Life of Paul Part 33 - The Philippian Jailor Gets Eternal Life

Good morning, everybody.

How are you? Good to see you guys here. Hey, let's open the Bible.

We're going to study together, Acts chapter 16, continuing in our study of the life of the great man, the Apostle Paul. Now, you know, sometimes a person is just at the right place at the right time. The man you see on the screen, for example, is Australian Stephen Bradbury.

Some of you already know the story. February the 16th of this year, Bradbury was one of the five finalists at Salt Lake City in the Olympic 1000 meter speed skating race. Well, coming around the final turn, Bradbury was dead last, way behind everybody else. I mean, like barely in the same zip code with the other four racers, when all of a sudden all four of the other guys wiped out. All of them went down onto the ice, including the odds on gold medal favorite American speed skater, Apollo Ono. And Bradbury simply guided through the wreckage and across the finish line and won the gold medal. Now, at the time he won the gold medal back in his native Brisbane, it was 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Not exactly Norway, if you understand what I'm saying. Now, here's another interesting fact about this guy. You know what Bradbury does for a living? He makes speed skating skates. And in fact, Apollo Ono was wearing a pair of Bradbury skates and Bradbury had asked him if he would please, if he won the gold, would Ono please mention Bradbury skates on the air so he could market some skates.

Now, Bradbury's making a fortune going around marketing his own skates as the gold medal winner. Sometimes you're just at the right place at the right time. We're going to look at a guy today, 2,000 years ago, who was just at the right place at the right time and his whole life was radically changed too. We don't exactly know his name, but we call him the Philippian jailer. So we want to look here in Acts chapter 16, a little bit of background. Remember, the apostle Paul is on his second missionary journey.

He's crossed Asia Minor, sailed across the beautiful Aegean Sea, and he's now in northern Greece in Europe at the city of Philippi where he has been sharing about the Lord. And there was a girl in this town, Luke tells us, who was demonized. Her owners made a lot of money from her fortune telling. And verse 17 says, this girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, these men are servants of the Most High God who are telling you the way to be saved. And the Bible says that she followed Paul and Silas day after day for many days, verse 18 tells us, until finally Paul became irritated with her, turned around, cast the demon out of her. And her owners, having now lost the income stream that she produced by fortune telling with no demon in her anymore, they dragged Paul down in front of the magistrates in the city.

And that's where we pick up the story. Verse 22, the crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, the Bible says, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and to be beaten. Remember, we said last week that the rods that were used to beat Paul and Silas were specially designed by the Romans to rip the skin right off the bone. Verse 23, and after they had been severely flogged with their backs open to the bone and just oozing, verse 23 continues, they were thrown into prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Verse 24, upon receiving such orders, the jailer put them in the inner cell, the maximum security unit, and today in Philippi, we actually have unearthed the actual jail cell that Paul and Silas were in.

Here in Philippi, you can actually walk in it today. And the Bible says, verse 24, he, the jailer, fastened their feet in the stocks. Here are some stocks that are designed for the legs, to spread the legs as wide as you possibly can and cause discomfort. Well, you know, it was no laughing matter what happened to Paul and Silas. As a matter of fact, the position that they were placed in by the jailer was a position designed to cause maximum discomfort. He put their backs up against the rough stone wall. Now remember, their backs are wide open, still bleeding, still oozing from the beating.

Put their backs against the wall. He took and handcuffed and chained their hands above their head, and then he spread their feet in these kinds of stocks as wide as he could spread them, and that's where he left them. This is a posture designed to cause your legs to cramp and to put you in a position where you can't move to relieve the cramping.

If any of you have ever had a leg cramp and you can't move to get rid of it, you can only imagine the agony that ours in this position would cause. The Bible goes on. Verse 25, in about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Considering the uncomfortable position they were in, that is, they were sitting down, their backs against the wall, their hands above their head, their feet spread in the stocks, it's no surprise they were awake at midnight.

What is a surprise is what they were doing at midnight. The Bible says that they were praying and singing hymns to God. You say, well, Lon, what hymn do you think they might have been singing? Well, maybe stand up, stand up for Jesus.

I don't know. But whatever they were singing, they were just having a ball, singing hymns there in jail. And the Bible tells us that every single prisoner was awake listening to them.

They must have had a voice like I had where when I sing, it wakes people up. But anyway, verse 26, and suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, the prison doors flew open and everybody's chains came loose. Friends, what we have here is not luck or fate or geological coincidence or good karma. What we have here is the living God of the universe supernaturally answering the prayers of his people. And verse 27, the jailer woke up.

He was fast asleep. And when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. Remember we said last week that there were two big military battles that were fought here at Philippi, one in 42 BC, one in 31 BC. And future emperor of the Roman Empire, Augustus, won them both. As a way of showing his gratitude to the people of Philippi, he declared Philippi a Roman colony. We said last week that one of the things that happened in a Roman colony is that there was a large contingent of the Roman army that would be stationed there to protect the colony. What we didn't tell you last week is that very often we know from history these soldiers who were stationed at these colonies, when they finally retired, they often just stayed there.

They retired right where they'd been living for years anyway. And there's no doubt in my mind that this jailer was a retired Roman soldier. Now as a retired Roman soldier, he knew what the penalty was for losing your prisoner. The code of Justinian said that any soldier who lets their prisoner escape is to be executed. And friends, this code was regularly enforced by Roman officials. Acts chapter 12 verse 19, when the angel, you know, had freed Peter from the Roman jail, it says after Herod had a thorough search made for Peter and didn't find him, he, Herod, cross-examined the guards and then ordered that they be executed for losing their prisoner.

And they were. Now the Philippian jailer figured, hey, number one, the prisoners have escaped. Number two, the magistrates in the morning are going to execute me anyway. So number three, why don't I pull out my sword and I'll just save them to trouble and do it to myself?

And that's what he was about to do, verse 28, when Paul shouted, don't harm yourself. We are all here. They said, well, that makes no sense at all. I mean, these guys were prisoners. They were jailbirds. When the prison doors flew open and the chains fell off, every jailbird I ever met headed for the hills. They didn't stick around to ask questions. So what were all these prisoners doing?

Why didn't they run away? Well, Paul shouted for a moment. When you hear some dude praying and singing hymns at midnight and then there's an earthquake and then the prison doors blow open and then everybody's chains, including yours, come flying off, I think you wait to see what he's going to do before you do anything, don't you?

Well, Paul didn't do anything. He just stood there. So I think all the other prisoners said, maybe we ought to just stand here for a moment ourselves, too. That's why they were still standing there. Well, the jailer rushes in, verse 29, and called for the lights. He fell trembling at Paul and Silas.

Now, think a second. This is a hardened Roman soldier. He's seen it all. He's seen battle. He's seen combat. He's seen people killed. He's seen horrible things.

He is scared to death. He comes running in, falls down, trembling at before Paul and Silas, brings them out and asks them, first, he says, what must I do to be saved? What must I do to get eternal life?

What must I do to have a relationship with God like you guys seem to have? Now, we should stop and note here that critics of the Bible often ridicule this passage and say that there was no supernatural event that happened here at all, that all we have here is just a normal everyday geological tremor that Luke took and built up and jazzed up into some huge supernatural event because he wanted to see God in it, but that really it wasn't anything like that. Well, friends, let me tell you something. The jailer who was there when it happened, he certainly didn't see it that way. I mean, here you've got this hardened, cruel soldier who suddenly becomes a reverent, humble seeker of God. He rushes into Paul, falls down on his knees, is shaken all over, brings Paul out of jail and says, sirs, what do I need to do to have the kind of God on my side that I just saw work right here at this jail? Hey, you know what? I think I'll trust the guy who was there watching this and his reaction before I'll trust so-called scholars 19th century later to tell me what happened there.

What do you think? Talk about a man being at the right place at the right time, the jailer just sleeping the night away, another normal night down at the old jail, and all of a sudden before he knows what's happened, the supernatural God of the universe has injected himself into this man's life. All of a sudden he has seen the power of God, and not only that, but he's got a guy right in the jail who can tell him how to get connected to this God.

Hey, talk about being at the right place at the right time. Well, Paul answers his question. What must I do to be saved? Paul says, verse 31, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. What must you do to be saved? Paul says you don't need to do anything to get eternal life. You don't need to do anything to get connected to this God that Silas and I are connected with. All that needs to happen, it's already been done for you on the cross by the Lord Jesus. When he died and shed his blood to pay for your wrongdoings, to open up a way for you to be reconciled to God.

All that needs to happen, Paul says, is for you to embrace, for you to rely upon, for you to place your personal trust in what Jesus Christ has already done for you. You know, I tell you, I go to the gym three days a week. In fact, I've actually had some of you people run into me at the gym, and when I have you all come up and you go, ah, you really do come to the gym. And I'm like, well, yeah, I wouldn't lie to you. Don't I look like you? Oh, sure, yeah, you do, Lon.

Honest, you do. I've never doubted you. Yeah, God bless you, but anyway. Anyway, I had a guy at my gym who a couple years ago came up to me and he said, hey, you're the pastor of a church, right?

And I said, yes, I am. And he said, you know, I'd like you to tell me what time your services are because he said, I need to start coming to church. I need to get some religion back in my life.

And I said, well, I'll be happy to tell you the times of our services. But, you know, if you want religion, you don't want to come to our church because that's the wrong place to come. We don't do religion at McLean Bible Church.

He's like, what? You're a church? Of course you do religion. Churches do religion.

What are you talking about? Of course you do religion. I said, no, we don't do religion at McLean Bible Church because religion is a bunch of rules and regulations aimed at helping people work their way into God's good graces.

We don't do religion at McLean Bible Church. That's not what God offers people in the Bible and that's not what we offer people. What God offers people is a personal connectedness with Jesus Christ and that's exactly what we offer people. And if that's what you want, then we can help you. If that's what you need, that's what will transform your life, not religion.

If that's what you want, we can help you. And, friend, the guy kind of looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Now, he was making the same mistake that the Philippian jailer was making. He was sure in his mind you had to do something.

You had to perform something. You had to go out and find the Holy Grail or kill a dragon or do some kind of incredible religious work to get into God's good graces. And, I mean, how much clearer can the Bible make it than Acts 16, 31? How does a person get eternal life? How does a person secure a spot in heaven? How does a person get into a personal relationship with God? How does a person become a new creature in Jesus Christ where their whole life gets transformed from the inside out? What did Paul say?

He said, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Period. Period.

Exclamation point. You know, I got a blue care card. You know those blue cards we put in the bulletin every week?

I got one of them in about six months ago. Here's what it said, and I quote. The lady said, I was very disappointed in the message today that said good works were not necessary and that belief in Christ alone assures eternal life. I found this to be a frightening message, and I don't believe that this is your real philosophy.

End of quote. Well, my dear, I hate to tell you, that is my real philosophy. And much more important than that, this is the consistent, constant, and unequivocal message of the Bible. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. And if you're here today, and you're like the Philippian jailer, or you're like this guy at my gym, and you've been convinced all your life that you've got to do something, earn something, work some way, do some religious activity, friends, I'm here to tell you that that's not the way it is at all. All that's involved is you and me taking our trust off of all that other stuff we do and putting it on what Jesus has already done for us on the cross. God wants to make this so simple that a little child can do it. All this involves is trusting somebody else to do something for us that we can't do for ourselves.

Get us into heaven, give us eternal life. That's why little children come to Christ so easily. They're used to people doing things for them they can't do for themselves.

This is easy for them to do. It's just that we grow into adults, and we become sophisticated beyond our intelligence. And God says, no, no, this is real simple here. All you've got to do is trust me to do something for you you can't do for yourself. And if you're here and you've never given your life to Jesus Christ, it's so simple, friends, a child can do it.

And we hope that you'll do it. Don't be more sophisticated than your intelligence can handle. Well, it's time to stop for our passage and to ask the most important question. And you all know what that is, so here we go.

Ready, nice and loud, one, two, three. So what? Ah, you say, Lon, so what? Say, you know, I'm really happy for the Philippian jailer, but Lon, I've already given my life to Christ. I've already believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. What difference does this make to me? Let's see if we can help you answer that question. You know, the Philippian jailer here asks one of the most famous questions in all of the Bible. Sirs, he says, what must I do to be saved? Now, here's my question. My question is, why did he phrase his question the way that he did?

Think about it for a second. Why didn't he say to Paul, sirs, what must I do to be on your team? Why didn't he say to them, sirs, what must I do to join your military unit?

Sirs, what must I do to have the power in me that you seem to have in you? Why didn't he say, sirs, what must I do now to keep you from retaliating against me? Why did he say, sirs, what must I do to be saved? This guy was no preacher. This guy was no theologian. This guy was no religious man. Where did he get a precise theological term like saved from?

You say, well, Lon, I can answer that. He was up all night listening to Paul and Silas sing about it. That's where he got it.

No, no. What did the Bible say? The Bible says, verse 27, the jailer woke up. He wasn't awake listening to Paul and Silas sing. He was asleep. So wherever he got this term from, he didn't get it from Paul and Silas. He said, well, then where did he get it? I think the answer is obvious if we just go back a little bit in the passage.

Let's go back. Verse 17. Remember that demonized girl? This girl followed Paul, and the Bible makes it clear. This went on for day after day after day, followed Paul, and the rest of us shouting, these men are servants of the most high God who are telling you the way to be what?

To be saved. Uh-huh. You know, what's interesting is the word she uses is the exact same Greek word that the jailer used. And I think it's obvious what happened here. One day the jailer was walking through town. Maybe he was on his way to the grocery store or to the gym himself or to buy some new sandals.

Who cares? And he passes this girl walking around town telling him that representatives of the most high God have arrived in town who are telling people how to be saved. Now, frankly, he didn't even know what saved meant. And what's more, he could have cared less what saved meant.

He wasn't the slightest bit interested in getting saved whatever it meant. But he heard the term. He heard what she said. He filed it away in the memory banks, and he went on about his business because at that moment his life was going fine, thank you very much.

I'm not looking for any change. However, when all of a sudden a few weeks later the doors of the jail flew open and all the prisoners were set free and all of a sudden his life is shaken to the very core, he went back into those memory banks and pulled out what he had heard this young girl say and came to Paul and said, what must I do, that girl said it, to be saved. Does everybody see where he got that word from? Everybody understand?

Now, here's the point. As followers of Jesus Christ, my friends, we often share Jesus with people and they seem to blow it off completely when we share with them, just like the Philippian jailer blew off this girl's comment. And so we tend sometimes to get discouraged and we tend sometimes to feel like we failed and we tend sometimes to lose hope. But we need to learn a very important lesson from the Philippian jailer. We need to learn that a lot of times people take the information we share with them about Jesus, they bury it away in their memory banks, it lays there dormant for months or years, and then all of a sudden some crisis strikes their life.

All of a sudden some exigency strikes their life, their spouse walks out on them, the doctor tells them they have cancer, they lose their job, they have a crisis with their children, somebody they love passes away, and then at that moment they do exactly what the Philippian jailer did when he had a crisis, they go back into those memory banks, they pull out what somebody told them weeks, months, years before and they use that information to do business with God. Now my dad was just like that. When I became a follower of Christ I really wanted my dad to come to Christ. And you know what? Whenever I would sit down and talk to him about Jesus he would do one of two things, he would either get up and walk out of the room or he'd get up and go over and turn the TV up as loud as he could so I couldn't even be heard above the television.

That went on for seven years. And I got really discouraged. I said, you know what God? My dad is not paying the slightest bit of attention, he's not listening, none of this is sinking in, this is a waste of time, he's never coming to Christ.

Then he had his third heart attack and he was down in University of Virginia Medical Center, Charlottesville, October 1976. And I went down to see him and I walked in his room and the very first thing he said to me when I walk in his hospital room, he's sitting in his hospital bed, he said to me, you know Lon? He said, I've been doing a lot of thinking about all that stuff you've been telling me about Jesus Christ. He said, and I've really begun to believe that what you've been telling me is right. Friends, I've got to tell you at that moment I felt like getting him out of the bed and me getting in the bed.

I thought, holy smokes, where is this coming from? And I had the incredible privilege the next morning of getting down on my knees with my dad on his knees next to his hospital bed, put my arm around my dad's shoulder and praying with my dad as he asked Jesus Christ into his life. A week later he was dead. He never left the hospital, had a fourth heart attack in the hospital and died. But oh, man, oh, man, what an incredible thing. And I never even thought he was listening. But he was just like the Philippian jailer.

He's just filing the stuff away and suddenly when there was crisis, it was there because I told it to him for him to be able to pull out and do business with God. Now, my mom was the same way, except she took 22 years. She's a little more hard-headed. But anyway, same thing happened to her. And folks, we need to learn our lesson from the Philippian jailer, many people whom you and I are going to share our faith with this very week are not going to immediately give their lives to Jesus Christ.

But that's okay. I mean, you know what they say, the opera's not over until the full-figured lady sings. And we got to give time for the full-figured lady to do the singing because one day, maybe even after you and I are gone, a lot of those people are going to hit a crisis in their life and they're going to go back into the memory banks and they're going to pull out what you and I told them about Jesus Christ and God's going to use that in their life so they can do business with God. In fact, the book of Revelation tells us, chapter 7, that as soon as we leave, the church leaves in what the Bible calls the rapture, that there are going to be 144,000 Jewish people who are going to do this very thing. People who have been told about Christ, they're not going to pay a bit of attention now, but as soon as we're out of here, they're going to go back and go, Oh, Susie was telling me the truth.

Oh, Jimmy was telling me the truth. And God, they're going to give their life to Christ. God's going to unleash them on the world like 144,000 kosher Billy Grahams.

It's true. And it's going to be people you're going to talk to now about Christ. They're not going to listen now. They're going to listen at that point. So friends, you keep sharing Jesus Christ with your doctor and your dentist and your lawyer, because one of these days a lot of those people are going to be interested in listening.

It's true, I'm telling you. Now, 1 Corinthians 15, 58 says this, Therefore be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, since you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. And nowhere is this more true than when it comes to sharing our faith. We never share our faith that God doesn't end up using it in somebody's life.

He may not use it right away. Hey, there are Philippian jailers all over Washington, D.C., all over the metro, all over the streets, in your office, in your neighborhood. This town's full of people like that whom you're going to share with, and they're going to file it away. They're not interested in getting saved. They don't care what it means. They don't even want to talk to you about it.

All right, neither does the jailer. So what? Just file it away lovingly, respectfully, insert the information in the data bank, and then they'll have it there when God's ready to pull it out in some crisis in their life and use it so they can do business with God. Friends, we've got to be careful that we don't try to orchestrate God's timing in people's lives. That's not our job. Our job's simply to put the information in the database so the Lord's got it there when He's ready to use it.

Let's be faithful in doing that, okay? We've got a town full of Philippian jailers. Let's give them the information they need so when the doors of the prison swing open and they're ready to do business with God in their life, they've got the data that they need.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thanks for talking to us today about our role here in this city, a city full of Philippian jailers. Lord, remind us that it's not our job to orchestrate the timing for these people doing business with God.

It's simply our job to give the information to them so it gets stored away such that that information is available to them when they need it later in life. So, Lord, help us be faithful in doing our job. Help us not lose heart or become discouraged, but send us out and help us be missionaries every single day, giving out to people just like with the Philippian jailer the information that one day you're going to use to change their lives. Lord, make us faithful, diligent, and consistent in doing this. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.