A Sermon by Rev D A Macfarlane
Acts 16:34. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.
In the early part of the chapter, we have an account of the vision which the Triune God gave to Paul. The vision was from the Father, and from the Redeemer as the alone adorable Head of His body the Church. It was supernatural; the manner in which it was given cannot be comprehended in any way. It was a revelation – a vision from the Most High through His Holy Spirit, for the glory of God and the good of the Church. It is the equivalent of a promise; there is embodied in it a promise as in Psalm 89:19:
“In vision to thy Holy One Thou saidst, I help upon
A strong one laid; out of the folk I raised a chosen one”.
To come at once to the back-bone of the matter – to the kernel of the covenant – here is the strong new testament David. The Father laid help upon the Lord of glory, the new testament David, who is now in glory with the boundless, inconceivable value of His atonement. He is the Foundation laid in Zion for the poor of His people to trust in, or take refuge in.
In this vision, the Redeemer, by the Holy Spirit, brought before the Apostle a man of Macedonia. He brought home to him that this man who appeared in the vision was a man of Macedonia. He likely showed him the man wearing the clothing common in that place – whatever kind of garments they were in the habit of wearing. Probably he heard this man say, “Come over . . . and help us”. He did not say, and this is not what is meant: “Help us with money. We are very poor; endeavour to bring us some money.” He did not say, “Help us as Joseph helped the sons of Jacob in Egypt with corn”.
Evidently the sum and substance of the message to Paul in that dream, “when deep sleep falleth upon man”, was a request to help them by bringing the gospel to the pagan world of Macedonia. There would have been many Jews there who would have read Moses and the Psalms and the Prophets, but generally the world of Macedonia and Achaia, in Greece, and on to Italy, was pagan and given to idolatry. As you read concerning those in Thessalonica, although no doubt there were converted Jews there, the emphasis is on how God the Holy Spirit turned them from idols and dark places of horrid cruelty, and from lust in its manifold forms, to serve the living God. And Jesus, who delivered them from the wrath to come, has promised to come again.
This is what they were needing in Macedonia. They were in a low state,
1A hearer’s notes of a sermon preached in Dingwall in November 1968, where Mr Macfarlane was then minister. Many of the Scripture quotations are taken from the Metrical Psalms.
a state of ungodliness – aliens and enemies in their minds, without God and without hope in the world. But the time to favour them had come. Paul had this vision and a promise, or promises, were implied in it: “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against thee . . . thou shall condemn”. According to the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit – the Comforter who came in Christ’s name – they were warned in the holy providence of the Lord not to go to Bythinia, a district beyond Troas. So they had the Lord’s guidance and His gracious, sanctifying presence, which implied that He would be as a wall of fire to them, their shield, song and salvation. In all their ways they would seek to acknowledge Him and He would direct their paths. He was the One who commanded the wind and waves on the Lake of Galilee, and He led them to this sea port of Troas and on to Philippi. And they preached the gospel there.
Here we go on to read of the well-known case of Lydia, who heard them at the river side, where prayer was wont to be made. Very likely they were not permitted by the Roman officers to meet in the town itself; it was a Roman colony. The Lord opened Lydia’s heart, so that she attended to the things spoken. So, though Paul planted, and Apollos may have watered – and Luke and Timothy – it was the Lord who opened her understanding and her heart. Now may our prayer be: Open mine eyes that I may see my need of the Redeemer. And, as a minister taught the little girl, “Show me myself”, and “Show me Thyself”.
Lydia saw her malady and, on the other hand, she saw the balm of Gilead, the holy remedy, and was brought to close in with the Redeemer on His own terms. At the river side, when Lydia was convinced and converted and bound up in the bundle of life with the Lord, Paul preached through the Holy Ghost. We may put it like this: Paul preached for eternity. He himself has it in the Galatian Epistle, “If any man [even an angel from glory] preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed”. The truth must have been very solemn. The holy Word, which is the divine truth from the Father within the Godhead, is solemn and ought to be holily precious to us. May it be wheat to us, the finest of the wheat, and honey from the comb! May we get a little of what Job had through the secret work of the Holy Spirit: “I have esteemed [it] more than my necessary food”.
We are not ready to do so. We need food each day. We say that the words of His mouth are not at all so necessary as food for our mortal bodies. Where grace is, the grace of God from Immanuel, in His bowels of mercy and kindness and pity and compassion, there will be a desire to seek the fear of His great name, to feed upon Immanuel, to feel our need of Him, to have a little of what Jeremiah had when he said, “Thy word was found, and I did eat it”.
He had holy boasting, holy joy and rejoicing. O may we have a little of that! We cleave so much to the dust. The sin is your own and my own. May the Lord visit us, touch us, draw us, incline us! The Lord fulfil the promise, “I will take away the stony heart”!
Paul preached for eternity, in love, and yet all the time he looked to the Lord to break up the fallow ground. Lydia was an honourable, hard-working woman. You would call her, in the way of ordinary morality, beyond reproach. But, from the point of view of spiritual morality, the veil was still on her soul. Through the preaching of Paul, God took off the veil and she saw herself in the mirror of the law and said, “I am a woman of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. What a thorn I am and what a briar, and how fruitless I am! I have no holy fear, no consecration, no holy insight!”
She had need of being born of water and of the Spirit, as Jesus said to Nicodemus; suppose Paul referred to that portion. What is it to be born of water? I do not know if that came up at the time, but Paul’s answer would be: If you are born of the Spirit, you are born of water, and this satisfies the longing soul. Ask the Lord that you would be steeped in the grace of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit is compared to fire which burns up the dross of self-wisdom, self-will, self-dependence. Dross is still left in the dear people of God, but where He begins the good work, He will keep on baptizing them with the Holy Ghost and with fire. They will long to turn unto the Lord, to be meek, to get the promise, “The meek shall eat and shall be filled”.
Lydia was blessed; she got in suitable measure what Paul himself had, which is eternal life. Say to yourself, “Is it so that I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live? I have gone down to the grave in and with Him, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by dependence on the Son of God.” You say, “I am ashamed of myself and desire to have tears in Thy bottle”, shutting the door and wrestling to be dependent on Him. Paul could say, “He loved me and gave Himself for me”. If you are crucified – but, nevertheless, living – the Father gave you to Him before the foundation of the world. Your names are in the Lamb’s Book of Life. The Son loved you and died for you, and it is wonderful to think that there are such here tonight. Christ, coequal with the Father as to His eternal person, and of the same divine essence, has grasped our nature, without sin in Himself. The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of the flock: “For the transgression of My people was He smitten”. May Christ be precious to you! If He is precious, He loved you. You may say to yourself that you can scarcely believe that. If I could do something myself, you might say, He ought to love me. Stop that! The Lord give us grace!
Paul and Silas had much trouble in the holy providence of the Lord. The vision implied that the Lord would be with them and be as a wall round about them. Here they were attacked; then they were reviled and persecuted and they landed in the prison. The jailer was charged to keep Paul and Silas safely; their feet were made fast in the stocks. It did not look as if the gospel was going to prosper in Macedonia. The people who lost their gain from the damsel with the spirit of divination, when the spirit was cast out by Paul, would not, we believe, care whether Paul and Silas were dead or alive. On the following day, if they were alive, they would perhaps permit them to get out of prison if they would never come back again.
One wonders how, in their bodily suffering – and they must have suffered grievously – they could pray and sing praises unto God. The prisoners heard them. They rose at midnight. It was a wonder they were not in a stupor, that they were not faint and weak in body, that they could speak at all. The Lord revived them in spirit. He visited them with a time of holy refreshing from the presence of the Lord. They got what we may call a breeze of the Holy Ghost, and of His grace, to refresh them – such a gale of the holy love of God: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Perhaps they practically forgot their bodily weakness and discomfort, and how their feet were fast in the stocks. The Lord could do that. This may have been the case, though it is not becoming on my part to say how things were, beyond what was revealed.
They began to pray and sing praises unto God. We are not told what praises they sang. No doubt they would sing the Psalms; they were at home in the Psalms. Even in the days of their spiritual ignorance they would be at home in chanting the Psalms in the synagogue at the times of the feasts. No doubt Psalms would be brought before their minds. Paul quotes one of them in the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 8: “We are killed all the day long”. That is Psalm 44:22. They were only regarded as sheep for the slaughter. A sheep in good condition would be more valuable than two Jews causing a lot of trouble.
They may have been singing Psalm 9, a particularly appropriate psalm: “My bands Thou didst untie”. The Lord did that already, spiritually; He was able to do it miraculously. They may have prayed and sung Psalm 116. The Lord make it graciously precious to us and give us an insight into it, a sanctified insight for eternity that would be hidden in us as the leaven in the three measures of meal! The Lord is merciful in virtue of the Redeemer doing what He did, drinking the cup to the last drop.
It would perhaps be appropriate to remember some of the verses in Psalm 9. Seek to commit them to memory, lovingly and humbly, for your own good and the exercise of your soul.
“God also will a refuge be for those that are oppressed.
A refuge will He be in times of trouble to distressed.”
We read also that “the name of God is a high tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe”. No doubt Paul often had trouble inside himself; what groanings he had in himself! “They that know Thy name, in Thee their confidence shall place”.
Another might be Psalm 18. This Psalm probably refers, to begin with, to the Children of Israel at the Red Sea, though it is put in mysterious language. The illustrations of it are indeed very difficult to follow.
“And He upon a cherub rode, and therein He did fly;
Yea, on the swift wings of the wind His flight was from on high”.
The first reference may be to the passage of the Red Sea, the strong wind that came to fulfil His will; it was the same omnipotence, the finger of the Most High, His holy will and commandment.
“And from above the Lord sent down and took me from below;
From many waters He me drew, which would me overflow”.
Paul and Silas were not in waters literally, but they were in great difficulties – very great difficulties which might be compared to storms and waters. The part we were singing, “For Thou wilt the afflicted save in grief that low do lie”, perhaps they were singing that when the Lord said to an earthquake, “Work, earthquake”. By His own hand He touched the manacles of the prisoners. Everyone’s bands were loosed. Can you tell how? Not for a moment. It was the invisible finger of the Most High. The sparrow falling on the ground, fowls of the air, fish of the sea, earthquakes – they are all under His control. We are slow to lay this to heart.
“Who but the Lord is God? But He who is a rock and stay?”
You may say, Paul’s feet were not very fast in the stocks. But while they were singing, there was an earthquake, and a man came running with a sword, going to kill himself. While he had a high enough countenance, he came tumbling down. He fell flat before Paul and Silas asking, “What must I do to be saved?” He had a lot to be saved from. He brought in the word do, if I do something. A doctor in Inverness said to a woman there who was telling him that, if she only felt she had something to do, she would feel easy. “My dear woman,” he replied, “faith is not doing anything but resting on the work Christ has already done”. That was a word in season to the woman: not do, do, do – but give a bill of divorcement to our doing, to be enabled to stand upon Christ’s merits and “know no other stand, save that of Christ’s merits, not even where glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land”.
“He made my feet swift as the hinds.” Was this true with regard to Paul and Silas? Yes, we do not say that they began to run in a physical way, but
we do say their hearts, and the feet of their affections and minds and consciences, were running to help the poor, miserable man and his family. They preached the gospel to them; they told them the sum and substance of it. I do not begin, to any extent, to refer to the details. Paul began to preach, and the Holy Spirit melted the heart of the man, and his household. They became like Lydia. They listened solemnly with lowliness. Grace came in, though they did not know how grace melted them. Grace is a great warrior. There was a man who was very reckless, and foolish for drink, and who was fond of fighting men at markets and places like that; the Lord visited him and brought him down to stand where the publican stood. When a certain elder was told that the man was converted, he said, “What a warrior grace must be, when grace overcame this man!” There was no man in the place as strong as he was.
What was the sum and substance of the gospel which Paul preached? The God-given gospel, not sealed with the blood of bulls and goats, but with the sacrifice of Immanuel. How little we appreciate and prize it! You have the prayer, “Turn Thou me and I shall be turned”. You may add, “Help me to come to Thy Son”. Paul would tell of the Redeemer and how He came. Perhaps He told about the shepherds at Bethlehem. He would tell how Christ lived, and how He offered Himself without spot to God. The Redeemer was a prophet, priest and king for ever, and of His kingdom there would be no end. He who received the gospel would be saying from his heart, with lowliness and self-abhorrence, “Be merciful to me a sinner; I am a poor lost sheep on the mountains of vanity. Help me to come ‘and, waiting not to rid my soul of one dark blot’, to drink in the gospel – and in the act of drinking in the truth as it is in Jesus, drink in Himself as my priest, my righteousness, and advocate with the Father, my propitiation for the forgiveness of my sins, my King to reign in me and strengthen me to die to my rebellion and unprofitableness.”
All that was put in brief compass, but seek to be prayerfully exercised in these things. The Lord granted that, as the jailer saw his need of the Most High, he went out to the holy sufficiency of the gospel of Immanuel. No doubt Paul was led to speak in a way suitable for him at the time – first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. I might venture to say that Paul did not mention the blood of the sacrifice put on the mercy seat. The man did not know what the mercy seat was. These things would come in time. We are very apt to bring in things like that.
The jailer was led to see the Redeemer, to discern the Lord as Prophet, Priest and King, to confide in Him and hang on Him as on a nail in a sure place. Paul and Silas were drinking in with their eyes, ears and mouths, and in the depths of their spirits, with lowliness and simplicity and gratitude, the
Word which was mixed with faith of the operation of God. They were mounting up on wings of gratitude and holy wonder, and thanking the Lord for His goodness “and for His works of wonder done unto the sons of men”.
“They shall run”,2 refers to the king’s messengers. Whatever messages they had, they shall run. We train men for running; Paul as a trained messenger of the King was preaching that the Lord is in Zion and that the poor of the people shall trust in His name and become messengers of the King. People will take knowledge of you that you have been with Christ. You will spread a sweet savour, and you will be greatly grieved if you are not doing so.
A soldier may be very strong. One who used to visit us was asked if he felt the marching wearisome. He said, No. Everyone is not like that. Where Christ is precious to the soul, they begin to mount up with wings as eagles. You may feel heavy, but you will never cease to mount up. Throughout eternity you will never cease to walk into the riches of the covenant. His people may be nearly fainting, but He will never leave them. “That which concerneth me, the Lord will perfect make.” “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” They may have their faults and failings and come to the throne of grace many a time in one day. The jailer, and perhaps the prisoners, though we are not told – the Judgement Day will declare it – might say, We got a bite of Christ, an earnest of what is to come. Then to them to live was Christ, and to die was gain.