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.

Rejoicing in God When Circumstances Are Hard

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? 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 are 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 like one phone call after another, and it's just like 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 tells 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 4x4s 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 going to 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, oh, things are going all right. I don't need God right now. It's only in the dark times. It's 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 moments 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 has 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. Obviously, first we're going to read the Word of God, and then Rob is going to come and lead us in worship.

So I want you to open your Bibles, please, to Acts 16. And we're going to read verses 25 through 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 want to just keep giving Bibles away.

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 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 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 are 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 had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.

Let's pray. Amen.

Paul and Silas Singing in Prison

How's everybody doing today? Everybody doing well? Alright. 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, it kind of goes without saying, Paul and Silas are in prison. Well, how did they get there? And I think 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? 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 that 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 going to lay down on that kind of floor? How many of you would sign up for that?

Like infection?

Can you say, ooh? You're going to 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? You know, 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? A 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, you know, we've sang multiple times, so you can just sing some of these songs, right? For those of you who have 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 going to 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.

The Prisoners Are Listening and the Earthquake Sets Them Free

But before we move on,.

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

Do 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. 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 whose 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.

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 what we're going to see here in a minute, he's going to take some people that are in his possession in his jail and literally have them over for dinner.

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 going to 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 going to 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. 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 earlier in the book of Acts?

The shackles are still chained, but there's nobody in there. It's like, well, it was a miracle. Are the magistrates going to accept that? No, as a matter of fact, King Herod, it says,.

Had those guards executed.

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. I mean, you'd 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?

He was 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, 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? 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. Imagine that his entire life has just flashed before his eyes.

He had the sword out.

And 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? 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.

He 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? 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? 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?

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. I can rush for 300 yards through Christ who strengthens me. I can get 13 sacks in a season through Christ who strengthens me.

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.

Do you see the difference?

So memorizing it, I'm sorry, that's all free because that's not in my notes. That's my rabbit trail for the morning. Am I allowed one? Can I get one? Okay, just one. All right. I've got to 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?

We don't 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 say.

That's a little bit confusing?

Because he saved,.

His whole household is saved? That'd be kind of cool, wouldn't it? 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 going to 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 there saying, you put your faith and trust in Christ, your whole family is coming in too. And as a matter of fact, we're going to 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?