A SONG IN THE PRISON

Acts 16:25

And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.

Have you ever found yourself singing in a place you never asked to enter? The bruises are still fresh. The iron is still cold. The door that swung shut behind you is thick, and from where you sit there is nothing in any direction that looks like rescue. And yet, somewhere deep in your spirit, a melody begins. It is not the melody of denial. It is not the false cheer of a believer who has not yet counted the cost. It is a stranger thing than that — the sound of a soul that has already weighed the darkness and decided it will not dictate the tune.

This is the music of Paul and Silas in the inner prison at Philippi. It is the music the Christian Church has, in her best moments, never quite stopped singing. And it is the music our own hearts are summoned to learn when midnight finds us where we never intended to be.

The Cost of Obedience

To understand the song, we must first understand the cell. Paul and Silas did not fall into that dungeon because of some reckless choice or private sin. They were in Philippi at the invitation of the Holy Spirit Himself, following the Macedonian vision, preaching Christ in a Roman colony that had never before heard His name. Their crime, so called, was compassion. A young woman possessed with a spirit of divination had followed them through the streets for many days, and Paul, grieved at her torment, commanded the spirit to leave her in the name of Jesus Christ. It did.

What followed was less a trial than a riot. Her masters, seeing that the hope of their gain was gone, dragged the apostles into the marketplace, and the magistrates, caring little for truth and much for civic peace, rent off their clothes and commanded to beat them. Luke records the scene with a restraint that somehow makes it heavier:

And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely:

Who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. (Acts 16:23-24)

Observe the geography. Not simply the prison, but the inner prison — the deepest room, reserved for the most dangerous men. Not simply held, but fastened — feet locked in wooden stocks that were designed to cramp the legs into postures of exhaustion. This is what the service of Christ cost them on the first night of their mission to Europe. They did not protest. They did not bargain with the darkness. They settled into the posture heaven had permitted and waited to see what their God would do with it.

At Midnight, a Sound

Luke tells us it was about midnight. The detail is not incidental. In the rhythms of Scripture, midnight is the hour when the old order breaks and the new begins — when the destroyer passed through Egypt, when the bridegroom came for his bride, when the Lord is most often said to arise on behalf of His people. Midnight is the hour when human strength has emptied out and only the God who does not slumber remains on duty.

It was then, in that unlit hour, with backs striped and ankles fastened and every outward resource stripped away, that the apostles began to pray and sing praises unto God. Not a groan. Not a complaint. A hymn. The older translations preserve the force of the Greek with a beautiful clumsiness: they were hymning God. What they sang we are not told. Perhaps it was a Psalm they had known from childhood — I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth (Psalm 34:1). Perhaps it was the newer song of the risen Christ, the praise of the Lamb that is found on nearly every page of the Acts. Whatever the melody, the text tells us one unforgettable fact: the prisoners heard them.

Imagine that first. Before any earthquake, before any miracle, before the jailer ever drew his sword, the other men in the inner prison — the thieves, the insurrectionists, the debtors, the violent — heard something they had never heard before in that place. They heard a song rising from stocks. They heard theology in the dark. They heard the melody of a people who belonged to Another Country, and for whom even a Roman dungeon was a temporary address.

What Praise Refuses to Do

Let us linger here, because this is where the lesson for our own midnights begins. The praise of Paul and Silas was not an emotional reflex. It was not denial of the pain. It was not the cheerfulness of a disposition that had never been hurt. It was the deliberate, theological, defiant song of men who had decided something about their God before the stocks ever touched their feet.

Praise refuses to shrink God to fit the circumstance. The dungeon says, God is small, or else you would not be here. Praise answers, God is great, and I am here because He has something to do in this place. The stocks say, You are forgotten. Praise answers, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The darkness says, There is no song for a hour like this. Praise answers with Job, Where is God my maker, who giveth songs in the night? (Job 35:10).

We are mistaken if we suppose that songs in the night are only given to the cheerful. They are given, rather, to the courageous — to those who have determined that the goodness of God is a settled fact independent of the present lighting. The Psalmist understood this when he said, The LORD will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me (Psalm 42:8). The day-song and the night-song are not the same song. The night-song is deeper, slower, costlier. It is learned in places most believers would rather not visit. But once learned it is never forgotten, and no devil in hell can silence the saint who has learned it.

The Earthquake Was Already Coming

Somewhere in the middle of that hymn, while the prisoners were still listening, the God of heaven chose to add His own accompaniment to the music. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed (Acts 16:26).

Mark the sequence carefully, for our souls need it. The song came first. The earthquake came second. Paul and Silas did not worship because the doors had opened. They worshipped while the doors were still shut — and the doors opened because they worshipped. This is the pattern the Scriptures press upon us again and again, from the trumpets at Jericho to the singers going out before the army of Jehoshaphat. Our God has an unusual fondness for working His deliverances through the worship of people who had no earthly reason to be singing yet.

Notice, too, what the earthquake did and did not do. It did not tear the prison to rubble. It did not kill the jailer. It did not hurl the prisoners free into the night. It shook the foundations, opened every door, and loosed every band — and then left the men inside to decide what to do with the freedom they had been given. Deliverance from God is often like this. He does not usually carry us out on a stretcher. He opens the door and waits to see if we still love Him when it is unlocked.

The Jailer’s Midnight Question

The keeper of the prison awoke and, seeing the doors standing open, drew his sword to take his own life. In Rome, the loss of a prisoner was the life of the jailer. But Paul cried with a loud voice, Do thyself no harm: for we are all here (Acts 16:28).

Here is a moment the world cannot explain. A beaten, bleeding apostle, with a free door before him, chose instead to stay — and to persuade every other prisoner to stay with him — so that a pagan jailer might not die. The song in the cell had already trained his heart for the question in the hall. When the jailer fell trembling at their feet and asked, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? (Acts 16:30), Paul and Silas did not need to rehearse an answer. It was already on their lips. They had been rehearsing it in the dark.

That house believed and was baptized the same night. A Philippian jailer and his family were added to the Kingdom before sunrise, and the first Gentile church on European soil received its first members not from a pulpit but from a prison. The apostle Paul would later write to that same city from another prison with the words, I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel (Philippians 1:12). He had learned it at Philippi. He never forgot it.

The Songs We Have Not Yet Learned

What, then, shall we say of our own midnights? For the prison takes many shapes. A marriage under strain. A body betraying us. A season of unanswered prayer. A grief that will not lift. A calling that has cost more than we counted. These are not foreign countries to the Christian. They are the appointed training grounds of the night-song.

We are not promised that every door will open in the hour we want it opened. Paul would later write, I suffer trouble, as an evil doer, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound (2 Timothy 2:9). He died, by most accounts, in a Roman prison that never did shake. But he died singing. The word of God in him was never bound, because a man whose God is greater than his cell carries his freedom inside him wherever he goes.

Perhaps the Lord is asking us tonight not for a prayer of escape but for a song of trust. Perhaps He is listening, as surely as He listened at Philippi, for the first note of the hymn we did not think we could sing. Perhaps the prisoners around us — the coworker who has watched us quietly, the family member who has waited to see if our faith would hold under weight, the neighbor whose marriage is quieter than ours but no happier — are listening too. And perhaps the earthquake is closer than we think.

The writer of Hebrews calls it the sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15) — and the word sacrifice is exact. True praise at midnight costs us something. It asks us to offer to God what we cannot yet feel, in trust that the feeling will catch up with the offering in His good time. It is the deliberate, determined music of a people who have decided that their God is worthy whether or not the door ever opens on this side of eternity.

So then, brethren, let us be slow to complain and quick to sing. Let us not wait for the lighting to improve before we lift our voices. Let the prisoners around us hear a song they cannot account for. Let the foundations beneath our circumstances be shaken by the weight of a worship they were not built to bear. And when the jailer falls at our feet and asks his question, let the answer be ready on our lips — because we have been rehearsing it in the dark.

Sing, O ye heavens; for the LORD hath done it: shout, ye lower parts of the earth… for the LORD hath redeemed Jacob, and glorified himself in Israel.

— Isaiah 44:23