Caring And Sharing

This morning’s message is entitled “caring and sharing.” Often when we teach on the purpose and life of the church we speak about koinonia, which is a New Testament Greek word meaning “fellowship.” However, one pastor tells us “that koinonia means caring for the poor” and that “Christian fellowship is Christian caring, and Christian caring is Christian sharing.”(1)

One of the purposes of the church is to care for others and then to share with them, whether it is in the form of material goods, such as we see in the example of the New Testament church (Acts 2:45), or whether it be to share the Good News of Jesus Christ. This morning I am going to talk about caring for the spiritual state of the people around us, and of how we should seek to share with them the gospel message of salvation in Jesus Christ. Let’s start with point number one, found in verse 25.

Point # 1: We All Go Through Life (v. 25)

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

The first point that I wish to emphasize is that “we all go through life.”

Right here we find Paul and Silas praying and singing praises to God while they were in jail. If we look back in verses 16-24 we find out the reason why they were in jail.

What had happened is that a slave girl who was possessed with a demon came and harassed them, so they cast out this demon. Her masters then became very upset, because through the power of this demon she was able to tell fortunes, and her masters made a profit from this ability. When Paul and Silas destroyed their method for making money, they turned the city against them and had them beaten with rods, and then thrown in jail.

They were going through a really difficult time of trials, and it appears that Paul and Silas had a good reason to be down. They had just been beaten, and in verse 23 we read of how they had stripes upon them, meaning that they were bleeding and in a great amount of physical pain. They were unjustly thrown in jail, and they were probably lying on a cold, hard floor in a damp stone prison cell. They were probably only fed once a day, and the place was likely filled with rats and pestilence. Talk about experiencing the hardships of life!

What I wish to point out from these verses is that things happen to each of us in life. We all encounter trials and difficulties and we all have things that try really hard to distract us from witnessing, or sharing our faith with people. When we go through these times it is hard enough to praise God like Paul and Silas did, let alone share our faith.

All of us go through life, and life can distract us from sharing our faith with others. Whenever we are experiencing a time of trials we can sometimes become so focused on our own hardships and feeling as though we are trapped in them, that we forget to look around and see that there are others who are hurting as well, like the prisoners who were all around Paul and Silas. Paul and Silas were not alone in that jail.

We all go through life, and life can distract us from witnessing and blind us to the needs of other people. It is not just trials that distract us, but it is the everyday hustle and bustle of life and the demands on our time. After work is over we have to take care of the bills and business, run errands, get groceries, drive the kids to extracurricular activities, and care for sick spouses or children, and the list can go on and on. It is hard to look out and see others when we are so inward focused and consumed by our own world.

Even though we have our own set of troubles and our own demands on time, we need to keep our eyes open to the people around us. If we can just open our eyes we will see that others are going through things too.

Paul and Silas put their own needs and problems aside and they began to sing. They sang from the joy of the Lord that was in their hearts, but they also sang for another reason. In verse 25 we read that prisoners were listening to them sing. So, we see that Paul and Silas also sang for the benefit of the other prisoners in order to lift their spirits and to become a witness of their own faith in God’s deliverance and sovereignty in their situation. They began demonstrating caring and sharing here, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.