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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. 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 called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
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. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household.
When it was daylight, the magistrates sent their officers to the jailer with the order: “Release those men.” The jailer told Paul, “The magistrates have ordered that you and Silas be released. Now you can leave. Go in peace.”
Acts 16:25-36
This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
There are two spirits at work in the world that impact people every single day.
One Spirit, singular with a capital “S”, is good and right. That is the Holy Spirit.
All others are spirits that are not the Holy Spirit and those spirits are bad or wrong.
With this, every person has a choice to either have the right Spirit or opt for any of the others that are wrong.
In yesterday’s message, we read an example of what happens when a wrong spirit is in play. A slave girl had the spirit of fortune telling and her slave owners were exploiting her for profit. Seeing an opportunity to capitalize on the work that Paul, Silas, and the other Christian missionaries were doing, the slave owners had the girl tail the apostles proclaiming the work they were doing. Of course, everything that Paul declared through the work of the Holy Spirit would come to be so the slave owners saw it as an easy way to make money, predicting things that would obviously happen. It was a shrewd move but it didn’t end the way the slave owners thought it would.
This is because their sinful exploitation of the slave girl and the attempt to profit off of the coattails of the Lord’s work through Paul was thwarted by the Holy Spirit through this command from Paul:
“In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” Acts 16:18
Immediately, the wrong spirit was trumped by the true Spirit, the one and only right Spirit, the Holy Spirit.
Well, losing their wicked instrument of profit, the slave owners decided to turn to deceit to try and get even with Paul and Silas. The wrong spirit within them was still trying to win the day.
And so we read where they dragged Paul and Silas into marketplace to face the magistrates, making the following accusation:
“These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.” Acts 16:20-21
While it was true that Paul and Silas were advocating for the Gospel, a belief in one God and His Savior Son to find salvation which was radically different from the Roman polytheistic practices, they were far from “throwing the city into an uproar”. That was a lie as the only people in an uproar were the slave owners themselves.
Still, the scriptures told us that the accusers persuaded the magistrate to have the apostles “stripped and beaten with rods” before being thrown into prison, placed in an inner cell, and fastened in stocks. It was obvious that the officials didn’t want Paul and Silas to escape but that assumption came from the wrong spirit. The Roman magistrates underestimated the power of the right Spirit, the Holy Spirit. We see this power, the amazing power of the Holy Spirit, on full display as we continue our study of Acts 16 today.
It didn’t take long for this power to be on display for we read where “Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God” around the hour of midnight with “the other prisoners…listening to them. All of a sudden, a “violent earthquake” occurred that shook the very foundations of the prison. Immediately, “all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose”. The apostles could have escaped right away but they didn’t.
Why?
Because the Holy Spirit, the only right Spirit, had them in the place the Lord wanted them to be, at the time He wanted to work through them, to accomplish His perfect purposes. It was a divine set up for another amazing encounter and as we looked at a few days ago, every encounter matters.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, the arranged encounter came between the jailer and the apostles. Afraid that the prisoners had fled after seeing all the prison doors open, the jailer was about to commit suicide because he knew that he would be granted the death penalty for not guarding the special prisoners properly. But just as he was about to take his life, Paul, driven by the Holy Spirit, shouts out to the jailer:
“Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”
Think of how the jailer must have felt at that point. He was about to kill himself, possessed by the wrong spirit and found himself spared through the intervention of the right Spirit. We know it had an immediate impact on the jailer who, after calling for the lights to be turned on, “rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas”, asking them one simple question:
“Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
The reply from the apostles, which is the most straightforward, Gospel sharing statement you will find in the scriptures, was this:
“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.”
It was a simple explanation on what was required for salvation. Note that there was no list of tasks to complete, no special required works to qualify for salvation. No, all the jailer and anyone else in his household needed to do was to believe in the Lord Jesus. That was it. Do that and you will be saved.
It was true in the New Testament times we’re reading of and it’s still true now, more than 2,000 years later.
Well, after sharing that belief in Jesus was all that was needed to be saved, Paul and Silas continued to speak the “word of the Lord” to the jailer and “all the others in his house”. The scriptures tell us that the jailer “washed their wounds” and then received his own holy washing as “he and all his household were baptized”. Afterwards, we read where the “jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them” as “he was filled with joy” as he and his entire household “had come to believe in God”.
Now, all of this would have been amazing enough to reveal to us the incredible power of the right Spirit, the Holy Spirit, but as we finish today’s passage, we find the magistrates sending the following order to the jailer at daylight:
“Release those men.”
And that was that, or at least it seemed so. The jailer told Paul:
“The magistrates have ordered that you and Silas be released. Now you can leave. Go in peace.”
But as we’re going to see in the second message from this series, the Holy Spirit still had work left to do in this situation. We’ll look further at what the right Spirit was up to in tomorrow’s message.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
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