Acts 16:25-40

²⁵ About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, ²⁶ 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. ²⁷ 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. ²⁸ But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” ²⁹ And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. ³⁰ Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” ³¹ And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” ³² And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. ³³ 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. ³⁴ 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. ³⁵ But when it was day, the magistrates sent the police, saying, “Let those men go.” ³⁶ 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.” ³⁷ 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.” ³⁸ The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens. ³⁹ So they came and apologized to them. And they took them out and asked them to leave the city. ⁴⁰ So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.

Let me introduce you to James Ireland, a great Baptist preacher from yesteryear. (William Grady has written a nice summary of Ireland’s life so we will use some portions of his summary for our consideration of the man.)

While on a recent Baptist history tour in the South, the Lord afforded me one of the more unusual speaking opportunities of my ministry. As the Holy Ghost bore witness, I preached the Word of God to over forty pastors and laymen assembled in a cow pasture! What sanctified our otherwise unorthodox sanctuary was a lone grave marker that read:

IN MEMORY OF JAMES IRELAND

1748 – 1806

MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL

The stone went on to inform that Ireland, an “ORGANIZER OF BAPTIST CHURCHES”, was “IMPRISONED AT CULPEPER, VA. FOR PREACHING THE GOSPEL.” In the fall of 1769, Pastor James Ireland was arrested at a preaching service during his own closing prayer by two officials who seized him by the collar before he could even open his eyes. When he appeared in court to answer their charge of “preaching without proper credentials,” the quorum of eleven magistrates declared that they would have no more of his “vile, pernicious, abhorrent [sic], detestable, diabolical doctrines” as they “were nauseous [sic] to the whole court.” The convicted pastor spent his first night of confinement in a cell full of drunks. In the morning, he was informed by the avaricious jailer, a certain Mr. Steward (who was also the local tavern keeper), that any visitors he might receive would have to pay a “fee” of four shillings and eight pence.

Apparently, it was going to be a long six months. Because of the immense crowds that were assembling to hear Ireland preach through the grates (the iron bars in his cell window), a number of plots were set in motion against him. A bomb was planted in his quarters, which “went off with a considerable noise,” but the preacher was miraculously spared, testifying, “I was singing a hymn at the time the explosion went off, and continued singing until I finished it.” On another occasion, his captors attempted to smother him by burning pods of Indian peppers filled with brimstone near the bottom of his cell door. Stating that the “whole jail would be filled with the killing smoke,” Ireland recounted that the threatening situation would “oblige me to go to cracks, and put my mouth to them to prevent suffocation.” A scheme between the jailer and a certain doctor to poison the preacher also met with failure. (However, three years later another attempt to poison Ireland at his home left one of his precious children dead.) Despite these many hardships, the man of God testified:

“My prison was a place in which I enjoyed much of the divine presence; a day seldom passed without some signal token and manifestation of the divine goodness towards me, which generally led me to subscribe my letters, to whom I wrote them, in these words, ‘From my Palace in Culpeper‘.”…

While some of his enemies were laid low, others were brought under deep conviction. After doing everything to disrupt Ireland’s services, from having horses ridden at a gallop over those in attendance, to the securing of vile persons who “made their water in his face” while he was preaching, the exasperated jailer succumbed to the kindness of his captive…[1]

It is a powerful and memorable story: a jailed preacher of the gospel who used his otherwise deplorable circumstances for Kingdom impact, to the inspiration of all who would later consider him. There is something otherworldly about the behavior of James Ireland in his Culpeper prison. It is certainly not the normal course of behavior for a wrongfully imprisoned man! What is most fascinating about it, though, is that Ireland’s shocking prison behavior is actually situated in a long line of similar examples, stretching all the way back to the early Church. Consider our text, Acts 16:25-40, and the story it tells of Paul and Silas’ imprisonment in Philippi. Let us do so not from the perspective of the imprisoned preachers, but rather from the perspective of their jailor, the Philippian jailor, who marveled at what he saw in the two men.

The Philippian jailor was stunned by and attracted to the otherworldly values of the imprisoned believers.

Immediately preceding our text, we saw that Paul and Silas were beaten and thrown into a Philippian prison. This was because they cast a demon out of a little possessed slave girl who was making her owners quite a good bit of money as an oracle for the spirits. Thus, the exorcism that Paul conducted on this girl was costly to her owners who, as a result, went and stirred up opposition against the missionaries. So they were thrown into prison, which, I will remind you, was no easy thing back in that day. While there, something shocking happens.

²⁵ About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, ²⁶ 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. ²⁷ 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. ²⁸ But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” ²⁹ And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. ³⁰ Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

What an amazing scene! Paul and Silas are worshipping God, an earthquake comes, their chains are loosed and the prison doors are flung open. The jailor, assuming that all the prisoners have fled, prepares to kill himself (for death would be the penalty for his losing a prison full of inmates anyway), but Paul informs him that they are, in fact, still there. Amazed, the jailor asks, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

In other words, in a very short period of time, the jailor moves from thoughts of suicide to thoughts of salvation. Why? Because of the otherworldly values that he saw demonstrated by Paul and Silas. There was something in their behavior that absolutely stunned and shocked him. It also attracted him to their lifestyle. He wanted to know what it was that they had. He wanted it for himself. Thus, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

What were these otherworldly values? If you look at our text, you will see two things in particular that stand out: (1) joyful worship in the midst of suffering and (2) a refusal to seize an opportunity for self-preservation.

First, the jailor was no doubt amazed at the joyful worship Paul and Silas were engaged in in the midst of suffering.

²⁵ About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them

I realize that the jailor is awakened by the earthquake, but there is no reason to think that he had not heard them worshipping before he went to bed or that he was not generally aware of it in waking moments throughout the night. He was no doubt already struck by the radical incongruity between their imprisonment and their general postures of praise. Apparently everybody in the prison was so struck for Luke tells us that “the prisoners were listening to them.”

Brothers and sisters, here is a fact: nothing will so capture the attention of those who are watching you as an attitude of worship when everything is going wrong for you. Make no mistake, how you handle misfortune will say more to those around you about your walk with Jesus than mere words every will. This jailor was no doubt amazed by the overall demeanor of these Christian prisoners, and it played no small part in opening his heart to the gospel.

So it was and so it ever will be. Jim Belcher has written of the behavior of the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he was thrown into Tegel prison as a result of his part in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Belcher writes of how Bonhoeffer’s behavior impressed both the prisoners and the guards who watched him.

But he did not just sit around. As soon as the authorities returned his Bible, which they had confiscated on the first day, each day he rose early to pray, to sing the psalms and read Scripture. He meditated on a verse of the Bible for thirty minutes. He interceded for others, lifting up his friends and relatives, his former students, some who were in prison or in concentration camps. He prayed for the Jews, who were suffering so much. He prayed for his new friends, both prisoners and guards, at Tegel. His daily liturgy gave him strength. In spite of the isolation, the dark thoughts at night, the constant homesickness, and the fear of torture and execution, Bonhoeffer began to build a life in prison. For hours each day he studied, wrote letters and continued his scholarship.

            His strong, optimistic outlook began to win over many guards. Impressed by his strength through trial, his good cheer to all, the guards started to bring their own problems to him, looking for advice or wisdom from this famous prisoner. In return for his counsel, they, at great danger to themselves, smuggled out his letters to Bethge, which years later would bring him great fame. Prisoners also sought his counsel, knowing that he was someone they could talk to, a person who would understand them. Since he was one of the few people that truly cared for others, and not just for himself, fellow prisoners wanted to be close to him.

Christian History magazine has provided a few other interesting insights into Bonhoeffer’s prison behavior and its results.

During Allied bombing raids over Berlin, Bonhoeffer’s calm deeply impressed his fellow prisoners at Tegel Prison. Prisoners and even guards used all kinds of tricks to get near him and find the comfort of exchanging a few words with him.

The majority of Bonhoeffer’s classic Letters and Papers from Prison was smuggled out by guards who chose to assist Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer could have escaped from prison but chose not to for the sake of others. He had prepared to escape with one of the guards when he learned that his brother Klaus had been arrested. Fearing reprisals against his brother and his family if he escaped, Bonhoeffer stayed in prison.[2]

How the people of God respond to severe trials can either draw people to or repel people from the God we claim to worship. But this fact is no less true for the smaller trials as well. The truth of the matter is that most of us will likely never be in a situation to worship God from the inside of a prison cell. We will, however, be given multiple opportunities this year to worship God when things do not go our way at work, at school, at home, and even at church.

How do you respond to adversity? Are you known around the water cooler as the man or woman who is unflappable in the midst of trials, who continues to worship the Lord God even when things go wrong for you? Let us please consider the amazing missionary opportunity in the ways we respond to suffering.

Let us also consider how our refusal to seize opportunities for self-preservation can further our witness for Christ. This is precisely what Paul and Silas did.

²⁷ 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. ²⁸ But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” ²⁹ And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. ³⁰ Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

They could have fled, but they did not! This seems to be the major factor in leading the jailor to call for salvation. Why? Because nothing is so counterintuitive as refusing to seize an opportunity for self-preservation.

Nobody has to teach human beings to assert their instinct for survival. We are born wanting to live, to survive, to avoid danger, to flee hardship. More than that, we are born wanting to assert our rights (as soon as we understand them). I repeat: self-preservation does not have to be taught! We understand this, especially as Americans. We are a people who are quick to assert our rights, especially if doing so can remove us from potential calamity.

But Paul and Silas do not do so. They do not flee the prison. They do not remove themselves from danger. Why? Because somehow and in some way the Lord God had convicted their hearts that staying was more beneficial to the Kingdom than fleeing. And so it turned out to be: the jailor is so amazed that they stayed that it opens his heart to wanting to know what kind of God it is that could make men like this.

Do you want to draw people to Christ? Then do not be the first in line for the safety train, for the advancement train, for the “saving your own hide” train. Learn to look at situations for their potential Kingdom impact instead of for what impact they may have for you personally. Ajith Fernando has given an interesting historical example of this very phenomenon.

Western powers crushed the Boxer uprising of 1900 in China, in which approximately 30,000 Chinese Christians died. The Chinese were forced by the Western powers into agreeing to pay high compensation for losses. Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission and several other Christians refused this compensation in accordance with the spirit of Christ.

Faced with an opportunity for personal profit, personal advancement, and, indeed, a measure of vengeance, the great missionary society China Inland Mission said “no” to the money. Why? Not because they did not need it or could not use it, but because they perceived that there was greater Kingdom impact to be had if they said “no.” So they said no. The result, according to Arthur Glasser, was as follows:

The Chinese were amazed. In Shanshi province a government proclamation was posted far and wide extolling Jesus Christ and his principles of forbearance and forgiveness…This official endorsement served to diminish the antiforeign spirit of the people and contributed not a little to the growth of the church in China in the years that followed.[3]

Because China Inland Mission took the surprising step of refusing an opportunity for self-preservation, a Chinese province, in amazement, officially posted a proclamation “extolling Jesus Christ and his principles of forbearance and forgiveness”!

Amazing! Absolutely amazing!

Church: we should be modeling otherworldly values, values that catch the fallen world off guard.

When you should complain, worship! When you have an opportunity to preserve or advance your own interests, consider the interests of the lost people around you! We should be shocking the world with the way we live!

The Philippian jailor moved from curiosity to belonging as a result of the example and witness of Paul and Silas.

As a result of Paul and Silas’ behavior, the jailor says, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” In other words, how do I get what you two have got? How do I become a part of this? In so asking, he was moving from curiosity about these men to belonging to the life to which they were bearing witness. Notice their response.

³¹ And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” ³² And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. ³³ 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. ³⁴ 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. ³⁵ But when it was day, the magistrates sent the police, saying, “Let those men go.” ³⁶ 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.” ³⁷ 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.” ³⁸ The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens. ³⁹ So they came and apologized to them. And they took them out and asked them to leave the city. ⁴⁰ So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.

Paul and Silas tell him the way of salvation: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” How simple. How beautiful! They do go on to instruct him further: “And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.” But whatever else they said (likely explaining the need for repentance and the reality of the cross and resurrection), they gave them the core: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

James Montgomery Boice helpful observes concerning Paul and Silas’ response to the jailor:

Notice that Paul did not suggest counseling…He did not give a lecture on theology. He did not explore the significance of the jailer’s religious terms. He did not talk about the sacraments. He did not even talk about the church. Those things could be dealt with in time, but this was not the time. The man was asking about salvation, and the apostle replied directly: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved – you and your household.”[4]

They call on him to embrace Christ, and he and his household do so. They trust in Christ and are baptized and they too begin to worship and to praise God! They also immediately begin to live out their new life in Christ by feeding Paul and Silas and washing their wounds. How glorious! How wonderful this is! The Venerable Bede called this “a beautiful exchange,” noting that “for them [the jailor] washed the wounds from their blows, and through them he was relieved of the wounds of his own guilty acts.”[5]

Both were bathed: Paul and Silas had their wounds bathed and the jailor and his household had their hearts bathed in the blood of Christ!

Our text concludes with the officials calling for Paul and Silas to be released and with Paul insisting that these officials come themselves and release them since they had wrongfully persecuted a Roman citizen. F.F. Bruce explains:

By a series of Valerian and Porcian laws enacted between the beginning of the Roman Republic and the early second century B.C. Roman citizens were exempted from degrading forms of punishment and had certain valued rights established for them in relation to the law. These privileges had been more recently reaffirmed under the empire by a Julian law dealing with public disorder.

What this meant was that any Roman citizen needing to claim the protection of his legal status would simply proclaim ciuis Romanus sum, “I am a Roman citizen.”[6] This is what Paul does. Why? We can be sure it was not an effort to be petty or vengeful. Rather, he was almost certainly seeking to establish some degree of protection for the newly founded church in Philippi. He likely reasoned that his actions here would remind the authorities that the one who planted this church was a Roman citizen who they had wronged and probably concluded that having the authorities recognize their mistake would lead them to be more favorably disposed toward the Christians they would leave behind.

Regardless, Paul and Silas had an amazing impact on Philippi! They led Lydia to the Lord. They conducted an exorcism that led to the freeing and the salvation of a possessed slave girl. They bore amazing witness to Christ while imprisoned resulting in the salvation of the jailor and his family (at least). And they took steps to extend some protections to the church they were leaving behind as they moved on.

I ask you: what are you going to do this year? How are you going to respond to adversities and to trials? Will you worship God in the dark times? Will you worship him in such a way that people want to follow Him with you?

Let it be so! Let it be so!

 

[1] https://www.wilderness-cry.net/bible_study/articles/licensed.html

[2] Jim Belcher, “The Secret of Finkenwalde.” Bonhoeffer, Christ and Culture. Eds., Keith L. Johnson, Timothy Larsen (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013), p.196. https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/dietrich-bonhoeffer-did-you-know/

[3] Fernando, Ajith (2010-12-21). Acts (The NIV Application Commentary) (p. 404). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

[4] James Montgomery Boice, Acts. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1997), p.283.

[5] Francis Martin, ed. Acts. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. New Testament, vol.V. Thomas C. Oden, gen. ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p.209.

[6] Bruce, F.F. (1988-06-30). The Book of Acts (New International Commentary on the New Testament) (p.319-320). Eerdmans Publishing Co – A. Kindle Edition.