Acts 16

ACTS16: A Bible teaching I gave in the Rockland county Jail



         Paul and Silas knew they were where God had sent them.  They had sought His guidance and been given a vision of a Macedonian calling for help.

         They found themselves in the Roman colony of Philippi.  There seemed to be no Presence of God there.  No synagogue, no place of prayer.  Paul's custom, when he reached a new location, was to go first to the synagogue, but here there was none.  So they went out by the river to pray.  There they found some women gathered, among them a woman named Lydia.  We are told that God had touched her heart and she was seeking for more light.  The Bible asks, “How shall they believe on Him of whom they have not heard and how shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall they preach except they be sent.”  If the city of Phillipi had had only one seeker, God would have sent someone to enlighten her!  The Bible also tells us, blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.

         Lydia was an interesting person.  She was a business woman.  We know she was was posperous because she owned a house large enough to lodge the evangelists and hold meetings.  We hear nothing about a husband, only that she was a business woman, dealing in dyes and textiles.  As such, she was something of an anachronism, since in those days women usually were not involved in business and trade. 

         She received the Word and was baptized along with her household and then she invited the evangelists to lodge in her home.

         So far everything was going beautifully.  Already they had the core of a new church, a meeting place and a place to live and, I am sure, were provided with the necessities of life.  Surely this was the place to which they were called by God!

         Except for one thing.  There was a young girl who was possessed by a demon.  It was a demon that had the ability to tell fortunes.  Most fortune tellers are fakes but there are some that get their information straight from hell itself, and these are dangerous to have anything to do with.  You see the illogic of going to fortune tellers; either they are fakes or they are in the employ of the one who seeks our destruction.  Why would anyone want advice from the enemy of his soul?  The devil is a liar so how could we trust anything he tells us? 

         The child was a slave and belonged to some men who were using her for profit.  They had no concern for her welfare of course, only interested in the money she was earning for them.  A child abused, both by the demon and by the slavers who owned her.  Day after day she followed after Paul and Silas in the street shouting that they were evangelists sent by God.  Actually she was telling the truth, but Paul was distressed by it.  Not only because he wanted no publicity from Satan, but also, I am sure, he had compassion on an abused child. Finally he could bear it no longer.  He cast out the demon. 

         Now she was just a normal little girl, of no use to her owners.  Far from being glad she was healed, they were furious because she was no longer a cash cow for them and their means of livelihood was taken away.  It looked as though they were going to have to go and get honest jobs.

         So they went to the authorities.  Of course they could not say, This slave girl of ours was a lunatic possessed by the devil, and these men healed her and now she's useless to us.  Instead they brought false charges against them.  Now everything was starting to unravel.  Paul and Silas were arrested. 

         Getting arrested wasn't exactly new to Paul. He was confident that he was in the will of God in this place, although they were beaten until their backs were cut and raw and then put in prison.  When we are in the will of God, working with Him in His plan, everything that happens is important to His planned outcome.

         That jail was not like this one, not a nice building with air conditioning and modern plumbing.  It was probably nothing more than a pit in the ground.  Instead of bars they had stocks which held the prisoners'  feet, rendering them helpless against the rats.  It would be a long time from then that plumbing was to be invented, so you can imagine the filth and stench of the place.  Moreover their backs were beaten raw with open wounds and into this filthy environment they had been tossed.  Prisoners must have died of infection as a regular thing in such places.  There was no such thing as due process.  They had no right to an attorney or any of the rest of it.  They were imprisoned without a trial on top of having been beaten severely.

         You see, the people of Philippi did not care if a few women held prayer meetings in Lydia's home and were worshipping another God.  They already had plenty of gods and one more or less made no difference.  Their gods had no powers; they were venal and prone to the sins and foibles of men and the people had no real fear of them.  It was only when they discovered that this God was not like the ones they knew. and not until the evangelsts began stirring up the order of things, upsetting the status quo, that there was any reaction against them.  It is like that today. As long as the church holds meetings and does not disturb the way things have been going, nobody cares very much.  It is only when the Christians start making a difference that the world rises up against them.  It is only when the people discover that this God is different, this one has power, this one can change life as they know it, that they become uneasy and seek to stamp out the work the evangelists have begun.  Then the gates of hell rise up in opposition.  They don't mind if we have our services, sing our songs, listen to our teachings and then go home to our lives.  What they mind is when things begin happening that change the status quo.  As long as we deny the power of our form of godliness, or are not serious enough about it to be tools of change in the hands of God, well and good.  We are the 'religious right.'  As long as we remain quiet and inactive, who cares?  And as long as the work Paul and Silas were doing was confined to a few women, what's the difference?

         But this was a whole other matter.  They had already wrecked some people's business; what next?  In another place where the evangelists had gone to preach people called them the men who had turned the world upside down, and said 'now they have come here!'  It is impossible to remain indifferent to a church that is doing things, that is, allowing God to do things through it. The idea was to nip it in the bud, let it go no further. 

         So the wounded evangelists are in prison, their feet fastened in stocks.  There is nobody to speak for them, all they can do is spend the night in this place. 

         It is important to note here that they had broken no law, they had committed no act of civil disobedience, they had not mounted a demonstration, and although they had been accused of speaking against the Roman government, they had not done so.  Nevertheless there they were far from home in a Roman jail where the conditions were horrendous.

         You might expect under these egregious circumstances that the evangelists would be indignant and complaining.  We were doing the will of God, we came where we were called to come, we were doing no harm, we were in obedience and this happened to us.  It isn't fair!  Silas might of turned to Paul and said "Well, this is another fine mess you've gotten me into."

         That's not what happened.  They began to sing hymns, probably Psalms, and praise God.  Their situation was horrible but God was still worthy to be praised.  He had called them here and they were here for a reason and this part of it was as important to God's plan as the pleasant parts. 

         We are told that God inhabits the praise of His people.  God now steps into things and begins taking action. There is an earthquake.  Not a natural earthquake, because this one breaks the chains that hold the prisoners.  This earthquake is a supernatural event.  The jailor takes in what has happened and is about to kill himself because the penalty for losing ones prisoners is death, probably crucifixion.  One might have expected the prisoners to have taken off in all directions.  But they didn't.  Paul cried out to the man, "Do yourself no harm, we are all here."

         Why didn't they run?  Possibly, because they had been listening to the evangelists.  There are few places where people are as receptive to the Word of God as they are in jails and prisons, and I suppose it was like that back then as well.

         In any case the prisoners, who were unchained and had nobody to stop them, were staying where they were.  This was unusual to say the least.  The jailor called for a light and jumped down into the prison and there they were, they had not escaped.  Aware that the evangelists had something he had hitherto known nothing about, he asked, Where do I go to sign up for this?  How can I join you?  How can I get this for myself?  What must I do to be saved? When the power of God is revealed He cannot be ignored.  Some, like the Gadarene swine herdsmen tell God to go away. They do not want their lives changed.  Some reach out for changed lives.  Some hearts are hardened and some are opened.

         Paul replies, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved and thy household."

         The Jailor welcomes this, and now begins to behave like a changed man.  He brings the evangelists into his home and dresses their wounds and sets food before them.

         Meantime, the representatives of the Roman government discover a disturbing fact they had not known before.  Paul and Silas are Roman citizens, and as such they have special rights.  The officers had made a serious error in having beaten them.  The next thing they know, these local functionaries might be feeling the weight of Roman law.  At best they would lose their jobs, and at worst, their lives.  So they release the evangelists and tell them they are free to go, get out of town.

         Paul now uses his civil rights, not in a prideful way but for a purpose.  He demands that they be treated as dignitaries.  The local government has no choice but to do as he says.  Can you imagine what would have become of that embryonic church group if the evangelists had simply been released from prison and disappeared?  They went to the new Christians and spent some time with them and then they left town, not when the Romans wanted them to, but when it was God's time for them to go.

         The church at Philippi prospered and grew.  We knew there was a flourishing church there some time later when Paul was in prison at Rome because he wrote them a letter from there. We have that letter today, the book of Philippians. It is still a source of encouragement and instruction to the church.

         The moral to this story is that, while not everything we get into in doing the will of God is pleasant to us at the time, everything is part of the plan and Purpose of God which is to build His church and offer the Gospel message to everyone in the world.