The year was approximately A.D. 52. Paul was on his second missionary journey and the Holy Spirit had called him and those traveling with him to Macedonea; located just East of Italy and North of the Mediterranean.
Their travels took them to Philippi, a Roman colony and one of the leading cities of Macedonea.
On the Sabbath, Paul, Luke (who wrote the book of Acts) and Silas, were walking by the river outside of the city gates, seeking a peaceful place for prayer.
As they were going, a female slave who was demon possessed and being used by her masters to earn money for them as a fortune-teller, was following the group and yelling,
“These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.”
While her words were true, God does not need Satan to speak for Him, and a true servant of God does not revel in the flattery of men to gain attention.
Now verse 18 of this chapter tells us that she had been following them around and doing this for many days. So Paul finally had enough of it, and turned and cast the demon out of her.
Anyone who has ever had a younger brother or sister knows what it’s like to have someone following you around, pestering you, wanting to be in on the action when you’re with your friends, just generally being irritating.
Just recently we were talking about when Brittany and Jacquelynn were very young, and Jacquelynn would be in Brittany’s bedroom uninvited so Brittany would kick her out. Jacq would stand with her toes literally on the threshold of Brit’s room and just smile. So we’d hear Brittany yell, “Get out of my room!” then Jacq’s voice would drift quietly up the hallway saying, “I am out”. So Brit would yell louder. “Get out!” And then would come Jacq’s soft, “I am”. Then the scream. “GET OUT!” “I am out”.
SLAM!
If you have children you know the routine. You all have your own stories, just as we have many more than the one I’ve illustrated with.
Now Luke says in verse 12 of this chapter that they had been in Philippi for ‘some days’, when they went down to the riverside for prayer and met Lydia and company.
Then it talks about baptizing her household and her invitation to stay at her house, then in verse 16 it says they were going to a place of prayer again.
So we’re rather vague on the time element here, but down in verse 18 it says this demon-possessed girl had been following them around for ‘many days’. So again, we don’t know what Luke would call ‘many days’, but Paul must have been exercising a great deal of patience. What this girl was doing and saying would have been much more vexing in spirit than just an irritating kid standing at the threshold of your door.
Paul wasn’t being irrationally impatient. He’d just had enough. So he turns and casts out the demon.
There went Paul’s frustration, and there went her masters’ profit. If a man’s god is his money, when you touch his purse you touch his god. It makes him angry.
So they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them before the authorities.
A little side note here; If you read this chapter carefully you’ll observe that these missionaries apparently had gone about in Philippi relatively unnoticed until now. It was by this incident and the anger of the merchants, that Paul and Silas came to the attention of the authorities, and thus into the public’s attention.
God often uses methods that to us would seem strange, to make His heralds heard.
At any rate, the end result of this confrontation is that Paul and Silas are beaten, thrown in prison and secured in stocks.
And we come to the focus of our study today.
Let’s read together, Acts 16, verses 16-30
So here’s the picture in brief. Paul has a dream of a man calling to him, “Come over to Macedonea and help us!” He understands that it is direction from the Holy Spirit, so he changes his travel plans and goes there in obedience to God.
Let me just toss in another nugget for thought here. If you read chapter 16, verses 6 through 10, you will see that Paul had his direction changed by the Holy Spirit several times before He gave him the vision from Macedonia. It is as important to know when the Lord is saying ‘no’ to a ministry idea, as to know when He is calling us to one.
Well, they come to Philippi and receive no great welcome, no gracious invitations to dinner, no introductions to the mayor; they are apparently ignored except by this small group of women who meet down by the river to pray.
We’re not even told if they ever met the guy from the vision!
They are hounded by a demon possessed slave-girl until, led of the Holy Spirit Paul delivers her from bondage, and for that they are stripped, beaten “with many blows”, and treated like very dangerous criminals.
So how do they respond, in their humiliation and pain and general discomfort and uncertainty of the next day?
They pray. They sing hymns of praise to God.
Folks, how often are we inspired by our circumstances to publicly sing praises to God?
I don’t mean in church. It’s easy here. Everyone (well, almost everyone) is doing it. It’s easy to be spiritual in church.
Unfortunately, most of us can be so bummed by something as simple as a BAD HAIR DAY, that we lose our ability to call praises to our lips.
The mark of a mature Christian, is that he is not only likely, but compelled to prayer and to lifting praises to God when in a time of trial. The greater the trial, the more fervent the prayer and the louder the praise.
Because you see, it is God’s praise. He brings forth praises to Himself from a heart that He has made His own.
It was Paul himself who wrote to the Ephesians, “...be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God, even the Father;”
Now he wasn’t advocating that we Christians go around singing to one another like we live in a Rogers and Hammerstein musical. (he didn’t even know Rogers and Hammerstein…sorry) But when we corporately worship and sing as one we do minister to one another. I know that each Sunday it is a blessing to me as we sing, to look around and see each of you enjoying that aspect of our worship. And in our communications with one another our words should be uplifting and edifying and encouraging; like worship music is.
At the end of Psalm 42 and again, Psalm 43, the psalmist says, “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? HOPE IN GOD, FOR I SHALL YET PRAISE HIM, The help of my countenance, and my God.”
One of my favorites is Psalm 92:1,2
“It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing praises to Thy name, O Most High; To declare Thy lovingkindness in the morning, and Thy faithfulness by night.”
Do you lose the sense of His presence when evil surrounds you? Speak to your soul. Tell your soul to hope in God, and then force yourself, if you must, to open your mouth and verbalize praises to Him, for Psalm 22 tells us that God inhabits praise; and you will know Him near you once more.
That is, if the praise is sincere and of true faith. I’m not talking about some doctrine of thanking the Lord for your troubles and He will be obligated to bless you and change the circumstances. I’m not encouraging you to some sort of grudging, “Praise the Lord anyway” attitude when your car breaks down or you get fired from your job or something much worse happens in your life.
I’m talking about remembering Whose you are, and praising Him in all circumstances. Of course, that’s going to be easier to do when you know the reason you’re suffering is because you’re in His service, and not because you drove drunk or forgot to pay the utility bill.
But the outcome of God’s praise is farther-reaching than giving us comfort and encouragement in trouble.
We’re told in verse 25 that “the prisoners were listening to them”.
Folks our world has for the first time in history, reached a place where voices are heard, in one form or another, far and wide, whether they have anything significant to say or not.
Anything from a President’s speech to a jeans commercial can be broadcast to places we don’t even think about by a simple entry onto a home page of the internet.
TV and Radio and Newspaper are all now going into homes in the remote villages of our planet, and influencing people who just a generation ago knew nothing of the world in which they live except their own small field of crops or the few livestock that roamed their own back yard.
When John Kennedy was assassinated, for up to a week later we were seeing people approached by newscasters on the streets, and responding with surprise when asked how they felt about the President of the United States being shot. Their mouth would drop open, or tears would come to their eyes, and they would say, “He was? I hadn’t heard!” I have a very vivid memory of this. It was on Monday. Kennedy was assassinated on Friday, and Monday morning as I watched the news a reporter approached a woman in a wool overcoat, scarf and horn-rimmed glasses and asked her what she thought of the President being killed. Tears welled up in her eyes and in shock she said, “The President? President Kennedy?”
No more.
Nowadays a green-haired basketball player divorces his wife of one week and within days it is such common news around the world that people who aren’t vaguely interested in American professional sports are seeing his picture and even hearing him quoted, whether they want to or not.
Where are our public praises to the Living God?
Acts 16 says “and the prisoners were listening to them”. And in just a few minutes we’re going to see the result of that; results that we could be seeing all around us now, if we were bold enough, spiritual enough, to endure the cross of Christ, despising the shame, and lift up praises to God!
Paul and Silas, instead of focusing on their pain or their humiliation or their discomfort, focused on God, and sang His praises.
And they saw God’s Power.
Verse 26 says, “and suddenly there came a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken”
People, when we hear of an earthquake, do we think of God’s power, or only of ‘mother nature’s wrath’?
There was a commercial for margarine a few years back, touting the praises of this certain brand that tasted just like real butter. The earth shook and thunder filled the sky, and a middle-aged woman with a wreath of flowers in her hair, eating a slice of bread with this margarine on it looked at the camera and said, “It’s not nice to fool mother nature”.
There is no ‘mother nature’. There is God; and God alone controls the forces of the universe.
Now I don’t know how centralized the earthquake of that night was. It’s kind of interesting that there is no further mention of its effects. After they leave the prison and spend the night at the jailer’s house, it doesn’t say that as they entered they saw Mrs. Jailer sweeping up the pieces of her best china.
It doesn’t say at the end of the chapter that when they went to the house of Lydia, she said, “Hey, did you guys feel that big earthquake last night?”
Well, Luke apparently didn’t consider that information pertinent to the story, so we just don’t know how far-spread the effects of that earthquake were.
But we are told enough to give us confidence that God does not forsake His own.
Jesus promised tribulation. He said, “in the world you will have tribulation, but take courage, I have overcome the world”. He said, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world”
The world, it’s cruel rulers, our own circumstances; nothing can put us someplace where God is not. Are you in the deepest pit of despair? Praise God, He is there with you. Are you in chains of habit that hold you fast? Praise God, He is there with you. Are you a prisoner of Christ? That is; because you serve Him and declare Him to others, are you rejected by family or friends or employers? Praise God, He is there with you, AND YOU WILL SEE HIS POWER.
And you will see His provision.
Would men today refute the involvement of God in this story and say, ‘It was coincidence. There is no connection between their singing and the earthquake”? Then I would answer the scoffer, “and immediately all the doors were opened and EVERYONE’S CHAINS WERE UNFASTENED”.
Christian, give God the praise He deserves. Ignore your circumstances for a moment; no matter how dire, no matter how long you have endured or how weary you are. Let your heart be so filled with God’s praises that they pour out your mouth, and watch Him do miracles in your life. Doors of opportunity will fling open and the fears and doubts that bind you will unfasten and fall to the floor. God honors faith, and He inhabits praises. He is as close to you as the praises falling from your lips.
He will provide for you. Listen:
The word ‘temptation’ does not always and only refer to temptation to sin. It often refers also to the trials of life that, because of their severity or duration, tempt us to stop trusting God; to grumble against Him; to lean to our own understanding. It is in this context that Paul exhorted and encouraged his Corinthian readers when he said:
“No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it.”
Your chains will fall off.
Proverbs 3:5,6 is one many of us are very familiar with; hear it again, or hear it for the first time:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”
These promises of scripture are not just pretty poems and bumper-sticker phrases to amuse or cheer us. They issue forth from the very mouth of God and are living words, meant to give us life. They are God’s provision for us. When we let the Holy Spirit take them to our heart and teach us their meaning, then in faith we begin to appropriate their truths and they change our lives.
God is your provider! Lift up praises to Him and see His power and His provision in your life!
And you will see His purpose being done.
What is His purpose? What is His purpose for allowing you to go through trials and testings and temptations when you belong to Him? Well, we get a glimpse of it here in this account.
Remember when I read the line from verse 25, “and the prisoners were listening to them” ?
Here we will see the impact of God’s praises coming from a believer’s lips, in other people’s lives.
Verse 28 “But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Do yourself no harm, for WE ARE ALL HERE!”
Here is a prison full of men. Some of them at least are actually criminals. Perhaps even some dangerous criminals who have committed violent crimes.
During the night they have sat listening to these two men who are beaten, their backs probably still bleeding, their feet in stocks, rats and cockroaches scampering back and forth across a urine dampened floor and no light except perhaps the faint glow of the moon from a small window high up toward the ceiling, and they’re singing praises to God.
The words of these praises must have reached and softened hardened hearts, but oh, what an impression must have been made when suddenly the building shook, doors flew open and chains...even their own chains...fell to the floor!
We’re not told anything more about the other prisoners. I have a feeling we’ll meet some of them one day. But this is all we need to know now, to inspire praises to God in our own heart: THEY ALL STAYED!
But there’s more! Where else do we see God’s purpose being done?
In verse 30. “And after he brought them out, (that is the guard), he said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
Yes my friends, when people hear our praises to God, and see His power and His provision in our lives, the result will often be that they will want what we have.
They may not fully understand what they are seeing; they may not really understand at all! But they will want it.
Do you think that later Paul and Silas considered the suffering they had endured well worth the outcome? You bet they did. I know they did, because Paul said so.
“BUT WE HAVE THIS TREASURE IN EARTHEN VESSELS, THAT THE SURPASSING GREATNESS OF THE POWER MAY BE OF GOD AND NOT FROM OURSELVES; WE ARE AFFLICTED IN EVERY WAY, BUT NOT CRUSHED; PERPLEXED, BUT NOT DESPAIRING; PERSECUTED, BUT NOT FORSAKEN; STRUCK DOWN, BUT NOT DESTROYED; ALWAYS CARRYING ABOUT IN THE BODY THE DYING OF JESUS, THAT THE LIFE OF JESUS ALSO MAY BE MANIFESTED IN OUR BODY. FOR WE WHO LIVE ARE CONSTANTLY BEING DELIVERED OVER TO DEATH FOR JESUS’ SAKE, THAT THE LIFE OF JESUS ALSO MAY BE MANIFESTED IN OUR MORTAL FLESH”
The great saints of God throughout the ages ARE great saints, because they came to a place in their relationship with Him, where all that mattered to them was living for Him who died for them; and being willing daily to die to themselves so they might manifest His life to the world around them.
At the Rio Grande County, Colorado Jail, just outside the bullpen door and taped to a refrigerator there, is a little sign that says, “Your body may be in prison, but your soul doesn’t have to be”. It was a printed quote from the TV show, “Touched By an Angel”; Which is one reason I disliked that show and any like it. They’re shallow.
That seems like a nice quote, but it is not a complete message. The soul without Christ is in prison, no matter where the body is. But in prison or out, the only freedom for the human soul IS in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And where He reigns, there is praise. Where God’s praise pours forth, there is His power. His power is manifested in His provision, and His provision for those who belong to Him is given to complete His purpose through us. His purpose to redeem the lost, and to make us more like Jesus.
It is a spiritual chain reaction, and the catalyst is praise from a heart of praise, to the God who sets men free.
