I made a new friend yesterday. He’s a guy named Laz. Actually his proper name is Lazarus. He’s from Greece, specifically the town of Philippi. He grew up just a few miles from a 2000-year-old jail. Today we’re looking at the story of what happened to the man who kept that jail in the Roman colony city whose name we Americans pronounce as Philippi.  This is the story of the conversion of the Philippian jailer.

Preachers love to talk about this gospel encounter because of the simple answer Paul gives to the jailer when he asks, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul boils it down to this: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” And it really is that simple: just believe. But what does it mean to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? For that matter, why does this fellow think he needs to be saved? And what does he need to be saved from? We’re going to have to look at this story a little closer.

We are making our way through the fifth book of the New Testament, which we have titled The Acts of the Holy Spirit. We give it this title because everything in the book flows out of the staggering event that happens at the beginning of the book: the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

By chapter 16, roughly AD 49 or 50, the Spirit-baptized people of Christ are spreading out and forming communities all over the Eastern rim of the Mediterranean Sea, from Egypt around to Asia Minor. We have been following Paul in his trailblazing ministry across the Anatolian peninsula. Just recently we looked at God’s call to Paul and his team to cross over to Macedonia, and the beginnings of their ministry in the city of Philippi.

We looked two weeks ago at how God used Paul to cast a fortune- telling demon out of a slave girl, and  how the girl’s owners, furious at Paul for taking away an important source of their income, hauled him into the marketplace to accuse him of disrupting their business and disturbing the peace.

S&R Acts 16:19-34

what they need to listen for

• 4 peculiar realities at this moment of redemptive history

Progressive pagan persecution

¹⁹ But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. ²⁰ And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, “These men are Jews, and they are disturbing our city. ²¹ They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.” ²² The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods. ²³ And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. ²⁴ Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.

Persecution has been a repeated reality so far in the book of Acts. But up to this point, persecution has been Old Covenant Jewish authorities persecuting New Covenant Jewish followers of Jesus. It began with Saul of Tarsus persecuting the believers in Jerusalem and Judea. After Saul came to know Jesus, he became, no longer the point of the spear for persecution from Old Covenant Jews toward Jewish followers of Jesus, but now the center of the bull’s-eye. In city after city the gospel of Jesus has provoked the established Jewish authorities to stir up trouble for Paul, his missionary teams, and the churches that he is starting. In this passage, we’re seeing  something noticeably different.

Here, the persecution is coming from flat-out pagans – Greek and Roman people who are upset at how the message of Jesus and the power of his Holy Spirit are shaking up the way the society works.

This will not be the last time we see it in Acts. Actually, the focus of the book is shifting from Jewish persecution of Christians to pagan persecution of Christians. Persecution is progressing in the book of Acts.

That matters for us because Christians are being persecuted all around the world to this very day. Here is something from the website of Open Doors, USA:

On February 13, 2025, militants rounded up 70 Christians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), took them to a church, and then killed all 70 of them… with machetes or hammers.

Field sources say that even several days after the attack, some families had not been able to bury their dead because of the insecurity in the region. Many Christians have fled the area to somewhere deemed safer.

“We don’t know what to do or how to pray; we’ve had enough of massacres,” said an elder in a nearby church. “May God’s will alone be done.”

Jesus promised us that, since the world hates him, it will hate us. Paul assures us that those who would live godly in this present age will suffer persecution. And although, like that faithful elder, we may not know how to pray, we’ll pray anyway.   pray

• groanings which cannot be uttered
• courage, comfort, relief, conversion of enemies (or their death)

Beyond praying, one thing we can do here in America is just be sure that we remain steadfast in the face of pressure to shut up and stop talking about Jesus our king. We thank the Lord that nobody is coming at us with machetes. But people are coming after us with laws and lawsuits and sneers and jeers and other more civilized but still pretty malicious means for making our lives harder because of our faithfulness to Christ. So if our brothers and sisters in the Congo and in many other places around the world can stand strong, so can we.

Powerful prayerful praise

²⁵ About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, ²⁶ and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. 

It’s standard practice for preachers to point out that Paul and Silas, beaten and bruised and bloody and in chains, are full of joy and faith and hope and song in the middle of the night in a dungeon. And the preachers I have heard have been careful to point out what worldly, whimpering complainers most of us are here in America. And they haven’t been wrong; we do tend to be pretty wimpy. It’s just that that’s not really the point.

The point is that Paul and Silas were full of the Holy Spirit and full of faith and that’s why their mouths were full of praise. And that united chorus of joyful praise and hopeful prayer in the middle of a nasty situation unleashed the power of the Spirit of God that broke them out of prison and changed the jail keeper’s life forever.

Of all the conspicuous characteristics of the NT churches, none is so striking as the priority they put on prayer – especially group prayer, gathered prayer, partnering together in prayer.

1. When the disciples were waiting in Jerusalem after the Lord’s Ascension, they had a forty-day-long prayer meeting.
2. When they needed to decide who should take Judas’ place as an Apostle, they prayed and cast lots.
3. After Pentecost, they continued to devote themselves to prayer.
4. When Peter and John were beaten and jailed for preaching the gospel, the believers had a prayer meeting that shook the building.
5. The church relied on deacons to lead its more practical ministries, so the Apostles could give their attention to prayer and the Word.
6. Philip and his partners prayed for the Samaritans to receive the Holy Spirit.
7. Peter prayed for a dead woman, and she sat up, then stood up.
8. When he was in Joppa, Peter was on the roof in the middle of the day praying.
9. Back in Jerusalem, he was thrown in jail again, after James Zebedee was put to death, so the Christians took to the streets to protest this grave injustice. [[ ]] No they didn’t. They had a prayer meeting.
10. In Antioch, God spoke to the believers to send Paul and Barnabas as missionaries—when they were praying and fasting.
11. When Paul and Silas were beaten and thrown in jail in Philippi, guess what they did? They had a prayer meeting and hymn sing.
12. When the Ephesian pastors said good-bye to Paul, they knelt down by the ship and had a prayer meeting.
13. When the Tyrian believers said their farewells to Paul, all of them—men, women, and children—knelt down in the sand and (guess what?) had a prayer meeting.

The prayer meeting is the lifeblood and the heartbeat of a New Testament church    x2

We need to decide whether we really want to be what New Testament churches were. Oh I’m not promising earthquakes as a result of our prayer meetings. But I do think we could see some church quakes.

We gather to pray every Sunday morning at 8 to pray, and prayer will be a major part of what we do this afternoon at 5. 

Passionate pleading penitence

²⁷ When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. ²⁸ But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” ²⁹ And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. ³⁰ Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 

If you’re wondering why the jailer was about to kill himself, there are two reasons. One, it was the equivalent of resigning in disgrace after a spectacular failure—just a little more permanent. Two, whatever his Roman bosses would have done to him for letting his prisoners escape would have been far worse than simply cutting his own throat.

In the event, though, nobody escaped. They all just sat there in the jail, even though the doors were now wide open and the chains fallen off. Can you imagine what the jailer was thinking when he realized that all of his prisoners were free to go, but instead freely stayed? You don’t have to imagine. Luke tells us the man collapsed on the ground. Something he saw about what was going on inside these men was even scarier than anything the Romans might throw at him—more terrifying, and more thrilling. What did the jailer see that prompted him to plead with Paul, “What must I do to be saved?”

The earthquake wasn’t a problem: it was already done. The Romans were no longer a threat: the prisoners were all present and accounted for. What was he afraid of? What did he think he needed to be saved from?

Have you ever heard someone suddenly faced with what looked like certain death say that “his life flashed before his eyes”? It seems that’s what happened to this man, and he didn’t like what he saw. He was probably a fairly decent, reasonably reliable man, or nobody would have trusted him to keep the jail. The jail was probably a basement or dungeon beneath his home, with his family and his slaves and their families living in private quarters above. Probably the whole structure belonged to the Roman government there in Philippi. This man was what we would call a public servant today. He was a well respected guy.

But even fairly decent people are sinners. And reliable people who rise to power and responsibility find themselves routinely forced to do unpleasant things. I can’t imagine this jailer didn’t have plenty of guilt and regret about what he had seen and done over the years. Now he knows that the One Holy God of these Jews is real, and he has to answer to him. That’s why he’s asking about salvation.

The same is true today. Somewhere deep down, every conscience—no matter how seared or self-deceived or sociopathic—knows the truth. We are sinners in need of salvation.

I keep getting told that people these days don’t want to hear about a God of judgment and wrath, a jealous God who is to be feared above all. And they don’t. But not wanting to hear the truth doesn’t make the truth anything other than true.

So many people cannot see how a God of love could also be a God of wrath. But Jesus is the one who teaches us this verity.

T&R John 3:16-18, 36      The loving Spirit of the loving Son of the loving God is why this man finds himself on the ground before his former prisoner .Paul, begging him to tell him what he needs to do to be saved.

The old preachers used to call this the conviction of sin, because that’s what the Bible calls it. Modern preachers seem to have all but forgotten it. We would do well to remember it and recapture it in this day.

Pointed personal preaching

Their answer to the jailer was simple: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you be saved. But as we noted at the beginning, it’s not at all obvious what believing is. We ought to pay attention to what the rest of the passage says.

 ³⁰ Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”  ³¹ And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” ³² And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. ³³ And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. ³⁴ Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.

Just a quick spate of observations

• “Believe” = personal trust, not mere assent
• probably did not have to explain that to the jailer and his household… pisteuo… we need it explained it to us
• BFM: Faith is the acceptance of Jesus Christ and commitment of the entire personality to Him as Lord and Saviour.
• The summary of the gospel in verse 31 is not the same thing as the explanation of the gospel in verse 32… the word of the Lord, the saving message about the Lord Jesus Christ

1. God, creation, and providence
2. Man and sin
3. Christ and his cross
4. The Spirit of Christ and the body of Christ (the church)
5. The reign of Christ and the discipling of the nations
6. The return of Christ and the resurrection of our bodies
7. The final judgment by Christ and the end of history

• They preached the gospel message to everybody in the house
• Priorities: gospel, wounds, baptism, breakfast
• Rejoicing

conclusion

• pray for my new friend Laz, who grew up just a few miles from the Philippian jail
• saved