A month or so ago, Rachel’s brother Zachary was hit by a car while he was trying to help police officers sort out a situation with someone else who was parked close to Zachary’s drive way. He sustained a broken leg but otherwise he is okay.
Sometimes we try to do something good but then something bad happens, not as a result of the good, but like Zachary, sometimes things like that happen.
GOOD INTENTIONS – 16:16-18:
This young girl was a slave, demon-possessed, owned by some other people. And she made them a huge profit by “fortune-telling.” According to a website, ibisworld.com, the Psychic Industry in the United States is a $2.2 billion industry!
This young girl kept following Paul and Silas. Nothing she was saying was false. However, just like in the days of Jesus that He told demons to stop telling people that He was the Messiah (because He did not want Satan’s messengers to be sharing the gospel), so here Paul stops the girl from directing people to them. God does not want nor need a Liar like Satan to be sharing His gospel message. If a man is not going to share the gospel in all of its purity and accuracy, he’s doing more harm than good.
Paul tolerated this girl’s behavior for a few days. But then he finally got annoyed and cast out the spirit. What a wonderful thing! That young girl was now free! She was free to serve Jesus Christ! She was free from being enslaved to her masters! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!
BAD RESULTS – (16:19-24):
Business men are business men.
These men had heard enough of Paul and Silas’s preaching to argue that they were proclaiming customs which were not lawful to accept or observe as Roman citizens. The Jewish religion was a legal religion in the Roman Empire; it was largely tolerated and many Jews were hated because those in Jerusalem, specifically, kept causing riots because they hated Roman oppression. But the Jewish religion was legal. Christianity, as a separate religion, was not legal. As long as it was viewed as a “denomination” of the Jewish religion, then it was also tolerated. But when Christianity started showing that it was also distinct from the Jewish religion, then the Roman Empire started persecuting Christians, as we see in the book of Revelation.
PAUL AND SILAS LET THEIR LIGHT SHINE – 16:25-28:
Paul and Silas are suffering in prison with their feet in stocks because they did something good for someone.
But, they let their light shine, despite their bad circumstances…
Just like God took advantage of the storm on the Sea of Galilee in Matthew 14 to provide Jesus an opportunity to strengthen the faith and conviction of His disciples, here, God takes advantage of the crisis to cause a great earthquake. It shakes the foundation of the prison house so that the doors of the jail cells were opened and everyone’s chains became unfastened.
THROUGH PAUL & SILAS’S FAITHFULNESS AND GOD’S MERCY, A SINNER IS SAVED – 16:29-34:
The jailer was a pagan, an unbeliever, a worshipper of the Roman gods. Paul tells him, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.” Indeed, trusting Jesus is at the heart and core of our response to God. But it is much more than just that. The jailer was not saved from his sins at this point because the jailer did not even know who Jesus was!
Verse 32 tells us that Paul and Silas then preached the word of Christ to the jailer along with all who were in his household – slaves, servants, brothers, sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, all those who were old enough to understand that sin had separated them from God.
As a part of the jailer’s response to Christ, he also took Paul and Silas – that very hour of the night – and washed their wounds from the beating they had received the day before. In effect, the jailer was repenting of his sins – at least beating men who were innocent of any crime. And then notice that he was “immediately” baptized. Why was he baptized? Because trusting in Christ by itself does not wash away one’s sins. It does not put one into contact with the blood of Jesus Christ: Acts 2:38; 22:16; Romans 6:1-7.
That is how God can work all things together for our good!
God can work all things together for our good. In the middle of hard times, let’s continue to let our light shine so God can use us for His good.
Paul Holland