Acts 16:25-34. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on November 19, 2023.
Have you ever noticed that there are some people who have a lot of things, but they are never thankful? We all wrestle with this, but some people are especially bad in this area. They are always complaining that they don’t have that, or that they do have this, or that something happened, didn’t happen, etc. They tend to only see what they don’t have, but even this is not their problem.
Imagine all the things that you don’t have, but that you also don’t want. I can think of all manner of things that I do not have and I thank God that I don’t have them. How many bad things could have happened to me today that didn’t?
Our title today asks the question, “Just who is the prisoner?” There are people who have very little, but some of them are the most thankful people you will ever meet. In fact, we tend to do one of two things when we run into them. We may be impressed, like being around them, and try to be better at it. Or, we may be annoyed by them, and do what we can to avoid them. I ask the question because we don’t always know who is mentally imprisoned by things.
Being a prisoner is more about your mind than it is about the external circumstances. Richard Wurmbrand was a Christian pastor in Romania when the communists took over. He was imprisoned for standing against the communists. Eventually, he was released and he came to the United States of America in order to exhort American Christians to pray for the persecuted Church throughout the world.
I mention this because we are often too fixated on what we don’t have, here in the land of plenty. People elsewhere would be thankful for even 10% of what we have. What about freedom? Would we remain faithful to Jesus if we lost our freedoms overnight? Would we complain that God doesn’t love us, or that “it doesn’t work”?
Let’s look at our passage and may the Lord help us to be a thankful people.
Paul had cast a demon out of a fortune-telling slave. Her owners used their power and relation to the people of Philippi to abuse Paul and Silas by having them beaten and thrown into prison.
We do not know exactly what time they ended up in prison in stocks, but our passage picks up at midnight. Here, we find Paul and Silas praying and singing hymns to God. That may seem unlikely to most. Of course, they were badly beaten and are not able to sleep. What else do you do in such a case? They were having a bad day. Still, they look to God for help, but also to praise Him.
When your day is surrendered to Jesus like theirs was even the bad things will have something good in them It is not like God causes them to be thrown into prison. There are plenty of bad actors who do not like them. There are enough sinners around you to put you in prison. We don’t need to blame that on God because He allows it to happen.
We need to stop looking at God like a micromanager who is the direct agent behind everything that happens in life. Of course, God takes full responsibility for the universe that He has created, but that is not the same thing as being primarily responsible for sinful acts.
Bad things can come into our life because of the sin of others, and it can come into our life because of our own poor or sinful choices. We are in a sea of sinful choices that causes difficult and troubling things. Yet, in the midst of that, God promises to help us if we will trust him and live for Him. In fact, sometimes it is the “bad” stuff that does the most good. Think about Jesus on the cross.
We are also very bad at defining what is good and what is bad. There are many things in my life that I once thought were bad, but there was a blessing in them that I couldn’t see at the time. God has shown me over time that they were not nearly as bad as I thought, and they were a lot better than I gave them credit for. The next time you think that you are having a bad day, then think about this. Remind yourself that you are really bad at defining things. Maybe this day isn’t nearly as bad as I feel like it is right now.
We need to let God redeem our thinking. If you suffer for doing the right thing (like Paul and Silas were doing), it is not because God hates you. No, He loves you, and He wants you to keep faith through it.
They are awake at midnight because God is their only hope and their only joy. They may be in chains, but their minds are not in chains. Our greatest chains are the ones in our minds. May we learn to trust Jesus and throw off such chains.
Paul and Silas couldn’t sleep so they talked with God about their situation. When you can’t do anything, that’s a good time to pray. There is no prison that can keep you from praying. It can only influence you not to pray.
What are some of the chains that keep us from praying? We can let chains of anger towards God keep us from praying. Why is this happening to me? Yet, imagine if God did this to us? What if God followed His anger and demanded of us why we were doing this to Him?
We can let chains of fear bind us. Paul and Silas could feared that their going to die in that prison and that no one who had power cared for them. But, that is not what they did.
They could have let chains of despair drag them down. Why is God doing this to us? We have served Him so well, and now this! This isn’t worth it; I quit! I’ve done all of this work for nothing, and God doesn’t care!
One of the greatest tests for a believer is suffering in one form or another. Suffering tests our faith far greater than anything else. Weak faith is easily stripped down in the furnace of affliction. What if you lost everything in your life? Would you be able to continue serving God, loving Him, being thankful?
Yet, the Bible tells us that God is in the furnace with us. He has promised to work all the things we are going through for a good purpose, at least if we are one of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). Ephesians 1:11-12 says that He “works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.”
Stories about heroes always sound amazing because they are about someone else. But, what if it was me? We have too many examples in Scripture to doubt that God is worthy of our praise even in persecution, or to doubt that He doing something good through it.
Sin is like chains. It starts out small and is easily broken, but over a long period of time and continued sinning, it becomes thicker and thicker. Soon, we are at its mercy and unable to get free. Paul and Silas were not in bondage to sin, and thus, they were able to praise God in a tough situation.
There are also chains of fleshly desires, the chains of being praised by others, and many others. Don’t wait until they are so strong that you can’t get free.
At midnight, we are told that an earthquake shakes the jail and the chains break free of the walls and floors. The cell doors open and Paul and Silas are freed from the stocks. We don’t know if the shackles broke free from their hands. The angel did this for Peter in Acts 12. Sometimes God answers us sooner than we think He will.
I would not venture to say that most prayers are not answered right away because there are so many prayers of our heart and spirit that we cannot keep track of them all. Yet, at least in the area of things that seem big in our mind, we can tend to prepare ourselves to settle in for the long haul. You may pray for years for some things, months for others, days, etc. Of course, how many Christians in history have ended up in prison due to persecution, and yet were not set free by God that first night? The answer is most of them.
Our hope is not in how quickly God answers our prayers, but in the fact that He always answers. If the situation doesn’t change today, then I need to remain faithful to Him, and remain a faithful light. Waiting on the Lord is never easy. However, His timing is always good, and we can trust it. Even for those who perished in a prison, God did not fail them. At the resurrection, they will rejoice that their prayer was finally answered!
We must also be careful of seeing the earthquake itself as the answer. It is only part of what God is doing. How long did they contemplate what to do? Or, did they immediately ask God what they should do? Does God want us to run?
I believe that Paul understood that God was doing a special work that would aid the Gospel in Philippi. So, when it came down to it, he remained in his cell waiting to see what God would do next.
The story moves to the jailer. After the earthquake, he is sure that the prisoners will escape. There is one rule of a warden in charge of securing prisoners. You guard this man, these men, at the risk of your life. The warden despairs of any hope of finding the prisoners so he draws his sword in order to take his own life. Paul and Silas can either see him outside the dark prison, or they hear him draw his sword and figure out what is going on, or perhaps the Holy Spirit tells them what is going on. Regardless, they stop the warden from killing himself by ensuring him that they are all still in the prison.
At this point, the warden, shocked at all that has transpired, trembles and asks what he must do to be saved. Wow, that is a turn around.
We need to always remember that our worst days can become our best days because of Jesus. The last 24 hours were not on Paul and Silas’ top ten favorites of ministering for the Lord, at least not yet. They were in excruciating pain while they prayed and sang to the Lord.
We should note that even before they were released the prisoners and the warden could hear them praying and singing. No doubt, they had pegged these men for loony bins, but your in prison. The content of their prayers and songs would have resonated in their minds. Who are these strange guys? How can they be hopeful and praiseful in a time like this, in a place like this?
Whether Paul and Silas realized it or not, they were living out a sermon that night to a whole prison full of men who needed Jesus, even the jailer.
Sometimes God lets things happen in our life because other people are watching us, and He wants us to be a witness to them. This is a holy moment when men who have been beaten for serving Jesus cry out to him in prayer and praise. Those men were witnessing a holy moment.
Paul and Silas tell the jailer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” How did he know to ask for salvation? Perhaps, it is from the content of their prayers and songs. It may also be from the stories about the fortune-teller slave that was freed from a demon. She had said they would declare the way of salvation.
Regardless, he is given the way. We can sometimes make salvation much more complicated than it needs to be. It all boils down to faith in Jesus. If you keep your faith in Jesus, then everything else will be worked out. Jesus will lead and help you. Jesus has given this man powerful witness through Paul and Silas. He will help him forward even when Paul and Silas are gone.
Impact is good, but it cannot take the place of Jesus. Thank God for people in your life who have impacted you and influenced your life for God, but in the end, keep your eyes upon Jesus.
When they say that his whole household will be saved, it is not saying that he can believe for them. Rather, he is in a pivotal position for the people of his household, family members and slaves. Salvation is a personal work that impacts the world around us, starting at home. Paul may have simply meant that his salvation would no doubt bring about the salvation of the home that he leads (i.e., the normal progression and not necessarily a guarantee). However, he may actually be speaking prophetically. It may be that the Lord is showing Paul that this man’s whole household will be saved. Yet, this doesn’t change that they will each need to put their faith in Jesus, just like this jailer.
Several things happen in the dark early morning hours. Paul and Silas spoke the word of the Lord to him and his household. The jailer washes the stripes on their backs, which had been left unattended. He and his family are all baptized. Wow, what a day!
This jailer in one day went from being normal to being suicidal to being joyful. Just who are these prisoners? And, just who was the prisoner? Paul and Silas didn’t act like normal prisoners because they knew that they were still free in all the ways that matter. The served the Lord of Freedom. Whereas, this jailer who was not in prison, was the one who really needed to be set free from the judgment that loomed over his head without Jesus.
The next time you are tempted to complain about your situation ask yourself this question. Just who is the prisoner here?