Say, fellows, that was one exciting day in Philippi. Not since Mark Antony's Roman legions went tearing through to meet and destroy the armies of Brutus and Cassius, nearly a hundred years before, had the town been so shaken up; and all because of two inoffensive looking Jews who had quietly walked in there and told about Jesus Christ. They had come over the winding road from Neapolis, nine miles distant on the seashore, where they had gotten out of a ship from Asia. A poor crazy girl, a fortune teller, heard the message, her heart was changed and she became sane and normal; it put an end to her "fortune telling" and this enraged her masters, who had Paul and Silas arrested and put into prison.
That created some stir, but it was nothing to what was to follow. The jailer seemed to take special pains to make his prisoners secure, putting them in an inside cell and making their feet fast in the stocks. These fellows looked so unworried that he probably suspected they had a well-laid plan to escape. The jailer was further surprised to hear the two prisoners singing—actually singing some of their hymns, though they must have been in great discomfort.
Away into the night they sang. The other prisoners heard them and marvelled. Surely these new jail-birds had something which they, the old ones, did not possess. The jailer, as he retired, doubtless remarked to his wife: "Well, there's something uncanny about those two men; here it is midnight and they are singing and going on like two schoolboys on a picnic excursion!"
He hadn't been asleep long, when a brick fell out of the mantelpiece near the jailer's bed and the furniture about the room began to dance a jig. Mrs. Jailer screamed and the children began to cry in terror. The door creaked and pushed off its hinges, falling with a slam-bang. The jailer jumped and landed in the middle of the floor. A flash of lightning put a photograph on his staring eye that he never got rid of to his dying day. The prison walls were cracked and falling, the doors were down and the dazed prisoners were groping about.
Alas, poor jailer, the thing of all most dreaded was about to happen—his prisoners would escape! Earthquakes were bad enough, but the sudden thought he got of himself answering to the governor next morning with his life for the escape of those put in his charge was more than he could bear. Reaching for his sword he placed it, hilt to the ground, to fall upon its point and end his life right there;—then he heard a clear voice coming through the darkness: "Stop! don't do that. We're all here; nobody wants to get away."
It was one of those psalm singing Jews! he recognized that at once, and putting up his sword he called to his wife to light the lamp quick and bring it; then he rushed into the cell where Paul and Silas stood, their feet free from stocks and hands unmanacled, and fell down on his face before them.
"Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" And the Philippian jailer was thinking about the peril of his soul, for like a flash it had been revealed to him that these men were from God. Paul's answer came quick and true: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." And thy house—for Paul saw behind the jailer his crouching, trembling wife and children. Paul told them all about it then, and as the blessed truth came into their hearts, they stopped trembling and began to find new hope in Jesus and a new joy in service. Immediately, the jailer and his wife got basins of water and washed the bruised stripes on the backs of the men. They saw in those stripes the suffering Saviour's wounds which they would like to soften; very differently they had viewed them the evening before. Right there Paul baptized the whole household, and quickly afterward the jailer straightened up the tumbled down kitchen stove and Mrs. Jailer cooked something good and savoury for the men of God to eat.
Fellows, it ends like a fairy tale, which says "they lived happy ever after," for the record says the jailer "rejoiced, believing in God, with all his house." And in this one word, "Rejoiced," I would like to hand you the strangely wonderful and fine thing in to-day's lesson. Rejoicing puts the climax of satisfaction of joy into any experience. Let it stand the test proof of rejoicing and you've got the true value. If believing in and serving Jesus Christ could bring rejoicing to a jailer and his household under such circumstances, surely then we can better understand the force of Paul's word to Timothy when he speaks of "the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy."
Here is a jailer. A jailer's office at best would not be much of a rejoice shop. This jailer's life is in jeopardy when his prisoners escape. His jail is cracked open, the doors are down and he cannot shut them. The prisoners are walking about. At daylight he must reckon with the authorities. Yet he is rejoicing. And the secret of his rejoicing is in his believing—believing God.
Fellows, it means everything to believe—to believe like the Philippian jailer did. He not only accepted Christ and was baptized, but he immediately began to minister to Christ's servants. It was the one way in which he could in those first moments of his belief express his faith, and he did it. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."