Act 16:25-34 | KingComments | STEP | But look, and above all, listen, how the evangelists reacted to all the pain and humiliation afflicted. Instead of becoming despondent or lamenting or crying out to God for vengeance over the defamation inflicted on them, they pray and sing. Prayers and singing are powerful weapons with which great victories over the enemy are achieved ( ; ). They seek their strength with God and praise Him for Who He is. They do not do this softly, but understandable to all prisoners. The prisoners do not shout at them to keep their mouths shut, but listen to them. They have never experienced and heard anything like this. The more difficult our circumstances are, the greater will be the impression our joy makes on those who are watching us in our difficulties. While Paul and Silas are praying and singing and the prisoners are listening, God suddenly makes Himself heard. He responds to the praying and singing of His servants by a sudden, great earthquake. It is a very special earthquake. It is limited to a building. The ground doesn’t tear open and all the walls keep standing. Only the doors open and the chains of all the prisoners are unfastened! An additional and possibly even greater wonder is that no one takes the opportunity to escape. They all stay where they are, nailed to the ground. Such special earthquakes are necessary in one’s life to make him realize the necessity of salvation.

‏ Acts 16:25-34

Praying and Singing in Prison

But look, and above all, listen, how the evangelists reacted to all the pain and humiliation afflicted. Instead of becoming despondent or lamenting or crying out to God for vengeance over the defamation inflicted on them, they pray and sing. Prayers and singing are powerful weapons with which great victories over the enemy are achieved (2Chr 20:1-22; Acts 4:23-37). They seek their strength with God and praise Him for Who He is. They do not do this softly, but understandable to all prisoners.

The prisoners do not shout at them to keep their mouths shut, but listen to them. They have never experienced and heard anything like this. The more difficult our circumstances are, the greater will be the impression our joy makes on those who are watching us in our difficulties.

While Paul and Silas are praying and singing and the prisoners are listening, God suddenly makes Himself heard. He responds to the praying and singing of His servants by a sudden, great earthquake. It is a very special earthquake. It is limited to a building. The ground doesn’t tear open and all the walls keep standing. Only the doors open and the chains of all the prisoners are unfastened! An additional and possibly even greater wonder is that no one takes the opportunity to escape. They all stay where they are, nailed to the ground. Such special earthquakes are necessary in one’s life to make him realize the necessity of salvation.

Conversion of the Jailer

Because of the earthquake the jailer also awakes. When he sees that the doors are open, he can draw no other conclusion than that all the prisoners have fled. It is his job to guard them and in that, he feels he has failed. He wants to kill himself, but God intervenes and lets him proclaim salvation. When the man is about to kill himself, Paul’s voice sounds in darkness.

Paul cannot have seen that the man wants to commit suicide. It is pitch-dark and he is in the inner prison. God makes the situation clear to him. His words “we are all here” bear witness to the same. The God Who unfastened the chains also prevents any prisoner from escaping. No one can resist Him and escape. Thus, all sinners in hell will be held there by God’s power for all eternity.

Paul’s words prevent the man from killing himself. That means that he believes Paul. He wants to go to Paul, but for that he needs light. He gets that and then he rushes in and falls down before Paul and Silas, trembling. We do not read that the earthquake made the jailer tremble, but we do read that the voice of Paul that came to him from the pitch-dark does so. He must have experienced that as the voice of God, the God for Whom darkness is light as day (Psa 139:12).

Grace has a crushing effect on the convinced sinner. At the same time, grace also works the request for salvation. With this question the jailer addresses Paul and Silas, whom he now addresses with “sirs” and thus acknowledging them as his superiors. He asks for the way of salvation. Possibly he has heard of it before. He may have laughed about it then, but now in his distress he asks about it. In this way God always works in the conversion of sinners.

Embedded in the jailer’s question “what must I do to be saved?” is the idea that he thinks he must do something for his salvation. But to be saved no one can do anything, it is even impossible to do anything about it himself. He does not get an order to do certain works. Paul proposes to him the only way through which someone can be saved and that is faith in the Lord Jesus.

It is about putting his trust in the Lord Jesus. He must throw his anchor in Him. That is not an achievement, but a necessity. Faith is no more an achievement than it is an achievement that someone grabs the rescue buoy that is thrown to him when he is in mortal distress.

Paul not only speaks of the salvation of the jailer, but also of the salvation of his household. Salvation means that a radical separation has come about with the world. As we have already seen with Lydia, it is the normal order that where the head of the house comes to faith, God extends the salvation also to the household members (Acts 16:15). The house where the light of the gospel is lit is no longer in the realm of the world, but in the realm where the Holy Spirit works and the Word is spoken by Him. The order in that house is His order.

After having given faith in the Lord Jesus as the core of salvation, Paul and Silas speak “the word of the Lord” to him and to all who are with him in his house. Whoever has come to faith has placed his life under the authority of the Lord. That Lord makes clear through His Word – ‘the word of the Lord’ – how He wants to be served. Paul and Silas give further instruction about this.

The jailer shows his conversion by taking Paul and Silas with him in that hour of the night. Nothing more comes of sleeping, there is no need for that at all. Here is a man who has undergone a great change inwardly and gives proof of that also outwardly. He takes his former prisoners, of whom he has now become a brother, into his house and takes care of them by washing their wounds. Immediately after the good care, he is baptized, he and all his people. In Philippi, the light has begun to shine in yet another house after it has already been lit in Lydia’s house. The jailer rejoices in the faith after having first known the sadness of his misery and having heard and accepted the gospel of his salvation.

Lydia was already a God-fearing woman (Acts 16:14), but still had to be saved, just as we saw with Cornelius (Acts 10:1-2 ; Acts 11:14). The jailer was a wicked man. He also needed salvation. Good and bad people both need salvation.