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Acts 16:16-34
The text we read this morning has been a popular one for Vacation Bible Schools for many years.
The cardboard props of the wall of the jail house and the barred windows has “imprisoned” many a child or saint in the skit.
someone pulls the string, and the prisoners are released.
This replay is good to put the story into one’s memory, but there is far more than is seen in the play acting.
Let us look further into the text to get “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey put it.
The set up for this text begins at Acts 16:6-9.
Paul and Silas were on what we call “The Second Missionary Journey.
They had strengthened the disciples in the Galatian and Phrygian regions whom they had visited on the first journey.
Now Paul felt it was time to evangelize new areas.
But the Holy Spirit forbid them to go to both Asia (Today, western Turkey) and Bithynia, That night Paul received a vision of a Macedonian man beckoning Paul and Silas to come over there to help.
This they did, and the first mission to the continent of Europe began.
The first city they came to was the city of Philippi.
It has been named after Alexander the Great’s father, Phillip of Macedon who lived about four hundred years earlier.
It was a patron of the Oracle of Delphi where people went to seek the will of the gods.
The oracles came to slave girls who sat over a pot which caused them to breathe hallucinogens.
They were said to be possessed by a “python spirit.”
The unintelligible gibberish they spouted was interpreted by a priest and delivered in perfect Greek hexameter, a form of poetry.
One can only say that from all human appearances, Paul’s travels to Macedonia got off to an inauspicious start.
Paul had been used to go first to the Jewish synagogues in the city where bot Jews and Gentile god-fearers came on the Sabbath.
There was common ground there to proclaim Christ as they knew the Scripture (Old Testament).
But Paul found no synagogue in Philippi.
There was not 10 Jewish men to be found in this city which was mostly inhabited by retired Roman legionnaires.
All he could find was several women who has come to worship at the river bank.
One of these, named Lydia, became the first convert in Europe to Christianity.
The fruit seemed to be meager.
It seems that Paul spent several days, if not weeks, wondering what to do next.
Paul’s usual strategy of evangelism would not work here.
He may have begin to wonder and suffer from depression.
We see tis in the slave girl with the python spirit following him over the course of several days, taunting both Paul and Silas.
The slave-girl was right in that she proclaimed that Paul and Silas were servants of the most high God.
But the message might as well as been gibberish to those who heard it.
Who was this “most high God?
Zeus?
It is interesting to not that Jesus made a habit of immediately silencing evil spirits when they tried to identify Him.
He would receive no testimony from devils.
But Paul put up with this for some time until he could take it no more.
He ordered the spirit to depart from the girl.
Now it was the owners of the slave girl who were greatly annoyed.
She was their meal ticket, and now she was useless to them.
So they went to the magistrates of the city (Roman lictors) and made complaint that Pau and Silas were preaching a strange God whose worship was forbidden there.
We should note that the emperor could be worshipped as a god anywhere, but other gods could only be worshipped in their land of origin.
The Jews had been granted an exemption to this, but the soldiers who ran the city had little regard for this.
They were Roman citizens and veterans.
So they had Paul and Silas beaten with rods.
This was not as deadly as being scourged with the flagellum, a whip with embedded glass and metal, but it was, nevertheless, very painful.
After this beating they were turned over to the custody of the jailor.
They were placed in the most secure place in the prison and fastened with chains and stocks.
There were no bars on the windows in the inner prison as there were no windows.
What little light that was there was for the benefit of the guards to make sure the prisoners were still there.
There were Paul and Silas in the gloom and in great pain.
What would happen to their mission now.
Would they be tried and executed on the next day?
There was by human standards great reason to be concerned.
The Greek says that they were fastened to the “wood.” the same word is use of Christ hanging on the tree (cross).
Paul had been told when he was converted that he would suffer greatly for Christ.
He had already been stoned to the point of death.
Now he languished in prison with his colleague Silas.
What were they to do?
Contrary to all expectations, they did not groan or lament their predicament.
They sang hymns of praise to God, the only God.
This would certainly been seen as strange by the prisoners and guards alike.
Would we do that?
Or would we groan and complain?
But this strange behavior was a powerful witness.
We can go back to the cross where the victims usually cried out in agony and cursed God and man in their pain.
the cross was made to make the victims appear as animals.
surely, such brutes as these deserved to die.
But Jesus kept His mind and forgave those who had put him on the cross, even in the midst of the hissing and curses of the crowds.
So unusual was this that upon Jesus’ death, the Roman centurion said instead: Surely this man was the Son of God!”
Meanwhile, back at the jail, midnight came, the beginning of the new Roman day.
What a new day it would be.
Just like at the crucifixion of Jesus, there was a great earthquake.
Earthquakes were seen as a sign from God, usually of displeasure.
It was doubly frightening.
But there was something unusual about this earthquake.
One would expect the cracking of masonry or the collapse of the wall.
This may indeed have happened here.
But the loosening of the shackles would have been quite unusual.
The may have come loose from the wall, but they would have remained on the prisoners.
It also says the doors were opened which implies that they weren’t just violently shaken down.
Also, no one was hurt.
Perhaps what is most unusual is that the prisoners were free to escape but did not.
We can deduce that at least some of them were there on capital crimes for which they would soon be executed.
This is because the punishment that would have fallen upon the escaped prisoner would have fallen instead on the jailor and the guards.
The fact the jailor, when he was awakened and assessing the situation drew a sword to kill himself rather than having the magistrates executing him.
Paul cried out to the jailor not to harm himself as no one had escaped.
How could Paul see this in the gloom and the dust which was stirred up by the earthquake.
How could he even see the jailor?
Paul was thought to have poor vision, possibly from the stoning he had received.
He even hints of this elsewhere.
But Paul had spiritual sight.
What a witness Paul and Silas had made on the prisoners.
They had the opportunity to escape but did not.
Surely the fear of God was in them.
How many of them became believers on Jesus that night?
We can’t answer the last question directly, but we can see the effect of what had happened to the jailor.
The jailor who had just despaired of life and was about to kill himself to avoid a more painful and dishonorable death now had hope, a hope he had not possessed even before Paul and Silas came into the prison he kept.
Sometimes we don’t recognize how much of a prisoner we are until we are set free in Jesus.
Charles Wesley, the brother of John had such an experience just prior to his brother’s encounter with Christ at Aldersgate.
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