No Intimidation

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Saturday morning, the 9th of May, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go straight to the Book of Acts 16:37:

”But Paul said to them, “They have beaten us openly, uncondemned Romans, and have thrown us into prison. And now do they put us out secretly? No indeed! Let them come themselves and get us out.” 

What had happened was, Paul and Silas had been preaching the Gospel. They had been falsely accused. They had been stripped down, beaten, humiliated and put into prison, but once they had been put into prison, the magistrates realised that actually Paul and Silas were Roman citizens. It was forbidden for them to beat citizens of Rome openly and humiliate them. So the magistrates tried to get out of it and told the jailers, ”Let them go secretly.” But Paul, that’s why I love him so much, he said, ”I’m not having this. They must come, those magistrates, apologise and let us out of prison themselves.” Which, of course, they did, they apologised profusely.

We need to be careful that we, as believers, are not intimidated by bullies, wherever they may be. Because a man is wearing a uniform, that does not give him the right to do what he pleases to you or me, and I’ll give you an example. If you are going down the highway and a Traffic Officer pulls you over and he walks up to your car and says, ”You have been speeding, breaking the speed limit and you need to pay a fine.” You can say to him, ”Yes Officer, I’m quite prepared to do that, but can you show me evidence on your machine that I was actually speeding?” If he says, ”No, I can’t.” Then you are not obliged to pay anything because it’s his word against yours. He needs to give you evidence.

Many years ago I and my young wife Gill, we were just newly married, we were in another country, we were going through the Immigration and Customs and this one officer, quite an otherwise type of person, I don’t know why he didn’t take a liking to me, he pushed a form in front of me and said, "Sign this form so that you can leave the country.” I was about to sign it and this little voice behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, ”Angus, what are you doing?” I said, ”He’s told me I must sign the forms.” She said, ”No, we are not signing any forms unless we can first read them.” And this man changed his tune all of a sudden and said, ”Yes ok, you can go.” Be careful, you don’t sign your life away, folks. Remember, because we are Christians, we don’t have to be doormats to everybody. 

Have a wonderful day,
God bless you and goodbye.