This episode ought to warn us against seeking after fortunetellers and palm readers or any sort of occult practice. We can see from this that such activity is inspired by Satan and involves both the medium and the patron of the art in evil.

These wicked men had Paul and Silas beaten and unjustly thrown into jail. Some people would have been discouraged by such a turn of events. To be beaten up for serving Christ, to be falsely charged and cast into a filthy prison, their feet put in stocks so that they were immobilized, then left to languish, what a predicament! But when you have Christ and are faithfully serving him he gives you grace to bear all things. Paul and Silas began to sing praises to God and pray and suddenly God brought deliverance. In the darkest midnight the nightingale sings.

Let it never be forgotten that when a man is down he has a grand opportunity to demonstrate his trust in God. A false faith can only float in smooth water, but true faith, like a lifeboat, is at home in storms. If our religion does not bear us up in time of trial what is the good of it? If we cannot believe God when our circumstances appear to be against us we do not believe him at all. Paul and Silas show us how to behave when the darkest midnight comes and all seems to be against us. But strangely enough the deliverance God wrought in that jail for Paul and Silas became the desperation point and conversion moment for the Philippian jailer.

Those outside of Christ generally are doing their best to make it in this world. The Philippian jailer was doing his level best to make an honest living for himself and his family. I am sure there were many problems in keeping the jailhouse at Philippi. There would be drunks and disorderly people, thieves and cutthroats put in jail who had to be carefully handled; probably not much different then than it is today in jailhouses. He had the responsibility for seeing that they were fed and kept locked up until higher authorities would come and deal with their cases. He must have met all kinds of people; no doubt politics played a part in the jailhouse business. Perhaps he held on to his job only by constant carefulness and political favoritism. Perhaps he had been warned that if a prisoner escaped it would cost him his job and that he would find himself in jail.

No doubt jailers had been known then as now to succumb to bribery, to occasionally allow a prisoner to escape. Perhaps he had been accused of that. We don't know, but we do know that when all the prison doors fell open he immediately viewed that as a crisis of unprecedented proportions. If all the prisoners escaped how would that make him look? He would be disgraced. He would be ruined. It would be a disaster for him come morning light. This was the end for him; so he took his sword and was about to kill himself.

Many people take a way out of life’s trials by committing suicide. A newsmagazine reported some years ago that between 1970 and 1980 285,000 Americans committed suicide, making suicide the tenth leading cause of death. During that period there was a suicide every 20 minutes. That means that while we are seated here in this sanctuary three people will commit suicide. The report stated that white males between the ages of 15 and 24 have the highest suicide rate, followed by white males 25-34. Three fourths of all suicides during the reporting period were males and one fourth were females. The higher incidence of males over females is probably due to the fact that males are expected to assume more responsibility than females. Like the Philippian jailer men have the lion’s share of responsibilities and the stress and pressure that goes with it. Because the man is expected to take leadership and shoulder responsibility in the home and in the market place it puts added pressure upon him. But beneath the macho image that is often projected there usually is a frightened little boy who just can't cope with life as well as he would like everyone to believe he can.

I am sure that Philippian jailer did not take his sword to commit suicide just because of this one instance in his life. There must have been many times when he had felt the pressure and each time it had made him a bit more worried, a bit more anxious about the possibility of failure.

Fears can easily overwhelm us. Some people live in constant fear that something terrible is going to happen to them. The fear of what might happen is often worse than the event itself if it were to happen.

An ancient legend tells how death was walking toward a city when a man stopped Death and said, "What are you going to do? Death replied, "I am going to kill 10,000 people." The man responded, "That's horrible!" Death insisted, "That's the way it is. That's what I will do." The day passed, and the man met Death on his return journey. He said to him, "You told me you were going to kill 10,000 people, but 70,000 were killed." Death shrugged his shoulders, "Well, I only killed 10,000; worry and fear killed the other 60,000."

          The jailer’s point of desperation became his point of openness to the gospel. God opened his heart to see his great need of salvation. Beneath the macho image the jailer put forward in order to maintain discipline and show that he was man enough to handle his job there was a very frightened fellow. Not only was he afraid of the disapproval of other men and the thought of disgrace and ruin he also reveals by what he says next to Paul that he had a deeper fear than that. He recognized that something supernatural was in this event and that Paul and Silas were connected to the supernatural power that caused the prisoners to be set free. He also must have sensed that suicide was not a solution that would resolve his deepest fear, so he goes to the very heart of the fear of all fears, the fear of death and the Judgment. He rushed in to the prison, trembling with fear and falls down before Paul and Silas. He is seized with the realization that somehow his destiny is wrapped up in what has happened and these men who have commanded him to do himself no harm because they had not fled the prison. So he brought them out and said to them,  “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

          A "Great Revival" occurred among Robert E. Lee's forces in the fall of 1863 and winter of 1864. Some 7,000 soldiers were converted. Revivals also swept the Union Army at that time. Sometimes preaching and praying continued 24 hours a day, and chapels couldn't hold the soldiers who wanted to get inside. -- "The Untold Story of Christianity & The Civil War," Christian History, no. 33