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Reading Acts 15:25-40 where Paul and Silas preach the gospel to their jailer, and the jailer and all his household come to faith. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
Paul and Silas were unjustly treated and thrown in prison, and it was because of this injustice that was done to them that a prison guard and his entire household were justified when we understand the text.
You're listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to the sound teaching of the Word of God. Find videos and more at our website, www .utt .com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the book of Acts, still in chapter 16, where we've been reading about Paul and Silas in prison in Philippi. I'm going to pick up reading in verse 25. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's bonds were unfastened. When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped.
But Paul cried with a loud voice, Do not harm yourself, for we are all here. And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
And they said, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once, he and all his family.
Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them, and he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God. But when it was day, the magistrates sent the police, saying, Let those men go.
And the jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, The magistrates have sent to let you go, therefore come out now and go in peace. But Paul said to them, They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison, and do they now throw us out secretly?
No, let them come themselves and take us out. The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens, so they came and apologized to them, and they took them out and asked them to leave the city.
So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia, and when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed. So where we left off on Wednesday last week, it was with Paul and Silas fastened in the stocks in the inner part of the prison, and at midnight, they're praying and they're singing hymns.
They were not discouraged at all about the fact that they had been persecuted for the gospel, beaten and fastened into stocks. Rather, they were singing hymns unto God, and the prisoners were listening to them, meaning that Paul and Silas had been witnessing to these prisoners, not just in singing hymns, but also praying.
You pray the gospel when you pray, right? I've done this before. I've had a person just kind of walk in the front door of the church before, and they just say to me, Hey, I'm just having a low day, and I need someone to pray for me.
This request has come to me several times. I don't know anything about the person. I don't say, Well, let me share the gospel with you first, but I can share the gospel with them in my prayer. So I might put my hand on their shoulder or something like that, and I'll pray, and the gospel will be included in my prayer.
It will be something like, God, thank you for sending your son to die on the cross for our sins so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. Teach us to repent and turn from our sins and lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake.
I've even prayed the 23rd Psalm for a person before and had fit high points of the gospel in there as well. So you can pray for somebody and fit the gospel in there. And so as Paul and Silas are praying and singing hymns, the gospel is being heard in what they're proclaiming.
The hymns that they're singing might be out of the Psalter, or it may be some of the traditional creedal things that the church was beginning to adopt and repeat that contained essential fundamentals of the gospel.
So they're witnessing to these prisoners. The prisoners are listening and listening to them. When we get to the part where the earthquake hits and the jail doors are all open. Of course, we understand why Paul and Silas stayed there.
But why would the rest of the prisoners stay there? Why would no one have left at all? Because of the witnessing that Paul and Silas had been doing to the rest of the prisoners so that they had nothing to fear.
Even they came to faith in God and Paul and Silas were able to keep them there without anybody running off and potentially costing this soldier his life so that they were able to proclaim, don't harm yourself.
We're all here. Verse 26 is where it says, suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. That's a pretty intense earthquake. And remember that Paul and Silas had been put in the heart of this prison and fastened into stocks.
Immediately all the doors were open and everyone's bonds were unfastened. Now we don't know if this was a natural event or a supernatural event, but either way, God's hand was still upon it. If it was a natural event, God caused this earthquake and it was so intense, it shakes the foundation of the prison.
It warps the doors so that the doors break open and their bonds were probably attached to the wall. So as it shakes the walls, their bonds become unfastened and they were able to get free. Or it could have been that the earthquake was supernaturally caused and God just opened up all the doors and broke the bonds off of Peter and I'm sorry, Paul and Silas.
Peter wasn't in this story. He was in Acts chapter 12 when he was in prison there. Remember that? Hold on to that because I'm going to come back to that in a moment. But there in that story, even Peter was set free by an angel who came in and released him from his bond.
So maybe God acted supernaturally here. Maybe he did this through natural means. But nevertheless, the hand of God was upon Paul and Silas. When this earthquake occurred, it woke the jailer up and he saw that the prison doors were open.
So he draws his sword. Why did he do that? Because if the prisoners had escaped, who was going to pay for that with their life? It was going to be the chief jailer and probably everyone else under him as well.
This is one of the ways that the Romans put fear in the hearts of their soldiers to do their job. Well, you got you have a prisoner that escapes. You're going to pay for it with your life. And it wasn't just the Romans.
This is the way that Herod dealt with his own guards, his own prison guards in Acts chapter 12 when the angel broke Peter free. The guards that were supposed to be guarding Peter were put to death by Herod because they let Peter go.
You know, Herod's putting them to death, thinking that you could have prevented this. There's no way the guards were never going to be able to fight against an angel. But nevertheless, Herod instilled the same thing upon his soldiers, that if you let a prisoner get free, it will cost you your life.
So for this Roman soldier, it was also going to bring shame upon his family. And so it was better for him to just take his own life and put the matter to rest instead of leaving it up to capital punishment and potentially bringing shame upon his household.
So he draws his sword. He's about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried with a loud voice, Do not harm yourself, for we are all here. And the jailer called for lights and rushed in.
Remember, they're they're in the deep, dark, central part of the prison. They can see out because you just got to follow the light out. But nobody can see in there until the jailer goes and gets lights.
He gets torches and rushes in, trembling with fear. He fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? He's not asking them, what do I have to do to be saved from the Romans?
I'm about to get in trouble here. There's been an earthquake and all the prisoners are set free. No, none of the prisoners had escaped. So the jailer is not asking Paul and Silas, how am I saved from the judgment of man?
He's asking them, how am I to be saved from the judgment of God? How does the jailer know to ask them that question? Well, he knows their reputation. This was why they had been thrown in prison, because they had been proclaiming the gospel in Philippi.
They had been proclaiming Christ and the people hated them for for that. Then when you've got Paul and Silas that are fastened in the stocks in the inner part of the prison, they're singing hymns and praying prayers unto God.
The jailer certainly heard some of this, as well as the rest of the prisoners. So he knew exactly what they stood for and what their message was. He knew exactly what to ask them, coming and falling down before them and saying, what must I do to be saved?
And what is their answer? Verse 31, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. Now that wasn't the entirety of their message. This wasn't like a quick conversion. He goes, amen, I'm going to believe and I'm turning over a new leaf.
And then Paul and Silas just kind of walk out and that's it. This was the beginning of what they were going to be sharing with the jailer and his household. Everything that they were going to preach to him was going to flow from this statement.
Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. Well, what does that mean? What does it mean to believe in the Lord Jesus? That's what they go on to tell him. Verse 32, and they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.
So it's not a standalone verse, even though we tend to use it that way. I had a fellow in my church one time, every Bible that he bought, he would have the engraving done on it, the little gold lettering there in the bottom right hand corner.
You know what I'm talking about? And the only engraving he would put on there was Acts 1631. He would just put that reference on his Bible. And one time I finally asked him about it. Why do you put Acts 1631 on your Bible?
I'm sure I knew the reason, but I wanted to hear what his answer was. And he said, well, this, this is it. This is the gospel. And this is all a person has to do to be saved. And I said, sure, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.
But as I visited with him more about that, what I came to find about this individual is that he was going down to like Walmart, just the Walmart parking lot, and he would be visiting with people claiming that he was sharing the gospel, but that wasn't really what he was doing.
He was, he was saying something to this effect, saying in Acts 1631, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. And he'll say something like, do you want to go to heaven? And the person will say, yes.
And he'll say, well, then pray this prayer with me and you will go to heaven. And then they pray the prayer and he slaps him on the back and says, see, there you go. Welcome brother or welcome sister into the kingdom of God.
Into the kingdom of God. Now you've got a one way ticket to heaven. And there was another time when he was visiting with an atheist or he was trying to do this with an atheist. And the atheist walked away from him and said, no, no, no, no, man, I already did this when I was a teenager.
I don't believe that anymore. And it's all nonsense. And you're not going to fill my head with this nonsense. And the fellow said to the atheist, well, see, we already got you then you're going to be in heaven, whether you like it or not.
Now I walked him through the parable of the sower. I took him to Matthew 13 and I explained to him the parable of the sower, exactly how Jesus explains that parable and what it represents. Those who are truly in the kingdom of God and those who are not.
And there in the parable, Jesus says there are some who are going to receive the message of the kingdom with joy for a time, but they have no root. And so they wither away or the cares of this world choke out the word and it proves to be unfruitful.
It's only when the message of the kingdom falls on good soil that it produces a harvest. And even though I took him through this parable and tried to explain how we can know a true and false conversion, the Bible tells us there are some that have false conversions.
They pray these prayers, but that does not mean that they are saved. Even though I explained that to him, he said, well, you know what? It's not my concern to think about that. I'm supposed to obey. And so I'm going to go to these people and I'm going to tell them to pray this prayer and tell them that they're in the kingdom of God.
And I said, you don't have the authority to do that. Share the gospel with them. Absolutely. I'm not telling you not to do that, but you don't have the authority to tell this person whether they're saved or not.
You can't popishly declare whether a person is a Christian, but you've been misled by this teaching for years and years and years and years to believe now that you are bringing folks into the kingdom by this prayer that you're praying and using Acts 1631 to justify it.
That's completely isolating the verse out of context. It's absolutely true that if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved. But what does that mean? We still have to explain to someone what it means to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
If someone asks you, what must I do to be saved? You can answer exactly like Paul and Silas did. But then you must do what Paul and Silas did. And that's what we see in verse 32. And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and all who were in his house.
They didn't just make some random proclamation and the jailer went, oh, okay, well, then I'm saved. But they spoke the word of the Lord so that this jailer would come to faith. He would know what he is to believe in and so be saved.
Verse 33, the jailer took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds. And he was baptized at once, he and all his family. And as we've seen demonstrated earlier in the book of Acts, they were already saved by this point.
So he's a Christian now because he had put faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's baptized to signify, I've been buried with Christ in my sins and I have been risen again to new life. And it says he and all his family.
Of course, Presbyterians and Baptists differ on this verse. And that's just singling out two denominations. You'll have one side that says all his family included infants and so infants were baptized as well.
But we can't know that. The text doesn't say that. And then the Baptist maintained the position that baptism is supposed to be one's own confession of faith and infants and small children. They cannot profess faith.
So therefore, infants are not baptized and we don't have any example of infant baptism anywhere in the New Testament. So of course, you can tell by what I'm saying here that I'm on the I'm on the Baptist side of the argument.
You know, here's here's basically the position that I take. And this is, of course, a secondary issue. This is not an essential doctrinal issue. But if you choose to baptize your infant, does it change their status before God?
No, no, it doesn't. Their their position before God is not changed at all because you baptized your child. Whereas for you, when you came to Christ and you were baptized, it was in obedience to the command to be baptized, a profession of your faith that with Christ you had been buried in your sins and raised again to new life as Christ was raised from the dead.
So you also have been raised from the death that you were in, in your sins and transgressions in which you once walked. So it is a profession of your faith, which is why I take the creedal position. I understand that Presbyterians likewise baptize those who make a confession of faith.
But you have nothing in the scriptures at all that says anything or gives any sort of command whatsoever to baptize your small children or your infants. There is there is nothing that you gain by baptizing your children and you lose nothing by not baptizing your kids.
There is no disobedience being done because you didn't baptize your children because there's nothing in the New Testament that says for you to do that. Therefore, that is the that's why I take the Baptist position that I do.
But that's just to explain that that particular passage tends to get used in the baptism debate. Who is the household who's among the household that is being baptized? Whatever the answer would be, it would be speculative because we don't know.
Verse 32, and they spoke the word of the Lord to him and all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds. And he was baptized at once. He and all his family.
Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God. All of this by God's providential hand, that Paul and Silas would be unjustly treated, that they would be thrown in prison, that they would be praying and singing hymns, that a big earthquake would come, that all the jail doors would be flung open, that the jailer was going to kill himself thinking that the prisoners had escaped, that Paul and Silas would speak up and say, don't harm yourself because we're all here, that the jailer would come to them and say, what must I do to be saved?
That Paul and Silas would preach the gospel to him, that they would then go to his home and preach the gospel to them. And an entire family and probably several families that may have been under the roof of this jailer's house came to saving faith in Christ through the unjust treatment of Paul and Silas simply for preaching the gospel that they were preaching there in Philippi.
And this was all by God's sovereign hand. There are souls saved for eternity because Paul and Silas preached the gospel to this jailer who otherwise would not have heard the gospel if they had not been beaten and thrown in prison for preaching it.
My friends believe in God and trust in him that he can take the worst of circumstances and he will use it for his glory. Amen. Why should we complain about our circumstances when we know our souls have been rescued and set free for eternity by faith in our Lord Christ who has paid the penalty for our sin with his death on the cross and through his resurrection from the grave.
All who believe in him will not perish, but we are saved. Saved from the judgment of God. Saved to have fellowship with God and live with him forever in his eternal kingdom. The jailer and his family celebrated God for all of this and Paul and Silas no doubt rejoiced as well.
So let us rejoice daily in the salvation that we have in Christ and let others see your joy, no matter your circumstance. Doesn't mean the circumstance isn't hard. It most certainly might be harder for you to rejoice in the circumstance that you are in, but do it anyway for it will be a testament to the goodness of God upon your life that you may share the gospel with others that they may experience that goodness as well.
We go on to verse 35, but when it was day, the magistrate sent the police saying, let those men go. And the jailer reported these words to Paul saying the magistrates have sent to let you go, therefore come out now and go in peace.
And the jailer is like, hey, you can go. But Paul said to them, they have beaten us publicly, uncondemned men who are Roman citizens and have thrown us into prison. And do they now throw us out secretly?
No, let them come themselves and take us out. See, Paul and Silas are going to use their citizenship, their rights as Roman citizens in order to make a greater spectacle of this, that this would not be dismissed secretly, but that Paul would get some attention so that he could preach the gospel to more people.
That's really what he intends here to do, that others would see they were unjustly treated and yet still rejoiced in God to share his gospel with the people of Philippi. So let them come take us out. Verse 38, the police reported these words to the magistrates and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens.
Paul and Silas are being cleared here and they're being cleared publicly. They're not going to let this be dismissed privately, but you must publicly issue this apology so that our reputations remain in the clear before the public and that they can go on preaching the gospel.
So they came and apologized to them and they took them out and asked them to leave the city. So they went out of the prison, visited Lydia, and when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.
The church of Philippi that was meeting there in Lydia's home. So that's the conclusion of chapter 16. We'll get to Paul and Silas in Thessalonica tomorrow. Creeping up on Acts 17, we've got the sermon at Mars Hill just around the corner.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the goodness that you have shown to us through the salvation that we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. And let this be the joy that fills our hearts. Teach us how to have joy, even in difficult circumstances, so that whatever comes our way, it's something that is growing us to be more like Christ or and or it may be an opportunity to share the gospel with somebody else.
Grow us in wisdom. Give us joy in your spirit. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
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