Acts 16:25-40 - Somebody's Watching You

You are listening to Recast Church of Madawan's Podcast. Listen in as our lead pastor,

Don Sopec, is in a sermon series entitled, Solid Foundation, A Journey Through the

Book of Acts. I'm going to kind of introduce the message this morning before we come to worship.

And I want to start off by a question, just a thought as it comes from this text that we're going to be looking at in Acts 16 today.

How can we ever rejoice? Like, think about the different things that go on in your life.

And I know that there's times when we come together on Sunday morning. Maybe this morning is one like this for you.

You've had a great week. The sun's been shining. You know, it's been warm, but not too hot. You know, whatever it might be that has kind of given you a good week, things went well at work, good things going on at home.

And it can be easy to worship God in those circumstances. Would you agree with that? There are some times that our circumstances lead us to worshiping

God. But it's not always that way, is it? There's some times when the phone calls have been like breakers, like waves smashing against our joy.

Have you had weeks like that where it's just one phone call after another and it's just hitting you hard? And it's like, how can

I rejoice? How can I have joy? The weeks when the tests come back with bad news or the kids have been incessantly annoying, antagonizing each other, and you are going to pull your hair out or someone is going to be in a body bag.

Have you ever had those weeks? How do we worship then? How do we come together and corporately lift our voices before God and rejoice in those circumstances?

Well, this week in our text, we're going to find two men in the book of Acts, historical account.

They were beaten with rods. We saw that last week. So we're picking right up where we left off. As a matter of fact, the text tells us that the policemen of the

Roman Empire, who were professional with a cane, laid many stripes on them.

Their shirts were taken off and they were beaten with a cane over the back for doing something good, for freeing a little slave girl.

And they are beaten. And the text told us many stripes were laid, a word picture of what you can imagine that looked like, that circumstance with their shirt off and being beaten.

And not only that, but then they were arrested after that. They were beaten, arrested, put out in a cold, dark, dank dungeon.

Their feet clamped down in the rough wooden stocks, hard enough that they couldn't get their feet free.

How hard do you have to put two four -by -fours together on your ankles before you can't free your feet?

Pretty hard. Rough wood on flesh. Their backs are raw.

And they are in a cold dungeon, alone in the dark. If ever there was a time to justify complaining, would you say that they are justified in complaining?

Right? But I believe that these two men knew God so well that when they faced hardships like this, they trusted him and even turned to him as their source, turned to him as the source for their comfort and joy.

Where did their comfort come from? From their physical circumstances? From a comfy, nice bed to sleep on?

Warm and cozy? Is that where their comfort came from? No, where was the source of their comfort?

God. So that in any circumstance, whether it's in the cold dungeon or in a nice, warm bed, either way, they could worship.

Because he was their comfort and joy. If you come this morning with a burden, we're gonna come to worship here in a moment.

And I'd encourage you to turn that burden over to God. Leave it at his feet.

If you come this morning with joy, then let the joy have its way in your life in turning your focus towards God and not towards the things that give you joy.

Because how many of you know, sometimes in those moments of goodness, we lose sight of God even then.

Have any of you ever experienced that? It's like how things are going all right. I don't need God right now. It's only in the dark times, that foxhole thought, when things are bad, well, then

I pray and ask for God to help. But man, when things are going good, I'm just doing all right on my own. So take the moment of joy.

If you're here and you're rejoicing and things have been going well for you this week, take that and turn the thoughts over to gratitude and recognition that God is the one who's provided you those things.

Don't worship the things, but worship the God who has given you the things. Does that make sense? So let's rejoice as we come together.

But obviously, first, we're gonna read the word of God and then Rob is gonna come and lead us in worship.

So I want you to open your Bibles, please, to Acts chapter 16. And we're gonna read verses 25 to 40, the end of that chapter.

And just as you're turning there, that's page 792 in the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you, 792.

And if you don't own a Bible, I'd encourage you to take that one with you. We want everybody to have a Bible. We've given over 100 of those away since we started two years ago.

We wanna just keep giving Bibles away. But 792, follow along as I read here the text of God's word.

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 a 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 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 magistrate sent the police saying, let those men go. And the jailer reported these words to Paul saying, the magistrate is 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 magistrate 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 from the prison and visited

Lydia. And when they'd seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed. Let's pray.

Amen. How's everybody doing today? Everybody doing well? All right. I want to encourage you to get comfortable. It looks like there's still some donuts back there while supplies last.

So you can get up and get those. There's some juice, coffee, whatever it takes to kind of keep your focus attentive to God's Word this morning.

But in our text this week, we've already read it. I kind of gave a little bit of an introduction. We see right off the bat, kind of goes without saying,

Paul and Silas are in prison. Well, how did they get there? And I think I just, for those of you who weren't here last week, just to kind of catch up the speed, they exorcised a demon out of a little slave girl, exorcised, kicked out a demon from a little slave girl.

And then her owners got all bent out of shape. So she's a slave, literally owned. She's the property of some people in the

Roman Empire. She's a little girl and she's a slave and she's got this demon. And it's very clear that she's demon possessed.

So why would her owners get bent out of shape? Like, wouldn't that be a good thing? Wouldn't you assume that that would be a good thing to have the demon cast out of this little girl?

Well, the problem is that as we saw last week, the demon gave this little girl a supernatural ability.

A supernatural ability that's a real genuine supernatural ability that demons apparently are able to give and she was able to tell the future.

So that it was profitable to her owners that people would come and literally pay a price, pay money to have their future told.

And it was accurate and effective and made a significant profit for her owners.

So that when the demon was cast out of her, she was no longer profitable to her owners. You get that picture? So that's where they got kind of angry, drug

Paul and Silas into the marketplace to be judged by the magistrates. They were beaten, like I mentioned, they were arrested and now they're sitting in jail overnight.

And we find it sometime around midnight, the text tells us. They're praying and they're singing. Now, what are you usually doing at midnight?

What are most people usually doing at midnight? Sleeping, most people. Now, not probably all of you, right?

But some of you sleep at midnight. They're locked in their stocks. They're in a seated position on a rough stone floor.

Their backs are beaten to a pulp. And I'm sure that laying down on that nasty dungeon floor was one of the last things that they wanted to do.

Can you imagine that? Your back has been just emaciated, just torn up and you're gonna lay down on that kind of floor.

Like how many of you would sign up for that? Like infection, can you say, ooh? You're gonna get something bad if you lay down.

So, why not sing praises to God, right? Like I mean, what else do you have to do?

So just go ahead and sing some praises, offer some prayers. Now, if we're honest, many of us maybe just now we're struggling to offer genuine praise to God in our comfortable seats.

Like if we're honest with ourselves, getting our attention focused on God and who he really is and worshiping him in spirit and truth, our emotions engaged, enthusiastic about who

God is, thinking about him accurately according to how he's revealed himself in the word of God. Is that sometimes tough for you even in a place of modern comfort?

How many of you would admit that that's sometimes difficult for you? Would you agree with me? Your little audience participation here.

Okay, so I'm not the only one on that that can sometimes just be like my mind's wandering off here. I'm like, well, we're singing songs.

So that's what we do right now. And some of these, we've sang multiple times. So you can just sing some of these songs, right?

For those of you who've been here for a while, you can sing them without even thinking about the words. There comes a point where you can do that. But here they are in this very dark place.

It's interesting to note that the main activity of our passage is gonna happen between the hours of midnight and six o 'clock in the morning.

So when your mom told you that nothing good happens after midnight, she wasn't being completely honest with you.

I'm just telling you. I mean, I know that that's a shock to some of you. Some of you, your mom is always right. But when she said nothing good happens after midnight, not true, just saying.

But before we move on, I want you to take a note of what happens, what's stated at the end of verse 25 here in our text.

The end of 25, it says this. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.

They're not alone. Now, they're locked, according to the passage last week, they were locked in high security section of the jail.

But there are other prisoners that are there with them, most likely in Roman jails that have been found to date.

Many were chained, shackled by the hands, and then a ring through the shackles, a chain up attached to the wall.

So most people would be shackled that way. That's the majority of the prisons in Roman times were just basically chained to the wall.

But the inner section was the stocks that we talked about where that was kind of the highest security area.

The inner section of the jail was reserved for the most hardened criminals, the ones that they wanted to punish or torture a little bit more, and they were in the middle, and that's where Paul and Silas are.

So other people are listening to them. Now, put this in perspective. If they're complaining and whining, the other prisoners are listening to them.

If they are cursing the jailer, the other prisoners are listening to them.

If they choose to rail against this little slave girl's owners, the other prisoners are going to listen to them.

Are you getting this picture here? Whatever they're doing out loud, the other prisoners are listening. But Paul and Silas are praying to God and singing, and the other prisoners are listening.

Now, things just kind of get weird. If you follow Paul, I think if you lived in those times and you were hanging out with Paul, just you'd expect a lot of weird things to happen.

Do you get that from the text? Like, we just kind of go through this, and it's just like, okay, well, we expect something strange to happen just about right now.

Boom, earthquake. Massive earthquake. And the foundations of the jail are shaken to the degree that those who are shackled to the walls, the shackles come off the walls.

I mean, this is a massive earthquake. The foundations of the jail are shaken. The stocks holding

Paul and Silas' feet are jarred open in the quake. The doors all swing out on their hinges, and freedom is theirs for the taking.

You get that picture? I mean, just all of a sudden, jailbreak, right? They're free, free to go. This is a supernatural event.

All the doors open. Every bond was unfastened, according to the text. And the fact of the matter is, God often uses the natural to do the supernatural.

So that when we see the parting of the Red Sea, we see that a wind blew out of the west for all night long, and then the water parts.

And you see sometimes these things. But God is not limited to doing that. He chooses to do that from time to time.

But we did see another jailbreak earlier in the book of Acts. Those of you who have been here for a while and have been following through, there was another jailbreak where God just simply used an angel.

An angel appeared to Peter. His bonds fell off. He put on his clothes, walked out of the jail.

The gate opened all by itself, and it was just utterly and completely supernatural in its entirety.

But here, there's an earthquake, and then miraculously, the timing, everything happens. The jailer who's home, we see in the text, is apparently attached, most likely above the jail during this time.

He awakes to the earthquake. Now, he's not the only one in the jail, by the way. You don't have in your mind that there's a jailer who's over this prison.

There's guards. There's all kinds of people that aren't even mentioned in the text. But he's the jailer. He's the head honcho. He's the guy in charge.

His house is attached. He awakes to the earthquake, runs down to the detention block in the midst of this earthquake.

Can you imagine the chaos? Have you ever been in an earthquake before? I've never, there was one, if you remember a few years ago in Louisville, down in that area, and I actually just felt a little, you know, and it was like, oh, that's weird.

But I'm guessing some of you have been in some pretty rough ones. I can't imagine, because I've never been there to see something like that.

But I'm imagining chaos here. A lot of crazy stuff going on. The doors are swinging open.

Things are going crazy. And he runs down into the midst of that.

And one thing becomes clear to this guy who is in charge of this jail. The prisoners have escaped.

The doors are all open. He runs down to the detention block, and the first thing he sees, all the doors are wide open, and immediately his mind jumps to they're gone.

The primary thing that I'm in charge of has left. And what you need to understand in Roman times about a jailer is that the people, the magistrates who tried these guys and put them in prison don't care whether the jailer becomes buddies with these guys.

I mean, he can take them out to the marketplace for lunch if he wants. The main thing is that the magistrates are concerned when we call for them, you need to produce them.

That's it. We don't care how you lock them up. We don't care how you treat them, how you incarcerate them. You can have them over for dinner.

You can do whatever you want. You can go buy them clothes. You can become their best friend. But when we ask for them, you produce them, period.

No questions. That is your charge, your duty as a jailer. So that we're gonna see here in a minute, he's gonna take some people that are in his possession in his jail and literally have them over for dinner.

And it's like, is that legal? Is he allowed to? Absolutely, he can do whatever he wants with them as long as he's got them. But now in this circumstance, in this situation, he doesn't expect that he's got any of them.

He's been given this charge to keep these people in his possession, and they're all escaped in his mind.

So hopefully understanding what a jailer does in Roman times helps you understand why he's gonna draw his sword. He draws his sword and he prepares to end his own life.

Now to get to the position where he's a jailer, he's gone through significant military training. He probably came through a military track, so to speak, to actually get to the place where he's over this jail.

He has military experience, which means that in the Roman times, he would have been well -trained in honor and shame.

He knows that his life is forfeit if he has not discharged his duties. Not to the best of his ability if he's not discharged his duties.

Do you hear what I'm saying? Not like, well, the magistrates are not gonna accept an earthquake as an excuse.

They don't care. We put these people under your charge, and they're not here, you're done. We saw that happen earlier when the angel appeared.

I mean, can you imagine being that jailer and the shackles are still tied and the doors are all still locked, and you go to open it, and Peter's not in there back in earlier in the book of Acts?

The shackles are still chained, but there's nobody in there, and it's like, well, it was a miracle. Are the magistrates gonna accept that?

No, as a matter of fact, King Herod, it says, had those guards executed. Right?

So back in our text earlier, we saw a jail break, and the guards were executed by the ruler. So he's expecting this to be the end of the line for him.

But Paul, in the darkness, is able to make out the form of the jailer. I don't know if you saw the flash of the sword or something, but he knows what's about to happen.

We don't know all the details about how he figured that out, but he shouts, getting the jailer's attention, and he says, we're all here.

Don't harm yourself. Now stop for a moment. Is it just Paul and Silas that are still there?

No, we're all here. That's kind of crazy. Paul and Silas not only decided to stay there themselves, but they also somehow convinced all the other prisoners to stay.

It seems likely to me that it was in the hearing of the prayers and the singing that the other prisoners grew to trust

Paul and Silas in this. I don't know how that worked, and Luke is not giving us an extremely detailed account here.

There's a lot of things as you read this text as we go through that you could have questions about that the text just doesn't answer. But it's likely that the prayers and singing had an impact, that them hearing

Paul and Silas had an impact on their hearts. So the jailer calls for a flashlight, and once he gets his mag light, or probably a torch, more likely, and he confirms that nobody has escaped.

Can you imagine? Okay, put yourself in his shoes. Okay, it says in the text he crashes to the floor.

He literally falls to the floor, afraid. Put yourself in his shoes. I mean, he was just about to take his own life.

Can you imagine the adrenaline that is going through this guy's veins? It's like he just crashes, like boom, the adrenaline is gone, and he just crumples to the floor in front of Paul and Silas.

What do you think that that would be a significant point of time in this jailer's life? Like, do you think he's maybe questioning existence and important questions at that point?

Now, he's just about to step into eternity, and I'm sure that there's some significant things on his mind because look at what he says next.

He asks a central question of human existence. Sirs, he says it respectfully, sirs, what must

I do to be saved? He doesn't ask in this most important moment of his life, what must

I do to make more money? He doesn't ask, you know what, what

I'm really wondering is how could I be more popular? How could I grow in notoriety or fame?

Or what do I need to do to get a job promotion, to get out of this stinking jail and move on and climb the

Roman ladder of success here? How many of you know that not all questions are equal in life, did you know that?

Not all questions are equal. And there are some questions that as a human on this ball of dirt floating out in the cosmos, that there are some questions that need to be answered.

Every human should come to the place of answering this question. What must I do to be saved?

Well, even the question itself implies a little bit of understanding, doesn't it? And he recognizes he needs to be saved, right?

Isn't that part of the whole problem of the human experience is coming to the end of ourselves and recognizing that we need to be saved?

Well, this guy did. He recognized that he needed a savior. He needed something beyond this.

As he's about to, imagine that his entire life has just flashed before his eyes. He had the sword out already ready to go.

And in that process of his whole life flashing before his eyes, he recognizes his need for a savior.

I think it's quite interesting. What was the little slave girl, anybody who was here last week, remember what the little slave girl kept incessantly crying out as she was following Paul and Silas and company around the town of Philippi, this town, what was she constantly saying?

These are servants of the most high God who proclaim to you a way of salvation. And she says it so much that it annoys

Paul to the point where he just turns around and says, demon, get out of her, and it leaves. But he gets angry because she says it so much.

So everywhere around this little Roman colony of Philippi, everybody has been hearing this little slave girl incessantly crying out in the town square, behold, these are servants of the almighty

God, the most high God who brings a way of salvation. Do you think maybe the jailer had heard that?

I can't help but think that he had because he knows to turn to them as a place of salvation.

He turns to them as, he even uses the same word that the little girl used for salvation. There's different words in Greek that could be used there.

Uses the word for salvation that the little girl had been using. So he recognizes his need to be saved.

He needs to be rescued, as we sang earlier. Paul's answer is profound. And it's one of the earliest verses

I ever remember memorizing. Any of you ever, any of you grow up in the church and memorize a lot of scripture, a handful of you?

Okay, I remember just when I was knee high to a grasshopper remembering this one. I think it literally might have been the second verse I ever memorized,

Acts 16, 31. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Yes, it's King James because that's how I memorized it back then.

So believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Now, everyone I've ever heard quote that never reads the whole verse.

They never quote the whole verse. Have you ever noticed that? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. How does it end?

You and your household. But we don't like what that means, or I don't know if we don't know if God really quite meant that.

So maybe we don't quote that part because we're not sure if it's inspired. Why do we leave that part out?

I always caution you when it comes to memorizing, and I would encourage you to memorize God's word. Get it in your heart, get it in your head so that when times of temptation, struggle, different things come in, you've got the word of God readily available to you.

But I'm always extremely irked and a little weirded out whenever I see like John 3, 16, part

B. Do you know what I'm talking about? Or you can even get like 1 Corinthians 2, 13E.

Like the word the. Do you see what I'm saying? I mean, you can get, like, have any of you ever seen that before?

Written or like memorized or put out there? You know, just memorize this part. Well, how many of you know that if there's a part

B, there's also a part A? And maybe somebody's trying to draw your attention away from part

A to just get your attention on part B, but those two probably go together somehow, right? So understanding the verses that we memorize is number one.

I mean, if you're memorizing scripture and you should be, make sure you understand it. And not just understand it, but understand it in context.

Have you ever heard the verse, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me? Have you ever heard that verse?

I can do, raise your hand if you've heard it. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Now, how many of you have seen that on a locker room? On a locker room wall.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. You know, I can rush for 300 yards through Christ who strengthens me.

You know, I can get 13 sacks in a season through Christ who strengthens me. You know, I can shoot 50 % from behind the arc through Christ who strengthens me.

Is that what that verse means? No, in context, it literally means the exact opposite. It's like, I can endure all things through Christ who strengthens me.

If you put it in context, Paul is talking about suffering for the cause of Christ, not even about succeeding and leaping over tall buildings with a single bound and things like that.

So you put it in context. Should we memorize it? Yes, and it doesn't come out when we are winning.

That verse comes out when we're losing, and I can lose well for Christ.

You see the difference? I mean, so memorizing it, I'm sorry, that's all free because that's not in my notes. That was just kind of, that's my rabbit trail for the morning.

Am I allowed one? Can I get one? Okay, just one, all right. I gotta even figure out where I was at in here.

Yeah, so believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. You and your household. So what is that about? Like we don't even memorize that.

We don't even tack it on because we don't know what it means, and it's confusing to us. How many of you would say that's a little bit confusing? Like because he saved, his whole household is saved?

That'd be kind of cool, wouldn't it? But is that what we see throughout scripture? Not really.

I believe that Paul here literally is being prophetic. He's speaking in a historical account to a historical individual.

He's speaking directly to a jailer, and he says, if you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, by the power of the

Holy Spirit, I have seen that your whole family is gonna come in. Not that because you are saved, your family is saved, but if you are saved,

I have seen that your whole family is in. Do you see what I'm saying? It's a prophetic word given to that man right then, and they're saying, you put your faith and trust in Christ, your whole family is coming in too.

And as a matter of fact, we're gonna see here, and it's important, they spoke the whole word of God, the gospel, to his entire household.

They spoke it to his household, everybody there. So whether they go upstairs, or the family comes down, or whatever, children, servants, wives, everyone hears the word of God, and they are all going to be responsible to believe on their own.

It's not his faith that saves them. It is their faith and understanding. Everyone hears, and we see down in verse 34, that he and his whole family believed.

So he believed. But notice the immediate action of faith. I love to see this, because I've seen that work out here, where people come to an understanding of who

Christ is, and their immediate desire is to serve, to help, to remedy situations even that they've caused.

But the jailer who has fastened their feet in the stocks, and was cleaning their, now in our text, is cleaning their bloody mangled backs.

He's turned from their tormentor and their persecutor to the guy who is literally taking care of their wounds.

Instant transformation. His life has been changed. He's encountered the living Savior. And he immediately desires to serve and to help.

He and his entire household are immediately baptized. And I want to point this out. This is something that is a little bit nuanced here at recast.

A baptism is not something that comes later after classes.

We see this consistently in the book of Acts. It doesn't come after a significant theological exam, or after you've been saved for 25 years, and you've proven yourself over time.

How much time had this guy spent in Bible study, and in theological study and understanding?

Has his life been proved yet to be transformed or changed? Not at all. Anybody could just clean up somebody's back feeling guilty for them, right?

Baptism is something that is very closely in Scripture, attached, associated to new life in Christ.

You've been saved, get baptized. It's not be worthy of being baptized, or prove yourself to be baptized, or take classes to become baptized.

I want to encourage you guys, there's going to be a baptism recast at two o 'clock this afternoon. I'd encourage any of you that are free at that time to come.

There's going to be maps available to get there. We're just going to be going over to a pool about a mile away from here. And there's going to be three people that are being baptized and just come out and support them and encourage them.

But again, this is something that we just, as a person comes to faith in Christ, it's a natural step for them to identify, associate.

Baptism is not saving them, it's showing outside, externally, what has transformed them inside, that they've been buried with Christ and raised again to new life.

It's a symbol, a picture, but a powerful symbol and picture. The jailer lets them come upstairs.

He opens his home to them. Like, are you getting this? They're prisoners. And he opens his house to them.

It's like he gives them refrigerator rights. How many of you know some people, some people in your life have refrigerator rights.

They're allowed in the fridge. Other people, they come in your house and it's like, they're running around the fridge. You're like, get out of here.

What are you doing? You know what I'm saying? But it's like he just opens it up to them and he's like, yeah, come on in, have a feast.

Now, one thing that many commentaries point out, and it's important, is that Luke leaves a lot of the loose ends, leaves a lot of loose ends in this account.

He doesn't sew things up real nice. So you might be scratching your head going, what happened? Anybody wonder what happened to the other prisoners?

Like, I can't help but think that they got the shaft in this, that this didn't go well for them. Like, they got the raw end of the deal in there. I picture

Paul and Silas up getting some grub while they're getting refastened. Like, I don't know why I picture that.

Maybe that's not the case. Maybe everybody in prison was up there for a feast. I don't know, but that's the way my mind goes.

But it's possible that even some of them hearing the gospel believed, that even some of those other prisoners there were impacted by the power of the word of God that was proclaimed.

We just don't know. But ultimately, Luke's purpose in writing this is to show us this jailer's testimony, to show us a transformed life.

And we see something that's amazing here. Another thing that's transformed is that joy comes to the jail.

There is joy here. The jailer's family rejoices that he has come to face.

And I can say from personal experience, and I'm sure many of you have seen this as well, so there's been some amazing moments of joy as Recast has gotten started.

And we've been going for two years, and there's just been some awesome stuff, some amazing things. You know, I find joy,

I've fallen in love with preaching. I love preparing messages and proclaiming the word of God. I enjoy counseling, and some of the opportunities

I've had to interact with some of you over just helping you grow in your personal lives. I love the relationships that I've been able to develop with you.

I love that. But the greatest joy for me as a pastor, the greatest joy in seeing

Recast grow has come in the form of a couple of different things. First, several men that are, some of you here right now, who have said,

I'm never going to church. You had almost a stubborn exterior about church that was just,

I'm never going. I won't go, that's okay for my wife, that's okay for my kids, but you're not gonna find me there.

And you're here. And you're not just here, but you recognize what

Jesus Christ has done for you, and you're becoming real men of God. And that brings joy to see people's lives being genuinely, radically transformed.

See that? I mean, is that joy? Is that a cause for rejoicing? Equally, I've seen that happen to women here.

Had the chance to see women who have been beat up by sin and the hardships of life, and they've come to recognize for the first time that there is one who loves them more than they could ever know, and gave his life for them, and they've acknowledged him as their

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Powerful, amazing to see. Joy is a byproduct of faith.

Amazing, intense, awesome joy. And not just here on Earth, in our hearts, where we get an opportunity to rejoice together over lives being changed and transformed, but this is interesting, because even in scripture it says there is a cosmic celebration over one sinner who repents.

Even the angels in heaven rejoice over one who repents and turns from a life of sin and trying to go it alone, and that loneliness and desperation of a life lived for self.

And a turning to Christ and saying, I will go with you, and I need you to carry me.

Cosmic celebration, a cosmic joy. The angels in heaven are rejoicing in our text. It doesn't say it, but they are.

One sinner has repented, turned from his own way. At daybreak after the feasting, by the way, how many of you are tired by the time you get to daybreak, and you have been up all night?

Now, I used to be able to do that when I was younger. I mean, some of you, when you were younger, you used to be able to just kind of stay, you know, the all -nighter before the exam at eight o 'clock in the morning, and just pull right through, and boom, a couple jugs of coffee, and you're good to go, or you're

Mountain Dew or whatever. Back when I didn't have to drink diet Mountain Dew. But yeah,

I'd be tired at this point. This is six o 'clock in the morning, this is daybreak. They've been up all night.

A lot of crazy, cool, amazing stuff going on at the wee hours of the morning, you know, four o 'clock in the morning.

How many of you just kind of feeling it around there? That'd be tough. But at daybreak after feasting, how does your stomach feel after you eat at night?

I don't know. The joy is there. Jailer gets word from the magistrates via the police.

The text says the word police, but it's those same lictors, the Roman judgment with the ones that carried the canes around just in case they got to beat somebody.

They were the arm of justice, and they're the ones who come and say, Paul and Silas are free to go.

They're just coming on behalf of the magistrates. But what's interesting is in verse 37, Paul suddenly appears to get stubborn and demand his rights.

It's kind of like, why all of a sudden? He says, wait a minute, the magistrates had us publicly beat, and we're

Roman citizens, and we didn't even get a fair trial, and they just beat us. And now they're just gonna quietly dismiss us without even a face -to -face?

You see, by dismissing them, the magistrates were saying, you're exonerated. You're free to go. You're no longer held guilty.

You're no longer culpable. Otherwise, there'd be a further trial, and there would be an execution, or something dire was going to happen, or they'd just leave them locked in jail.

But by letting them go, they're admitting that they are not guilty. So he's saying, come and let us go face -to -face and make this a public exoneration.

Now, this can be confusing until you do a lot of historical and cultural research and find that it was illegal to publicly beat a

Roman citizen even after a fair trial and guilt was established.

So even if they had been fairly tried and found guilty, it's still illegal to beat them, to cane them in the fashion that they were.

So when you put that in perspective, you suddenly realize, why in the world would the magistrate be nervous?

Now, why Paul and Silas didn't appeal to their citizenship before the beating, how many of you know that just as the cane's about to drop, they could've been like, we're

Roman citizens, you're not allowed to do this, and it would've all changed, right? It would've been pretty different at that point.

So why didn't they? Well, there's all kinds of speculation surrounding that. I personally think it was for the sake of the church in Philippi.

It was for the sake of those who had already come to faith in Christ. If they were not willing to suffer, if Paul and Silas were not willing to suffer for the cause of Christ, how could they expect that young church to suffer as they were going to down the road for the cause of Christ?

And so they literally are taking these licks knowing that there was a way out. Pretty intense, wouldn't you say?

There was a way out for them and they didn't take it. That's also, I think, the thoughts, the care, the concern for the local church was also what motivated them to,

Paul, to appeal for a public exoneration here. Why is he being stubborn now?

It's for the sake of the church. You see, if he receives a public apology from the magistrates, then his followers are acquitted as well.

But if he doesn't receive an acquittal publicly, then everybody thinks that the church in Philippi is some cult that was started by some criminals who were arrested.

Do you see that? Does that make sense to you? Are you following that logic? So he's saying, I want a public acquittal.

I want the magistrates to know that we didn't do anything wrong and to say it, to come and apologize to us so that the church is also exonerated as well.

The magistrates were immediately concerned. As a matter of fact, the text uses the word afraid when they found out that they had beaten

Roman citizens because if word of this situation gets back to Rome, best case scenario, they lose their job, worst case, their head.

They've broken Roman law in a position of Roman authority and they are in significant trouble.

So the magistrates come down to the jail, apologize. The apology is a profuse apology and they ask

Paul and Silas to please cordially, would you consider leaving town? They cannot expel a

Roman citizen from a Roman colony. That hasn't been found guilty. But they can request and their tone has significantly changed.

It's interesting to note that all of a sudden, Paul and Silas are in the driver's seat. The magistrates ask them, hey, would you be willing to leave town?

And they're like, well, we got some other business we need to take care of. We're gonna go back to Lydia's house. We're gonna visit the church and then we'll leave. Like they're in the driver's seat now.

Are you seeing that? They go and do what they want. They're like, we're free to go around your colony if we choose and they do.

So they visit Lydia, who was the very first person we saw come to faith in Christ in this little Roman colony.

Lydia, the seller of purple, the one who was a woman of commerce, a prestigious lady.

And they go visit her and the other followers implied that the other followers of Christ actually met for church in her home.

They give them a word of encouragement and then they leave Philippi. They get out of Dodge. So we see in our text that God worked in some amazing ways.

We see this really as I'm kind of wrapping up this section in the book of Acts. We've seen now really in the last three sections here,

God working and leading this lady of commerce to faith in Christ, the seller of purple cloth,

Lydia. We saw that a couple weeks ago. And then he brought into their lives a little demon -possessed slave girl.

And then now in our text today, he led them through difficult circumstances to a jailer whose life is radically changed.

We see the story of three people, three very different people. Do you see how different they are? A wealthy business owner, a little slave girl, and a

Roman jailer. Would you say Christ is for everyone? It's one of the points there. Christ is for everyone.

Paul and Silas lived their lives on stage before many people. Would you agree that people were watching them?

The other prisoners were. And they saw how, people saw how they responded to this imprisonment.

The jailer saw them as a place to turn for spiritual insight. And he even asked them the most pressing question on his mind.

And I wanna ask you, who's watching you? Who's watching us?

Consider that carefully. Do you have children? They're watching you. Do you have a spouse?

They're watching you. Coworkers, neighbors? If you have a pulse, somebody's watching you.

And interestingly, it might be the last person you think. Maybe somebody you already had a spiritual conversation with that just totally put you off.

Like, I don't even wanna talk about Christ. I have no interest in that. How dare you muddy this conversation with the name of Jesus?

They're watching you. Somebody's deciding in their mind if you're the real dealer or you're a fraud.

And I praise God that He can use broken people. Certainly we can't be perfect, can we? We're not gonna be perfect for those people.

If somebody watches us closely enough, long enough, we will fail them. Did you know that?

It's reality, that's truth, that's the human condition. But that is what is beautiful in our text is that by prayer and singing and pointing to God, Paul and Silas directed everyone to their

Lord. They pointed and directed to Him. They were broken. They were tired.

They were significantly weak. But you can be sure that their songs were strong and their prayers were fervent and their faith in Jesus Christ was alive and passionate.

If we communicate our own righteousness to those around us, those who are watching us, they will catch us failing.

But if we communicate the glory and righteousness of Jesus Christ, we point them to the only thing that can really transform them and change them.

You see the difference? What are we, are we trying to market ourselves? Are we trying to market our church?

Are we trying to make ourselves look good? Or are we trying to lift high the name of Christ? And yes, we fail.

And maybe just telling that, maybe just saying that to others around you. It's not about me. You are going to see me fail.

I am not perfect. I'm forgiven, but I'm not perfect. And when it really comes down to it, I need Christ constantly.

So if we're authentic and we're real with people and we're telling them that, then that gives us cause to point to Christ and say

He is the one. He is the one who sustains me and keeps me on the path and keeps me moving forward and keeps me growing.

So not communicating our own righteousness, but the righteousness of Christ. And that's the only thing that can transform them. And that's where a testimony comes in.

Being able to tell others what God has done for you. You see, God is in the business of transforming lives.

He transformed lives in Philippi. We saw that. And He's transforming lives in Matawan, Michigan as well.

At the start of this message, everyone received a piece of paper. Am I right? Did everybody get one of those? Got kind of a postcard -sized piece of paper with a fill -in -the -blank formula.

I was once blank, but God has blank. At this point,

I'm gonna ask you to fill that out. And I'm gonna encourage some of you. Nobody needs to feel any pressure here.

I don't want anybody coming up here because you feel like you have to. But I'm gonna encourage some people to do something different.

We don't do this every Sunday, for those of you that this is your first time here. I'm gonna encourage some of you to come up and read it. And the purpose of this,

I wanna point out, is to glorify God and His power to change lives. Not to glorify ourselves, not to make ourselves look good.

But I'd ask you to be authentic and real. I mean, certainly, many of us could get up and say, I once was lost, but now

I'm found. But that's not very specific or authentic. I mean, it's true, right? But I'm looking for a little bit more, like for example,

I think if Lydia was here, she could say something like this. Lydia was once a seeker, looking for God in Judaism.

But God revealed Himself to her through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Or the little slave girl was once the puppet of a demon, but God set her free to follow

Him. Or the jailer was once hopeless, literally on the verge of suicide, but God brought him to eternal life from the very brink of death.

You see, for me, what I would say, if I was filling in that blank, I was fatherless at the age of eight, but God has proven

Himself to me to be a faithful father through my entire life. What about you?

The mic's gonna remain open. I think somebody moved my mic, so I'm gonna need to set that back up here. But the mic's gonna be open up here.

Thanks, Rob. And it's gonna remain open for a short time.

I'm not gonna belabor this. If nobody wants to share, again, I don't want people to feel pressured, but I do want you to please, as much as possible, stick to the text that is there.

Please limit yourself to only reading what is written. This is not an extensive discussion. I want as many people to be able to get through as would choose to come up here.

And I don't know how long this is gonna take, but just stick to reading it exactly as you have there.

I praise God for His power to change lives. The fact of the matter is some people are watching us, and they are wondering what makes us different.

And telling them what God has done for us is the most simple way we can turn their focus to God. I'm gonna encourage you, the mic is open, and you can come up and share what

God has done for you. If anybody's kind of riding the fence, thinking maybe come up, this would be the time.

Otherwise, we'll close it out and take communion together. One last call. Okay, great.

I know that many of you, I think most everybody could have gotten up and shared something, but I praise God for those of you who did.

And just sharing that and thinking about how those things could be shared with people who don't know the love of Christ, with those who you interact with, those neighbors and those people, and who don't know this side of grace, don't know the glory.

And where would we be were it not for somebody who stepped into our lives and shared the glory of Jesus Christ and what

He has done. So just contemplate and consider that as we move throughout this week, that lives are transformed and being changed, and that we have the opportunity to be a part of that is a glorious thing.

So we're gonna come to communion now. And remember, ultimately, that this is all about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sins.

That as we come and we take that piece of cracker, that it represents

His body that was broken for us. And that when we take that cup of juice, it represents

His blood that was spilled to cover our sins. That we needed a Savior. And that like the jailer who cried out, what must

I do to be saved? There is an answer. It is Jesus Christ, the

Holy Son of God, who took the weight of sin so that we who are unholy could be forgiven.

We're gonna have two lines that form up here and one in the back as Rob comes and plays a song for us.

Meditate, consider, and even just reflect. And maybe some of you haven't filled that card out yet. And maybe just take the time during this song to really contemplate and consider what does that card reflect to you?

What God has done for you? So contemplate and consider that and then feel free at any time to get up and take communion.

Let me pray. Father, I praise you for the way that you are transforming lives. That we look back in the pages of Scripture and that we see you consistently working through history.

That the same types of transformation that happened back in Philippi happened here in Matawan, Michigan. And we rejoice and we are grateful that the

Holy Spirit is not limited to that historical time in the book of Acts, but that you have broken out around this world, transforming and changing people.

I ask for more of that, Father. It's our desire to see us continuing to grow and to walk with you, but also to be bold in sharing the natural ways that you provide for us to tell others about what you have done in our lives.

I pray that as we come to communion, we would reflect and remember the glory of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

That it took that punishment, that extreme and brutal punishment to cover our sins.

That's how horrible our sin is in your sight. Father, we rejoice that there is a way of salvation and it's in Jesus' name that we pray.