Farewell Philippi (Acts 16:27-40)

Isn’t it funny how God uses a seemingly isolated experience/insight to inspire new directions in our lives and fresh insight into His Word?!  That is exactly what God did with me and Psalm 27:1 last week – “The Lord is my Light and my Salvation…” (Amplified).  In presently studying the jailer from Acts 16 – his call for light and his desire to know the way of salvation – I could almost hear Paul using Psalm 27 (vs. 1 and beyond) to minister to the jailer in that moment.  The new direction this insight inspired was a deliberate reading of the book of Psalms.  There are so many gems I’ve been missing because of my satisfaction with superficial knowledge of a few of the biggies – Psalm 23, 119, 139.  So in the last week, I have begun including one psalm in each day’s study (working backward from Psalm 150 to Psalm 1).  …Some of you may be thinking that I’ll finish reading the book of Psalms about the same time we finish our study of Paul’s second missionary (through Acts 18:22).  Lol…  You may not be far off. 

For now, we’re going to catch back up with Paul and Silas in Philippi by way of another verse from Psalms.  I read it this morning, and it reminded me of our most recent Sunday school lesson:

            “Bring my life out of prison, that I may confess, praise, and give thanks to Your name; 
           the righteous will surround me … for You will deal bountifully with me.” (Psalm 142:7)

We started last week with Acts 16:27 and concluded with Acts 16:34.  In these few verses – and the few hours of time depicted by them – the jailer went from the “point” of suicide to jumping for joy because of his (and his family’s) newfound belief in God and Christ!  That being said, there was still the legal matter of Paul and Silas’ imprisonment.  It was still the jailer’s charge to guard them from escaping.  So when in verse 35 – the very next morning – “… the magistrates sent policemen, saying, Release those fellows and let them go,” can’t you just imagine the relief the jailer must have felt in receiving this message and delivering it to Paul and Silas?!

…Grab your Bible (if you haven’t already) and read it for yourself.  While you’re at it, go ahead and read through verse 37...

The jailer’s relief at the quick release of Paul and Silas must have turned to nausea when Paul‘s response was, “… No, indeed!  Let them come here themselves and conduct us out!” (vs. 37).   The magistrates wanted Paul and Silas to walk away with a lesson learned, but it was Paul who was teaching the lesson that day.  The magistrates came fearfully, and apologetically they brought them out of the prison.  In that moment, I’m sure that Paul expressed his gratitude … maybe even in the presence of the magistrates, but it wouldn’t have been them he was thanking.  Instead, I imagine Paul saying words similar to David’s in Psalm 142:7.

            You have brought “my life out of prison, that I may confess, praise, and give thanks to Your name; 
                       the righteous will surround me … for You will deal bountifully with me.”

Now released from prison, Paul and Silas made one more stop before leaving Philippi – Lydia’s house.  There they were surrounded by God’s righteous ones in Philippi, including Luke and Timothy.  Luke tells us that Paul and Silas (1) encouraged the believers – perhaps by recounting the ways in which God had dealt bountifully with them during their (24-hour) imprisonment – and then (2) they left.  As simply and quietly as that … they “departed” (Acts 16:40).  Does it seem kind of anticlimactic to anyone else … given the crescendo of events throughout the rest of the chapter? 

As we have looked at Paul and Silas’ last day in Philippi with the backdrop of Psalm 142:7, I ask you to reflect on your own journey.

1.      What prison God has brought you out of?  If you don’t think you’ve ever been in a “prison,” I ask you to step lightly.  Even the jailer himself had his own prison to be brought out of.

2.      Did your release (or your lifelong freedom) prompt you to “confess, praise and give thanks to” the name of the Lord?

3.      In seeing Paul and Silas surrounded by believers at Lydia’s, think about the righteous ones with whom God has surrounded you.  Remember righteous doesn’t mean perfect.  Another aspect of our identity in Christ is that, in Christ, we as believers have become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21).

4.      As Paul and Silas look forward to new cities and the inclusion of new believers, how are you expecting God to deal bountifully with you this week/month/year? 

I look forward to seeing God deal bountifully with Paul and Silas as we move forward in our study, and I hope that you will share how He is dealing bountifully with you.  Now What?  “Every day [with its new reasons] will I bless You … yes, I will praise Your name forever and ever.” (Ps 145:2).

My Light and my Salvation (Ps 27:1)

Since arriving at Philippi in Acts 16:12, there have been several additions to our cast of characters – Lydia, an unnamed slave girl, the girl’s owners, the magistrates of Philippi, a chorus of townspeople, and a group of prisoners.  I realize in looking at that list that God positioned Paul and traveling partners to minister to people at each and every level of status in the city of Philippi.  To both women and men.  From slaves and prisoners to those with wealth and power.  From worshipers of God to people previously ignorant of Him.  God desires all people – His entire creation – to know Him and come to Him (2 Peter 3:9).  Once we come to God through and in Christ, there is no longer any distinction, “neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male and female; for [we] are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28, Amp).  If you were in class a few weeks ago (maybe a month now), that verse should ring a bell … It’s one of the aspects of our identity in Christ.  Yesterday we continued Paul’s secondary missionary journey with Acts 16:26-34.  I sense the need to remind you that nothing I say here could or should replace the Scripture itself, so before you continue with this post, please read the passage yourself…

… A character who had a cameo in last week’s lesson just became a leading man – the jailer.  Yesterday we worked our way backward from verse 34 to verse 26 – talking about:

(1) how the jailer showed genuine love for Paul and Silas (vs. 33-34),

(2) how it was hearing God’s Word and receiving Christ that gave the jailer the ability to love Paul and Silas (vs. 31-32), and

(3) how the door was opened for Paul and Silas to minister to the jailer and his family through the jailer’s question (vs. 30):  “Men, what is it necessary for me to do that I may be saved?”

Yesterday we chased the jailer’s question back to a strikingly similar question with a similar love-related response in Luke 10:25-37.  I encourage you to go there and read that passage.  Compare questions.  Compare answers.  Compare outcomes.  I pray you’ll see how the jailer was certainly a powerful example of how having Christ in you today is better than even having Him standing in front of you in the days before His death, burial, and resurrection (John 16:7).

All that being said, the direction I feel led to take this week’s post will allow us to look at the two things the jailer asked for.  We’ve already seen one of them (the second), “… what is it necessary for me to do that I may be saved?” (vs. 30), but look back at verse 29, what other thing did the jailer ask for?  Okay, he “called for” it … light.

In yesterday’s message, our speaker, John Preston, led us through a selection of Scriptures from Psalm 23 to Galatians 6:9.  Given my current Acts 16 perspective, several of the verses jumped off the page as relating to our study of Paul and his missionary journeys, but one, in particular, reminded me so much of the jailer and his two requests in that midnight hour.  Psalm 27:1a, “The LORD is my Light and my Salvation – whom shall I fear or dread?”  What did he ask for again?  … light and the way of salvation.  God had given Paul such a masterful way of knitting together Scriptures from (what we would call) the Old Testament with their fulfillment in Christ Jesus.  I imagine Paul using the jailer’s plea for light and the way of salvation to say to him, “You want lights.  You recognize your need for salvation.  Praise God!  Allow me to tell you of my Light and my Salvation.” (my own dramatization).

In reading the remainder of Psalm 27 this morning (By the way, I encourage you to read it, too.), I wonder if this Psalm may have been one of the songs of praise Paul and Silas lifted up in the moments before God shook the foundation of that prison (Acts 16:26) – along with the foundation of the jailer’s life.  I ask you today, what has been laid as the foundation of your life?  Has Christ been the Cornerstone to which you have measured everything (Eph 2:20)?  Does He continue to be your Cornerstone? 

So what?  Like Paul (Rom 15:20), God is not interested in building on the foundation of another.  Now what?  I ask you today to examine the foundation of your life.  Then what?  Where you find sand beneath it, ask that God replace it with the Rock that is Jesus Christ (Matt 7:24-27).  Amen.

Hope Floats (Acts 16:19-26)

When looking at a story recorded in Scripture, we … okay, I’ll just speak for myself … I often go into it with the mindset of identifying with the story’s protagonist (the good guy).  After all, I am a Christian, so that’s what I should be, right?  Most of the time, I’m completely oblivious of how this poisonous attitude is working behind the scenes to direct my conduct and my conversation.  Last week we watched Paul and his missionary cohort meet a slave girl who was possessed by a spirit – not the Holy Spirit.  Luke (the author of Acts) told us how this girl’s owners weren’t troubled by this spirit/demon.  In fact, it was their “hope of profit” (Acts 16:19, Amp).  Acknowledging how we can relate to the girl and/or her owners, we considered the ways in which we, too, allow demons to take/keep a place in our lives.  Why do we do that?  I can think of two reasons – either like the slave girl we feel powerless to banish it from our bodies and minds or like the slave owners there is something about the demon that gives us a hope of profit.  [For more on this, look at last week’s post, “Let Him have the things that hold you.”]

This week we continued on in Acts 16 with verses 19-26.  In these verses, we witnessed the desperation of the slave owners after losing their hope of profit.  Like a drowning man, they grabbed for whatever could.  In this case, that meant Paul and Silas.  These Jews had taken the slave owners’ hope, so the slave owners would do whatever they could to take theirs (i.e. Paul and Silas’s, Luke and Timothy seem to be excluded because of their Gentile background).

Paul and Silas were drug to the town marketplace, which basically served as the city’s courthouse (Acts 16:19-22).  It didn’t take very long for a mob mentality to take over.  Paul and Silas were stripped and severely beaten.  When the mob’s blinding rage subsided, Paul and Silas were handed over to the town jailer, who was given the strictest of instructions regarding their incarceration (Acts 16:23-24).

A few weeks ago, one of the characteristics of our identity in Christ we talked about was that we “are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).  We are all one in Christ because we are clothed with Him (Gal 3:27).  Like Paul and Silas, we may be stripped of our clothes … our dignity … even the skin on our bodies, but we can never be stripped of Christ!  You have to read on in Acts 16 yourself … go to verse 25-26.

Being in the innermost cell, every other prisoner would have been within earshot of Paul and Silas, but instead of hearing the sound of excruciating pain, they heard heartfelt prayers and songs of praise.  The slave owners tried to strip Paul and Silas of their hope, but instead it abounded – overflowing to men who had probably lost theirs long ago.

The truth is that, any time we put our hope in something other than our Lord and Savior, it will be taken away.  I don’t want that to make you sad; it should make you rejoice.  God is faithful, and He loves us too much to allow us to keep our hope in something false.

“I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in Him.  Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Rom 15:13, NLT, emphasis mine).