When You’re Falsely Accused
Acts 16:23-34
Have you ever been falsely accused? I’m pretty sure we all have at some point in time. It really feels bad. If you’re like me, your first impulse is to justify yourself, to assert your innocence, and if at all possible...to get revenge!
But that’s not what we see here. Things go south really quickly for Paul and Silas. We didn’t read the background story. What was their heinous crime? They put a damper on profit margins, that’s what! My father-in-law always says, “Follow the money.” If you read the background story, you see that a demon-possessed girl was following Paul and Silas around, shouting, “These people are from God! Listen to them!” Great message, yet an obnoxious delivery! She wasn’t really living up to 1 Peter 3:15, which tells us to share our faith with “gentleness and respect.” Finally, Paul had had enough, and told that despicable demon in the name of Jesus to leave the girl, which he did. When the girl acted normal, her owners realized they had lost their sideshow circus act, and brought false charges against Paul and Silas, saying they were rabble-rousers stirring up trouble in town.
Before the two of them could blink an eye, Paul and Silas found themselves not only in jail, but whipped and put in stocks. These devices were designed to hold your legs apart and produce cramping. These fellows were falsely accused to the extreme. What would they do? How would they react? Would they insist on their rights? Would they pursue litigation? Would they seek some kind of retaliation?
Well, if you look on your outline, you’ll see the first thing they did was to...
1. Worship and wait
Now that is certainly contrary to our instinctual response. Yet, that is what they chose to do. Look at verse 25: “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.”
Paul and Silas chose not to whine, but to worship. In so doing, they took their attention off their problems and shifted it to the problem solver. When life puts you on your back, look up! “Look to the mountains, whence cometh your help” (Psalm 121:1).
Now this is not easy to do, at least for me. I was driving home from work this week, pretty upset over an accusation I thought was exaggerated and untrue. And I knew I was going to be preaching on this very story, but I didn’t want to praise God. I wanted to feel sorry for myself. Yet, that didn’t really do anything except make me more upset.
When Job’s distraught wife encouraged him to curse God and die, he said to her, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10). Earlier he had said, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Job praised God in good times and in bad, as did Paul and Silas. What about you? Can you choose, as an act of faith, to worship and wait, to see what God may do? Years later, Paul would write from another prison cell back to a church right here in this same city, “Rejoice in the Lord always!” (Philippians 4:4).
The New King James Study Bible notes, “It is in times of darkness that the light of a Christian witness shines brightest.” In today’s story, the other prisoners were listening in on this worship service. They were taking note. And then something amazing happened: an earthquake in which no one died, yet every jail door swung open. Back then, jail cells were locked by iron rods across the bottom of the doorway, so an earthquake could have set ajar all of these rods. And we discover in the story that God did not send the earthquake to free Paul and Silas, but to save the jailer and his family. And all because of an attitude Paul chose to have toward his tormenter. Look at point two; we worship and wait on the Lord, and we also...
2. Refrain from revenge
Verses 27 and 28 tell us, “The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, ‘Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!’”
The jailer’s first instinct was to commit suicide. Losing control of your prisoners in Roman times was a capital offense. He knew he had a painful death coming to him, so he decided to just end it quickly himself. However, when Paul gave a report of, “All present or accounted for!”, the jailer was floored. The guy he had been torturing convinced him that he wouldn’t get in trouble!
When you choose to take the high road, people take note. The world’s way is to get even, to pursue that revenge at all cost. The easiest path for Paul was to sit back and watch that jailer kill himself, then walk out a free man. After all, the jailer had supervised his torture. Didn’t the jailer get what was coming to him? Yet, Paul chose to see this man as a creation of God who needed to become a friend of God. And so Paul did what he could to save the man’s life, and the man took note. What Paul really did is part 3, which is to...
3. Give glory to God
Notice the jailer’s response to the grace and mercy shown him. Verse 30 says, “He then brought them out and asked, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’
That’s a great question, isn’t it? There was something radically different about Paul’s life. Paul didn’t operate like the rest of the world. I’ve always liked this story; yet, when I studied the passage this week, I discovered something totally new: the Romans promised a version of salvation themselves: “The Pax Romana,” or “Roman Peace” was their version of salvation. Technology, military domination, spread of wealth and empire all were designed to offer “salvation” to people in need of a better life. Yet, here is a Roman authority asking these two Jewish men, “What must I do to be saved?”
What do you need to do? Only believe. Verses 31 and 32: “They replied, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.’ Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house.” And the rest of the story shows a changed man: the jailer and his family all get baptized. And the jailer cleans Paul and Silas’ wounds and feeds them. His life will never again be the same. He has believed. He has turned over his life control to Jesus. As Paul would later write, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved” (Romans 10:9-10).
In summary, Paul acts like a Christian by choosing to worship God in hardship and taking the high road rather than revenge. And when asked about it, he gives glory to God. He points people to the author and finisher of our faith: Jesus Christ. And the jailer and his family join the family of God.
Today we’re taking the Lord’s Supper together. Paul did a good job of illustrating our three points, but what better example could we have than our Lord Jesus? As the cross drew near, Jesus chose to pray. We looked at that story the last couple of weeks, as we looked at his High Priestly Prayer and the Gethsemane Prayer. Despite false accusations, Jesus worshiped and waited for God’s perfect plan to unfold. When he was treated unjustly by the Roman government and the Jewish religious leaders, he refrained from revenge. He never struck back. He took it quietly, certain in the Father’s plan. And then, while he died a death for you and me, he gave glory to God: “Into your hands I commit my Spirit.” He pointed people to the Heavenly Father. And God raised him up to the highest point, as Paul describes in Philippians 2. Jesus remained humble, and Father God raised him up to be our conqueror over and sin and death forever. That’s what we celebrate today in the Lord’s Supper. Let’s pray about it together:
Father, help us in our time of need, when things are not going right, to trust that you are still at work, that you will vindicate us, that you will give us the courage to keep our eyes on you instead of ourselves and our problems. We ask this in the name of the One who gave himself for us, amen.
