New
Testament
Lesson
Acts 16:16-34
16 One
day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who had a
spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by
fortune-telling. 17 While
she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most
High God, who proclaim to you a way
of salvation.” 18 She
kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to
the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And
it came out that very hour.
19 But
when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul
and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. 20 When
they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men are
disturbing our city; they are Jews 21 and are
advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” 22 The crowd
joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their
clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. 23 After
they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered
the jailer to keep them securely.24 Following
these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet
in the stocks.
25 About
midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the
prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly
there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were
shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were
unfastened. 27 When
the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and
was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. 28 But
Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” 29 The
jailer called
for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas.30 Then he
brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 They
answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32 They
spoke the word of the Lord to him
and to all who were in his house. 33 At the
same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his
entire family were baptized without delay. 34 He
brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire
household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
Has anyone here ever been to Stone
Mountain in Georgia ?
It is a giant granite mountain, made
famous by the fact that on the face of the mountain is a giant carving of the
three horsemen of the Confederate apocalypse – General Lee, General Jackson and
President Davis.
Years ago I lived in the Atlanta area and very
often my wife and I would walk up that mountain about once every other month or
so. It was good exercise and the hiking
trails were safe and clean.
If you ever visit Stone
Mountain you will notice that people have taken the liberty of
making their own carving into the granite hiking trails. There are all sorts of messages.
Some are very interesting!
There were phrases like – “Betty Lou
was here, 1955.”
Or “Bob loves Ann, 1909”
And “Alice loves Robert.”
But along that trail there was one
particular bit of graffiti that stands out among the rest. On a rock higher than the others, so high
that you know whoever carved it went to a great deal of trouble to make it
visible to anyone on the trail, words carved so deep that you can put your
fingers into the letters...all the way up to your knuckles. The letters are carefully and artistically
designed.
They are the words... “Jesus Saves.”
This bit of graffiti has captured my
imagination, and of many others who have hiked that trail. It is easy to
imagine someone bundled up and making his way up the trail at night, taking out
a hammer and chisel and beating out the letters, night after night for weeks,
until the work was finished.
And it is also easy to wonder ...
Why?
Why would someone go to all that
trouble to carve the words JESUS SAVES
into the side of a mountain.
Let your imagination run wild and it
is possible to conceive of a sinner who had led such an immoral life who
thought that a carving out the words JESUS SAVES on the face of a granite rock
was some form of repentance.
In my imagination, I have often wondered
who this man was trying to convince.
And I finally decided that it
possible that he was simply trying to convince himself.
Perhaps it was not with the
commitment of Faith that this man carved the words JESUS SAVES.
Perhaps instead it was with the HOPE
that Jesus Saves. And maybe he carved
those words to convince himself, as well as others, that those words were true.
Subconsciously, there is within many
of us, a stirring of doubt, a twinge of fear – “Jesus Saves, doesn't he? Or does He?
What if he doesn't? What if?”
A recent article in a Christian
magazine reported on some findings about a church growth program in a
metropolitan area church. Part of the
program was to interview and survey those who were already members.
Only half of those interviewed were
sure of their salvation.
The rest were trying to convince
themselves that there was truth in the words...JESUS SAVES.
At the conclusion of our worship
service today, we will sing a stanza from the familiar hymn, BLESSED ASSURANCE,
JESUS IS MINE. But for far too many of
us; that statement becomes a haunting question....BLESSED ASSURANCE??? IS JESUS MINE?
Behind those doubts and fears is a
question....what must I do to be saved?
The jailer in our New Testament
lesson faced that question when he found himself in a bind.
Like so many of us, this all
important question had taken a place on the back burner of his mind until
circumstances forced him to face the question.
As Luke tells the event, he and
Timothy and Silas and Paul were going to the place of prayer one day, when this
demented slave girl began following the group, shouting over and over, THESE MEN ARE SERVANTS OF THE MOST HIGH
GOD. THEY ANNOUNCE TO YOU HOW TO BE
SAVED.”
This went on for days and days. Finally Paul, fed up with this, suddenly
turned and miraculously healed her in the name of Jesus.
In that miracle, the slave girl, who
had made money for her masters by telling fortunes, suddenly lost that
ability. And having lost that, was no
longer of any value to her owners.
The owners, angered by this, had
Paul and Silas jailed.
Timothy and Luke, being GENTILES
were not arrested, but the mob, the crowd, arrested the two Jews, Paul and
Silas, and charged them with the honest offense...
THESE MEN ARE JEWS AND WE ARE ROMANS.
It was, in many
ways, a racist situation.
But – God uses
it for good.
That night, Paul and Silas prayed
and sang hymns, while the other prisoners listened. Then, there was an earthquake. Doors were thrown open, and chains fell from
the hands and feet of those in the prison.
It was then that the jailer woke up
and for a moment thought that the prisoners had escaped. Realizing that his superiors would have him
put to death for sleeping on duty and allowing the WHOLE prison to escape, the
jailer drew his sword and decided to kill himself.
It was at this point that Paul
stepped in and stopped the jailer by up pointing out: WE ARE STILL HERE.
So the jailer asked, “What must I do
to be saved,” --- saved from what?
For the jailer, the question was –
who will save me from execution for falling asleep on the job – because that
was going to be his punishment.
For Paul, and the writer of Acts,
they take that question one step further and think theologically, and they lead
the jailer to think theologically as well.
It becomes more than a simple
question of how do I save my hide, it is how do I save my soul. And more than just a question of how to save
my soul – it is how to give meaning and value to my life.
It is a haunting question. And once asked it may haunt even those who
think that they are saved. Because it
resurrects those ancient doubts and fears -- Am I really saved?
How can I be certain?
People have differing opinions about
the answer to that question of certainty about salvation.
For many people, the secret is to
live the good life.
After all, everyone knows that good
people go to heaven and the bad people go to hell----or do they???
In George Bernard Shaw's play, MAN
AND SUPERMAN, an old woman dies. At
first, she is not quite sure what has happened to her, or where she is. So she approaches another soul and asks.
To her greater despair, the answer
is that she is in hell.
"Hell,” she exclaims. "How can I possibly be in hell? I was a faithful member of the church. I was a solid pillar of the community. How dare they send me to hell....I was a GOOD
person"
To that, the other condemned soul
replies... “There are a lot of good people in Hell.”
The truth illustrated by this
imaginative play is that if we try to life the good life as a means of
salvation, then we will find that we can never be quite good enough.
Paul in one of his New Testament
letters --- the one to the Roman Church, said that “All have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God.”
Well, that takes as back to our
question. And the question of the
Philippian jailer....what must I do to be saved?
If we are all sinners, maybe the way
to be saved is by confessing each and EVERY sin. Martin Luther, the great 16th century
reformer believed this -- at least in the EARLY PART of his life, that this was
the way of salvation...by confessing.
Roland H. Bainton, in his biography of Luther, wrote that Luther
confessed "Frequently, often daily, and for as long as six hours at a
time. Every sin, in order to be
absolved, was to be confessed.
Therefore, the soul had to be searched and the memory ransacked, and the
motives probed. Luther would repeat a
confession and to be sure of including EVERYTHING, would then review his entire
life, until the priest who had to listen to the confession grew quite tired of all
this.”[1]
I suspect that none of us confess
like Luther did, searching and examining every action and motive and spending
hours confessing.
And even if we did, it would not
save us. Luther himself came to realize
that he could never be absolutely sure and certain that EVERY sin had indeed
been confessed.
So---as important as confession
is...that is not the way of our salvation.
We are thus brought back to that question that the Philippian Jailer
addressed to Paul and Silas.
WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?
The reply of the evangelists was
simple- BELIEVE IN THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND YOU WILL BE SAVED, You AND YOUR
HOUSEHOLD.
It is as simple as that.
The act of baptism did not save the
Jailer. He was baptized later, as a sign
that he HAD BEEN saved....as an outward expression that a he did indeed
believe.
The achievements of good deeds did
not save him. The kindness and concern
he expressed to Paul and Silas were the RESULTS of his salvation and were done
AFTER he came to believe in Christ.
And so it is with us.
BELIEVE IN THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND
YOU WILL BE SAVED.
Copyright
2016.
Dr.
W. Maynard Pittendreigh
All
rights reserved
Ministers
may feel free to use some or all of this sermon in their own ministries as long
as they do not publish in print or on the Internet without ascribing credit to
the author.