Acts 16:25-26: “But around midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, while the other prisoners listened attentively. Suddenly there was a violent earthquake which shook the prison to its foundations. All the doors flew open and everyone’s chains came loose.”
This is an arresting and wonderful story, and the more carefully it is considered, the more the wonder grows.
We wonder at the singing. Then we wonder so much at that which inspired the singing, and then we should wonder more if these men had not sung. At first we are amazed with the cheerfulness and heroism of these men, and then we find out that their singing was not abnormal, but normal. It was not the result of a transient emotion. It was the expression of a constant experience of the soul.
Let us, then, first look at the picture presented by these two verses; second, recognize the one central value of the story in order that; third and finally, we may consider some of its particular teaching. These are the things that arrest attention:
The men: Paul and Silas;
The circumstances in the midst of which we see them;
Their occupation in the midst of the circumstances
1) The men
They were Jews held in contempt in Philippi. One an apostle, the other a prophet. They were calling men and women to a new way of life both as to ideal and power. Consequently, wherever they went they created disturbances.
2) The circumstances
“But around midnight…” They had been charged with sedition. They had been beaten with many stripes. Beating with rods was a terrible experience. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he referred to such beatings as amongst the things he had endured (2 Corinthians 11:25): “Three times I was beaten with rods.” It was physical brutality of the worst kind. Their backs were bruised, bleeding and unwashed. They were cast into the inner prison, some inner dungeon from which light was excluded and probably almost all air was shut out. The final barbarity was that their feet were made fast in stocks. All that before the word “But”. Immediately following it are the words “at midnight”. That accentuates everything. It accentuates the loneliness, the weariness and the suffering.
3) Their occupation
The occupation of these men is the central issue. They were praying and singing hymns. This is not a description of two exercises. It does not mean that they were offering petitions and also singing hymns of praise. The word translated “praying” covers the whole ground of worship: asking for gifts, rendering of adoration, continued supplication, offering of thanksgiving. In this story, the word “worship” is qualified by the word that follows: They were hymning the praises of God. The Greek word here employed is one that had long been reserved to represent the praises offered to heroes or gods, or to one God. The worship of these men was that of adoration. It was the expression of the gladness of their hearts. Two were gathered together in the Name of God, and in their midst was the LORD; all unseen by the eyes of sense, unapprehended by any who were roundabout, undiscovered even after the jailer himself had come back to look at the prisoners. The Presence of God was the supreme sense of these men. They did not ask for anything, they gave. They were exercising their “priesthood” on its highest level which is not intercessory, but the priesthood of thanksgiving. They gave and their giving was the outcome of their gladness. Immediately we ask: “What was there to make them glad?” Suffering is the method by which joy is perfected.
As Yeshua said in John 16:20: “You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.”
In all this story, there is revealed the victory of the soul over all adverse circumstances and the transmutation of all opposing forces into allies of the soul. Think of some of the writings of this man Paul who sang that night.
In Romans 5:3, he wrote:
“Let us boast in our troubles; because we know that trouble produces endurance”.
In 2 Corinthians 4:17, he wrote:
“For our light and transient troubles are achieving for us an everlasting glory whose weight is beyond description.”
Yet again, he wrote in 2 Corinthians 7:10:
“Pain handled in God’s way produces a turning from sin to God which leads to salvation.”
These are all the things from which the soul of man shrinks: tribulation, affliction, sorrow!
What then was the secret of this experience in the case of these men? It was the outcome of their knowledge of God. God was and is known as compelling all things to work together for good to those who love Him. Our belief in God is built upon the cheerful optimism which cooperates with the process, because it sees that through suffering and weakness, joy and triumph must come – that always and only results from a clear vision of God. Wherever this clear vision of God comes to the soul through Messiah Yeshua – through whom alone it can come – there follows the ending of bondage to all secondary causes, and the sense of relationship to the primary and final cause is supreme!
The men were in Philippi, in prison, in the inner prison… in stocks, in suffering, in sorrow! All true, but the final thing is not said. They were in God! Their supreme consciousness was not that of the prison, or the stocks, or the pain, but of God! They were not callous or indifferent; pain was pain to them; confinement was confinement; loneliness was loneliness. But they realized how all these things were yet held in the grasp of the King of the perfect order. Whom they knew as their LORD and Master and, consequently, they sang praises. They did not ask for anything, not even an earthquake. They gave Him praise. Because of this vision of God and because of this sense of the soul, the experience which otherwise would have depressed and led to despair became wings of hope, the inspiration of song.
It was impossible to imprison Paul and Silas. Men who sing in prison are men who cannot be imprisoned. Fellowship with God is the franchise of eternity.
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