For many weeks, our attention
these Lord's Day mornings has been riveted on a very vital
passage of the Word of God, Ephesians chapter 2, particularly verses
8 through 10, a portion of Scripture which I have called a compendium
of salvation by grace. Some of you will remember, if
you have elephant's memories, to think back that far, that
when we introduced that study, I said that these verses, perhaps
more than any other collection of verses in all of Scripture,
set forth all of the leading lines of biblical truth concerning
salvation by grace more succinctly, more comprehensively than any
others. Well, that conviction is only
deepened after a lengthy study of that portion of the Word of
God. If you want to know what it means to be saved, delivered
from sin and its consequences by the grace of God, then I commend
to you a careful analysis of Ephesians 2, verses 8 through
10. And with the completion of our
study in those verses, we of course completed our study in
the first paragraph in Ephesians 2, the great contrast between
what the Ephesians were before the coming of the grace of God
and what they were after the coming of the grace of God. We're
going to leave Ephesians for a while, at least for several
weeks, before taking up the second paragraph. And my concern is
that having looked at the doctrine, having carefully analyzed all
of the phrases and clauses in the statements of the Apostle
concerning salvation by grace, that we should in the next few
weeks look at a wonderful illustration of how God does what he describes
in Ephesians 2, 8-10. In other words, we've looked
at the theory as it is carefully set before us by the Apostle.
Now we want to turn to a living demonstration of the work of
God making a new creature, making a new creation, creating someone
in union with Christ unto good works. We've often heard it said
that one word, one picture is worth a thousand words. Well,
whether that's true or not, I believe there's an element of truth in
it. To see the truth set forth in words, demonstrated in vivid
description, perhaps will help enforce the lesson to us. And
so what we'll do for the next couple of Lord's Days is study
a passage which is a vivid illustration of Ephesians 2, 8 to 10 in operation. And that portion is found in
the book of Acts, Acts chapter 16. What I propose to do is to give
a brief summary of verses 11 through 18, and then read verses
19 through 34. Verse 11 of Acts 16 tells us
of Paul and his companion entering into Philippi, and that's the
proper pronunciation as I reminded you in the adult class, not Philippi
as I've said for years, but Philippi, a city of Macedonia, And there
the Apostle finds a woman's prayer meeting. And as he preaches to
the women, God is pleased to touch the heart of at least one
of them and then her household. Then we have this strange account
in verses 16 to 18 of this demon-possessed woman who constantly troubles
the Apostle and his companion until Paul casts out this demon. Well, this created quite a stir,
and now we pick up the narrative in verse 19. And when her masters,
the masters of the demon-possessed girl, saw that the hope of their
gain was gone, she was a soothsayer, and they made money by her. And
now the commercialism has ceased because the demon power is gone
from her. Well, this upset them. You see,
the economics of the whole thing they considered was not quite
fair. And so what do they do? They laid hold on Paul and Silas
and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. And notice
the graphic language. They laid hold. They dragged
them into the marketplace before the rulers. When they had brought
them unto the magistrates, they said, these men being Jews do
exceedingly trouble our city. What they should have said is
they exceedingly trouble our pocketbook. This was false witness. even
as with our Lord. But they trouble our city. They
appear, you see, to be very loyal citizens, when they're just mercenaries
who are crying out because their pockets have been pinched. But
they say they exceedingly trouble our city, set forth customs which
it is not lawful for us to receive or to observe being Romans. They
are political insurrectionists. They're a threat to the stability
of our society. Let's get rid of them. And the
multitude rose up together against them. The magistrates rent their
garments off them and commanded to beat them with rods. Unlike
the Jews, who would only beat a certain limit, the Romans had
no such rule. And we read this in a phrase
and say, beat them with rods, that's that. But they were probably
men who were gory to look at when they were done with welts
and open wounds upon their backs. And when they had laid many stripes
upon them, notice again the vigor of the language, they cast them
into the prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely. Who,
having received such a charge, cast them into the inner prison
and laid their feet fast in the stocks. And many of the Roman
prisons had three basic divisions, an outer court that was light
and airy, the inner court that had bars, to keep the prisoners
and then the inner dungeon where criminals condemned to die would
be kept. And these stocks were not like
the New England stocks just to keep a man incarcerated and make
him a public spectacle. They were actually arranged so
that they stretch the legs apart and were not only for confinement
but also for torture. So here's the picture. They've
been illegally and brutally apprehended. They've been dragged before a
puppet court. They've been beaten until their bodies are a mass
of welts and open wounds. They are rudely cast into the
inner dungeon. They are put upon a stretch rack
to intensify the suffering. And then, the wonder of wonders,
verse 25. But about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and
singing hymns. The original is not quite conveyed
accurately there. They were praying, singing hymns. In other words, their prayer
was constituted in the singing of these hymns of praise unto
God. And the prisoners were listening
to them. And suddenly, there was a great
earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken.
And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's bands
were loosed. And the jailer, being roused
out of sleep and seeing the prison doors open, drew his sword and
was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped,
the picture being that wherever he was sleeping, whether in his
own house, and some of his associates aroused him, or whether the earthquake
did, and he came running, he came to the outer court where
there was some degree of light. And he sees the doors wide open,
but he cannot see into the inner chamber where the prisoners are,
and he thinks that with the open doors the prisoners are all gone.
And he's about to kill himself, because he knew it was only a
matter of time before the Roman government would do the job for
him. Or a prisoner who was charged, or a jailer who was charged to
keep prisoners, did so at the expense of his own life if the
prisoners escaped. So here's the picture now. He's
about to kill himself, supposing the prisoners have gone. But
Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm, for
we are all here. And he called for lights and
sprang in, you see, from the outer court to the inner, and
trembling for fear, fell down before Paul and Silas and brought
them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they
said, Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou
and thy house." And they spake the word of the Lord unto him
with all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour
of the night, and washed their stripes, and was baptized, he
and all his, immediately. And he brought them up into his
house, and set food before them, and rejoiced greatly with all
his house, having believed in God. Now this is an amazing passage,
and yet I confess in 22 or 23 years of preaching, I've never
expounded this entire section. Often I've quoted verses 30 and
31 and made reference to the passage, but what a joy it has
been to dig into it for the first time. And what I wish to do so
that we don't get lost in irrelevant or at least in secondary details,
not irrelevant if God has included them, I want us to focus our
attention for today, and possibly one or two more Lord's Days,
on what I'm calling the most important question a man ever
asked, and the most accurate answer that was ever given to
that question. The question is in verse 30. The question serves,
what must I do to be saved? The most important question a
man ever asked. And the most accurate answer
ever given to that question, verse 31, believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. This morning, just the
question, the most important question ever asked. Now, all
of us have asked many questions in the course of our own life
history. Some of us who are parents know
what it's like when our children reach the why age. For some,
it's two, two and a half, three, four. But it seems they have
more questions than a cat has lives, times 242 million. I mean, they just, why this?
Why that? Why the other? How? Why? Why? How? Why mommy? Why daddy? Until you feel if you hear it
one more time, you're going to ask some very serious questions
too. How does an airplane fly? Why
can't I fly? Who am I? Where do babies come
from? What happens when you die? Am
I going to die? And then a little bit later,
start asking questions like, how do you know, mom, when you're
really in love? How do you know, dad, if she's the right girl?
questions that get a little more serious, but still, questions
that all of us have asked at one time or another or may be
asking here this morning. Some of them are very silly questions.
Some of them are tremendously important questions. But may
I say, if we take all of the questions asked by every man,
woman, boy or girl in this place and put them all together in
one bundle, they can begin to add up to the weight and importance
of the question that is asked. in the text of scripture before
us. Where did I come from? Where do I go? What is death? Why this? Why the other? None
of these questions can even begin to compete with this question
in terms of being the most important question any man has ever asked. Now we want to analyze that question,
and we'll do so along three lines this morning. First of all, just
a word about the person who asked the question. Secondly, the factors
which led him to ask it, and thirdly, the real content of
the question. First of all, who asked the question,
recorded in verse 30, serves, what must I do to be saved? Well, the man is given no name.
All we are told about him in verse 23, when he comes into
the picture, is that he is a jailer, literally a keeper of the chained
ones. He's a jailer. obviously a Roman,
and because a Roman, most likely a pagan, a worshipper of false
gods, and we know very little about his character except, given
this responsibility, he was probably a man who had proven himself
trustworthy, capable of assuming great responsibility, There's
some indication that he had developed the hardness that jailkeepers
often develop. The word used in verse 24, he
cast them into prison, is a flexible word. Sometimes it can simply
mean to bring something without any violence, or it can actually
mean to throw something. And in this case, it could well
be that having received a charge, he not only fulfilled his duty
to take them into the inner dungeon and make them secure, but he
did so with the roughness common to men who become hardened to
human suffering. But apart from those little things,
nothing is really told us about his character until we find the
statement in verse 27, And the jailer, being roused out of sleep
and seeing the prison doors open, drew his sword and was about
to kill himself. And that statement is the most
telling statement about the character of the person who asked the question.
If the man was in the area where the other prisoners were, if
he had a cot outside of the actual prison cells, Then he showed
a total spirit of indifference to the phenomena that was keeping
the other prisoners awake at midnight. When they saw these
fellow prisoners brought in, all beaten and bruised and bloody,
and they are put into the inner dungeon and placed in a form
of torture, and they are singing praises to God, These other prisoners,
they just can't buy this business. What in the world is going on?
They're all ears. Now, if he was close enough to
hear that, the scripture records for us the fact that he was sound
asleep during all of this. But we don't know if he was in
that area. He may have been home. He may have been some distance
and had some of his hirelings, or not hirelings, but men who
worked under him taking care of them. But one thing is evident.
When all of the situation comes to his awareness that the prison
doors are open, that the prisoners are probably gone, his reflex
response is to take his sword and to kill himself. Why? Well,
for the simple reason, as we've already hinted, and this is established
in Acts 12.4 and verse 19 as well, that a Roman soldier charged
with keeping a prisoner was conscious that if the prisoner escaped,
his own life as a jailer would be forfeited. And this is exactly
what happened upon the escape of Peter. And those soldiers
that were charged to keep Peter were slain when Peter escaped
and could not be brought back into prison. And so his first
thought is upon this discovery of the open prison, I as a Roman
jailer, will forfeit my life rather than allow the Roman authorities
to do so because there was some thinking in the Roman mentality
of the nobility of suicide. He draws his sword and is about
to kill himself. Now what does that tell us about
his character? It tells us that this jailer, up to this point
in the narrative, was able to face death, the world to come,
Almighty God, judgment, the fact of the hell that awaited him
with a total spirit or spirit of total indifference and insensitivity. At this point, he is fearful
of one thing, those that can destroy the body. And Jesus said
in Matthew 10, 28, don't fear those who can destroy the body,
and after this have no more that they can do. Fear him who can
destroy both soul and body in hell. At this point, this man,
this jailer, this keeper of the prison was totally devoid of
any of that true fear of God. He was totally devoid of any
sensibility about the world to come. All he is concerned about
is the world that now is, and the problems that will come to
him as a result of his present circumstances, and he thinks
that by ending his life, he will end the complex of his problems. And I say that this jailer, then,
is typical of every single human being by nature. Whatever things
make us different in terms of nationality, temperament, occupation,
etc., at the core of what we really are, we're all the same.
We're spiritually dead and therefore insensitive to the greatest issues
of true importance. We may be upset by a thousand
things, our popularity or the lack of the same, our money or
the lack of the same. You kids, you get upset and uptight
about your report cards and your tests and all of these other
things that pertain to your school life, the approval or the disapproval
of friends. But the real issue that every
creature of God ought most to be concerned about, our relationship
to God. whether or not we're prepared
to stand before him, whether or not we are fit to enter the
world to come. By nature, we are as indifferent
and careless and blind and stupid as this poor jailer was at the
point that we find him in the narrative. If we are left at
the point that we find him, then it were better for us that we
had never been born. If we are never brought to ask
his question, rooted in the things that provoked him to ask it,
if we are simply like the jailer when we first meet him, all of
his concerns limited by this life, it were better for us that
we had never been born. Now, having said just a few things
about the man who asked the question, notice in the second place the
factors which provoked him to ask the question. And Luke, of
course, is not writing a detailed account such as would be demanded
in a criminal court. So the details are sketchy, but
there is enough in the passage to point in the direction of
an answer to the question, what factors awaken this careless,
indifferent man who's wrapped up in this world? What provoked
him to ask the question, sirs, what must I do to be saved? Well, I would suggest three things
combine to provoke him to ask the question. Number one, the
report he had probably heard about these men. Look back to
verse 16 in the chapter. It came to pass, Luke writes,
as we were going to the place of prayer, a certain maid, having
a spirit of divination, met us, who brought her master's much
gain by soothsaying. The same following after Paul
and us cried out, saying, These men are servants of the Most
High God, who proclaim unto you the way of salvation. And this
she did for many days. Can you imagine the public disturbance
this would create? Whenever Paul and his companions
are going to the appointed place of prayer, this demon-possessed
girl follows behind them, crying out, Notice, not just whispering,
but crying out. These men are servants of the
Most High God. These men proclaim a way of salvation. Well, that's not just a happening,
you know, that occurs every day, like the rising and setting of
the sun. And the scripture tells us this went on for many days.
So in all probability, this became common talk amongst people, and
the jailer probably had heard the report concerning these men
who had come to Philippi, who were proclaiming a way of salvation. They were servants of the Most
High God. They were not parroting all of
the pronouncements of pagan religion. They professed to be servants
of the Most High God. They were proclaiming the way,
or a way, of salvation. Keep that in mind now as we try
to wrestle with the question, what factors provoked him to
ask the question? the report of these men which
in all probability was heard especially after the demon was
cast out of the woman and it created such a stir but then
secondly the conduct of the men under great injustices could
not but have impressed this man, verses 19 to 24, when the masters
saw that the hope of their gain was gone, they laid hold on Paul
and Silas, dragged him to the marketplace, brought them to
the magistrates, then they beat them, and then this man, at that
point, comes into the picture, whether he actually saw the beating,
we do not know, but one thing we do know, when they handed
the prisoners over to him, as he had had prisoners handed over
to him many times, with their bodies beaten and bruised and
bloody. He had had this many times and
no doubt fully expected what he in most cases would have heard.
The cursings, the foul revilings of the captive to the captors. But nothing of this comes from
the lips of these men. These servants of the Most High
who proclaim a way of salvation, who have done nothing but deliver
this girl from the terrible commercialism of her owners and the bondage
to an evil spirit, they come before him beaten and bruised,
and their mouths are not full of cursing and bitterness. Their
mouths are full of no invectives. There is nothing in terms of
what he was used to. Now, you just can't take those
things, even if you're a hardened old Roman jailkeeper. and not
begin to wonder what in God's name makes these men tick. There's
something different about them. And furthermore, whether he was
there to actually see it, whether the report was brought back to
him, something of the conduct of these men as they were cast
into the inner prison and sing hymns of praise to God at midnight. So that's the second thing that
contributed to his asking the question. The report about these
men, verses 16 to 18, the conduct of the men under great injustice,
but then most of all, it was the manifestation of the power
of God recorded in verses 25 to 28. But about midnight, as they sang
and prayed, suddenly, verse 26, there was not an earthquake alone,
but a great earthquake. Not so that the superstructure
of the prison house shook, but the very foundation stones shook. It's one thing to have the roof
creak a little bit when there's a strong wind. That's hairy enough. But when that which is underneath
you begins to quake, then it's really getting spooky. And the
scripture is careful to record, it was a great earthquake, and
the very foundations of the prison house are shaken, and immediately
all the doors are opened, and everyone's bands were loosed.
The jailer, being roused out of sleep and seeing the prison
doors open, probably roused by the earthquake, drew his sword
and was about to kill himself. And then Paul says, we're all
here. Let me suggest this was a singular manifestation of the
power of God in two worlds. The external world and in the
moral, the internal world. The manifestation of the power
of God in the external world is very clear. The earthquake.
The dropping off of the chains from these men, whether the chains
in their sockets in the walls were loosed and they still had
them about their arms, or whether God performed another miracle
and actually caused them to be loosed from their hands, we cannot
say from the language. It simply says their bands were
loosed. I think in all probability. With
the shaking and the loosening of that whole structure, the
chains fell off from the walls. They were in that sense free
men, but with some of the chains still hanging about them. But
we cannot absolutize. The scripture is general in its
description. But here was a manifestation
of the power of God that bore no human explanation. This was
no form of trickery, this was no form of magic, no sleight
of hand. The rumbling of the very foundations
of the prison house, the throwing open of the doors. No human being
could do this. Here is a manifestation of the
presence and power of the God who is the Most High God, the
God of Paul and Silas. But then there is an internal
miracle in the moral world, where the prison door is wide open.
Paul was able to say, Sir, do thyself no harm, we're all here.
Well, what in the world is holding them there? If the prison doors
are open and their bands are loose, what's keeping those prisoners
from running out? And I believe that jailer got
the message. The God who shapes a Roman prison
is the God who can restrain men's hearts from doing the thing that
is most natural and native to those hearts. When prison doors
are thrown open and the guards not present, that's the time
for the prisoners to split. But Almighty God did an internal,
moral miracle in restraining them from what would be natural
to them. And when the jailer man sees
this, There is this confluence, this coming together of this
threefold influence. The report, he had heard about
these men that floated around, as it were, in suspension in
his mind. Something about the Most High God and their servants
of that God. Not one of the many gods that
I know about as a Roman pagan, but THE Most High God. They proclaim
a way of salvation. Well, that's fine for them if
that's your cup of tea, but I see no need to inquire after a way
of salvation. Servants of the Most High God,
way of salvation find. Then when those two men are actually
brought to the entrance of his jail and he sees their conduct
in the face of this injustice done to them, then it begins
to burrow itself a bit deeper. Servants of the Most High God
proclaiming a way of salvation. By the way they act is reflective
of something different. Conscience begins to be stirred
and yet he's still able to go off to sleep while the prisoners
listen and he snores. But then the shaking of the foundations
and he sees a manifestation of the power of the God who is most
high. And then he sees that moral miracle
of restraining the hearts. And now the issue bears down
upon him and breaks into the realm where he can no longer
treat it with indifference. He can no longer hold it as a
detached, occasional thought. that there might be a Most High
God, there might be a way of salvation. These may be servants
of the Most High God. All of it comes to sharp focus,
and the issues of God and sin and wrath and judgment are the
one burning reality. And what does He do? He comes
now before His very captives, and kneeling before them, cries
out, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? These, I suggest, are
the factors which provoked him to ask the question, and let
me say by way of application, as with that jailer, so with
us. A sovereign God does and can use a thousand means to awaken
a slumbering conscience and to bring men to see and to feel
the real issues of true importance. The last time we saw the jailer,
he was concerned about nothing but the world that now is. And
because of the circumstances that were breaking in upon him
in that world, he wanted to escape it into another world. Now, he
says, I'm not ready to enter that other world. I need to know
the way of salvation. Now, God's dealings with him
were both what we would call placid and quiet and also vigorous
and dramatic. There was the report about the
men. There was the sight of their conduct. Then there was the earthquake
and the restraining power of God. Now listen carefully. God
has a thousand instruments to bring men to this same place.
With some, he uses the gentle, gradual influence of a Christian
home, where the conscience of a boy or girl is made sensitive
almost from the dawning of consciousness that there is the Most High God
with whom they have to do, that there is a holy law, that there
is judgment, that there is a real hell of outer darkness, there
is a glorious heaven to be gained, So that though God never uses
an earthquake, and God never uses the dramatic, He brings
that child by degrees to the place where the issues of the
world to come, the issues of the relationship of the soul
to God, are the all-consuming issues with some God uses dramatic
strokes. There are parents of Christian
children who have seen those children with all those influences,
just as indifferent and careless as the jailer, until God broke
in with some dramatic intervention, sickness, death of an intimate
loved one, the frustration of a lifetime ambition. God has
a thousand instruments to awaken the conscience and to bring the
person to the place. And it's not important to ask
what instruments have been used, but to ask rather, have I been
brought to the place where I've asked that question in all earnestness? Have I been brought to the place
where one issue has burned its way into the depths of my being? What must I do? To be saved,
the sensual, the earthly, the temporal, though legitimate and
though perfectly right in itself, is no longer the beginning, the
middle and the end of my concern. I am concerned about the Most
High. I am concerned about the way
of salvation. Well, having looked at the man
who asked the question, what provoked him to ask it now in
the third place, and this is the heart of our study this morning,
What things does the question reveal? When he said, Sirs, what
must I do to be saved? What is he revealing? Let me
suggest, first of all, he's revealing a deep consciousness of guilt
arising from a sense of his sin. Now, the word saved, I'm fully
aware, can mean temporal deliverance or preservation from mere physical
harm. But remember, the physical danger's
gone. The earthquake is all over. So
he's not afraid of that. He's not asking, sirs, what must
I do to be saved physically from the walls? No, no, no. The earthquake
is over. Nor is he afraid of death. The
prisoners are all there. So when he said, sirs, what must
I do to be saved? It is evident on the one hand
from his circumstances and evident from the response of the apostle
that the word saved is to be taken in its highest, richest
biblical sense. Sir, what must I do to be delivered
from sin and its consequences? This God who shakes the earth
This God who restrains men's natural bias to flee when prison
doors are open, this God who makes men like you, Paul and
Silas, who can in the midst of injustice and personal abuse
and physical agony sing praises to God and have no words of vile
retort, this God is the Most High God. This God is the God
with whom I have to do. This God is the God against whom
I have revolted and I have sinned. Sirs, servants of the Most High,
who are known to declare unto men a way of salvation. Sirs, tell me that way of salvation. I am conscious of my guilt arising
from the sense of my sin. The conscience long slumbering
is now awake. The conscience that whispered
when this man broke the law of God, but the whisper was drowned
in his sensual earthly pursuits, now conscience no longer whispers. Conscience thunders and says,
Thou art the guilty sinner. Thou art unprepared to stand
before thy God. Oh, may I press upon your conscience
the question, have you ever asked his question? Because you've
been brought to a sense of your own guilt, not guilt that you
disobeyed mommy and daddy and therefore sinned against them,
disobeyed the norms and the mores of society and therefore sinned
against it. But has there come to your heart
a consciousness of guilt arising from a sense of sin, sin against
Almighty God? So that you can say with David,
Against thee and thee only have I sinned, and done that which
is evil in thy sight, to say with the prodigal, I will return
and say to my father, Father, I have sinned against heaven
and in thy sight. Oh, dear children, listen to
pastor this morning. Your sins are not sins against
Mommy and Daddy's standards and against the church. Your sins
are against God, the most high God, the God who makes Mommy
and Daddy live the way they live, the God who has manifested his
power before your very eyes in the transformation of lives.
Has it ever been brought home to your heart that you have guilt
arising out of your sin? But I suggest in the second place,
the question revealed not only a consciousness of guilt arising
from the knowledge of sin, but a consciousness of danger arising
out of that guilty condition. If the Roman authority will carry
out his threats, what about Almighty God? A few moments before, he's
ready to kill himself because he knows when Rome says, keep
the prisoners or you'll die. Rome means what it says. He's
come to the consciousness, God Most High has said, obey me or
die, and I've broken His laws, and with the sense of guilt comes
the sense of danger. And he's no longer afraid of
the Roman sword. He's afraid of the sword of the
Almighty. Pulling his own sword, he's about
to commit suicide. Now he falls before his very
captives and says, sirs, how can I have the sheath, the sword
of God sheathed. How can I be delivered from this
state? There was not only a glib acknowledgement,
oh yes, I'm a sinner and I've broken God's law. There was a
sense of danger arising from the guilt. And I suggest it was
this sense of danger, felt and owned, that produced the intense
and urgent activity. Look at the vigorous language
in verse 29. And he called for lights and he sprang in. He didn't say, oh, well, morning
will be coming and I'll just examine this question. No, sirree. When conscience became awakened,
it says he called for lights and he sprang in. And what did
he do? Look at the vigorous language.
And trembling for fear. It takes an awful lot to make
a Roman jailer tremble. He's seen a lot to harden him.
Now he's shaking. He's shaking in his boots. Furthermore,
look at the activity. He brings them out. He completely
forgets about the prisoners. He says, if God could restrain
them for the past ten minutes, He'll take care of them. I've
got business to take care of. It's a beautiful little descriptive
element. He brought them out. As though
he just said, let the prisoners take care of themselves. Let
God take care of them. There's something more important
than this. brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do to
be saved? And they give him a little capsule
answer. And then he says, look, this is too important to put
off till later. You folks come over to my house. And he rouses,
raises the whole household at this unearthly hour, probably
at least twelve, thirty, one o'clock in the morning. And he
says, we're going to have us a house meeting. We're going
to have preaching in this place one o'clock in the morning. Furthermore,
after preaching, he then takes them down wherever he took them
and washed them. And then he was baptized, and then he had
a feast, and all this between midnight and morning. I tell
you, this man's all business. There's an earnestness! There's
an urgency! And what was the spring of that
urgency? I submit, it was the consciousness
of danger! Someone came through the back
door in the next ten minutes, wild-eyed. And saying, I've planted
a bomb in this place and it's going to go off in five minutes,
if you believed him and the sense of danger gripped you, you wouldn't
sit here hoping the preacher would get done. You'd be quite urgent either
in seeing that he got done or in being totally rude and walking
out before he was done. If you're convinced the danger
is real, your activity will reflect an urgency And that's what happened
to this man. Oh, let me ask you this morning,
do you feel the danger arising from your guilt? Have you ever
felt the urgency of the danger of being an unconverted, unforgiven,
unsaved sinner? Now, you see, your sense of danger
doesn't change the reality of it. Listen, you kids, I've got
an illustration especially to make this real to you this morning.
Imagine a little girl who gets lost. She's straight away from where
she should be, and she gets lost out in the woods somewhere. And
nightfall is coming, and she's scared and doesn't know what
to do. But she sees a little cave. And so she figures, well,
at least I'll be safe in there. So she crawls into the little
cave and sobs herself to sleep, missing her mommy and praying
that God will help whoever's looking for her to find her.
And she goes sound asleep. And all the while she's sleeping,
just 15 feet away, there's a bear in that cave. Twenty feet away,
there's a whole nest of rattlesnakes. But she falls fast asleep, utterly
oblivious of the danger that's so near. She may even have wonderful
dreams that she's home in her mummy's arms, that she's in the
warmth of her own bed, and she sleeps like a baby, having her
wonderful dreams. And then with the first light
of morning, as she begins to awaken, The light begins to illuminate
the cave from its entrance. She sees 20 feet away a bear,
a few feet away a nest of rattlesnakes, and she's scared to death. She
freezes with fear. Now my question is this. Is she
in any more danger when she opens her eyes than she was when she
was asleep? Did her Opening her eyes and seeing the bear create
the danger, or did it simply make her aware of the danger
that was already there? You see the point? The danger
was there, wasn't it? Now, her opening her eyes and
seeing it didn't create the danger, it simply made her aware of the
danger. Now, imagine, of course she couldn't do this, but imagine
if she could. Suppose seeing the bear and the rattlesnakes,
she could force herself back to sleep and have wonderful dreams
about being home in her own bed. Would her dreams remove the real
danger that she's in, yes or no? Her dreams don't remove the
danger, and her safety is in facing the danger realistically
and fleeing the danger. My friend, you may sit here this
morning as a boy or girl, man or woman, and the bear of God's
anger against impenitent sinners is at your shoulder. And the
rattlesnakes of divine vengeance against impenitent sinners are
at your feet! And you're sound asleep, having
lovely little dreams. God is so sweet and so nice,
He never hurts any of His creatures. And I'm religious, and that,
my friend, I don't mean to be facetious, but I hope to shake
and shock you loose from your delusion. Those are nothing but
dreams! And I call upon you to awake,
what? Not to some figment of my imagination,
but to the reality of divine judgment against sinners. The
soul that sinneth, it shall die. Jesus Christ our Lord said, except
you repent, you will perish. You may leave this place this
morning. and find yourself rocked to sleep on the lap of some false
teaching called religion and Christianity that says there
is no hell and no judgment and no need of repentance in the
new birth, but my friend, your dreams and your sleep don't destroy
the bear and the rattlesnakes. And thank God this jailer woke
up to the world of reality and he said, look, that's a frightening
world of spiritual reality. I've sinned against the Most
High. I'm unprepared to meet him. What a fool that I came
within a hair's breadth of thrusting myself into the presence of an
angry God. And now the consciousness of
his guilt brought this intense awareness of danger. And then
thirdly, I suggest that his question reveals not only the consciousness
of guilt, the consciousness of danger, but the consciousness
of helplessness to alter the situation by himself. Look at
the wording. He came to Paul and Silas. He brought them out and said,
Sirs, what must I do to be saved? He does not turn aside and implore
his false gods. He knows that when his conscience
begins to be gripped with a sense of sin, he can get no help from
some God that he's made with his own hands. He says, these
are servants of the Most High God who teach a way of deliverance. I shall seek help from the messengers
appointed of God. And then the very way he phrased
the question, he did not say, sirs, what must I do to save
myself? He used a passive verb. What
must I do to be saved? I need someone to rescue me. What must I do to get in the
place of being rescued? My friend, you must ask a question
which reveals that you've also come to a conviction of your
helplessness to rescue yourself. You have guilt rooted in your
sin. You're in a place of danger because
of that guilt. And perhaps your danger is never
more great than when you think you can help yourself. Sirs,
what must I do to be saved? To have someone or something
lay hold upon me and purge my guilt and cleanse my sin and
make me fit for the world to come. I submit to you this morning
this is the most important question any man, woman, boy or girl can
ever ask. Thank God I had the joy this
week of having one of our own children of the congregation
sit in my study, coming to ask her pastor, what must I do to
be saved? And I've not been able to shake
the conviction that in asking that question, that young child
was asking the most important question that some of you, age
20, 30, 40, have never yet asked! You're asking stupid questions.
Where'd Cain get his wife? Did God create the world in sixth
literate? My friend, you better stop trifling
with the issues of your eternal soul of salvation. The question
you need to ask is, sirs, what must I do to be saved? Whether God brings you to ask
that question gradually by gentle dealings, by sudden arousals,
by inward or outward calamities, but it must be a question arising
out of the knowledge of your guilt, the sense of your danger
and the consciousness of your helplessness. But asking that
question does not save you. You'll never get saved unless
you ask it, but asking it doesn't save you. And God willing, next
week, I want to expound the answer, but I may not be here and you
may not be here. So I close with just pointing you to the words.
And they said, here's the most accurate answer to the most important
question. What did they say? And they said
they would be false, false physicians if they had said, well, you're
really all mixed up. You see, you really don't need
to be saved. You've just got some psychological hang-ups.
You've just got some guilt complexes. You've overestimated your problem,
Mr. Jailer Man. That's the abominable trash being
peddled in the name of Christianity. Nothing but psychology with a
word of scripture here or there, telling men you've got a little
guilt hang-up, a little maladjustment on your inside psyche. No, no,
they did not say you've overestimated your problem. When they said,
When he said, what must I do to be saved? They didn't say,
well, we've got to sit down and give you instructions for seven
weeks and we've got to tell you all the sacraments and we've
got to tell you you've got to be baptized and you've got to
do good works and you've got to join this church or that.
They didn't tell them that. What did they tell them? Well,
look at it. The most accurate answer ever given to that question.
And they said, you must believe. You must believe, that is, you
must rest wholly upon and look solely to another. That one spiritual
activity that takes us wholly out of ourselves in the direction
of another. They didn't say you must start
by loving God, serving God. They said you must believe. And
then they didn't say simply believe as though faith were the savior.
But they set forth the object of that faith. Believe on the
Lord Jesus. He said, Mr. Jailer man, you
must believe, but there must be a definite object to that
faith. It is the Lord of glory. It is
Jehovah manifested as Jesus of Nazareth, God's prophet, priest
and king. You must believe on the Lord
Jesus. And then they didn't put parenthesis,
plus his church, plus his people, plus his sacraments, but not
all. They said, believe on the Lord Jesus. And then they gave
a wonderful promise. And thou shalt be saved. Believing you are saved, Mr.
Jailer Man. Your hope is not in us. We are
but servants of the Most High. We do not point you to ourselves.
We do not even point you to the church, which we founded here
in Philippi, that began with the prayer meeting by a riverside.
We point you away from ourselves, away from yourself, and we point
you to Christ and Christ alone. My dear friends, it will be my
joy, God sparing us, to open up that passage next week, but
I can't wait till next week to tell you. That's the answer.
You must believe. This is the work of God that
you believe him whom he had sent. And you must believe on the Lord
Jesus, the Lord Jesus alone, the Lord Jesus in all the fullness
of his glory as the God man, as the only savior of sinners.
We do not ask you to believe in this church, join this church,
believe any other church. If you go out saying they're
terribly narrow, my friend, we're broad and we're narrow. Our command
is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ in all the magnitude of
the glory of his person and work. But you look anywhere else and
you'll destroy your soul. You'll damn your soul. Thou shalt
be saved only believing and believing only in the Lord Jesus Christ. The most important question any
man ever asked. Have you asked that question?
Have you asked it? with a real sense of the importance
of the question, with the urgency upon your spirit. My friend,
if you haven't, you're fast asleep in the cave having dreams that
are mere delusions. May God grant that you'll give
yourself no rest until that cry comes from your heart, sirs,
what must we do to be saved? And oh, dear people who can say,
yes, I've asked the question. Thank God I've heard the answer
and I found that it's true. Oh, can't you rejoice this morning
as you look back and see God didn't use an earthquake? What
did he use? Well, he used a transformed life that came across your path.
And you said, I don't know what makes that guy that gal tick,
but I'm going to find out. And you started coming under
the sound of the word and you found out it was Christ. For
some of you God had to shake you. You were so thick and so
dense God had to holler in your ear. Some of you God whispered. It makes no difference what means
He used. But He's brought you to ask that
question, hasn't He? And He's shown you the answer
in you, son. Rejoice. That's His work. And to Him and Him alone be the
praise. For by grace have you been saved
through faith. And that not of yourselves, it
is the gift of God, not of works, that no man should glory, for
we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus. And there's
a wonderful example of how the Lord does it. Has he does that
in you? If not, give him no rest until
you know that he has. Let us pray.