Acts 16:25-32

Chapter 57

Prayer

Almighty God, we are still in the land of the living because of thy great mercy and most tender lovingkindness towards us. There is no death in God. Thou wouldst that we should be like thee altogether, living in thine own endless Evermore. Breathe into our souls the breath of life. Keep us near thee in Christ thy Son, our Saviour, and let death have no more dominion over us. We know that our flesh is delivered up to the jailer; we cannot release the body from his hard grip; the condemnation of death is written upon every bone, and all our blood must be dried up in the dust. But for our souls we pray; we would that they might be hidden with Christ in God; that they might never die. Hast thou not cried unto us from thine home in heaven "Why will ye die?" We would now, in the power of the Spirit, and by the grace of Christ, return unto the Lord, that he may have mercy upon us; and to our God, that he may abundantly pardon. If we could hear that sweet word in our souls, uttered by thine own voice, we should now while on earth be in the very heaven of eternal light. Speak comfortably unto us. Let our bruised and wounded condition of heart be its own plea; and let our hiding under the shadow of the Cross be its own argument, and cry unto us that our iniquity is pardoned, though our warfare is not yet accomplished. If thou wilt say this word "pardon," we shall spring up again, forgetting old age and gray hair; we shall reclaim our youth, and with the energy of morning hope and strength will lift still higher our hymn of Sabbatic praise. Fill us with thy love, thou loving One. Make us know in our hearts the tender mystery of the Cross. May the Cross of Christ show itself in new forms and bearings every day. May it lie over the whole length and stretch across the whole breadth of our life; and thus may we live in the Cross and rise from it to the crowns that are kept in heaven. We would speak of our sin, were not our memory flooded with the recollections of thy grace. Where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound; and we forget our sin as we forget the darkness of the past night in the lustre of the present day. Few and evil are our days a child's handful; like in their swiftness to a post, yea, even to a weaver's shuttle coming, shining, dying yesterday, today, to-morrow here now, gone whilst we are speaking. We are as grass that is cut down and that withereth in the noontide that was to have crowned our pride. Oh spare us, pity us, let us recover strength that we may pray some bolder prayer, and give us courage that we may weep some manlier tears. The Lord have mercy upon us; surround us with mercy; crown us with mercy; give us to feel the day and the night are filled with mercy. We can only live in mercy, we have no standing in the law; we dare not appeal to righteousness. We come before the Lord, whom we have offended, crying for mercy free, boundless, unmerited mercy. Show us that in Christ Jesus thy Son, thy mercy endureth for ev. Give unto us this day according to our need. Thou knowest the heart that is too sore to be touched; thou knowest the ear that is pained by listening; thou knowest the weakness that would feel the dew of the morning to be a burden. Thou knowest those who are crying in the spirit, and weeping bitter tears which the eyes conceal; thou knowest the grave that is in the garden; thou knowest the worm that is gnawing the root yea, thou knowest us altogether. Wilt thou not pity us, and cause thy Spirit to dwell in us, ruling us wholly, until there be no disobedient thought, until our whole heart be a very temple seven times cleansed and beautified for the indwelling of God the Holy Ghost? We put ourselves into thy keeping, and pray for one another. When the road is slippery, take hold of both our hands; when the road is hard and long, find us a place where we may sit down a while, and when danger thickens, may Divine securities abound. The Lord take care of our friends at home, abroad, on the great sea, in the far-away city; the mother, the father, the aching heart, the repentant prodigal. The Lord's Sabbath day enclose as within arms of infinite love all, from the highest to the lowest, for whom it is our duty and our delight to pray. Amen.

Act 16:25-32

25. But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying [G. "worshipping"] and singing hymns unto God [Psalms 107:10-16 . Although in evil case, they might reasonably be thankful for life preserved], and the prisoners were listening to them;

26. and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened; and every one's bands were loosed.

27. And the jailer being roused out of sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, drew his sword, and was about to kill himself [Acts 12:19 , and Acts 27:42 . Note also the suicides, here at Philippi, of Cassius, Titinius, and of Brutus, who "fled not with feet but with hands"].

28. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm: for we are all here [this word, so calm and kind, touched the jailer's heart. Renan entirely ignores it, and accounts for the jailer's changed behaviour by imagining that the Apostles "declared to him their quality" as Roman citizens!].

29. And he called for lights, and sprang in, and, trembling for fear [of God now, not of man, Act 27:27 and Act 27:28 ],

30. fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and said, Sirs [G. "my lords"], what must I do to be [in order that I may be] saved ( Act 16:17 )?

31. And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus [they are not lords, but Jesus is Lord: they are not the Way of Salvation, but the Lord Jesus is that Way. Cf. John 1:36 , John 1:37 . The jailer's faith is turned away from their persons to the Person of the Lord Jesus. This Exalted One is the only object of faith. They added not his Jewish title Christ (Messiah), which would have been misleading here, would have suggested Judaistic error to this Gentile. The word "Christ" and the Judaistic idea (the historic Christ) have been added by ecclesiastics], and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house [Acts 8:25 , an additional clause probably suggested by members of the household crowding around].

32. And they spake the word of the Lord unto him, with all that were in his house.

Disadvantages Made Useful

THIS ( Act 16:25 ) is an instance of turning strange places into churches. If, in many cases, desecration has taken place, we are bound to admit as just critics and reviewers of history that many surprising instances of consecration have also occurred. Think of the prison at Philippi being turned into a church! Think of midnight being turned into midday! And think of an unexpected congregation gathering together at a moment's notice! We might turn every place into praying-ground. There ought to be no difficulty in praying in the market-place. It ought to be quite an easy Christian miracle to turn the thoroughfares of the city into aisles of the church, through which we pass with reverent step and with expectant and solicitous hearts. Thus we might build churches by the thousand, and inexpensively and immediately, so that we need not take long and weary pilgrimages to special places upon urgent need, but might turn the enemy's masonry into sacred fabrics and common places into consecrated sanctuaries. Every place should be holy unto the Lord. The outputting of a hand should be the finding of an altar; the uplifting of an eye should be the discovery of God. Pray without ceasing. Let your common meal in the house be a holy sacrament, and the drinking of your water be as the imbibing of the blood that vitalizes and saves. Paul and Silas could not be driven from church; they were, on the contrary, always taken to church. As unusual places can be turned into religious temples, so unusual circumstances can be turned into Christian sanctuaries. In all probability we shall never be in the merely stone prison, but is there a man amongst us who is not in a still stronger and darker prison every day? The stone prison may be a palace; but what of the soul's despair, the heart's necessity, the life's keen hunger, the cold, so bitter that it chills our inmost life? Do not let me say again and again imagine that Holy Scripture records ancient instances of imprisonment, or necessity, or difficulty. By many a type, more or less historical and literal, it sets forth our own condition and experience. The teaching of this immediate lesson is, that as unfamiliar and unconsecrated places may be turned into sanctuaries, so may unique, distressing, harmful, and threatening circumstances be turned into ladders up to heaven. What are you doing in your unusual circumstances moaning, groaning, complaining? Paul and Silas "sang praises." Such men, therefore, never could be in prison. Prison it might be called, but prison it was none in reality. It was only a valley on a highland journey a valley very deep, and yet not deep at all, because only relatively deep to the infinite heights up which their souls often climbed to hold Divine communion in the purer light. Christians ought never to be in prison; Christians ought never to be in any circumstances which they cannot turn into sacramental occasions. "This is my body, this is my blood." I may take two views of the body and blood the murderer's view or the Saviour's. The murderer says, "I have killed him"; the Saviour says, "I lay down my life; no man taketh it from me." Do not let us take the enemy's view of our imprisonment, whatever that imprisonment may accidentally be; let us take God's view of it, and then the stones, seven feet thick and more, shall vibrate under the resonance of an unaccustomed and startling song.

Here is an instance in which Christian thinkers and workers and worshippers may have unexpected observers and listeners. The text says, "and the prisoners heard them"; the Revised Version says, "and the prisoners were listening." It is always exactly so. You do not speak without being listened to; you do not go to church without being observed; you do not sing your hymn to yourself alone; the hymn has a beginning, but who can tell its end? It warms your own soul as it passes up to the hearing ear of God; but who can tell what it is doing on the way? Sometimes the hymn of the church is overheard by the passers-by, and they who go out to spend the Sabbath in some unknown way carry the hymn with them, and it hums in their memory and calls up recollections of other days, and sometimes brings the wanderer to the evening service. You cannot tell what you are doing. The preacher speaks to his immediate congregation, but he knows not who is listening in the vestibule. "And the prisoners were listening." They never heard such music before! They had been accustomed to profane language; to cursing and denunciation; to violent and complaining exclamations and reproaches; but here is a new spirit in the house hark how the music rises, falls, plashes like a gracious rain upon dry ground! It is so at home. Passing the room door, we pause a moment to hear some sweet voice in prayer or praise. We say nothing, but receive it in sweet confidence and think about it, and it works wonders in the soul; it follows the life like a pleading angel. We cannot tell all we do. What is true on the one side is true on the other. The fierce word you spoke was heard. The unjust judgment you passed was listened to by your children, and they will grow up to repeat with broader, darker emphasis your sneering and your cynicism. Did you think the children were not listening when you used harsh words and passed unjust not to say ungenerous judgments, and when you ridiculed things that ought to be held sacred? The children heard every word and responded to every tone, and when they grow up to curse the altar you neglected, their blood will be required at your hands. Study this matter of indirect and unconscious influence. Let us remember as those that must give account that whatever we do has an immediate effect upon self, and also a relative and immeasurable influence.

This incident shows us how possible it is quietly and even thankfully to accept all the circumstances of life. Nothing must interfere with the religious sacrifice. Are we in prison? We may have to alter the hour of worship, but not the worship itself. Are we in an uncongenial atmosphere? We may have to wait until the company has broken up before we have our little quiet psalm and our deep and earnest communion with the Father; but it is only waiting; it is a mere change of time; there is no change in the substance, the reality, the sovereign purpose. That does not admit of change. You cannot injure the men who proceed as Paul and Silas proceeded. You cannot get in front of them. You cannot disappoint them. There is something about their whole spirit and force which rude hands cannot touch. If they do not pray in one place, they will pray in another; and if they do not pray at midday, they will have their prayer at midnight, and be all the better heard by human listeners for the silence which they considered was concealing their worship. What a lesson is this to us! Show me a Christian who does not complain. It would seem as if in some cases Christianity had done little for us but teach us the art of reproach. Where are the joyous Christians? the midnight-singing Christians? the Christians who turn night into day, who read the Bible by candle-light, and who wear out the paper by their eagerness of perusal of the Sacred Word? In old times Christians used to be irrepressibly glad; it was part of their very charter to be always joyous not after a flippant and transient sort, but to have that deep joy which gathers to itself the tender shading of melancholy, that ineffable gladness which must of necessity be solemn. We are disputatious Christians; combative believers; great in argument, in hair-splitting, and in cunning use of words. Where is the ancient joy, the old delight, the Sabbath seven days long, the Church that spread its golden roof over all the hills and valleys of changing life? May the old days come again! When they come Christians will accept poverty or wealth, life or death, bleak March or warm June, with resignation, thankfulness, sweet and holy content, saying: "This is the best for me; here I stand in the midst of barns enlarged and harvests multiplied;" or, "Here I stand without a robe to cover my nakedness, without bread enough for the passing hunger, with nothing that I could lay my hands upon and turn to immediate use; yet, though the fig-tree shall not blossom, though there be no fruit in the vines, no herd in the stalls, yet I must not forget my prayer, my hymn, my worship; my circumstances must give accent and immediate expressiveness to my oblation of praise and dedication to God; I live, not in circumstance but in faith." This is a religious service of prayer and praise. "But there was no preaching," you say. Yes, there was for we may preach by singing. There would be no harm, but oftentimes great good, if there were no formal preaching; if the whole service were one of prayer and praise. Could we some morning sing twenty hymns straight off, connected only by brief invocation, we should most surely have preached the Word. "The prisoners were listening." So there was a congregation. But even in a more direct and literal sense preaching was added to prayer and praise. The earthquake took place, the foundations of the prison were shaken, all the doors were opened, every one's bands were loosed, and the keeper of the prison, awaking out of his sleep (which he ought not to have indulged, and the penalty for which was capital punishment), seeing the prison door open, drew out his sword and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled; and he, with his house, became a congregation to which Paul and Silas did, in the literal sense of the term, preach. So that night they had a full service prayer, praise, preaching, and conversion. How did the jailer know this word "saved"? We must call to memory the speech of the divining damsel, who followed Paul and Silas. She cried, saying, "These men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation." The soothsayer had made the sacred word salvation familiar in the speech of Philippi. "Salvation" was not an unknown term, but a term well known. As the hymn of the Apostles was heard by those whom they did not know were listening, so this word "salvation" rung out in the clear, silvery tones of the divining damsel was heard by others beside Paul and Silas and Luke. We cannot tell how we pick up our words; we do not always know so as to be able to explain the origin and authority of our information. There is a process of unconscious acquisition. Look at this conversion of the jailer. It took place under circumstances which may well be described as "exciting." Have we not been unjust to what is called "religious excitement"? Surely nothing could possibly have been more sensational than the circumstances we are now considering. They would shock us. But are the circumstances to blame or ourselves? We like quietness deadness; we do not like to be "excited," disturbed, unsettled; because the devil has got both his arms around us and has chloroformed us into a state of insensibility. Jesus Christ did not rebuke the excitement which followed his ministry; when others would have had him rebuke them he said, "I tell you that if these held their peace, the very stones would cry out." I do not object to religious excitement, but I do object to religious cynicism and religious death. Happily the incident does not end here. To excitement was added the necessary element of instruction. In the thirty-second verse we read: "And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house." Excitement must be followed by instruction, if it is to be turned to highest and most enduring usefulness. We must know what we believe; the Word of God must dwell in us richly. Religion is not an excitement only, but a conviction, as deep as life, as lasting as the duration of the being which it has transformed. Religious emotion not followed by religious instruction becomes a harmful agent in human life. Tears in the eyes that are not followed by activities in the hand harden the very heart which for the moment they softened. We shall be the worse for every revival that ends in itself. That is to say, times of revival must be followed by times of study, with Bible-reading, comparing spiritual things with spiritual and getting into our hearts the very pith and marrow of the Divine revelation. We might get up such services as these almost every day in the week. If we prayed and praised in every prison into which our life is thrust, we should be heard by strange listeners, we should be interrogated by strange inquirers, and doors of usefulness would be opened in the very granite which apparently shut us in. There is a releasing power in life. Do not ask yourselves puzzling questions about earthquakes, the shaking of stony foundations and the loosing of iron bands, or you will fritter away the opportunity in a useless inquest into accidents that belong but to a moment. The great truth all-including, everlasting, all-comforting is that in the providence of life there is a releasing power against which nothing of human machination or malignity can stand. God will bring you forth. The Lord will shake the foundations of every prison for your sake. You have seen great and bitter afflictions, yet the Lord has delivered you out of six troubles; will the seventh be too much for him? Can omnipotence be weary? Can almightiness need sleep? Doth the Lord slumber because his eyelids are heavy? The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice. You are shut up in the prison of ill-health; and you are enclosed in the prison of poverty; and you are bound round with chains of circumstances which you cannot overcome, and you are thrust into the innermost dungeon, and your feet are made fast in the stocks, and you say, It is midnight upon midnight, and in the darkness there is no star. Recalling all Divine history, and all Divine promises, recalling the covenant and the oath of God, I have to say to you and to myself, "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper. For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with everlasting mercy will I gather thee. When the poor and the needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I, the Lord, will hear them; I, the God of Jacob, will not forsake them." Let God be true and every man a liar. Against all transient accidents and all momentary appearances I set up the oath of the Triune God.