Tommy Stone - KNEE
Eric Sellars - Surgery
January-2011
Songs in the Night Acts 16:16-34
God uses people who make themselves available to Him to do in and through them what He chooses to do. He is on the look out for people who will be obedient to Him and step out by faith and follow. He prepares a person to share the gospel and then leads them to people He has been preparing to hear that message.
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In Acts chapter sixteen we encounter the Holy Spirit leading, guiding and directing the apostle Paul and Silas as they seek to do God's will. We see Him closing and opening doors for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Paul and Silas were looking to see where God was at work and making themselves available to Him.
SAINTS IN PHILIPPI (16:14) God is at work all about us. He is always leading His people to accomplish His eternal purpose. Anything we try to do in our own strength, imagination and power will not impress anyone. It will usually fall to the ground as premature fruit and rot. Only what God chooses to do in and through us will last for eternity. Jesus said,” Apart from Me you can do nothing”(John 15:5b). When He has prepared our hearts spiritually then He will invite us to join Him in His eternal purpose.
How tragic when we are not available to Him or are not willing to allow Him to work a deeper work in our hearts. Only when He has prepared us adequately for the task will He invites us to join Him in His work. He is constantly pursuing an intimate love relationship with us preparing us and making us usable in His service. We do not get invited because we are not ready for the task at hand.
* When we are ready He speaks to our hearts and guides us into His chosen area of service.
* When God leads us it is always something beyond our ability to do it. It has eternal magnitude. It is larger than us. It is beyond our means.
* Only God can do it. It will always cause us to exclaim, “I can’t do that; only God can. ”And when it is accomplished we can only shout: “I saw God do it!”.
* We have to step out by faith to join Him. However, the exciting thing is that He always provides everything we need when He invites us to do His work. When we walk hand in hand with Him He uses us to bring honor and glory to His name alone and we experience Him. This is exactly what we see God doing in Acts chapter 16
* However, even though what she was crying out to people was true Paul would not accept the witness of an evil spirit. What she said was true, “These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation”(v. 17)
* However, there was a problem of integrity. The messenger was unclean. Sometimes we cannot hear what people say because their own actions speak louder than their words. The source was unclean. The message and the messenger were incongruent. Jesus also refused the witness of the unclean, even though they spoke the truth. Paul refused to compromise the gospel.
* Satan is great about telling the truth one minute and deceiving the next. He has no integrity. I really am surprised this evil spirit got away with scam as long as it did. “She continued doing this for many, This is exactly what we see God doing in Acts chapter 16.
The apostle Paul in Acts 16 was seeking God’s leadership on his second missionary journey. He and Silas were journeying through cities where Paul had preached on a previous missionary journey strengthening churches in the faith and people were coming to believe on Christ daily (v. 5). As they passed through the regions of Galatia and Phrygia, they had” been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia Minor”(v. 6). They kept on trying to go into another region, Bithynia,” And the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them”(v.7). In a vision “a certain man of Macedonia” kept standing and pleading with Paul to come over and preach the good news of Jesus Christ to them. It was in the city of Philippi that Paul met a businesswoman by the name of Lydia whose heart He had prepared to hear the gospel. Lydia was a Jewish proselyte, a God-fearer, and she was listening with sustained attention to every word the preachers were saying. And the Lord opened up wide her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul (v. 14).
Again Luke stressed the sovereignty of God in salvation (cf. Acts 13:48).
Not only did Lydia believe on Christ as her Savior, but also “her household,” probably includes her immediate family, slaves and freewomen employed in her cloth dying business. God planted a church in Europe in the home of this businesswoman. Only God can do that! God invited Paul to join Him in taking on a God-sized opportunity.
SATAN SEEKS A COMPROMISE (16:16-24).
It wasn’t long before Satan used a demon-possessed ventriloquist to compromise the gospel. Paul was going to the “place of prayer” where Lydia and others had put their faith in Christ for salvation. A “slave girl having a spirit of divination met” them and began following Paul around. She had a quite profitable business fortunetelling (v. 16). She brought her owners a steady source of income. The original word refers to a tumult of mind with the furry and temporary madness under which those who were possessed delivered their oracles.
The original priestess in the Greek city of Delphi was thought to be possessed by the god Apollo who was considered to be embodied in a python snake. It was thought that anyone possessed by the python spirit could predict the future. Demons and evil spirits took advantage of these pagan worshippers of false gods. This slave girl was demon possessed. Her owners were making a fortune off the scam.
I really am surprised this evil spirit got away with scam as long as it did. “She continued doing this for many days. “Paul was greatly annoyed” is probably a polite way of saying it! She wore him out. He “could bear it
no longer”. He was annoyed and “in a burst of irritation, turned around ”on his heels one day and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!”(v. 18). “And it came out at that very moment!”
If you think Satan gives up that easy when God is busy at work think again. Paul got his hand in someone’s pocket book. “But when her master’s saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market place before the authorities”(v. 19). The slave owners cared nothing for the spiritual freedom of their slave girl.
They were only interested in their spreadsheet. They manipulated the gathering mob and stirred up their religious-social prejudices against these Jews. Probably Paul and Silas had the most Jewish features in their makeup and Luke and Timothy were considered Greeks to the crowd.
Confusion reigned in the mob action. “The crowd rose up together against them, and the chief magistrates tore their robes off them and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods. When they had struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely; and he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks”(vv. 22-24).
Hey, I didn’t think this was supposed to happen to the good guys! Where is God? His messengers have been beaten to a bloody pulp. The legs have been stretched as wide apart as possible to cause excruciating pain in the stocks. This will not be a comfortable night. The next scene is in the darkness of the night in a cold, damp dungeon in the Philippi jail.
SING SONGS IN YOUR PRISON ((16:25-29)
Paul and Silas were singing praises from the gladness of their hearts in prison. They were exercising the priesthood of the believer at the highest level in thanksgiving to God for the opportunity and privilege of
serving and suffering for Him. “But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God . . .”(v. 25a).
* What was there that made them so glad? These two believers had such an intimate love relationship with Jesus Christ that they were gathered together in the name of Jesus and He was in their midst. The Lord was
there though unseen by the eyes of the physical senses, and un-apprehended by the other prisoners in their cells. The Presence of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ was with these men in their prison cell.
* Christ was in that dungeon. We do not hear these men whining. They did not ask for anything. They were not begging Him to set them free. They gave God praise for the privilege of knowing Him! What was the secret? They had an intimate personal relationship with Christ. He causes all tings to work together for our good. These two men were in stocks and in a great deal of pain in the Philippi prison. But that is not the final word. They were in Christ and abiding in Him! They had a sense of God’s presence with them in the prison.
* It was not that of the prison, or the stocks, or the pain, but of God that gave them the victory. They could sing praises in the prison. That is the heartbeat of Christianity. “Any fool can sing in the day, ”said Charles Haddon Spurgeon. “It is easy to sing when we can read the notes by daylight; but the skillful singer is he who can sing when there is not a ray of light to read by. Songs in the night come only from God; they are not in the power of men.”
Have you learned how to sing in prison? Those who sing in their prison have learned the profound secret that suffering is the method by which God perfects joy. Our joy is always perfected in suffering. All the ultimate joys of heaven are joys that have come out of the agonies of tribulation. Our best songs come out of suffering. Suffering is the method by which joy is perfected in our lives. Where is your prison? Do you feel you are in some deep dark dungeon of depression? Are you going through the ravages of a loved one addicted to drugs or alcohol? Perhaps your dungeon is cancer, or a loved one who is enduring that dreadful disease. Maybe your prison is the emotional pain and suffering that goes along with divorce, or
emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. Where is your prison? What do you think is your inner prison?
Are you allowing God to cause all things to work together for His glory and your good? Are you singing in you prison? You cannot imprison a man who sings in prison. It was impossible to imprison Paul and Silas. Their feet may be in stocks in the inner prison at Philippi, but they are not there. They are sitting with Christ in the heavenly places! They are in the presence of the Living One. They are singing praises to Him whose name is above all
names. “Men who sing in prison cannot be imprisoned.” Do you sing at midnight? Have you found the deep inner source of joy that enables you to sing and make music in your soul on your darkest night? If you do you are a citizen of that city which has no need of light or sun or moon, for the Lord and the Lamb are the light of it. Paul and Silas were singing in the City of God!
You do not stop God’s work when you put a man in prison. Men who sing in prison are men whose work is never stopped.
David L. Himmelheber evangelist
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