Acts chapter 16. Let's begin
reading in verse 16. Acts chapter 16 in verse 16. I was looking through some notes.
I don't know how many messages I've preached from this incident
here of the jailer, but I've preached so many messages. And
I'm still learning from it. So I want to call your attention
to that this evening. But I want to begin in verse
16. It came to pass as we went to prayer, A certain damsel,
possessed with a spirit of domination, met us, which brought her masters
much gain by soothsaying. The same followed Paul and us,
and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the Most
High God, which show unto us the way of salvation. And this
she did many days, but Paul being grieved, turned and said to the
Spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come
out of her. And he came out the same hour.
And when her master saw that the hope of their gain was gone,
they caught Paul and Silas and drew them into the marketplace
and to the rulers, and brought them to the magistrates, saying,
These men being Jews do exceedingly trouble our city. And they teach
customs which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to
observe, being Romans. And the multitude rose up together
against them, and the magistrates went off their clothes, and commanded
to beat them. And when they had laid many stripes
upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailer that
he should keep them safely. who having received such a charge,
thrushed them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast
in the stocks. And at midnight Paul and Silas
prayed, and sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard
them. 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 keepers
of the prison, awakening out of his sleep, and seeing the
prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed
himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried
with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm, we are all here. Then he called for a light, and
sprang in, and came trembling, and 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 in thy house. And they
spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to 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 straightway. And when he had brought them
to his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing
in God with all his house." This is one of my favorite incidences,
I think, one of them in the book of Acts. It's so instructive. Paul and Silas here, they were
called the servants of the Most High God. That's what this soothsayer
called them, and she was right about that. And she was right
in that they showed the way of salvation. And they beat them,
we're told here, severely beat them. Verse 23 said they laid
many stripes upon them. And when they told the jailer
to secure them, boy, he did that. He took that serious and had
no pity on them, no mercy whatsoever. And he thrushed them, it says
there. Thrushed them. That means he
just cast them. He literally threw them all the
way in the back of the prison. And that wasn't enough for him.
He made their feet fast in the stocks. Now imagine this guy.
He had no sympathy at all for these men. Thought nothing about
their blood running from their backs. Just cast them in there
and locked them down where they couldn't worsen their wound.
And there he went off and went to sleep. What an unconcerned
rascal this man was. And then our story here tells
us about midnight. About midnight. When, if you
and I had been in that city, we no doubt would have been sleeping,
wouldn't we? But these two men were praying and singing praises
to God. That's what my margin says. Instead of prayed and sang, they
were praying and singing to God. Now what does that tell us, brothers
and sisters? That tells us that this thing
of the Lord's power working in His people, that's not a myth. That's reality. Here these two
men were, were so severely beaten and locked down where they couldn't
even scratch and wipe their blood. And yet they were rejoicing and
singing praises to God and praying unto Him. I don't know what they
were saying. Maybe they were singing just
what we just sung. Maybe they were singing, I stand
amazed in the presence of Jesus of Nazarene and wonder how He
could love me. They were singing praises to
God. And that shows us that no matter what situation the Lord
may put us in, that we suffer, that there's no situation, but
He cannot rejoice our souls. All of us have read about the
martyrs, haven't we? You may have read Foxe's Book
of Martyrs or read some of the books back here that we have
in our little pamphlets about the saints suffering. And you
find that some of those people rejoiced while they burned them.
And praise God for it. And they had no sense of even
the pain. And we see that here. We see
that here. One of my favorite passages of
Scripture is found over in Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 16. I've
often quoted it to you, but turn over there with me and read this.
Look at this. Right here I think it's exactly
what had come upon these two men of the Lord in their dreadful
situation that they found themselves in. Look in Ephesians chapter
3 and look in verse 16, Paul had prayed for these people that
they might know this very thing, that He would grant unto you
according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with
might by His Spirit in the inner man. And that's what they were
doing. Their hearts were rejoicing because
the Spirit of God had so filled them in their hearts that no
matter what condition their body was in, they were rejoicing. They were rejoicing. At midnight,
they rejoiced and sang praises to God. And then here's what
happened. Here's what happened. It seems
to me like the Lord must have said something like this. You
know they've been calling me the Most High God. Let me give
them just a little illustration. Let me give them a little demonstration
just how mighty I am. So what does He do? He shakes
the very foundation of this prison. He shakes it! And it's the most
amazing thing because when He shook it, Though it was out of
all of their control, and you can see some of them being dashed
around because of this earthquake. But it wasn't a normal earthquake. It was a control shaken. This
is the most amazing thing because it says here the prison doors
were opened and all their bands were loose. Now have you ever
heard of an earthquake opening doors? You hear it turn doors
down and walls caving in, but you never hear it taking handcuffs
off of people, do you? What a control, shaking. And this is encouraging to us
too, isn't it? There's nothing happens in nature.
Sometimes we're scared to death of nature, but you know there's
nothing benign in nature. There's nothing there that can
hurt us. We don't have to be afraid of nature, what we call
nature, as we go through this world because our Lord created
it and He controls it, doesn't He? We don't have to be afraid
of it. I want you to turn to another place. Look over here
in Psalms chapter 46. David begins to imagine what
all could happen and if it did happen. You know, how would he
feel and how would he be safe if all of this catastrophe came?
His imagination just runs wild with him. Notice here in Psalm
46 how he says this. I love the way he begins with
it. Psalm 46, verse 1. God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in time of trouble. And then he imagines
this scenario. Look in verse 2. Therefore will
not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains
be carried into the midst of the sea? Now, if that happens,
where would that leave us? Can you imagine such a thing?
You see the mountains flying through the air, and they're
going out into the sea, and the earth being shaken and moved?
What would happen to us? Well, he goes on in verse 3,
Though the waters thaw, roar and be troubled, though the mountains
shake with the swelling of these being torn down and cast into
the sea. Well, he says, there is a river.
There is a pure river of life and grace. The stream whereof
shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacle
of the Most High. God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God shall help her and that right
early. See the comfort He takes? Imagine
the worst scenario that you can. And then bring God right down
in the midst of it. And say, It's all so under His
control. In Him, I have a refuge. Nothing
is going to touch me. When heaven and the earth moves
away, in God is my refuge. And then He says on in verse
6, He imagines something else. The heathen rage The kingdoms
were moved. He uttered His voice and the
earth melted. Then He goes right back to this.
The Lord of Hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge,
Salih. Come, behold the works of the
Lord, what desolations He has made in the earth. He makes wars
to cease until the end of the earth. He breaketh the bowl,
He cutteth the spears and sundered. He burneth the chariot into fire.
Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the heathen.
I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge. And when that prison was shaken,
and the doors were flying open, and some may have been screaming
and trembling, the Apostle Paul and Silas basically said this, God is our refuge. And though
He shake this prison down, we're safe. We're safe. That's a wonderful thought, isn't
it? Such a wonderful thought. I don't know what I'm going to
face and you don't know what you're going to face. Some of
us this time next week or next month may be laying in a room
and all we can hear is these machines around us keeping us
alive, as it were. What are we going to think then?
This is the Lord. He may shake us, but He'll be
a controlled shaking one, and He'll control it. And here in verse 27, this jailer,
he wakes out of his sleep, and he saw what was happening, and
he was ready to kill himself. He said to you that he drew out
his sword and would have. would have killed himself. And
Paul stopped him and said, ìDo yourself no harm. Weíre all here.î
And boy, this man changed his attitude real quick. He changed
his whole tune. It says that he called for a
light and he came in trembling and he fell down before them
and says, ìSirs.î Boy, this word means lords, masters. And he asked him this question.
He asked him this question. What must I do to be saved? Well, don't you wish you could
run into more people? And he didn't ask the question,
What shall I do that I may have eternal life? That wasn't the
question he was asking. He said, I'm a lost man. I feel myself under God's judgment.
I'm an awful sinner. I'm guilty. What must I do to
be saved? That's what he was asking. He
wasn't asking anything physically. He wasn't talking about being
saved from the prison. They were outside the prison
now. He wasn't talking about what can I do to be saved from
the civil government. He says all the men are here.
This earthquake wasn't his fault. It didn't have anything to do
with physical or being saved from the Roman government. He wanted to know. what he could
do. What must I do to save my poor
soul? I'm lost. I'm lost. He was in
spiritual trouble. He was in spiritual danger. His
soul was lost in sin away from God and he knew it and now he
wants to know how can I be saved? How can I be saved? It was evident
that that's what he was asking because of the answer. Look at
the answer in verse 31. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. Not from temporal danger, but
from spiritual danger. Your soul. What brought this
man to such a knowledge and such a reality of his condition? Did you ever think about that?
What brought this man there? Well, we could consider different
things. Maybe it was how he treated God's
servants. Maybe when this earthquake started,
he thought, man, look how I've treated God's servants. This
is the servant of the Most High God, and what I think of them
is what I've thought of Him. And then he may have said, man,
I'm lost. That could have been. Maybe it
was because he saw the power of God here shaking this prison,
and he thinks to himself, God is angry with me because of my
sins. It could have had something to
do with that. Maybe it was because he was closer to taking his life,
and Paul stopped him. And he realized suddenly to himself,
man, if I'd have killed myself, I'd have perished. But really, the question we should
ask ourselves is this, not what brought him to this knowledge,
but who? That's the main thing to ask.
When a person knows themselves to be lost, who's brought them
there? That's the work of God, isn't
it? God had begun a work in this man's heart. There have been
people that's been faced with great danger and death. They
never realized they were lost. As a matter of fact, they died
not knowing. God can use means to open a person's
understanding, to give them the knowledge of their sad and dangerous
condition, or He can do it without using any means. He can come
to a man's conscience by his spirit and show him that he's
lost. He that rules the regions of
the sea, plants his footsteps in the storm, He can do that,
can't He? Because He's mighty. He's mighty. Who taught Him that He was lost?
God did. God did. I wish He'd teach more
of that in our day, don't you? I do wish he'd do that. That's
my prayer. Oh, God, teach. We just get up,
and I just get up here and rap and rave and, you know, try to
tell people, and you can't get people to listen. They sit and
listen, but they don't hear in their heart. And what we pray
is, Oh, God, would you open the understanding. I'll just make
them mad. I can just keep on pressing,
pressing, pressing, make them mad. But you can open the heart. And then they'll cry out, Bruce,
what must I do? What must I do? And the answer
here is in verse 31. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and you shall be saved. Now Paul wasn't saying believe
merely historically that God sent His Son. and that He came
and lived a holy life and died a vicarious death and rose again
and He's in heaven. It's not just believing that
from that historical perspective because I believed that all my
life. I was taught that all my life. But when He says here,
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, it means
this. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
to the saving of your soul. Look to Him alone by the eye
of faith for your salvation and for your life. It is to wholly
rely upon Him and trust Him to save our immortal souls by His
grace, by His power, and for His own name's sake. It is to give up ourselves to
Him and expect pardon and peace and righteousness and life from
Him. It's a complete heart reliance
upon Jesus Christ as your salvation, as your all in all before God. You know that's so difficult
to do that you can't do it apart from grace. One of the most difficult
things I've come to in my life was to truly trust Jesus Christ.
to give my soul up to Him. That's a difficult thing, isn't
it? If you had a million dollars
and you went down in the morning and put it in a safety deposit
box, would it be a difficult thing to put that money in there
and lock it up and walk away? You've got a million dollars
cash. Would that be difficult? I bet it'd be more difficult
than you imagine. You'd probably have all these
thoughts. What if somebody breaks in here? What if this place burns
down? What if this? What if that? And
you'd be turning around and getting that back out and putting it
in your pocket and taking it with you. I've got to trust myself with that.
I don't trust this place. That's the way a man is with
the Lord Jesus Christ. Your soul becomes precious and
to go to leave it with Him to save, cast it upon Him to secure
it for all eternity, it takes grace. It takes grace. And the more you're convinced
that He's able to save you, and willing to save you, the quicker
you'll do it. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. Well, we got ourselves into trouble
by sinning against God, but we can't get ourselves out of trouble.
We can't. Salvation is in somebody outside
ourself, isn't it? And this is what Paul is talking
about. He said, buddy, listen, you're in trouble. You're ready
to perish and you're beginning to feel it. And the only way
you can be saved is by this glorious person outside of yourself who
is in heaven. Believe upon Him. Believe the
record that God gave of His Son. Believe in Him and you'll be
saved. Boy, that's easy. That's easy. And I'm glad it's
plain and easy. But you can't do it apart from
grace. Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief. Look unto
me and be ye saved. For I am God, and there is none
else. There is no other Savior. And
these holy men of God, if there had been another way to save
oneself, they would have told this man. But they said there
is only one way. Believe in Jesus Christ the Lord,
and you shall be saved. So there is the question, and
there is the answer, isn't it? What must I do? Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. And here's the effects
of it all in verse 34. And when he had brought them
into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing
in God with all his house. For God to truly save a man and
let that man know it, it would be strange if he didn't rejoice
with it. That would be strange. To find out that all your sins
are forgiven and not rejoiced? To find out that you're not lost
anymore? To find out that God's not angry
with you? Why, you can't help from rejoice,
can you? He rejoiced with all His house. I'm saved. The Lord has saved me. In a way
that I've never dreamed, He saved me. He's forgiven all my sins. He's given me life eternal. Oh,
He rejoiced. He rejoiced. If you realize this evening,
dear soul, that there's nothing between you and God. I mean nothing. There's nothing. Christ has answered
it all. He's taken it all. Wouldn't that
rejoice your heart? That would rejoice you. And nothing. Nothing will unfix
your destiny. He saved. The Lord has saved
me. And well, let me say it like this. I've told you about this
incident. I was talking with a dear friend of mine at a Bible
conference one time. We were talking about what a
mess everything's in. And he just come up out of the
blue and he said, now this business of salvation, he says, you're
not going to mess that up. You're not going to mess that
up. And he says that's one of the things that's so wonderful
about salvation. You can't mess it up. Makes you rejoice, doesn't it?
Oh, everything has been fixed. Everything is settled. Grace
has begun in my soul and heaven will be won at last. It's fixed.
He rejoiced. And you know, it's still sometime
after midnight and they still haven't got sleepy. And something
else I was noticing here I thought was somewhat important. The Presbyterian, some of the
covenant theology tells us that they used this place and Lydia
being baptized in water that it babies, infant baptism. All that were in his house and
they just jumped to the conclusion that there were babies there.
But if you read this very closely, when Paul went into the house,
it said he taught the Word to all that was in the house. And
then this man believed in God with all his house. Now here's
the thing about infants. You go up to a little three-months-old
infant and preach the gospel to him if you want to. But I
can almost assure you He has no idea what you're saying. And
when you're finished, He won't believe what you're saying. But
these heard the Word and they all believed. They must have
been adults or young people, no infants. This does not teach
infant baptism, does it? It just teaches us the marvel
of what God was doing in those days and still can do, saving
a whole house in one night. That's amazing, isn't it? And
you know He's done that since then. And I hope He does that
to some of us. I hope all your kids are here.
He saved both of your boys. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Saved
your whole house. That'd be wonderful. Be wonderful. He says here in verse 33 and
verse 34 that He brought them into His house. He brought them
into His house. Boy, it seemed like there was
something in the early church that when they opened their hearts,
when Christ said, I must abide at your house, boy, they opened
their hearts. They opened their house, didn't
they? They opened their houses. Lydia, when she professed the
Lord during this chapter, she said, Come to my house. Come
to my house and eat. And they didn't want to go. They
didn't want to impose, and she constrained them. Come to my
house. And this fellow here, he took them into his house.
That's amazing. And washed their stripes and
fed them. And when the Lord Jesus comes
into our hearts, it ain't just our hearts that we give to one
another. It's our houses. And what we
have, we give to Him. Let's sing 491.