Amazing Grace, Part 1

Yes, sir, the greatest legacy you can leave is not how much money you had, how many square feet your house had, the whether or not your children and your wife knew you knew the gospel. And should your child come to you and ask you the way to heaven? You can answer that. And you don't have to say. Call Pastor So-and-so. Bigger children. Hear you. Pray for them. Have you ever prayed with them? Do they know that you know Jesus Christ? That's the greatest legacy I know personally. If I let 10000 people of faith in Christ in this city, that could not compare to four to.

When Paul and Silas ended up in prison, God used them to bring salvation to their jailer who asked this question, what must I do to be saved?

Are you prepared to answer that? Being a jailer was a cruel profession, and he was likely a cruel man. But the change in this man's life was dramatic. Salvation is God's gift, and all that jailer needed to do was believe that message has not changed.

This is wisdom for the heart. And today we continue in our Vintage Wisdom Archives from 1997 to bring you this lesson called Amazing Grace Open to Act 16.

Stephen begins this lesson.

In our last discussion, Paul confronted the slave girl predicting future events through the God Apollo. By means of the serpent, the python, which was their symbol. Paul and Silas have robbed the coffers of Apollos Temple, and the priests will certainly not stop at anything less than an explosion of anger. Let's pick our story back up there with verse 19 and win. Her Masters saw that their hope of prophet was gone. They seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. And when they had brought them to the Chief Magistris, they said, these men are throwing our city into confusion, being Jews and are proclaiming customs, which it is not lawful for us to accept or to observe. The Romans and the crowd rose up together against them and the chief magistrate's tour their robes off. Then Paul and Silas. That is, and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods in order to get the picture here. The market place or the O'Gara was the open forum in this city, as it was in many cities. To this day, it's where a lot of things took place. Dramas, speeches, political debates and also crimes were discussed and the verdict rendered in VILLAGRA. They have excavated Phillip High and have been able to excavate the podium and the raised platform with the two stairways leading up each side in the city of Filipacchi, where Paul and Silas once stood.

If you can imagine that there was one podium but two seats, Roman law dictated that there had to be two magistrates and they would render their verdict and after their verdict was rendered. What is translated in my text, policemen or literally Lichter's officers Latin locked doors would administrate the punishment fact that Latin gives us our English expression. You got your licks. That is, you took your beating. That comes literally out of the practice as these lichter's would administrate the beating of the Lichter's. I found it interesting to learn that their their symbol, the symbol of their office, was a bundle of rods with an ax protruding from the center and the bundle of rods was tied about with a red band called a Fashi is Mussolini will resurrect this symbol. Years later for his fasces or his fascist party as they ultimately inflict pain and suffering upon the Jew. Well, the Jews during the Holocaust were not the first to suffer. Certainly the Jews are suffering here as Paul and Silas suffer a beating from the hands or rods of the lichter's. And now their backs are swollen, bleeding, masses of tissue and lacerated skin. Though this verse twenty three, and when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely. And he, having received such command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. Now the Bible does not exaggerate. And so you get a picture here of this.

This Catalyst's prison warden who will treat Paul and Silas like hardened criminals. He's told the guard them and he will now throws them into the inner prison. That is the maximum security section of the prison. This is the dungeon. You can render the whole. This is where those hardened criminals would be placed. And then on top of that, this Catalist individual places their feet in stock so that now they can't curl up on their side and sleep through the night.

They certainly can't lie on their backs, which is what they'd have to do because their backs are bleeding. They're beaten. So he treats them in this fashion. And I imagine this would be a miserable night. And as I sort of tried to enter this scene myself, I'd ask myself the question.

And I want to ask you, what would you do now? You know the rest of the story and I'll pick ahead anyhow. To stop. What would you do now? Fumble around in your calendar for the name of your lawyer? Demand your rights.

Are you in the night? Shout obscenities.

Say, don't you realize, as they will in the next paragraph, that we are Roman citizens and you can't treat Roman citizens like this?

Let you have a talk with a suddenly absent God. Who led you here to this city?

Now you're in the hole here in the dungeon.

Well, let's find out what they did. Verse twenty five. What about midnight? Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. I'll bet they were. Imagine this loss of blood, hunger, terrible thirst, a rat infested dungeon.

And can you imagine some kind of conversation that must have gone on between Paul and Silas? Paul, how you doing too?

Well, back is really hurting. How about you?

Oh, Paul, my back's the same effect. My legs are beginning to cramp. I wish I could just lie back, but I know I can't put my back in the dirt. Paul, you think we're going to be beaten again? No, I don't think so. That after they discovers they will shortly that we're Roman citizens. What do we do? Well, Silas, I was sitting here kind of remembering I remembered the words of our Lord when he said, blessed are you. When men persecute you for my sake, for great, will your reward be in heaven? What that means is, Silas, we are fulfilling what Jesus Christ said would happen. And because of that, he's promised to begin storing up great reward for us one day because we have been persecuted for the name that we hold to and our relationship to the Savior. I don't know. Sousuke can't think of anything better to do than maybe pray in and say, say, say what?

They're Paul. Do you say we sing?

And so they prayed. That is, they offered, they cast their burden on him and they sang.

They cast their worship on him in the prison walls. Now will echo with the sounds of newly composed hymns from this early church. They will begin singing in harmony is sort of resonating around. We know that because the prisoners can hear. So it's that going through that through that prison emanating from the dungeon, they expect to hear those hardened prisoners coming from the dungeon, blasphemy and cursing and railing and and shouting. But they're hearing a duet.

How do you sing at midnight? Can we give you a couple of things to add? You don't sing without an act of compliance.

Paul and Silas knew that God was in control, so this could not have happened without God's permission. So in order to sing to a God who allowed such a thing requires compliance with what God happens to be doing right.

It also involves mature character. Galatians, five, tells us that the fruit, the developing ministry of the spirit within us produces love.

What joy, joy could be defined as contented composure, regardless of circumstances. Maybe you're here this morning and you're you're in this midnight hour. Differing circumstances, but you're here. It might be physical illness, pain. Difficult circumstances of some sort. Maybe it's betrayal by close friend or abandonment by a friend or maybe even a spouse.

Maybe your midnight is the ridicule of unsaved relatives who mock you or coworkers whose slight you.

Would you ever consider singing at a time like that? Maybe it was easier for Paul to sing because Silas was with him. I think it probably was. They were in that dungeon together and so they bullied one another's faith. I happen to believe that the church family should do the same thing. That is when we get together, you know what our singing does, our worshiping does it sort of boogies the faith of all of us around each other.

The writer of of Hebrews said that we provoke one another. We encourage one another on the love and good works by the meaning of ourselves together.

Why don't we sing? God is so.

Can you sing that song even in the midnight hour is who he is, so we can sing that because he's planned it all? He has plans.

Oh, he he's planned. Oh, he has planned it.

Oh, he's. And even in the dark to sing by faith.

He loves me.

So he loves me. He's.

Oh, who?

He was me. Oh, he knows me.

So he is so good to me.

You know, I found it interesting in studying this if we can indeed make something of consecutive events as they appeared in this narrative.

It wasn't until midnight that Paul and Silas began to sing. You know, that just made me wonder. I wonder if it took them that long before they could maybe they had a conversation with each other. That was a little more frustrating, a little more anxious. They were men, but maybe somehow is the time ticked away as it reached the darkest hour of the night. But maybe after having a few words with the Lord in those prayers, they were finally able to comply, surrender, submit to a sovereign God that had led them there to place them in this deep, dark pit and then they could sing of their love.

Will you back in the text? It's interesting to me that it is only after this demonstration of praise that you have a demonstration of power. You see, they were praising God in advance. And that's what you have to do in that dark hour, don't you? You have to magnify the Lord at midnight, which means that you honor and worship him without having an answer.

It was then at that point, the text tells us that suddenly there came a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken. That implies to us that it is only the prison house, not the entire city or the region. It's as if God has that prison house in his sovereign hand and now he's just going to start shaking it.

And immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened. Now, imagine this. Don't go too quick, even though you've heard this in Sunday school and charge.

Think about this. I imagine it's midnight at a state penitentiary in North Carolina over there on Hillsborough Street. Suddenly, the building begins to violently shake. For whatever reason, you're in there. And then all of a sudden the security system works in reverse so that now all the gates flying open.

And all the doors open wide.

And all that's left for this prisoner, including yourself, to run and escape is just a brief dash in the dark.

That's what was happening here.

Verse twenty seven, and when the jailer had been roused out of his sleep. Now holding him mean because that tells us a lot about him, he he slept through the concert. His little dwelling, we know, would be attached to the prison house. And because the prisoners were all able to hear, this man was also able to hear.

But this callous prison warden couldn't care less what those cooks were singing from the dungeon. Maybe he stuffed cotton in his ears, but he would go to sleep. It would take an earthquake to rouse him from his slumber. Ladies and gentlemen, his descendants live among us today.

Maybe you're praying for an earthquake to occur in the life of someone you know. Maybe it is you that needs an earthquake to rouse you from your spiritual slumber.

Well, it does yard him out of bed. He looks down the hallway and maybe out a window and he sees the prison house doors wide open.

First twenty seven, the latter part says he drew his sword and was about to kill himself. Supposing that the prisoners had escaped. Well, why would that cause them to want to kill himself? Because the Roman code of Justinian declared that if a prison warden allowed criminals to escape, that he would suffer the sentence that his prisoners had been delivered. That tells us then that men were in this prison house condemned to die. There were men on death row here, and because they had escaped under his administration. He would now suffer their penalty. He would die rather than drag it out through a long court proceeding and public humility. I'll just take care of it now. And this old man, this man filled with himself, unable to be jarred by the gospel, but now realizing he's staring death in the face, takes his sword and he's about to fall on it. And at that moment, the Bible tells us first 28, that Paul cried out with a loud voice saying, do yourself no harm.

For we are all here.

So he called for lights and rushed in and trembling with fear. He fell down before Paul and Silas. And after he brought them out, he said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Ladies and gentlemen, this is the greatest question anybody can ever ask. The gaoler had heard about the priest. Evidently, he'd heard about the slave girl. We know that because he uses the same Greek word for salvation that the slave girl had used when she announced that they were bringing a way of salvation. He had evidently heard about the exorcism. He had evidently heard the news that these men supposedly followed a God that had greater authority than Apollo. But he could have cared less until. Now he's asking, what do I have to do to get in touch with your God? What do I have to do to get what you have? Because you have something that I don't have.

What must I do? To be saved.

John Taylor Smith was the honorary chaplain to Queen Victoria and the chaplain general of the British Army during World War One. John Smith used to ask all the candidates for the chaplaincy, basically the same question, and he's being interviewed. And I let his interview speak for itself. I would ask them, now I want you to show me how you would deal with a man. He would say to this candidate for the chaplaincy, we will suppose that I am a soldier and I've been wounded on the field of battle. I have three minutes to live and I am afraid to die because I do not know Christ. Tell me, how can I be saved and die with the assurance that all is well with my soul?

He told the interviewer if the applicant began to beat around the bush and hem and haw and talking about the church and the ordinances and so on, I would say that will never do.

I have only three minutes to live.

Tell me what I must do to be saved as long as John Taylor Smith was chaplain general, unless a candidate had the answer to that question. He did not become a chaplain in the Army, period.

My friend, you can graduate from some rather prestigious seminaries in our country and not know the answer to that question.

There are pulpits filled today in our city and our country with men who cannot answer that question. Him and hard work, this and that dog about the church and all sorts like this, and you have three minutes to live.

Because it's the greatest question in the world anybody can ever ask. The answer is the most important answer you'll ever hear. And I don't know how many people I've talked to in this church and their homes had the delight and privilege of praying to receive Christ. I could tell you, raised in church. Religion did nothing but muddy it. Church did nothing but confuse it. Let's clear away the confusion first. Thirty one. And they said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved.

You and your household. That's it.

No lecture. No religious mumbo jumbo. No card design. Nothing about how his parents raised them. No self-image test.

No exhortation toward some Sacramento or some system of religion, no requirement of baptism or that the church, ladies and gentlemen, is not even mentioned here.

Believe in the Lord Jesus. And you shall be saved.

You and your household.

Now, I want to suggest this answer provides us with several wonderful things. Let's take longer than three minutes to just explain. Number one, Paul's answer provides first of all, if you're following in your notes the simplest invitation.

What must I do to be saved? And the text tells us they answered. In other words, Paul and Silas are still talking in unison. They're still singing a duet.

What must I do? It's as if they said, Do you want to do anything?

Jesus Christ has done it all. All you have to do is place your faith in him alone.

First 30 to tell us this, they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all that we're in his house. They evidently explained what it meant to believe, what faith was all about.

But it's the simplest invitation because it's an invitation not to do anything but to receive the finished work of Jesus Christ. You know, I've had dozens of people tell me after I finished explaining the gospel to them, I didn't know it was that simple.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of praying with a gentleman in his dining room raised in the church. And he said to me, as I finished, I didn't know it was that simple. That's why Paul reiterated in Romans, if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. For if it were on the basis of works, then it would not be grace than Grace would not be Grace. Earlier in the Book of Acts in Chapter four, Peter was preaching and he said There is salvation and no one else, for there is no other name given or under haven't given among men whereby we must be saved.

Third, you are given an everlasting promise. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you you shall be saved.

But I want you to notice fourthly here from this passage, the greatest legacy policies believe on the Lord Jesus. And you will be saved, you and your household. Now, a lot of people stop here and come up with all kinds of covenant promises for household salvation. All you have to do is just keep reading. Put a period there and they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all who were in his house.

In other words, everyone in this man's household will hear the gospel that night. Later on in this paragraph, we'll learn that they all believe in the gospel. They hear his wife. If he had one, his children, if he had them, they all heard the gospel. And this is the greatest legacy you can give your family.

This crusty, callous prison warden booted those men into the dungeon and slept through the concert. Who could care less about those men?

Now, once those men to come into his home and tell his household he had a wife and children, tell them what it means to be saved.

Here, sir, of the greatest legacy you can leave is not how much money you had. How many square feet your house had, the whether or not your children and your wife knew you knew the gospel. And should your child come to you and ask you the way to heaven? You can answer that. And you don't have to say. Call Pastor So-and-so.

Do your children hear you pray for them? Have you ever prayed with them?

Do they know that you know Jesus Christ? That's the greatest legacy I know personally. If I let it if I let 10000 people to faith in Christ in this city, that could not compare to four kids.

You have to understand this jailer wants his household to hear, because verse 32 tells us he takes these criminals in the dining room and he does something else. First, 33 took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds. And immediately he was baptized, he and all his household.

Can you see this guy who could care less about people? And all of a sudden you say, Paul, your back looks terrible, Silas. All you guys really must be hurting. Would you mind if I just clean you up and he goes and he gets a bass in the water and a towel and he very gingerly begins to clean these guys up? This man is a different man.

He's been saved.

I want you to look at the church in Phillip. Now, this congregation down by the riverside growing. And we have this cultured, wealthy lady who eight with three forks and three spoons and all that stuff.

Now you have a slave girl who's only recently been delivered by the power of Christ. Now you throw into that mix. This is callosal guy who's turned into a teddy. Very probably still hasn't stopped smiling since the time when he discovered the way of salvation.

The church is now flying a flag on the continent of Europe, ladies and gentlemen. The flag is the flag of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the flag of Amazing Grace.

God's amazing amazing grace.

The grace that got extended to the early church in Europe is the same grace that God extends to you today. Have you responded to God's offer? If not, maybe today will be the day that you join with all of us who are recipients of God's Amazing Grace. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davy. We've gone back to our Vintage Wisdom Archives to bring you this series from Ax. And today's lesson is called Amazing Grace. Before we end today's time together, I want to make you aware of a resource we have on our Web site. We have a short document entitled God's Wisdom for Your Heart. It's an easy to understand explanation of the gospel message. If you'd like to know more about the Amazing Grace Stephen discuss today. Navigate to wisdom online, dawg. There's a menu across the top of that page. And in the about section is a link that simply says the gospel. I'll also let you know that we make printed copies available in bundles of twenty five. And those are in our online store. You'll find those at Wisdom Online dot org as well if you prefer to talk with us directly. We can help you over the phone.

Give us a call today at eight six six forty eight Bible. That number numerically is eight six six four eight two four two five three.

We would enjoy talking with you today and telling you more about our ministry. Today's lesson was actually a two part lesson. And so we'll bring you the second half on tomorrow's broadcast. Join us at this same time for more wisdom for the heart.