Singing & praying until midnight

Good morning. Glad you have survived the shift to daylight saving time. I think I have. Now, I understand that being a little short on sleep and a lot of sink and everything, some of you may fall asleep or something of that sort, and that's understandable. It would be really bad if I did. So anyway, I'll try to avoid that, even though I also am an hour short on sleep, and then some.

So we have Paul and Silas and Timothy and Dr. Luke and perhaps others who have been going into Philippi as directed by the Holy Spirit. They came initially to the gathering of probably Jews and and God-fearing Gentiles there along the riverside likely because there was no synagogue officially in place there and it was there that Lydia was the first one that dr. Luke recorded as becoming a believer and so the Paul and his companions were invited to stay at the home of Lydia.

Lydia, being a seller of purple, likely had a very upscale, as you would say, place. This would be a typical upper-class Roman villa. to give you an idea, and we would almost say, well, that's a small village in itself. But this might be representative of the kind of house that she had to offer to them. And this would be another example of a typical upper-class Roman villa, and very likely in the character and magnitude that Lydia had.

So one day as they are going, as they actually probably did repeatedly, the implication from Dr. Luke's language is that for many days they had been going to this place to pray. Lydia, Paul, and those of the companions, others who had become believers, going to this place to pray rather regularly. And as they went there, there was a slave girl.

She is not named, but we are given the information that she, as Dr. Luke recorded specifically, has a python spirit. Now you might say, wow, I've never heard of such a thing. But it is, in fact, what Dr. Luke recorded. If you see on your map that's on page one off to the left-hand side, just slightly below the center, Delphi or Delphi as it's also pronounced. And at this location there was a an oracle there at Delphi and the women there would have a Pythoness spirit.

So you'd have, it was a Pythoness temple. People would go for quite some distances to be there. Apparently the owners of this slave girl had gone to this temple and actually purchased one of the girls from this place to take to Philippi so that they could sell her fortune-telling services. After many days, which is very likely a number of weeks, Paul cast this python spirit.

We would also say that she was demon-possessed or possessed by an evil spirit. He cast that evil spirit from the slave girl. And the slave girl was free of the python spirit, but that started things rolling. She could no longer tell fortunes, and she was essentially, you know, healed of this possession. And so that began some other things rolling.

The owners of the slave girl, they went to the authorities, who were the magistrates there, The owners of the slave girl did not ask that the magistrates force Paul to put the spirit back in This girl apparently that was not something they even hoped for but rather They wanted revenge and that's exactly what they've got at least as they saw it This rectangular area that you see in the center of the photograph is looking down from the mountainside into Philippi.

That rectangular area is called the agora in the Greek. Marketplace is what we would call it. The Latin term is forum. And so they hauled them to this place. Why? Because that's where the magistrates, there would be two of them, and the lictors, typically two of them, the enforcers, would be gathered and that's where they were hoping to get some revenge.

This is the likely location of the Bema that is the judgment area there at Philippi. Other areas we know more specifically, for example Corinth, we know more specifically where that judgment area was based on what the archaeologists have found here. Here, this is the likely location, we don't have quite the specifics. You may recognize that term Bema, that judgment area, because that's a judgment that believers will have, going by that same name, when we go to be with the Lord. It'll be a judgment not of condemnation, but of evaluation for rewards.

So, the demand was, give these guys a Roman massage. And by that we mean to be facetious. This is not going to be a Roman massage that they're going to enjoy. It certainly wouldn't be one that you would pay for, and it wouldn't be one that you and I would volunteer for, because instead you have these lictors, and these guys are like paid sadists. They just love inflicting pain, and they stand around, so to speak, just ready for the opportunity to beat people with rods. So it's not this kind of a Roman massage. It's not this kind of a Roman massage, but rather this kind.

So Paul and Silas got this rod beating, essentially. Now, what's really interesting is to note that Paul says in 2 Corinthians that he actually had been beaten three times with rods, so this is soon to be one of the three that he lists there. These would be the lictors. They would go around with a set of rods.

I'm not sure why they needed quite so many, but I guess they wanted to give them all equal experience. So at any rate, these guys were quite cruel. They did nothing other than go around threatening and then, of course, actually enforcing. They were somewhere between the bailiff and the punisher. for the officers that were there.

This is traditionally the place that is marked as Paul's prison in Philippi, and on archaeological examination it probably is not. but it is even labeled the prison of St. Paul, but it's probably not the actual case. There obviously was a prison there. We don't know for certain which location it was in, but it at least gives you an idea. These would be rough places, a lot of stone. Here is an entrance to an inner Roman prison.

This is one that's actually in Rome. But it gives you an idea. Now the lights are modern retrofit so that we moderns can walk safely up and down stairs. And by the way, so is the ventilation is also retrofit, right? So, but it gives you an idea. Probably a better idea might be something like this, dark, okay?

So the inner prison where Paul and Silas would have been located would be dark, and as nightfall came, even darker. And in no case was there great ventilation. It stank. It probably did not smell very good at all. So here would be the prison at daytime, and this would be the circumstance under which Paul and Silas would first be brought there. and then nightfall would come.

We're not certain exactly what kind of stocks were there. Several different kinds have been found among different Roman prisons and punishment areas. This one is stone with some little dips there to lock the feet in. One of them at Pompeii, which was a city that was buried in volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius, At Pompeii, what they did is they had metal combs, so to speak, and they would force the ankles down in this metal comb.

And the idea is that, yes, this would be uncomfortable at least, and torture at best. So this would be most likely what Paul and Silas would see down there in the inner prison. Just about like that. So once nightfall came and it got really dark, it would be about like this, and so you wouldn't see anything, you would smell things, you might even hear little things crawling around, but you would not see much more than about this. Now, so in that circumstance, just imagine, here's Paul and Silas, they're put in that circumstance, they've been given a Roman massage, by these lictors, and then they've been put into this inner prison that doesn't smell very good.

It's dark. Later on, the jailer's going to have to call for lights because ordinarily, though, that's not provided. So by nightfall, the outside of the prison, and by the way, this lighting is probably more than what they actually would have on the outside, but just so you can see something. By nightfall, you would have, here's this prison, it's dark on the outside for the most part, dark on the inside.

So, is this the start of a miserable night? By any usual, typical human experience, here's Paul and Silas, they're about to have a most miserable night. Are they feeling comfortable? No. Their backs have welts at best and probably some open wounds. It seems that's at least partly the case, if not quite the case. Lots of bruising, that kind of thing.

So they would go into this very uncomfortable place. You'd think they'd need to go to an ER, right? But instead they put them into this place that's uncomfortable, unsanitary. They're about, by any earthly measure, to have a horrible, horrible day on into the night.

The Roman lictors, that's the term for the guys who do the beating, the beating with the rods, it was quite severe. And then to be sent to a Roman-run prison. By the way, the Descriptions of the Roman prisons are, you'd better have friends on the outside if you're going to stay there very long at all. Because if you don't have friends on the outside, you don't have any friends on the inside, and it's going to be miserable. They would fasten the feet in the stocks, and like any other confinement, it was really bad. Oftentimes, not just feet fastened, but arms and wrists fastened as well.

So what are they doing? They're praying and singing hymns of praise. Paul and Silas didn't spend the day in the evening moaning or griping or even complaining about their pain and discomfort. And you can imagine them going, but not at all. Even though they had very good reason to gripe and to grouse and to complain, that's not what you read about. Instead, we read about their praying and sing hymns of praise to God. Their prayers may have included praying for their fellow prisoners and singing about the gospel of salvation.

Can you imagine that? I'm going to tell a brief story. My grandmother, who is pictured here, this is World War I era. She was a missionary to the cannibals in Fiji. This is a picture of the kind of a good news club that they had gathered together after about two weeks of being there. So she's with these children of the cannibals. And this is Alma Starkenberg who worked alongside her. Now Alma Starkenberg had a pattern that she developed, a single lady, Swedish by the way, if you hadn't guessed.

But so Alma Starkenberg would every night, she would get ready for bed and that would include her getting her Bible out and reading the Bible for a little while and then pray. Well one night she noticed that as she was getting ready for bed that there was a pair of feet visible at the end of the bed. So she's getting ready for bed and she does partly her pattern and then partly not. And what she does is she gets the Bible out and instead of just reading the usual verses quietly to herself, she reads specific verses out loud. And so she reads those verses out loud, and then she prays out loud, and she goes through the usual things that she prays for, but she finished the prayer, and, Lord Jesus, I pray for the man who is underneath my bed and is going to eat me. And the man came out from underneath the bed, and someday you're going to get to meet him. because she prayed for that man. He did become a believer that day.

One of the things that my grandmother told me is, as you see here, that the Fijians loved to wear white when they came to be believers because that represented the righteousness that they had after having eaten people through all their growing up years. And by the way, you can't just eat people. You have to go to the cannibal temple and offer the meat to idols. Isn't that amazing?

So anyway, I imagine that Paul and Silas, as they were there in the prison, fashioned their prayers and the songs they sang and the things that they said, such as to present the gospel to these people, just like Alma did in her reading the scripture and praying, and praying even for the man who was underneath the bed that was going to eat her. We could well imagine the other prisoners with Paul and Silas, hearing Paul and Silas as they prayed and sang, especially since these prisoners were a captive audience. They couldn't go anywhere, right? But what's amazing, the prisoners, and the Greek that Dr. Luke uses, the prisoners were listening. Dr. Luke wrote, and it's what's called the middle voice. What does that mean? The prisoners were not just going, oh, these guys need to get over this. I can't wait to get past this.

No, they were actively listening. And the Greek word there says with the result of that listening coming back onto themselves. They were listening and they were responsive to that. So the other prisoners with Paul and Silas were being impacted by the prayer and the singing. They were being spiritually impacted by it.

Act 1626, and suddenly there came a great earthquake so the foundations of the prison house were shaken and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened. Now you notice I got this thing showing earthquake and it's in broad daylight.

I couldn't find one that had pure dark down there and with it shaking. I couldn't find one. Here they were in the prison and so here suddenly this earthquake hit about midnight Prison really being shaken and by the way, it wasn't just a kind of rocking and rolling I don't know about you. How many of you been in earthquakes? Nancy and I were in one that was centered in San Francisco and we were in Nevada and And we just thought, oh boy, I've got a blood sugar problem or a little dizzy or something. But no, this was when things really got shaken. The foundation of the prison house was shaken. Immediately all the doors were open. Everyone's chains were unfastened.

So earthquakes were common in this area, as they are actually in much of the Mediterranean. But there were certain aspects that were extraordinary. For an earthquake to happen right then, for example, as opposed to several days later, right, and to free all the prisoners at the same time, possible, but those two things together were rather exceptional. So here is a natural event that everyone would expect to happen from time to time, but the timing of it and the outcome from it, that would be supernatural. So it had these natural aspects, but it also showed God's intervention with the timing and the unlocking of doors, gates, and the chains of all the prisoners coming loose.

Now, one of the things to keep in mind, and we're going to see this as we go into next week's passage, The pagan perspective on earthquakes was that the gods would express their anger in various ways, and that included earthquakes. So the pagans would think if we have an earthquake, it's because the gods are upset. And a really bad earthquake would mean that the gods are really upset. That would be the perspective. So to have a very large earthquake meant that the pagans had done something to make the gods angry.

And so we're going to see how that plays itself out in next week's passage here. But the magistrates are soon going to be in a panic. They're going to be in a panic for three different reasons. And the magistrates will find themselves soon to be in very serious trouble. So these two magistrates, that would be the proper number for a Roman colony. They'd soon be in big trouble with the Roman law in three different ways, as we'll discover here. The local magistrates also view themselves as in big trouble with the pagan gods, and everybody in the community would be mad at them too. So we'll see how that's going to work itself out. They are soon going to be very, very frightened in this earthquake is going to bring this all to a head. Here's Acts 16, 27.

And when the jailer had been roused out of sleep and had seen the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. He looks there, doors are open, and he says, Oh no, I am in deep yogurt. Right?

So imagine the jailer's state of mind. He's just awakened from sleep. You ever awaken from sleep and get into some emergency? That's a really tough thing to have happen. You know, sometimes that's the way it is. You know, where there's a fire or maybe you've been sleeping and an earthquake hits. But if you've ever had any event like that, you get some sense of what this is like. Here's the jailer.

He's going from sleep to, oh, I'm going to die, right? So he was startled to discover the doors were already open. He assumed just, you know, going from waking to sleeping to waking rather, and then seeing these open doors, all the prisoners escape and that he would be held accountable, which of course, that was really bad. So in the culture of the day, the jailer would very likely be given the death penalty for allowing the prisoners to escape. Killing oneself was more honorable than having an execution in public shame. So, it was something that was almost a foregone conclusion that you'd take your life as opposed to going through this public shame and public execution.

Acts 16.28, But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying, Do yourself no harm, for we are all here. So Paul, knowing full well that the culture would drive the jailer to take his own life, he knew that.

He told the jailer loudly not to harm himself. So the influence of Paul and Silas was towards saving the prisoners, and by saving I don't mean just saving their life, Those prisoners who stayed in the jail were all here, right? And to save the jailer. Again, not just saving his life, but that he might be eternally saved. So Paul and Silas did what was the exact opposite of what we would normally come to expect.

Normally you'd say, I have an opportunity to get out of here. I'm out of here right now, right? Included in that was seeking to have the jailer be saved instead of getting what's coming to him. The normal mindset would be gripe and grouse, and I've had a chance to escape, of course, right?

Paul and Silas, instead of griping and grousing, do the opposite. They pray and praise the Lord, and given the opportunity to escape, they don't, and they apparently convince the other prisoners to do the same, to stay there. Acts 16 29 and 30 and he called for lights and rushed in and Trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas and if he brought them out he said sirs What must I do to be saved at this point in time?

I'm using a video to get you know pictures that I Use on here at this point in time. They don't quite follow the script and That is, he asks, what must I do to be saved while he's still in the prison? Which doesn't follow exactly what it says here. So, if you'll give it that latitude, or at least correct it in your thinking.

Sirs, what must I do to be saved? You can imagine, here's this guy, he's been from, I'm asleep, to now I'm awake. And now I'm in deep, deep trouble to know everything is okay. And now taking Paul and Silas out who haven't been behaving like any prisoner that they've ever heard of or seen before. Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And he may not have had a clear idea what saved meant yet, right?

But certainly ask the question. So, the jailer was compelled to check out Paul's claim, because remember, the whole place would have been dark. It was, from a human viewpoint, just unbelievable. What? You're all here, the doors are open, the chains have fallen off, but you're still here? So he called for lights. The inner jail was unlit. Dark. The place is dark.

So he rushed in, as we'd understand, his life was at stake. He says, you're kidding me. The prisoners are all still here? The jailer trembled with fear. You can imagine his sudden shocking state of mind. I'm asleep. I wake up. The doors are open. Now I'm in big trouble. And then, all of a sudden, they have, nope, stop, don't harm yourself. Come back in. Call for lights. Come in. Paul's right. Everyone is here. But he still was trembling with fear, fell down before Paul on Silas. This was an instant of very sudden change in perspective, and he'd just been through a threat of death. Immense relief.

Have you ever had that, where you get some really bad piece of news and then go, whew. Ever had that? This was that in great extreme here for this jailer, right? a really, really bad piece of news that's going to end his life. And then, now, what must I do to be saved? These guys have been talking and singing about something. So, would you do the same if your life had been spared? Likely so. Put ourselves into this in even some similar form and we'd get an idea what this was like. So he brought them out, unlike what the picture shows.

He brought out Paul and Silas, apparently only Paul and Silas, not the others. Jaylor saw that Paul and Silas lived a life and displayed a power far, far beyond his own. He said, I don't understand this. They seem to know a power well beyond those that threaten the Jaylor's very life. It was more than the power of the Roman Empire and more than the power of all the pagan gods. Paul and Silas did not live like anyone else they'd ever seen.

It reminds me of the time when here is Christ on the cross and the Roman centurion recognized that this man was crucified like none we've ever crucified. We crucified an innocent man, he said. And at the end, he said, this is the Son of God. And it was how he lived while he was on the cross and how he died. Certainly, this is different than Paul and Silas didn't die.

But nonetheless, the jailer recognized a radical change in the life of these men from any he had ever seen before, a great difference. So he asked, what must I do to be saved? So we can begin to understand his question if we just kind of put ourselves in his place for a moment. He'd just been spared a death of suicide rather than death by the Roman Empire, because it's preferred to take one's life rather than to have the Roman Empire do it.

He had just seen an earthquake, and it was a big one, usually attributed to the anger of the gods, and it freed all the prisoners, or at least it could have. All the prisoners stayed in the cells. This never happens. Paul and Silas have prayed and praised God until the earthquake at about midnight. He'd never seen anything like this before in his life. What must I do to be saved? These guys have the key. I apparently don't.

Acts 16.31, and they said, Believe in the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved, you and your household. So the jailer asked, what must he do to be saved? That strongly implied he knew that Paul and Silas could answer his question. Otherwise, why bother to ask? His question actually was rather simple. And so was Paul's answer. Isn't that good? Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Believe in Christ, who he is, and what he has done and you'll be saved. It's that simple.

So Paul summarized the gospel, very likely he had added other explanations, the good news of salvation, about what Christ did that must be believed, the who and the what. He gave that in 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4, as he wrote it down, for I delivered to you as a first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures."

One of the things we want to be aware of is the wrong Jesus. We have a picture there is buddy Jesus, right? Eww, buddy Jesus, right? We have buddy Jesus there in the picture. Various voices will err in delivering the simple message of salvation. The errors differ, but it comes down to actually three errors in the gospel. They present the wrong Jesus, not the Jesus of the Bible. So here's buddy Jesus. He just wants to be your friend, you know. There's also legal Jesus. You got these Ten Commandments here. You better do your best to follow that, right? You better give it the old college try. You better give it your best effort, give your best to the Master and you'll be saved.

So the wrong Jesus is what some people will present. They present something short also of the true gospel of salvation, gospel light, if you will, much less filling. And so that will be presented. They may also present something more than the true gospel of salvation. We call it gospel plus. So the errors are gospel minus and gospel plus. Here are the other things that you have to do, right? Keep up this and keep doing that and keep on here and do this and do that and make sure you don't, you know, gospel minus and gospel plus. Those are the risks.

Believe that Christ, the Son of God, who He is, died for your sins, was buried and rose again. Not anything taken away and not anything added to it. So He's offered that to you and to your household. I offer this same gospel to you and your household. If you and those of your household will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he died for your sins, was buried and rose again, then every person in your household who believes will be saved eternally. It's that simple. It's that simple and it's that universal. He could offer it not just to the jailer, but all of the jailer's household.

Here's Acts 16.32, And they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all who were in his house. This term, the word of the Lord, It means the message about Christ for salvation for everyone who believes. It's used from before Paul was saved on into Paul's third missionary journey.

And so we see a listing of all the places that shows up from Acts 8.25 where Paul is not yet a believer, all the way into Acts 19.20 will be Paul's third missionary journey. Act 1633, and he took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds, and immediately he was baptized, he and his household. So the jailer washed the wounds of Paul and Silas, which were no doubt severe, and usually they would get badly infected and more painful given the circumstances inside the prison cell. So the jailer and his household, having believed, were baptized because they believed and were saved. They were not baptized in order to be saved. What must I do to be saved? He didn't say, you've got to get baptized. He said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved.

You'll also notice the words of immediacy in the jailer's actions. Paul and Silas in the jailer's own household, he was very responsive. He didn't say, give me some time to think about it. At 1634, and he brought them into his house and set food before them and rejoiced greatly, having believed in God with his whole household. So the jailer set a meal before Paul and Silas. And of course, they probably had not eaten since before this event there with the slave girl. So the jailer and those of his household believed in the God, it says, actually, not the gods or one of the gods, but the God and the salvation provided by grace through faith.

That is who Christ was and what he had done so that he, the jailer, and we are saved. So one of the essentials here that we see here is that is the critical gospel. What is the gospel? Who is Christ as He is identified in the Bible, who died for our sins and was buried and rose again? It's critical that nobody redirects on who Christ is, that nobody adds to or takes away from the gospel of salvation. No gospel plus, no gospel minus. The other thing we note here is God's will does not mean easy.

Paul and Barnabas had been through an earlier time where the Holy Spirit had directed them to Philippi. At first they had great circumstances with Lydia, probably for some weeks, perhaps about a month, and then things got rough. But it didn't mean that they were out of God's will. They were still in God's will, even though the circumstances were difficult.

God's opportunity may look hard. We might have easily understood if Paul and Silas were overwhelmed, they just stayed in their misery mode. And certainly we can understand that. I mean, they were in pain and great discomfort. The opportunity God provided was when they were in pain and great discomfort in bad circumstances. ill-treated, beaten, uncomfortable, unpleasant, and unsanitary conditions, that was God's golden opportunity for them, for Paul and Silas. God's gospel opportunity for all in that jail. What about Paul's and Silas' civil rights?

We're going to take a look at this next week particularly. The magistrates had at least three serious legal problems. And by the way, if I can find more, I'll let you know. But that's what I found so far. The magistrates had three serious legal problems in what they did to Paul and Silas. And Paul and Silas could have pressed for their rights, even pressed that these magistrates lose their lives. That serious.

So why does Paul not press for his rights earlier in Philippi, but later in Acts he does press for his rights? Hmm. As we'll see, Paul does not maximize his civil rights all the time, nor does he always set aside those rights. Instead, he aims to maximize the spiritual opportunity. Ding!

This is a key point on God's will. We'll look at this further next week and by the way 2nd Corinthians 11 25 says he was beaten with rod three times that would include this time and none of those three times were actually allowable under Roman law with him as a Roman citizen. He could have pressed for his rights in all three instances but did not. Isn't that amazing?

So take a look at that. next time, next Sunday. Let's pray. Lord, thank you. As we look at this, we can see multiple examples of your working in the lives of Paul and through the lives of Paul and Silas and working in hearts. And we thank you for the guidance that we get regarding your will. And we'll see even more of that as we see next week here. and at the passage we'll be looking at. Thank you that through it all you intend for us to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.