Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. That's taken from this story
here in Acts 16. It's the story of how Paul and
Silas were beaten and then put in prison at Philippi. And then
some events that we'll look at here in a moment take place that
prompt this Philippian jailer to ask an important question.
And in response to that question, in verse 31, Paul and Silas give
this answer. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. Now think of that. Think of what
a declarative, definitive statement that is. That is that it's speaking
first of all of eternal salvation, of being saved from sin and its
consequences. So we're talking about issues
of eternity, heaven and hell. And it's very important here.
And he's saying that that makes it, I should say, incumbent upon
us to understand clearly what is meant by believing on the
Lord Jesus Christ, for therein is a certain assurance, a certain
evidence of one who is saved. Let me, by way of introduction,
just talk about that. We're talking about subjective
faith this morning. That is, believing. And not all
faith, as we know from the scripture, from testimony throughout the
epistles, not all faith would give evidence that one is indeed
safe. No, we have genuine God-given
faith. And I want to suggest to you
that we know what is genuine God-given faith because there's
a consistency about it. And that consistency is found
in God's Word. Likewise, there's another category,
and there's all shapes and sizes and forms of that false faith. That is, a believing in something. But the nature of that faith
is such that it would not give evidence that one is saved. And I want to suggest to you
there's a consistency about all that large category of false
faith, and the consistency is that it's consistent with the
notions of fallen natural man. In other words, it's a faith
that we all initially embark upon when we get an interest
in religious things. If you think about it, If we
just consider that the scriptures describe us all as dead in trespasses
and sin, that faith is set forth as a revelation from God, that
suggests something is revealed that we previously did not know.
In other words, we discover that the way that would seem right
to us, but leads in death, as the writer of Proverbs put it,
was altogether wrong. And so we see then that we all,
when we first get an initial interest in religion, we will
lean toward our natural, fallen, sinful persuasions. And I think
you'll see that, even typified in the story, this pattern of
conversion that we see here with the Philippian jailer. So how
are we going to know? We're going to look for that
this morning, that it's consistent with God's Word, rather than
consistent with our own notions of natural fallen man. So look
with me in verse 25 of Acts chapter 16. There we read, And at midnight
Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God, and the prisoners
heard them. Now they had been beaten and
thrown in jail prior to this. And then we read in verse 26,
And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the
prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors
were opened, and everyone's bands were loosed. And the keeper of
the prison, apparently having been careless and had fell asleep,
says, The keeper of the prison, awaking out of his sleep, and
seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and he
would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled.
But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm, for
we are all here. We haven't fled. Then he, the
jailer, called for a light, and he sprang in, and he came trembling,
and he 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 Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy
house. And he took them the same hour
of the night, and he washed their stripes, that is, where they
had been beaten, and was baptized, he and all his, straightway.
And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before
them and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house." Let
me just point out a few things here. from this story. First
of all, I want you to notice that an interest is providentially
stirred up here in one whom God will reveal Jesus Christ to so
that he might believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Here it was
an earthquake. His ground was shaking pretty
badly. Something God providentially brought some events about that
led this Prisoner I mean this jailer to come and and gain an
interest in Eternity and I say that for the indifferent for
any who just really? Likes to put this out of their
mind again. We're talking about eternity
And I don't know God I pray that God this morning for someone
who hears this message that he'll stir up an interest in And then
I want to point you down at the nature of the question. I'm going
to spend a little time here in verse 30 when he says, What must
I do to be saved? The literal Greek translation
of that question shows that this is actually a good translation.
It is what is necessary for me to do that I may be saved. Now, that's a good question.
You see, it's a good question in this sense because it shows
an interest in the things of eternity. Someone must become
interested if they're to hear anything. But we will find that
it will only prove to be a fruitful inquiry, so to speak, if one
properly understands and heeds the information that's given
here in this answer. I want to suggest to you there's
an underlying preposition or presupposition, I should say,
in this question, a premise, an assumption that is made. And
that assumption is this, that there is something that I can
do in order to be saved. You know, many questions are
like that. I think before the service, I asked Bill if he was
feeling better. Well, that question has an assumption,
and that is that I rightly understood that he wasn't feeling so well
earlier. And so it's not uncommon for
there to be an assumption included in any question that we might
ask. And I want to suggest to you
that this question asked by this jailer is as natural to fallen
man as just taking a breath. While something happens in our
life, perhaps we're faced with our own mortality. And we say,
you know, I need to get serious about this eternity thing. I
want to go to heaven. That's forever and ever and ever.
And so what do we first do? We say, okay, I need to figure
out what I need to do to get there. You see, it's just natural. We begin our journey, our religious
journey, with that assumption in mind. Now I want us to look
at the nature of the answer in verse 31, though, that Paul and
Silas give, when they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
thou shalt be saved. I want to declare to you that
this answer here is one that is given to correct the assumption
rather than confirm it. You see, when there's an assumption
included in a question that is asked, The answer always does
one or the other. It provides information, but
it does so, and relevant information, but it does so by either correcting
that assumption by way of contrast with a question or it confirms
it in a complement or complementary to that question. So, and I may
beat this to death, but the reason is is the vast majority of so-called
Christianity, and I mean vast majority, misunderstand this
little point right here. They've got this wrong. They
believe that Paul and Silas, and most of us would start out
imagining that as well, that they're giving this jailer the
answer to what he needs to do. I'm an avid quail hunter, and
if some of you were talking with me about my hobby, And you said,
Randy, what kind of tree do quail build their nest in? Well, that
question would carry an assumption that quail, like many other birds,
build their nest in trees. And if I answered live oaks,
well, I would be giving an answer that confirmed your assumption
while providing you the relevant information. But I'd be lying
to you. For as many of you know, that's
just not the case. But if you ask that question,
you said, Randy, what kind of tree do quails build their nest
in? And I said, they nest on the ground. You see, I gave you
the answer. I gave you relevant information
that you needed. But I corrected the assumption
that quail build their nest in trees. Maybe a better example
would be if Susan and I held a dinner party and we invited
you to come. And you said, Randy, what would you like for us to
bring? And I said, it's being catered. Well, I've corrected the assumption
that you think I want you to bring something. But I'm telling
you, oh no, it's all been done. It's finished. It's over with. And I want to suggest to you
that's exactly what Paul and Silas were telling this jailer
when he asked, what must I do to be saved? He's saying, oh,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That is, you need to, if nothing
you can do, you look to what He did. And I think that is so
critical for us to understand. I said that there's a consistency
with God-given faith, a consistency with the Scriptures. And when
I started preparing this message, frankly, I think we could spend
a year on this subject. I realized I couldn't go all
over the scriptures, but I'll give you this just very one simple
thing that points out the folly that we all as just born as blind
sinners, that is unable to behold the things of God, how foolish
our thinking was and how foolish the thinking of the vast majority
remains. When you just consider that most
of Christendom, like us, they read the passages, Ephesians
2, 1, where he says, you have to be quickened who were what?
Dead in trespasses and sin. They agree that when Christ said
to Nicodemus, you must be born again, that we must be granted
spiritual life, that we are spiritually speaking dead while physically
alive when we first come into this world. Now, if you think
about this, if one says, well, I must do something in order
to be saved. It's no different than if you
walked into a funeral home during visitation and a corpse was laying
in the casket and someone in their distraught grief was sitting
there looking at the corpse and they were saying, breathe. Breathe
and live. Breathe and live. And if you
were a loved one or a friend, you might stand to the side and
say, oh, this is sad. Don't they realize there's nobody
there? They're dead. They're gone. That
person can't hear them. You see, they don't have ears
to hear. They don't have eyes to see.
And it's just as foolish for us to, on one hand, acknowledge
that sinners are dead, spiritually dead. That is, physically, everyone
who hears this message can hear with their physical ears. But
the Scriptures make it clear that none can hear apart from
God-given ears to hear and eyes to see that accompany the very
spiritual life that He gives in the new birth. And so, how
foolish is it that we would tell someone who's dead, here's what
you need to do as if they could do something in order to be saved. As Christ said in John 6, 44,
no man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me.
Drawing. So it shows that the nature of
believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, it's not a matter of something
you do in order to obtain life, but rather having life given
to you in Christ. It's a matter of revelation.
He's revealed to you that you might trust in him. and trust
in Him alone, in His doing and not your own. There's some other
things I'd like to point out here from the immediate context
of Acts 16. You know, that some might think,
well, that sounds somewhat mystical. Will I just feel that suddenly
I have life and then know that? No. We see here that God is a
God of means. Look with me in verse 32. Notice
that right after they gave that answer, and said, Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. That is, rely
on him, on another, trust in another. He says in verse 32,
it reads, And they spake unto him the word of the Lord. You
see, that was the gospel, the good news of how God saves sinners. The gospel, in Romans 1, 16 and
17, we're told, Wherein the righteousness of God is revealed. Speaking
of Christ, His doing, His perfect satisfaction. Revealed from faith
to faith. You see, from that objective
body of truth to our subjective believing. Showing that righteousness
and faith are not one and the same. But what I want you to
see here is this word of the Lord. You see that they speak
to this jailer. On the surface, one might very
well naturally imagine that when Paul and Silas said, Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, that they were confirming the assumption
made in the question, and they were giving him the thing to
do. And yet, we see here, God did not, through Paul and Silas,
leave this Philippian jailer in his false assumptions. No,
he went on and revealed something because he spake the Word of
the Lord. And when we talk about Paul speaking the Word of the
Lord, this is the same Paul who said in 1 Corinthians 2, 2, I
determine not to know anything, save, that means anything but
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. So we know therefore, for that's
to preach the gospel. That is, for in the gospels where
Christ is revealed, where we see who God is as we see Christ
and what He accomplished in doing what? Establishing righteousness.
Righteousness and perfect satisfaction to God's justice. And thereby,
He's distinguished from all counterfeits. Now, you know, we may take this,
this seems like a very simple message, and you know, for those
of you whom God has revealed Himself to in the Lord Jesus
Christ, it is, but it's a glorious thing. And we don't tire of hearing
it. Because you see, this is the
word of regeneration. God uses the means of his preached
gospel in the hands of the Holy Spirit to save them that believe,
the scriptures tell us. In Romans 10, verses 13 and 14, Consider how this is restated.
Actually, this same phrase, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and
thou shalt be saved, we have other declarations that show
that they are synonymous. These other ways of putting it
are synonymous with what Paul and Silas said here. For example,
in Mark chapter 16, in the Great Commission, our Lord told his
disciples, go into the world and preach the gospel, and they
that believe and are baptized shall be saved. Believe what? The gospel. They that believe
not shall be damned." And here in Romans 10, he said, "...for
whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."
That is Christ as he's identified. That would be contrary to, I
think it's 1 Corinthians, to the church at Carramp anyway,
when Paul said, beware. Do not be deceived. They'll come
preaching another gospel. And he said, and another Jesus. You see, most versions of false
faith among those who call themselves Christian, there's a connection
with Jesus Christ. Their gospel is about Jesus Christ. But I want to suggest to you,
I want you to see the distinctiveness today of the gospel so that we
rightly understand what it really means to believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ so that we might distinguish it from any other
counterfeit, another Jesus. And Paul goes on there in Romans
10 and verse 14, he says, Then how then shall they call on him
in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe on
him in whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without
a preacher? In Psalms 119, the psalmist twice
made this statement towards God. He said, Thy word hath quickened
me, made me alive. You see, when Paul and Silas
here spake the word of the Lord, they spoke in the gospel messages
the very words of regeneration when applied by God's Spirit
to the heart of the sinner for whom Christ lived and died, for
he purchased that life for them in his death on the cross. His
work by word hath quickened me." That's why it's called in Romans
1 the power of God unto salvation, this gospel itself. In 1 Corinthians
1.21 we read, "...for after that in the wisdom of God the world
by wisdom," that is, by man's natural persuasion, his assumptions,
He knew not God. It pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. So what a blessing to
hear this word that's preached from this pulpit week in and
week out. It's a word of reconciliation
that in the hands of God the Holy Spirit is the very distinct
message of how God saves sinners that he uses to bring his people
to life. He uses means. The word so here
that reveals him is mentioned in spoke to the jailer in verse
32 is the gospel. And we know that that gospel
wherein Christ's righteousness is revealed is the word that
they delivered. And we know that also by the
immediate context. So let's consider that. If you
go on down through the rest of Acts 16, you'll see Paul and
Silas were released from prison. And then as we begin chapter
17, immediately after that we read, Now when they had passed
through in Thitholis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where
it was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul, as his manner was,
This is the Paul who determined not to know anything among you
save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Now, as his manner was, he went
in unto them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of
the Scriptures. Now, if Paul has a consistency
to his message that involves preaching Christ and Him crucified,
then we can rest assured that when he reasoned with them out
of the Scriptures here in verse 2, that it was the same reasoning
they gave to that Philippian jailer when he spake the word
of the Lord to him. And he tells us here though,
specifically in verse 3, what that reasoning was all about.
When it says, "...opening and alleging that Christ must needs
have suffered, and risen again from the dead, and that this
Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ, I brought a message
not too long ago from Mark, the book of Mark, where Christ was
teaching his disciples and it said, he began to teach them
how he must needs be rejected to suffer, to die, and to rise
again. And you remember, like the tendency
of all of us by nature, Peter says, oh no, that's not fitting
for you. Christ said, get thee behind
me, Satan. Now, you see here, Paul is not telling, he's not
reasoning with them that Christ died, suffered, died, and rose
again. No, he's reasoning with them
that he must need to die and rise again. You see, he's reasoning
with them about the very necessity of that. The literal Greek translation
of verse 3 is this here it said there in verse 2 the reason with
him out of the scriptures Opening and setting forth that the Christ. There's a definite article there
it behooved to have suffered and to have risen from among
the dead and that this is the Christ Jesus whom I announced
to you and It's almost as if Paul is saying, I believe he
is saying, this Jesus, not another that he warned the church at
Corinth to beware of, it behooved, he said it behooved him. You
know, that word as we saw in the book of Mark, same thing
when Christ was telling them how he must need, means that
it was fitting. Unlike Peter's rebuke, it was
fitting. It was what, you see, it's what
he came to do. Jesus Christ came into this world
to die as a substitute, a representative for sinners. And that word behooved
also carries with it the connotation of absolutely necessary that
this take place. Now I want to suggest to you
to have this assumption confirmed rather than corrected that there
is something we can do to be saved. That's the religion of
works, of salvation, a condition some way, some degree, on you
the sinner, some requirement you meet. And I want to suggest
to you that that denies what Paul was reasoning with them
out of the scripture. It denies the necessity that
he live and die. You see, it makes what Christ
did, perhaps maybe at best, some sort of prerequisite but more
or less just the body of truth because you see the thing that
really matters if you get this if you fall for this assumption
that we all start out on it causes you to imagine that what really
makes the difference is your believing it's that simple rather
than what you're trusting in so though I when I was blind
spiritually dead I would have said, no, it's absolutely necessary
that Jesus lived and died. But you see, the only reason
I really thought it was necessary was because I believe the Bible
was true and the Bible said that Christ had come to live and die.
But there was nothing about where my hope was placed. about this
good news of the gospel that necessitated it. If this Bible
had stated, hypothetically, which it could not, but if it did,
that there was some other body of truth, that if I would just
believe it, this is what you have to do, Randy, in order to
be saved, it would have done no damage, see, to my scheme,
my plan of salvation, the way that seemed right to me, but,
oh, was a way that would lead to death. You see, it makes what
Christ accomplished. First of all, doesn't the scripture
say that if righteousness come by the law, by your deeds of
the law, your acts, didn't Christ die in vain? It really makes
what he did fruitless. He didn't accomplish anything.
But you see, your faith, your believing, cannot satisfy God. And as we've established from
Romans 1, Faith and righteousness are not the same thing. Faith
is a revelation, as it's described there. And that righteousness
in the gospel is revealed to a sinner, he said, from faith
to faith. So that sentence alone says,
well, righteousness and faith are two different things. And
yet if you think about it, and most people would understand
that, yet if we think that believing, Any who think that believing
forms any part of the cause or ground, rather than being a fruit
and effect of what Jesus Christ alone purchased for them, you
see, that's what they've done. They've put faith, their believing,
in the place of righteousness. That which Jesus Christ alone
could and did accomplish. The righteousness that He said
He came to do. as we heard alluded to in the
10 o'clock hour when he said, I came to fulfill the law. Every
jot and tittle. And he said, except your righteousness
exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees
put together the most moral, religious, admired folks of their
day, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now,
if you imagine that by your believing, You do so in order to be saved. If you misunderstand this question,
then you're believing, first of all, must have taken place
from the cradle to the grave, which would deny all the scripture
that says we must be born again. And not only that, there better
not be one ounce of doubt or wavering if you're going to base
your hope on the fact that you believe something that other
people didn't believe. You see, for he goes on through
the end of chapter 5 of the Sermon on the Mount, and he says, this
is just how far that righteousness must exceed that of the scribes
and Pharisees. Be ye therefore perfect, as we
heard in the earlier hour, even as your Father which is in heaven
is perfect. Only what Christ did can satisfy a holy God, for
he required perfect obedience. And Christ came as a representative
and a substitute to do that for his sinners, who transgressed
the law. And so therefore, a just God
must extract the penalty. So he must bear their sins. And what did God do? He graciously
took a people, gave them to Christ, all for the honor of His glory.
And Christ bore their sins. for God judicially accounted
them, put them upon the Lord Jesus Christ. He who knew no
sin was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. In the same way that he died
for sins he had no part in producing, but he really died. So that amputation
was for real in the same way We're declared righteous based
on a righteousness we have no part in producing. The very demerit
of the sinner whom God chose before the world began charged
to a substitute who could get the job done. The only one who
could ever walk on this earth in perfect obedience and the
only one who shed blood would be of value enough to pay the
penalty due to a holy God. My goodness, it's good news. Well, in closing, as we look
back at our text, I do believe we have a picture of conversion
that we can glean some things from. First of all, God does
get the attention of those that he brings to faith, that he reveals
Christ to in the gospel. And I pray that that's what he
will do, that he will shake someone's ground who may hear this message
that he'll bring them out of a state of indifference. And
then secondly, I want you to note that something I kind of
skipped over there in verse 28. When Paul, when that jailer saw
that the chain that fell off the prisoners and he'd been sleeping,
he pulled out his sword and he was going to kill himself. And
Paul said in verse 28, do thyself no harm. Now I want to suggest
to you that as evidenced by the presupposition, the assumption
made in the question he asked in verse 31, that's exactly what
we will do when we're stirred up to an interest in eternal
things unless God intervenes and causes us. We'll do ourselves
harm if we cling to that notion that salvation is somehow conditioned
on me, on my believing. rather than believing on, trusting
and relying in the doing and the dying of another. But there's
good news here. There's a word of encouragement
for all who hear this message this morning. As we read earlier,
how shall they call on Him in whom they've not believed? How
shall they believe on Him in whom they've not heard? And this
day, all who hear this message, you're privileged. You're hearing
with the physical ear for sure. All are hearing with the physical
ear. that of Christ as He revealed in the gospel wherein that righteousness,
His work is revealed. A work which necessitated His
suffering and death. You see, for there is no other
way that God could be just and still justify a sinner apart
from the perfect obedience unto death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The gospel has been brought forth today as it often is from this
pulpit. And we should be thankful for
that. You know, the gospel that calls men to do what? The scripture
says, look unto Jesus as the author and finisher of our faith. Not some act of believing a body
of truth that adds to it. In other words, it's not something
that's enhanced by you, the sinner. What he did in establishing righteousness. It's not something that's appropriated
by you, the sinner. That's not the picture of God-given
faith in this book. It's not something procured by
you, but we're talking about a salvation that's been procured
by the Lord Jesus Christ, finished at the cross of Calvary, and
appropriated to the sinner by God's judicial reckoning, accounting
of it. to the sinner, for every one
of those sinners for whom he lived and died, so that he might,
just as those sins were accounted to him, that he could bear them
on the tree. So in God-given faith, we see how he must needs
have suffered and rose victorious, and we rejoice in the certainty
of salvation, certainty of it. found then and there. It cannot
fail for our trust is in a work that was finished and at which
God declared was effective. He must need suffered and risen. You see, righteousness demands
life. And he arose from that grave,
testifying to us, as Acts chapter 17 tells us, that God's given
assurance to men everywhere. That got the job done. For grace
reigns through righteousness, Romans 5.21, unto eternal life. You see, He arose and Christ
said, All those that you gave me, Father, I'm going to raise
them up at the last day. And that same resurrection power,
based upon that righteousness, and based on that same righteousness,
God, as a fruit and effect, gives eternal life to all those whom
He represented, whose sins He bore, and spiritual life in each
successive generation, that more than just with the physical ears,
that we might embrace this. We see what is so obvious to
many of you now, but just recall how blind we all were to it at
one point in time. And thank God that He opened
our eyes and our ears and drew us, drew our hearts to a love
for this truth. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved.