Dennis Tuuri

As we were seeing the processional on the way into the sanctuary, I noticed several things in it that are probably good to point out to us. It’s good to not simply read or sing these verses sort of without our minds, but to try to apply our understanding as well. You’ll notice in the first stanza processional, it talks about how we’ll appear at Salem’s court and we’ll be all arranged together like her towers.

It’s a correlation between the physical architecture of the temple and then the people as they come to convocate for worship. The book of Acts is about God building his new temple of the church based upon the true temple of all temples, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we come together, we constitute the temple of God. Notice too that was in the last, next to last verse, a river flows whose streams made glad the city of our God when the processional group kind of broke ranks and began to flow into the sanctuary.

The scriptures tell us that our savior tells us, rivers of living water that flow out of our bellies, the Holy Spirit. And as we move away from our convocation together on the Sabbath, the Lord’s day, we flow into the world and we flow with a river, the grace of God whose streams make glad the city of God and the people of God throughout the entire world. We go forth to water the world in obedience to the Savior.

And then the final verse, the processional reads about God speaking. The nations raged, the kingdoms moved, but when his voice was heard, the earth was melted and dissolved before his mighty word. And that’s what we just sang of in Psalm 2. That particular version of Psalm 2 was produced at Geneva at the time of John Calvin and the Reformation. As we move over this next week into Reformation weekend, next coming weekend, it’s good to meditate upon how seriously the reformers took statements such as this.

Our biblical text today is found in Acts chapter 16. We return to that long passage of scripture dealing with Paul’s dealings at Philippi. And it is a time of reformation in the city of Philippi. It’s a time we can see great parallels to our own time in our culture as we move into our Philippines, into our Roman Empire, so to speak, built upon salvation through the civil state and not salvation through the Savior.

And we move with that message of God, with the grace of God. The sermon text then that repeats many of these same truths we just spoke of and sang about is found in Acts 16, verses 13-40. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Acts 16. And I’m going to read the whole account again, even though we’ll mostly be dealing with the last section, the conversion of the jailer at Philippi. Acts 16 beginning at verse 13.

And this is where we see the time reference that continues I think throughout the text. And on the Sabbath we went out of the city by a riverside where prayer was wont to be made. And we sat down and spake unto the women which resorted there. And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of Thyatira, which worshiped God, heard us, whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.

And when she was baptized in her household. She besought us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there.” And she constrained us. And it came to pass as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed of the spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by susanning. The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, “These men are the servants of the most high God, which show to us the way of salvation.” And this did she many days.

But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour. And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas and drew them into the marketplace under the rulers, and brought them to the magistrates, saying, “These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, and teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, being Romans.” And the multitude rose up together against them.

And the magistrates rent off their clothes and commanded to beat them. And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely, who having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. And at midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God. And the prisoners heard them.

And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened and every man’s bonds were loosed. And the keeper of the prison, awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, “Do thyself no harm, for we are all here.” Then he called for a light and sprang in and came trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas and brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” And they spake unto him the word of the Lord and to all that were in his house.

And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes, and was baptized, he and all his, straightway. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. And when it was day, the magistrates sent the servants, saying, “Let these men go.” And the keeper of the prison told this, saying to Paul, “The magistrates have sent to let you out now.

Therefore, depart and go in peace. But Paul said unto them, they have beaten us openly, uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison, and now do they thrust us out privily? Nay, verily, but let them come themselves and fetch us out. And the sergeants told these words unto the magistrates, and they feared when they heard that they were Romans, and they came and besought them, and brought them out, and desired them to depart out of the city.

And they went out of the prison and entered into the house of Lydia. And when they had seen the brethren, they comforted them and departed. Let’s pray. Father, we stand before your presence now. You have called us here today. And we have come forward to worship you and to receive instruction, receive a message to take into our lives, and the lives of those round about us in this city and in this state, in this nation, in this world.

We pray, Lord God, you would grant us the gift of your Holy Spirit’s discernment of this text. We thank you that this book is unlike every other book in this world. For it must be understood as the spirit writes it upon our hearts and opens the doors of our understanding the way that Lydia’s heart was open. We pray then Lord God that our hearts would be moved by your spirit to be open to this word to hear it that we may rejoice for the great truths contained therein that we also might act in obedience and show that we believe this and rejoice in it and give you thanks in all things.

We thank you for this word now, Lord God, and we pray that you would indeed cause it to edify us and cause our hearts to swell forth with praise and thanksgiving to you for so great a salvation that you’ve affected for us the work of Jesus Christ our savior. In his name we pray. Amen.

This one is probably just more plain than the presentation of the gospel truths and the great cause of rejoicing that we find in it. Before we get into this text, I want us just to—I had a couple of thoughts the last couple of days that are related to the text but not directly a result of the exposition of it. But now I wanted to just mention them briefly before we get started. You’ll notice in this text as well as in all other texts that the men are the ones who are persecuted. We’re going to deal primarily with the release from prison of Paul and Silas and then the release of the bondage of sin of the Philippian jailer.

And these are men, the leaders of the church. Satan always attacks leaders, or almost always. That’s the way it works. And it’s a good way to wage war to cut off the head. And of course, he attacked our savior. Then he attacked—earlier in the book of Acts, Peter and John the apostles were thrown into prison. Then Peter is thrown into prison later. Now Paul and Silas are thrown into prison. Satan attacks leaders, tries to go for the head.

And there is a form in this of—uh, these men are the leaders, the rulers of the church. They’re the elders of the church. And I wanted to share this and I guess I just want to get this out of the way because it sounds—it was funny when my daughter pointed this out to me and it relates to the text and it’s maybe a good way by way of a joke to remind you that one of the things this text tells us as well as many other texts is that the opposition to the church usually focuses upon the leaders of the church and then you can cause the sheep to be scattered if you strike the shepherd.

My daughter was looking through a PCC catalog on course listings and she came across this particular course listing in PCC’s catalog and the course that is taught is called “Elder Abuse is Real.” And now what they really are referring to here are the elderly. But the way it’s phrased, it’s kind of interesting for those of us who understand that it is the elders, it is the leaders of the church who are frequently attacked by opposition.

Elder abuse is real. Course description says one out of every ten elders lives in a situation that may lead to their abuse. This workshop will provide health care professionals with an understanding of elder abuse, the victims, perpetrators, causes, risk factors, and mandatory reporters. On to list the instructors. Well, that’s true. And here we have elder abuse in the first century church because Satan attacks the leaders.

And let me just mention that in the context of this church, we have men who are leaders in the family. And if Satan attacks the leaders in the church by way of elder abuse, which is something I can attest to, you can bet your bottom dollar that in terms of the attack on the family, it will usually come upon the head of the family as well. And he’ll be drawn off away from his responsibility. So Satan can then entice the wife or the children.

That’s the way it works. So, you strike the head guy and then you try to deal in a friendship relationship with those under his authority when he’s out of the way. And men, you don’t want to let yourself be taken out of the game through personal sin, through sloth, through whatever it is. And you want to train particularly your male children that it’ll be their responsibilities to be leaders in the family, the church, and the state as they grow up.

I’ve seen a pattern in various churches and I don’t want that pattern to happen at this church. That pattern is that as young men mature into their teen years, they tend to get a little self-conscious. They don’t want to make foolish things happen in the context of girls particularly I suppose. But the end result is they sort of pull back from activities in the church. They move away from leadership positions and then the women, the young teenage girls are the ones who assert their leadership then in the absence of the men.

And this is what happens in our culture at large and I’ve seen it in church after church that I’ve been in the past and if you think of most, for instance youth groups you’ve been involved with, I’ll bet you that the women, the girls, the teenage girls are more active in the thing than the boys are and we want to be careful we don’t have that pattern develop in this church. We want to see male leadership in this church particularly as we look to the next generation. You know what happens then is that as men kind of pull back, the boys kind of pull back from involvement and the girls assert themselves now the boys can’t really compete at that level.

So frequently what’ll happen is they’ll turn to foolishness. And I, you know, I’ve seen various Christian schools for instance where the men or the boys, the growing boys in high school can be kind of foolish. That’s all they’ve got left. They took themselves out of the ability to lead. Kind of abandoned that to the girls. And so then they become foolish. You know, fathers in this congregation, let’s make sure that we produce men who will be subject to attack by Satan because they’re leaders and not taken out of the game through a failure to assert themselves in the context of the institutional church and their families etc.

So I just give that by way of opening remarks here that this gives us a picture of the attack upon the leadership in the church that in tells us that Satan will also attack the leader of the family as he did with Adam try to subvert away the wise and we also have to teach that truth to our children particularly the young men growing up in this church. We’ve got to want to have them assert themselves in positions of leadership and spirituality.

Okay let’s look at the specific specifics of this particular text. Then as we see the implications of what we liturgically perform before God every Lord’s day, Sabbath worship. Remember I said that in Philippi we have the opening gateway now to the Roman world and to Europe. We’ve moved out of Asia Minor into Rome. And so this is the second missionary journey and it’s really kind of flourishing now because it goes into brand new territory.

Remember being directed sovereignly by the spirit of God closing doors and then causing them go through the one door that was left open which led them into another country into another continent so to speak out of Asia into Europe and so Philippi is the opening forward of that and I think by way of analogy there’s analogous relationships between it and Jericho with the conquest of Canaan being symbolically represented in the conquest of the leading city Jericho so here the conquest of Rome and the Roman Empire is symbolically presented in the conquest of Philippi now it’s a funny situation though because you know Paul has this vision of the Macedonian man, come help us.

Come help us. They get to Macedonia and there’s nobody there to welcome Philippi. They apparently abide there for some time without knowing what to do exactly. And then the first convert at least that God records for us in the context of Europe is a woman. It’s Lydia. And the second specific convert that’s told us is this Philippian jailer, a Roman official. Now, this should draw correlations in our mind back to the ministry of Peter.

Remember the book of Acts is primarily focused upon the way the work of Peter and as the leader of the church then and now the apostle Paul the apostle to the gentiles and you remember with Peter at the very beginning of the opening of the door to the Gentiles we have two accounts put together we have the Cornelius—we have the Cornelius of course the Roman centurion as a picture of the coming conversion of the Roman world but before Peter gets to Cornelius he goes through Tabitha Dorcas remember the widow and she becomes converted and so we have a correlation between Tabitha and Cornelius.

And now we have Lydia and the Philippian jailer. And so God puts these big pictures in our minds to remind ourselves that there is a sense in which we’re all that widowed church. We’ve been widowed from the first Adam. And we stand in need of a husband, the body of Christ does, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we’re all in a sense Lydia. We’re all in a sense Tabithas. And we all should be like Lydia and Tabitha in extending grace and hospitality based upon the grace that God has given to us.

God sovereignly opened Lydia’s heart to understand the things of the scriptures. Earlier in the book of Acts, we read that as many as were ordained to believe believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and were saved. God’s sovereignty is pictured and the response to God’s sovereignty on our part is should not be some kind of cold pride aloofness from the world around us.

If we understand the depth of our sin and how God has redeemed us out of all that sin and misery by his sovereign grace, by the extension of mercy to us. Then we should be motivated in our hearts to want to extend mercy to people not on the basis of who they are, but on the basis of the extension of God’s grace and mercy to those who are undeserving of grace and mercy. And so the whole, the driving motivating factor that this picture as well as throughout the scriptures wants us to see to affect biblical hospitality which is the mark one of the great marks of the Christian church.

Hospitality the driving force behind that is a theological one. It’s this supposed dry theological truth of the sovereignty of God in all things and particularly in our salvation understood properly. That’s the assertion of God’s grace to us and as our response to that should be to want to show grace to others. Then you see so here we have theology practice coming together orthodoxy orthopraxy correct understanding of who God is should lead us not to some kind of cold aloofness but rather to have our hearts warm to demonstrate the great grace of God that he’s demonstrated to us to be purveyors of what some have called in the near east the princely or kingly virtue, the virtue of the king.

God has brought us into his household. We have had our hearts opened and we want to open our homes then to display this royal virtue to other people. And so we see that and the Sabbath is a day preeminently of the declaration of the sovereignty of God. The Sabbath services begin here formally with the call to worship. The sovereign call by God, the formal call. He gives us an informal call. When your alarm rang this morning, that should have been seen by you as a call to worship him this day.

You get up and the one thing you do this day is to worship God in response to his sovereign call. The formal call reminds us of that. We’ve been forward as been brought forward as recipients of God’s grace as Lydia was. But we recognize too that as we understand the Sabbath worship correctly and the pronouncement of the word that God brings us here not just to worship him, he brings us here to give us a message to challenge our world with.

And so if I understand the time reference to the casting out of the demon that had possessed this woman correctly, that time reference being that they were going to prayer to the house of prayer is what the Greek probably refers to the prayer house. They were going to worship. It was a Sabbath day. I believe it was the day of formal worship. But even if it wasn’t, the fact is that formal worship reminds us that the word of God challenges us.

It brings out the antithesis. It brings out the battle between good and evil with the proclamation of his word. And as we go into this week proclaiming God’s word and the implications of it to our lives and the lives of our culture, we’ll see opposition. If the church doesn’t proclaim the word, if it doesn’t act on the basis of the word, there is no opposition. And that’s all too sadly the case as it’s been in America for too many years.

But with the church reasserting itself, reasserting the doctrines of God’s word that relate to the practice of our lives. We see the antithesis stressed. And so in Sabbath worship, we’re reminded of both God’s sovereignty, but also the call to have ourselves instructed in our own hearts challenged with God’s word and to reform our lives and the life of our culture as well.

Whenever the church prospers, as I said at the beginning of this talk, Satan opposes the work of the church. Whenever there is success in the preaching of the gospel venture, Satan tries to oppose that work. Satan intends it for evil, but God intends it for good. He intends us to be disciplined, the dross driven out, etc. He places wood, hay, and stubble in the context of the institutional church that it may catch fire, revealing what it is, and it may cause the gold and silver in the church, the true members of the temple of God to be refined by that stress, refined by that fire, and refined by that controversy.

And it’s no different here at Philippi. You remember that the book of Philippians talks about joy. Over and over and over, sixteen times in that short book, the epistle to the Philippians, we hear Paul talking about joy. Well, they knew joy in the context originally of persecution. And Paul and Silas give us that picture of joy and worship in the context of the most difficult of all persecutions. And they understood that they were still to be joyful in the context of all of that.

So the Sabbath reminds us of the grace of God and salvation. It also reminds us of the battle we have in the world round about us. If we’re successful as a church, if we’re successful as Christians in raising our children correctly in asserting the truths of God as they relate to our community, we’re going to face opposition. And so we have, by way of illustration, Proposition 19, Measure 19 here in Oregon, an attempt to assert the idea of a Christian morality into our culture.

And we see great opposition as a result of it. It’s just a picture, but it’s a typical picture. It’s a picture that is reaffirmed in the text we read last week about how the men whose gain suffered as a result of the casting out of the demon who made this woman valuable to these men. Instead of asserting their need—their desire for financial gain, the scoundrels turn to patriotism as the mean by which they’re going to bring persecution to the church.

And we can I can assure this congregation and the young people in it particularly that if God sees fit to continue to cause the expansion of the understanding of the church of the grace of his sovereignty and salvation and the need to apply God’s law in every sphere of action. If the church in America continues to manifest and grow this reformation that started in little households across the country primarily through the work of Christian Reconstructionists, if that work continues, I can guarantee you that we will face the sort of persecution that Paul and Silas faced in Philippi as they took the message of reformation and reconstruction to the city of Philippi.

We can assure ourselves that opposition will occur and we see it already. If we dare to challenge the political forces, if we dare to assert the crown rights of Jesus Christ in terms of political action, we see a tremendous reaction against it because now we’re doing what Paul and Silas really did. We’re challenging the god of this world. At the time that they lived, there was none that could be saved except through Caesar.

You remember Philippi was the place of the originally Octavius Caesar, Augustus Caesar was the place of his repression of the republic. The defeat of Brutus and Cassius the assertion of the emperor as the head of all and the center of all religion in salvation in the culture. And while our particular political trappings in America aren’t quite so obviously religious, is there any doubt but what the entire political structure is designed to attain salvation, health, education, welfare, the good of all people through the political mechanism.

And as the word of God challenges that truth in this culture, we already begin to see the original the first stages of persecution. The persecution will come not on the basis of pornographers, for instance, losing revenue, but them saying, “You’re not good Americans. You’re getting rid of free speech. You’re getting rid of the right of every American to go buy a Playboy magazine if they want to.” We had the libraries.

I think it was this last week had an hour they shut down or something and said that this is going to result in terrible you know what do they call that? denial of free speech you know censorship. That’s the word I was searching for. Well, we do believe in censorship. We do believe the public morality should be dictated by our religious convictions. And so we do believe in that. Well, it’s just the beginning.

But I can promise you that you’re going to face we’re going to face persecution as we’re successful in promoting the causes of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we come now to the third lesson that we I believe occurred on the Sabbath here where the men are in prison. And in the context of prison, we have a most remarkable story laid out for us in verses 25 following through the end of the text here.

That is the final occurrence really of what happens in this first missionary endeavor in Philippi in Europe before they move on then to move further into the Roman Empire. And of course, Acts ends with Paul in Rome, converting members of Caesar’s household himself. So let’s look at the text then in verse 25 we see in the context of this persecution that inevitably results to the pressing of the antithesis, the declaration of it by God between the two types of humanity that fill the earth.

Persecution happens but persecution is not a cause of discouragement for the apostles. As surely as I can guarantee people that are who are faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ will face persecution. Just as surely if we’re faithful to the doctrines that we’ve taught in this church for a dozen years now will understand that persecution is not a cause for depression. That persecution is a cause for rejoicing.

Look at verse 25. At midnight, the darkest of all hours. Okay? At midnight, Paul and Silas prayed. Where are they? They’re in the inner prison. They’re not in the outer prison where they can walk around freely and talk to each other. No, they’re in the inner prison. The darkest part of the prison facility in Philippi was the inner prison. And this is the darkest of hours, midnight. And they’re not just sitting there.

They’re in the stocks. And these aren’t just stocks to hold them in place. The particular word used here refers to instruments of torture used by Roman jailers. They would force the legs apart through these stocks. They’re in pain from that. Then they’re being tortured. And they’re not just in there in the darkened and the darkest hour of the day and the darkest part of the prison being tortured. They’re already in great pain.

They’ve received many stripes from the men that beat them. The text tells us that. And then and so their backs are undoubtedly bleeding and problem with great pain, loss of blood. They haven’t been fed all evening, undoubtedly. And not only that, but they are facing possible execution here. Remember I told you last week that the lictors, the Roman men who exerted punishment, carried this thing that was a bundle of rods in the middle was an axe.

And when the time came to punish somebody like their time came to punish these guys. They take off the cords first, those rods of wood, and beat them with that, and then they throw them in prison and get them ready to use the next instrument of torture. The center of Roman power is the axe, the ability to cut off somebody’s head. And so, we have the full exertion of Roman authority against these two men to suppress what—really the ungodly men who used the servant the slave girl for divination.

What they really hit right on the mark. Paul and Silas were teaching people that salvation only comes through Jesus Christ. So they were subversive to the existing Roman Empire. And in response to that, the full exertion of Roman authority comes upon their backs, literally on their backs, maybe upon their necks and upon the torture instruments and in the dark in prison. This is Paul and Silas’s dark, dark hour here.

Everything looks bad and you can imagine things that happened to you this last week or maybe, you know, the car didn’t work right. or maybe the finances didn’t budget well or you didn’t have enough time or maybe the kids were somewhat obstreperous and compare that to the problems that Paul and Silas faced in this moment and you see what our response even at the worst of ours should be in case of this so it should be in the best of ours in our homes.

Well let’s see what they do they don’t sit there depressed they don’t get angry they don’t react out of anger fear or anything else or depression what do they do we read that they prayed and sang praises to God. They pray and sang praises to God. Now, I want you to understand this. I want to read from J. Alexander. Most of you know who have talked to me about sermon preparation. I use some commentaries that are exegetical that are good in the original Greek language. I use some that are more devotional. J. Alexander is one of the preeminent scholars of biblical Greek. And so I believe him when he tells me and it helps me to understand particular Greek words used in the text.

And here’s what he says about this particular phrase. He says, “This does not refer to two separate acts as in the English version, praying and then singing praises, but rather to the single act of lyrical worship or praying, in other words, worshiping or calling upon God by way of singing or chanting psalms. One or more of the many passages in the book of Psalms peculiarly adapted and intended for the use of prisoners and others under persecution.”

But what they were doing here was they were having a worship service in their prison cell. Now, you’d think they just go to sleep. It’s midnight. But no, they are happy men. Well, they’re not happy maybe, but they’re praising God in the context of this problem. You know why they do that? You know why they praise God? Because they understand biblical history. They understand that when Joseph was put into prison, it was on the verge of him being exalted to become ruler over all Egypt. It was on the verge of the conversion of all Egypt and of Pharaoh first and then all of Egypt. That’s what the book of Genesis pictures for us that happens in Egypt. They understood that when Samson was thrown in prison, it wasn’t to the end that God’s enemies might be exalted. It was to the end that God’s enemies might be destroyed. Now, Samson himself died in the battle, but remember, he pulled down from his chains of torture and imprisonment.

He pulled down destruction upon the enemies of God. And of course, they had more contemporary biblical history they’re looking at, too. When Peter and John were thrown into prison in Acts 5, they’re loosed. They get out right away. And then later when Peter is tossed in prison, an angel of God comes to him and delivers him. And Peter reports that back to the brethren and encourages them with it. They understood that the darkest hour does indeed always come just before the dawn.

They understood the cause of Christ brought about the pressing of the antithesis and the end result of that would be not suffering as martyrs meaning the end of the Christian faith in Philippi. But if they were to be given to death even it would result in the exaltation of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the conversion of men and nations. They were going about the work of the great commission. And as one man I heard this last week said, “The great commission is not a commission to witness in vain.

The great commission is a commission to disciple the nations. And Paul and Silas understood they’d been called by God to this purpose. And if opposition comes, that’s a good thing because it means we’re being effectual in our work. And the end result of that will be the promotion of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Victory always follows persecution and trial and triumph always follows trial. And so when we see in our lives difficulties, help remember this is God’s sovereign work in our lives.

And his purpose is to affect to mature us rather to cause us to be made more effectual for gospel work and to yield ourselves submissive and more than submissive worshiping God in the midst of those very trials and triumphs. What an incredible verse this is. This in the midst of all this darkness, these men worshiped God. I said that the young people in this church may well grow up to face just such persecution, being cast into prison, losing life and limb.

It happened in the Reformation. Understand it, believe it. We have our gather together. We rejoice in the great reformations on October 31st every year. But let us remember that many, many of those men gave lives, gave blood, gave their backs to torturers for the sake of the gospel of Christ. And if we want a new reformation in America, we better be prepared to face the cost of that. And the cost is persecution as we press the antithesis.

But if our children can be guaranteed a persecution, they should be guaranteed as well that the spirit of God will cause them to worship in the context of such persecution, knowing indeed that the darkness of the hour that they face is greatly overwhelmed by the brightness of the hour, the pressing forth of the claims of God’s gospel, and the victory that he gives his people as they worship him in spite of all the persecution in the world about them.

Will we equip our children? What did these men do? How did they worship? They sang psalms. They chanted psalms. Can our children do that? Well, some of them can. Can you do it? Most of you probably don’t know that many psalms to be able to sing in the context of prison. But that’s why one that’s one reason folks why we continue week after week, month after month, year after year, singing and reciting responsively the psalms of God.

That’s an essential part of our worship. And I want my kids to be able to recite or to put to melody and so praise God in the words of God’s psalter. And I want my children to be able to sing forth the psalms. And they know a lot of them already. Psalm 2 we just sang. A lot of us know that one. Psalm 83, Psalm 1, portions of Psalm 119. Many, many psalms we’re starting to commit to memory in this church. And that’s not just sort of pie in the sky buy and by stuff that equips us for those dark hours.

And you know, they could equip us as well for those not so dark hours. The hours when our business isn’t going well, when our time isn’t going well, or when the car isn’t working right, or when the children are obstreperous or rebellious or whatever it is, and when maybe there’s problems between mom and dad, too. The words of the Psalms can come back to our hearts then and put us in a correct response to God’s sovereign declarations in our lives by singing forth praises to him.

Psalm 149 says, “Let the saints be joyful in glory. Let them sing aloud upon their beds. Psalm 119, at midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments. And I don’t know what psalm they were singing, but Psalm 2 would have been a good one. Psalm 83, an imprecatory psalm would have been a good one. Or maybe just a psalm to bring comfort to their hearts and recognizing God’s providence in their lives.

We don’t know which one it was, but we know that they were joyful. And then we know in the context of persecution, the response of God’s people to that is worship. And then God acts. He acts. Now, what does he do? Things begin to happen suddenly. See, now actually I skipped a phrase there. They sang praises unto God and the prisoners heard them. This is just so you’ll know this. This doesn’t mean that the prisoners—oh, okay.

They’re singing and that was the end of it. The word heard here has continuing action in it. In the Greek, verbs can have either single point action, continuing action, action with present or with later ramifications etc. This word means that the prisoners heard them and continue to hear them. The prisoners were listening to the praises of God. The worship service going on where two are gathered in the name of Christ in the darkest hour.

The prisoners are listening to him. See, the indication is the prisoners are responding favorably to this or at least in awe and amazement. And as we worship in the context of persecution, the world begins to say these men have something different going for them. They don’t cry out in pain. They don’t yell and get mad at the jailer. They praise God in the context of it. And that should be our witness as well.

And the prisoners round about us who are prisoners to sin and the effects of sin hopefully will hear our praises to God in the midst of difficulties. And God acts then in response, the text wants us to see in response to the worship of God. Suddenly there was a great earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s hands were loosed. God acts.

He acts first of all by having those prisoners listen. Maybe he’s opening their hearts the way he opened Lydia’s heart. And then he acts by means of an earthquake indicating the shaking of all things. The preeminent earthquake occurred when Christ was on the cross. That is the earthquakes of all earthquakes. The dead come forth from their graves. And this earthquake should remind us of that earthquake. The proclamation through the singing of psalms and worship to God of the gospel of our savior and the effects of it has a shaking effect in the world round about us because God moves through those words and his sovereign actions are declared in relationship in response as it were to our response to him in thanksgiving and praise in spite of desperate circumstances and God moves supernaturally here by means of an actual earthquake and the prison shakes and everybody’s free just like that the mighty work of God keeper of the prison wakes out of his sleep he sees the prison doors are open he draws out his sword and would have killed himself so supposed that the prisoners had been fled.

But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, “Do thyself no harm, for we are all here.” God moves in terms of this Philippian jailer as well. He moves the jailer to great, great fear. We read that after this, he calls for a light, springs in, and he came trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas. What that means is he was so shaken, he was so fearful as he comes into the prison cell where Paul and Silas are, he basically kind of faints away.

His knees give way, his legs give way, and he has no strength in him. He’s that fearful. Now, he wants to kill himself. Why does he want to do that? Well, in Rome, if you allow a prisoner to go free, it was your life for his life. He knew that he was being a good Roman soldier by planning on throwing himself on his sword here. And it’s interesting that Philippi, I’ve mentioned this several times now, but I hope you remember it.

The site of the great battle between the emperor and the forces of the republic. Now, the battle between the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ and Rome as savior which Christ will win. But back then when Octavius and Mark Antony beat the forces of Brutus and Cassius, they killed themselves and all the followers of Brutus and Cassius at least many of them killed themselves. And so Philippi was a place where suicide was sort of memorialized as a good noble great thing to do when you’re in defeat.

And so this Roman soldier here, and that’s who the jailers were, they were retired soldiers, so to speak, this good soldier was going to do the right thing. He was going to throw himself on a sword and kill himself. But Paul says, “No way. Don’t do that.” He says in verse 26, “Do thyself no harm.” And he’s saying here, “Don’t hurt your body. Don’t sin against your soul.” This has contemporary implications for us in terms of the coming election as well.

We have a measure on the ballot, measure number 16, that wants to be able to have people get lethal prescriptions from doctors if they’re terminally ill and kill themselves. Suicide is a sin according to the scriptures. And Paul, I think, was referring to that sin, but he said, “Don’t harm yourself.” He’s not just worried about this guy’s body. He’s worried about this man’s sin as well. You see, we’re not our own.

David says in terms of his great sin against Uriah and Bathsheba, etc., against thee, against thee, only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. While we do sin against other people, ultimately all sin is against God. We’re not our own. Our bodies aren’t our own. And to kill ourselves is sin against God and it as a result harmful to our own souls as well. The fact that this culture wants to be able to commit suicide shouldn’t surprise us at all.

The basic reason for that is that God is out of the equation. What a sad thing it is that the only ads I have seen so far against Measure 16 give their great reason for opposing it, the fact that it doesn’t require those who want to kill themselves to get mental health counseling before they do it as if somehow they just got mental health counseling. You can go and kill yourself as long as you talk to a good shrink first.

It’s sin against God. And that’s the message we should take as we take implications of the gospel into this election. We should tell our friends, you know, suicide isn’t just a bad thing or somehow it isn’t right because people don’t get enough counseling or maybe it hurts the economy. None of that stuff. Suicide is a sin because it is a sin against God who made you. You’re not your own. God created people and to take our own life is a violation of the commandment do not kill.

Doesn’t just say do not kill others. You’re not to kill yourself. Well, anyway, Paul understood the disastrous consequences for this man’s body and soul. And he yells out to him, “Do thyself no harm.” And then he gives him a reason to stop. And this is a good thing to do when you’re counseling people in distress. We’re all here. You don’t got to kill yourself. Everybody’s here. It’s okay. Nobody’s escaped from this place and the man then comes trembling as I said into Paul and Silas and he brought them out and he says to them Sirs, what must I do to be saved?

Now there’s a contrast here in how this man comes to salvation and how Lydia came to salvation. And it’s worth pointing out in terms of our evangelistic efforts individually and corporately that we see a wide variety of how God moves in the spirit of people. With Lydia, God opens her heart. He makes her amendable through the truths of the gospel in kind of a soft way. But the way the Philippian jailer comes to conversion is through great fear and trembling. It is one of those crisis conversions. And don’t put them down, because this is one of them. And realize that crisis happens in people’s lives as a result of the sovereign hand of God. And so it is good to make opportunity of crisis situations in counseling.

But in any event, this man before this as the spirit comes to the Philippian jailer. He comes first of all with a spirit of great fear and dread. What must I do to be saved? This guy is shaken up. He’s just been awakened out of sleep by the mighty hand of God, earthquake, etc. Now he faces these men who have had this gospel witness going for the time that I’m sure that the Philippian jailer has heard them preaching the gospel earlier in the evening, etc.

Now he hears this earthquake. He wakes up. These men haven’t run away. They haven’t tried to escape. They’re not afraid of him or the jail. And all this is part of God’s moving in his heart to bring him great fear and trepidation. And he cries out, falling down before them, he cries out, “What must I do to be saved?” Fear is not a bad thing. Fear in the providence of God is a very good thing. As I was meditating upon these verses again last evening, I thought of several times in my life when I became extremely fearful.

It’s been a number of years now but there for a while over the course of a couple years this is probably 15 16 years ago I would get quite fearful and originally it was kind of related to claustrophobia whatever it was I didn’t know what was happening I felt pressed in upon just a fear unreasoning really an unreasonable fear would overcome me and I mean overcome me I thought it was over I thought I’d have to go to the institution I thought I’d go raving into the evening.

I was that frightened of really nothing. But, you know, it was—it was the spirit of God those times. This is a was a hard thing for me to say. And you know, it’s it’s it’s only after the time passes that you can say these sorts of things about such experiences. But I look back on those times now with thankfulness to God. And I’ll tell you why. Because as I sat in my bedroom or on the plane, wherever it was, and I’d get so fearful, the thing that came to my mind more than anything else was a need to confess sin.

Sin to my wife, sin to my children, sin to other people, whatever it was. And it was different in different cases, but it was a need to confess sin to God and to other people. Fear brings us to a place of many in the providence of God can frequently be one of the means the spirit uses to bring us to a place of comfort. It’s through the confession of sin, through an acknowledging of what terrible, awful people we really are in our own flesh that we then have the comfort of knowing God’s forgiveness of those sins through the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, we’ve repeated it over and over. Heidelberg Catechism, what’s the first thing you must know to live and die happily in the comfort of Christ? How great my sin and misery is. The Philippian jailer, sure, there are external circumstances that caused him fear, but the text, I think, wants us to know that he’s talking about salvation, not just in terms of the earthquake, but something far deeper and broader.

He was brought to an awareness of how great his sin and misery was. He had taken the ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ, watched him get beat, cast them into prison, and tortured them. He knew the depths of his sin and misery. And don’t think you’re any different. In your flesh, you would do just the same thing. You would yell out like the crowd around Jesus did, crucify him. In ourselves, we are enmity against God.

We want nothing to do with God. Well, actually we do. We want to kill him. Nietzsche thought he had accomplished that. The world thought it had. We want to kill him. We want him out of the presence. We want him out of the vineyard. He owns the vineyard. If we kill him, we get the vineyard. If we get rid of that guy who made me, then I made myself. I came from ooze, whatever it is, and I can do whatever I want to do.

So, in our flesh, we’re just like this jailer. And hopefully, God has brought you to an awareness of your depravity before him and of how terrible you’ve treated the Lord Jesus Christ in the person of Christians or just in your own response to him and to his word. And God may have brought you through fear or through the gentle opening of your heart as he did with Lydia to the place where you had to cry out, “What must I do to be saved?” And so we can identify with him and hopefully we can identify with the manner in which he asked this question, but also we can identify with the ability to give the answer.

Hopefully we also identify with Paul and Silas in verse 31 as they say, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. That’s simple. Now, of course, it isn’t quite that simple. They do in the very next verse, they speak unto him the word of the Lord to all that were in his house. But all of the gospel, all that we must know how we’re redeemed from all our sins and misery is contained in that phrase, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

To believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is to have faith, to understand, to trust, and build your life upon the fact that you are doomed apart from him. That it is only through Christ’s vicarious atonement for your sins that you can be saved. And only through his righteousness applied to your account judicially by God.