Acts 16:16-40 “The Philippian Flip”
I want you this morning to consider the Trojan horse. Nobody expected that a bunch of Greek soldiers would hide inside of a giant horse. And, it was that lack of expectation that made the idea so profoundly successful.
Now consider Hannibal’s march across the Alps with his African elephants to conquer Rome. His campaign was so outrageously successful because nobody expected Rome to be attacked by Carthage via coming down from the North. It was unthinkable that somebody would do that. That is why it worked.
Consider, if you will, the Allied landing at Normandy. Hitler was absolutely convinced that the invasion was going to be at Calais. The idea of landing at Normandy or other points south was again simply unthinkable. And, that is why it worked!
Historically speaking, I think we all realize and can acknowledge as the truth that one of the best ways to win a war is to catch your adversary off guard. Doing what is unexpected usually gives one the greatest chance at success. However, as we know this to be true, most of the time that we are in conflict or arguments with others, we do the same thing over and over again somehow expecting that the results will be different. They never are of course.
Please take a moment now to consider all of the stories that we find in the Bible. This book is a collection of God doing the unexpected! From the parting of the Red Sea, to Noah’s Flood, to Jonah’s being swallowed by a big fish, to Elijah’s being fed by ravens, to Jesus rising from the grave, to end times in Revelation. If it is outrageously unexpected, it is in this book!
This morning I want to encourage you as Christians to do the unexpected. Christianity is all about the unexpected, isn’t it? Really, who would have expected that the guy on the Cross would have popped back up out of the grave after three days after taking all of our sins upon himself?! To believe in Christ means to believe in what is beyond the ordinary and everyday banal happenings. It means that you believe in miracles. Or, even more basically, it means that you believe simply a different way of doing things.
Christ himself constantly told us to do things that seem crazy to the world in which we live. For instance, if someone hits you on the cheek, turn and give him or her the other one. Somebody asks for your coat, give him or her your undergarments as well. It is that basic “love your enemies” side of Christianity that is so unexpected that the world just gets turned upside down by it.
The whole idea about grace is that you get what is not expected. In this world, we hear it being said over and over again that one gets what one deserves. But really, we don’t, do we? Nobody ever really gets exactly what he or she deserves. The good people get bad things happening to them. The bad people get good things happening to them. It never works out as we think. The idea of Christian grace is, simply put, that none of us has or could ever earn the right to go to heaven and be with God. None of us is that good that we could ever compare to God in heaven. We get to be with God only by accepting that which we honestly do not deserve, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen to that!
In our Scripture for today, we see Paul and Silas doing one thing after another that is not only unexpected but even goes beyond unexpected in a significant way. When we do something that is unexpected for our own benefit, and we have success, then we say that it is good for us. Paul and Silas just do not do what is unexpected for their own benefit but rather take it one step further. The Holy Spirit opened the prison doors and released their shackles, but they stayed in prison because they did not want to get the jailor in trouble with his superiors. That is not just doing the unexpected for your own benefit but doing the unexpected to your own detriment and to the benefit of others who would otherwise do you harm.
You see, they were in the middle of worship service when the earthquake struck. What good would it be to the prisoners’ and jailor’s souls if they were to stop the true worship of God just to escape? That would not be to the glory of God! So, they decide to stay there. The jailor is converted and later his entire family joins him!
If any of you have ever studied early childhood development, you will know that the human brain really is not able to have an argument until the child has developed certain ability to reason. If you do not know this, let me tell you now, there is no arguing with a two year old! Don’t waste your breath. The two-year-old child is not able to change his or her mind because of a logically introduced argument. The only thing that you can do with a two year old is change subject. This is called “redirection.” You stop the argument by changing it.
Let us say that you are at the supermarket checkout and your two-year-old child sees some candy and wants it. They start to cry and carry on, hoping to get the candy. What should your response be? What if you told the child, “We have candy at home, you will have to wait”? That won’t work. What if you tell the child, “Candy is bad for you”? That won’t work. The only thing that will work is if you suddenly take the child’s attention away from the candy and onto something else. You might suddenly point outside and say that a dinosaur just walked by the store. The child will forget about the candy and go look outside for the dinosaur.
We do this with children all of the time. However, we forget that this still works with adults, and I believe it is a Christian way of dealing with intractable arguments. Although it just takes longer with adults most times. In Exodus 7-11, we see the list of plagues against the Pharaoh in Egypt. When we look at these, we have to see that God is trying to do “redirection” with the Pharaoh. God is saying, “forget about the slaves, think about frogs, the boils, the flies, the livestock, the gnats, the water supply, the food supply. . .” The pharaoh still does not get what God is trying to do. Only when it comes down to his own family, the Tenth Plague is the lost of the firstborn, does it finally hit him that his focus should not be on the slaves but on his own life and family.
Do you see how this matches our text for today? The jailor is so worried about the prisoners being let loose after the earthquake that he is about to fall on his own sword and kill himself. Then, Paul redirects the entire scenario. He yells out to the jailor, “We are all still here in the prison. . . .no need to kill yourself.” From that point on the issue is not the loss of prisoners, but about saving the jailor’s life, his soul as he begins to understand Christ’s ministry, and saving his own family as they are all converted to Christianity in the end. Doing the unexpected, staying in prison when the doors are opened for you, saved that man’s life and his family’s souls!
The best modern example of this power of redirection I think came in the 1970’s with the Soviet wheat crisis. All the time we were in this arms race with the Soviets. It was costing the United States an incredible amount of money. More than we could afford. The Soviet citizens needed wheat to have bread to eat. We had a surplus of wheat. We sold it to them at an extreme discount. They became dependent on our wheat. This undercut their farm initiatives. The more we gave them, the more dependent they became. In the end, we collapsed their economy, and we were able to reduce our strategic nuclear arms on both sides, thus saving our own economy.
Think about this, if we can bring down the mighty Soviet Army by giving them wheat and never having to fire one shot, think what we could do in countries such as Iran or North Korea? I just put that out there! If we do the unexpected, we might have a greater chance at success!
In our own personal lives then, when we find ourselves in chronic conflict, we must just do the unexpected. Conflicts typically go through cycles of latent ambivalence and outward expression. The way to stop chronic conflict is to just do something that breaks the cycle.
There was a couple that came to me for marriage counseling once. They were stuck in chronic conflict. It seems that every time they drove somewhere together, they would have a big argument. It had to do with comfort zones. He liked the air conditioner full blast; she liked the breeze from the window. She would roll down her window in the car right away and the fireworks would start. It ruined everything they ever tried to attend together. The first thing I told them to do was to break the cycle. All they had to do was drive separately or walk.
The Lord has given us this wonderful Scripture today to let us reconsider how we typically do things in our lives. As God’s people, we look at how we can get God’s Will to be accomplished on this planet. The best way is to follow the example of Christ, and his Disciples such as Paul and Silas. Turn everything upside down.
Amen.