Faith In The Middle Of Failure Series

Faith in the Middle of Failure

Jeffery Anselmi / General

Proclaim- The Gospel Has Come / Salvation; Failure / Acts 16:25–34

INTRODUCTION

• Sometimes things don’t go as planned.

• Imagine that you are serving God and you seem to be doing a good job of it, then something bad happens to you.

• No matter how faithful you are to God, no matter how much attention to detail you put into your next step, the unexpected can still happen, and you can find yourself far from where you thought you’d be.

• This is the case in Acts 16 for Paul and Silas.

• One day, while they were headed to prayers, a woman possessed by an evil spirit began to make pronouncements about them, so Paul put a stop to it by casting the spirit out.

• However, the girl’s owners, who had been exploiting her demonic possession and supernatural abilities for personal gain, became upset when they realized they had just lost their passive revenue stream.

• They got the city magistrates involved, which led to a mob attacking Paul and Silas.

• After being beaten, they were thrown into jail (Acts 16:16–24).

• It is in that jail that we encounter the next proclamation from the early church.

• Not every important message the church proclaimed happened on a grand stage.

• This isn’t like Peter in front of thousands outside the temple, or before the Sanhedrin, or the Jerusalem Council.

• This proclamation comes in the privacy of prison, but it too has an important and relevant lesson for us today.

• The proclamation has a direct impact on an unlikely person, the Philippian jailer.

• The jailer was doing his job like he always had done, then POW, something unexpected hit him that would forever change his life and the lives of those in his family.

• Paul and Silas’s situation looked like a failure, but these men will need to allow their faith to prevail in the middle of what appears to be a great failure.

• The jailer, when standing at the crossroad of apparent failure, will need to make a choice. Will he allow faith to prevail in the midst of what looked like his greatest failure in life?

› Big Idea of the Message: The first church proclaimed that failure does not negate the fact that salvation is still the ultimate pursuit.

Acts 16:25–28 (CSB)

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

26 Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the jail were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s chains came loose.

27 When the jailer woke up and saw the doors of the prison standing open, he drew his sword and was going to kill himself, since he thought the prisoners had escaped.

28 But Paul called out in a loud voice, “Don’t harm yourself, because we’re all here!”

SERMON

I. Life at the crossroads of failure.

• Ever had a bad day at home or in the office?

• Paul and Silas are doing God’s work; as we stated earlier, they even cast a demon out of a young servant girl.

• God is with them; what could happen to them?

• When you dig back earlier in chapter 16, we see that Paul got annoyed, which is where the trouble starts.

Acts 16:16–24 (CSB)

16 Once, as we were on our way to prayer, a slave girl met us who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She made a large profit for her owners by fortune-telling.

17 As she followed Paul and us she cried out, “These men, who are proclaiming to you a way of salvation, are the servants of the Most High God.”

18 She did this for many days. Paul was greatly annoyed. Turning to the spirit, he said, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And it came out right away.

19 When her owners realized that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to the authorities.

20 Bringing them before the chief magistrates, they said, “These men are seriously disturbing our city. They are Jews

21 and are promoting customs that are not legal for us as Romans to adopt or practice.”

22 The crowd joined in the attack against them, and the chief magistrates stripped off their clothes and ordered them to be beaten with rods.

23 After they had severely flogged them, they threw them in jail, ordering the jailer to guard them carefully.

24 Receiving such an order, he put them into the inner prison and secured their feet in the stocks.