No Easy-Believism Here

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the 16th chapter of the book of Acts and make your way to verse 19.
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Acts 16, verses 19 through 40 is our text for today and the title of the message is No Easy Believism Here.
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No Easy Believism Here.
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One of the five major tenets of Protestant theology, also called Reformed theology, is sola fide.
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Sola fide is a Latin phrase which when translated into English means faith alone.
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This is the shorthand expression which is intended to describe the biblical view of justification.
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Man who is sinful before a holy God is justified not by what he does and not by his works, but he is justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
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No work, no matter how virtuous, no matter how noble, no matter how sacrificial can cause or add to our salvation.
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We are saved solely and completely by trusting in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in His work.
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Now I begin with all that because sola fide is often confused with its monstrous counterpart called Easy Believism.
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Easy Believism is the teaching which says that all people who make any form of confession regarding Jesus Christ are saved in and through that confession and can then never again be lost because they're saved immediately.
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And it asserts that the faith which saves is merely an intellectual assent to the truths of the gospel.
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It is not in any way going to necessarily change a life, but it is in and of itself simply saying, I believe in Jesus or expressing that faith, and I'll call it faith in quotes, in some way.
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And it's often combined with a very shallow view of the once saved, always saved doctrine.
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Now I want to clarify.
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We do believe that once a person is fully justified, completely justified before the Lord Jesus Christ or before God because of the work of Jesus Christ, we do believe that person is saved forever and will not fall away.
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We do believe that.
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That is not to say, though, that a person who confesses Christ simply with his mouth has truly believed in his heart.
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You have to understand that.
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That there are people who confess Jesus with their mouth and their heart is still dead in their sins.
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Easy Believism would say that's not true.
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Easy Believism would say everybody who has ever confessed Christ in any way made any kind of confession at all.
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And this is why we have, in churches now, become so fascinated with the invitation system.
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Because the invitation system is based on the idea that what we must focus on and what we must do is we must get them down the aisle.
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We must get them to repeat a prayer.
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We must get them to say certain things because it is through saying those certain things that they automatically become saved.
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No matter what happens after that, no matter how they live after that, no matter whether or not they are faithful to Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter as long as they say those magic words.
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In fact, I know of a pastor, a local pastor, who I once heard say very clearly in his invitation.
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He said, you should accept Jesus tonight because even if you wake up tomorrow and realize you don't like him anymore, you'll still have him.
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Now what kind of sales pitch is that? And what is he even trying to sell? He's selling Easy Believism.
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He's selling foolishness and calling it the gospel.
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You see, it's important to understand that Sola Fide is not the same as Easy Believism.
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Sola Fide says that we are justified by faith alone, but faith is a living, active work of the Spirit of God, whereby we are conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.
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If a man is not being moved towards conformity to Christ, he is not a Christian.
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If a man is not being conformed to Christ, he has not come to Christ.
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Now why am I addressing Easy Believism? Why is this even the subject, the title of the message? Well, because we have come to a passage in Scripture which is often used by those who support this false teaching, which is the conversion of the Philippian jailer.
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Most likely, if you've been in church for any length of time, especially if you've ever attended those things called revivals, you've heard the story of the Philippian jailer.
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He says, what must I do? And Paul says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved and your house.
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And that text has been used in countless evangelistic and revival messages, but what is often left out of those messages is what we're going to see today.
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This jailer is no example of Easy Believism.
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There is no Easy Believism here.
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Because what we see instead is we see a radical, genuine conversion which demonstrates itself in a legitimately changed heart and life.
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That's what we see.
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It's not Easy Believism.
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This is radical conversion.
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Let's stand and read.
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We've got a lot of text we're going to read today.
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We're going to read 19 through 40, which is quite a bit, but it's the whole story and I want us to get the context of the story as we read.
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It begins following where we were last week with the woman who was the fortune teller.
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Paul cast the demon out of her and it says in verse 19, but when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers.
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And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, these men are Jews and they're disturbing our city.
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They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.
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The crowd joined in attacking them and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods.
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And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely.
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Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet with stocks.
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About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the prisoners were listening to 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 bonds were unfastened.
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When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew a sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped.
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But Paul cried with a loud voice, Do not harm yourself for we are all here.
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When the jailer called for lights and rushed in and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas.
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Then he brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.
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And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and all who were in his house.
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And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds and was baptized at once, he and all his family.
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Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them and he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.
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But when it was day, the magistrate sent the police saying, Let those men go.
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And the jailer reported these words to Paul saying, The magistrates have sent to let you go.
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Therefore come out now and go in peace.
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But Paul said to them, They have beaten us publicly, Uncondemned men who are Roman citizens and have thrown us into prison.
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And do they now throw us out secretly? No.
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Let them come themselves and take us out.
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The police reported these words to the magistrates and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens.
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So they came and apologized to them and they took them out and asked them to leave the city.
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So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia.
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And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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Father, forgive me for any pride.
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Forgive me for hubris.
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Humble me before your text.
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Make me simply a vessel of your word.
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And keep me from error.
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I pray, God, that you would open the hearts of your people to the truth.
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To those who have been truly converted, I pray, God, that you would show them from this text a truth that would stir their hearts toward good works and repentance.
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And Lord, for those in this room who are not yet converted, I pray that this would show them that there is only one name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
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And that is the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And if they are to be saved, they must call upon Him in repentance and faith.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.
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It is not my custom to read such a long section of Scripture, but it fits our message today because primarily our focus is going to be on verses 29-33.
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The conversion of the Philippian jailer.
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But to understand the context of this passage, it's important to understand what happened before and what happened after.
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I didn't put an outline in your bulletin this week, but if you wanted to write an outline, it's very simple.
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What got Paul and Silas Stone in jail? What happened while they were in jail? And what got them out of jail? That's the story in a nutshell.
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What caused them to go in? What happened while they were in and what got them out? And that's kind of what we're going to look at in our outline today.
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You'll remember that Paul and his fellow laborers are in Philippi, which was their first stop on their missionary journey in Macedonia.
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Paul and Silas had begun much earlier in Antioch.
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They'd gone through, picked up Timothy, picked up Luke along the way.
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They had been forbidden to preach in Asia Minor, but instead were called by a vision to Macedonia, and they set sail from Troas, which was on the coast of the Aegean Sea, went across the Aegean Sea to Macedonia, and this is the first time the gospel comes to Europe.
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The first person that we see converted was a woman by the name of Lydia, and then her house was converted.
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And then, of course, Paul continues to go out to this prayer meeting, which was by the riverside.
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And as he was going to the prayer meeting, there was a woman who was following him who was a fortune teller, and the fortune teller was shouting out, These men are servants of the Most High God.
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They preach the way of salvation.
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And even though that was true, Paul didn't want to be associated with a fortune teller.
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He didn't want people to think that his message in any way lined up with the things that she had been doing beforehand.
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So he cast the demon out of her, stopped her from doing what she was doing and the association that was there.
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But in doing so, Paul ended up upsetting the people with the money.
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You see, this woman who was doing the fortune telling, this woman who had been going about acting as essentially the town psychic, was not doing so for her own benefit, but was doing so under the employ of other men.
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These men were the men behind the scenes, if you will.
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They were the ones who were making money off of this woman's prophetic utterances.
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And so we see in verse 19 what gets Paul and Silas Stone in jail.
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Verse 19, it says, But when the owners, her owners, interestingly, it defines her then as somewhat in a slave capacity because it says her owners, she was owned by these men, more so than an employee.
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These men felt like they had authority over her.
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And when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers.
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The rulers, of course, were Roman men.
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These men were chosen by Rome to have authority in the Roman cities.
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And it seems at this point that Paul had been in the city for many days, but only now are they being taken before the rulers.
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And I point that out because all that Paul's done up until this point, Paul hasn't been quiet.
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He's been preaching the gospel.
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He's been talking to people.
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I'm sure he's been doing individual evangelism.
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All that he's been doing up until this point is fine.
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No one has said a word to him.
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But the money has been disturbed.
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The income has been disturbed.
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Interestingly enough, those men didn't care one bit about that woman.
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See, we talked about her last week.
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She was delivered from that demon.
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She was delivered from that oppression.
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She was delivered from that sinful condition.
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That was a moment that should have encouraged rejoicing, but not for these men.
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Because these men wouldn't care if this woman busted hell wide open because she was making money for them.
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They didn't care about her.
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They cared about the money.
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Sort of like the story...
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Remember when Jesus cast the demons out of the demoniac at Gennesaret? The one who was filled with a legion of demons.
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And what did Jesus do? He took the demons out of the men.
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He put them in the pigs.
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And the pigs all went and ran off the cliff and died.
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What did the people say? Did the people come out and say, Hey Jesus, we're so thankful.
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This man has been crazy and he's been breaking chains.
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And we can't even go out because we're afraid this man's going to hurt us.
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And you've delivered him from his demon possession.
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We're so thankful.
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No, they come out and say, Man, what did you do to our pigs? That was our money.
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You didn't throw our pigs off the cliff.
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This is again why the Bible says that it's hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.
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It's hard for a person who's so focused on their finances to be able to see the kingdom of God.
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They have that giant blinder over their eyes.
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It's in the shape of a dollar sign.
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So here these men are.
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They see that their money train has pulled into the station.
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And they're upset.
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Verse 20 it says, And when they had brought the magistrates, they said, These men are Jews, and they're disturbing our city.
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Now it doesn't say so in the text, but there is a sense in which by calling them Jews, there is a derogatory nature in what is being said here.
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And it's likely, because we're going to find out later in Acts 18, that Emperor Claudius had excommunicated the Jews from Rome.
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And it appears there's a growing antagonism between the Romans and the Jews at this point.
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We know that by 70, there's going to be a huge antagonism.
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They're going to go and destroy Jerusalem.
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So by identifying them as Jews, it was sort of a way of saying, These Jews are causing problems.
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And it's a derogatory identification in that sense.
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And then verse 21 it says, They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.
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You have to understand, that's not exactly untrue.
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Paul and Silas are calling people to faith in Jesus Christ.
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You know what the demand of Rome was in the first century? Caesar Corias.
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You know what Caesar Corias means? Caesar is Lord.
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What do Christians say? Oh, no, no.
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Jesus Corias.
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Jesus is Lord.
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You see, there is a sense in which verse 21 is true.
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They are advocating customs that are not necessarily lawful.
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You see, the Bible does say we have to be good citizens.
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We have to obey the law.
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But when the law of man is put before the law of God, the law of God will always supersede.
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And God's law will always stand higher than any law that is put out by man.
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And here, Paul, yeah, we're advocating customs and traditions that are different.
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You are right.
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We are calling you to say Jesus is Lord.
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Verse 22, The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave order to beat them with rods.
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Now, this is one of several times that Paul is going to take a beating over his faith.
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And this is not a small thing.
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They're beating them.
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They've taken their clothes off.
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They're stripped naked.
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They're in front of everyone, and they're being beaten with sticks in front of the crowd.
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And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering that the jailer keep them safely.
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Now, the jailer, just to give you a little history here, the jailer doesn't tell us who he is, but history tells us that Roman jailers were retired Roman soldiers, that men who had reached an age where they could no longer be effective on the battlefield, but still had enough life in them that they could work and do a job, would be offered opportunities to work in these prisons or these jails.
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And they were responsible.
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They were good soldiers, and they had been obedient to Rome.
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And so because of their being good soldiers and obedient to Rome, it stands to reason that now they would be entrusted with watching over the jail.
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So it's likely that this man is an older man.
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He's got some age on him.
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He's got some experience on him.
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He's probably got a few notches on his sword, where he's taken a few lives.
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Verse 24, Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison, and fastened their feet in the stocks.
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Now, we often think about stocks as, oh, we think like Disneyland.
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You think about stocks as being those, like, three circles.
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And everybody does this when they go to Disney World or Disneyland.
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They put their hands in, they put their head through, and they smile because it's not really uncomfortable.
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And we think of that like Old English style stocks, right? Old English, they would lock you up, and they would put you on display because you did something foolish.
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And the city folk would come by, and they'd throw tomatoes or whatever.
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They'd make fun of you.
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It was a sense in which it was punishment, but it was also embarrassment, and embarrassment sort of added to the punishment.
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That is not what these are.
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In fact, I've seen coloring books, Christian coloring books, where they've pictured the stocks, and you sort of see Paul and Silas, feet locked up in the stocks, sitting down, kind of comfortable, kind of kicked back, but their feet are stuck.
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That is not what this is.
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These were fashioned in such a way that there were several holes in the stocks, so that the person who was being put in them could be stretched out as far as possible, and locked in.
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And so it sort of became a stretching machine, where it would simply pull you to the point of discomfort, and begin to create within your body, and in your extremities, a lot of pain, and discomfort, and...
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I kind of lost my word here, I'm sorry, but the thing...
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You don't eat before you go in the water, because you get a cramp.
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That's the word I'm looking for.
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Okay.
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Sorry.
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I didn't think about that.
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But it causes muscles to cramp up, and you're fully stretched out, and you're uncomfortable.
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So this is the situation these guys are in, and you've got to think, this guy's an ex-Roman soldier, here he is a jailer, he's got...
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He don't care about these guys.
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He wants it to hurt as much as possible.
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Now think also, they're naked.
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Now we don't know if they're completely, if they're undergarments or whatever, but we know that they were stripped bare.
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Their backs have been bruised, and beaten, and probably opened with wounds, and now they're stretched out on wooden stocks, pulled out as far as they can, so now they're discomforted, they're dealing with the cramps, and their bare bones, or bare back is against bare wood.
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I'm sure they didn't have a, you know, a sander back then, and sanded it down smooth.
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I'm sure it was just heavy-duty wood with the body rubbed up against it.
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This is a very uncomfortable and punishing situation.
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It was meant to discourage continued behavior.
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See, that's what jail used to be.
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Sorry.
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It used to discourage repeat behavior.
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So they didn't want them to be comfortable.
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They wanted them to be in pain.
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That's what makes the next verse all the more, because now we see what happened when they were in jail.
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Now they've gotten there.
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We see how they've gotten there.
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But what happens in verse 25 is amazing, because verse 25 tells us about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
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Now you say, why were they singing at midnight? I'm going to give you my thought on this.
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I'm not giving you an absolute, but I'll tell you this, it's hard to sleep when you're uncomfortable.
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It's hard to sleep when you're in pain.
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You know, a few years ago, I was having a medical issue and I had to go to the hospital and spend two nights in the hospital.
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And I don't think I slept more than ten minutes the whole time I was there, because it's just, sleeping when you're hurting is hard.
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So here are these men, they've been beaten.
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They've been stretched.
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They've been laid there to sit and think about what you've done until your punishment is fully laid down and you're brought before the magistrates for your true sentencing.
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And what do they do? Oh, woe is me.
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Nobody knows the truth.
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No, they didn't do that.
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It says they prayed and they sang hymns to God.
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They prayed and they were singing hymns to God.
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And the prisoners, there were other prisoners there.
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We don't know what these other men did.
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We don't know what the other prisoners did.
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But they're listening to this.
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They're saying, here's guys who've been beaten.
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Here's guys who are in pain.
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Here's guys who are suffering.
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And yet, they are praising God in the pain.
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And suddenly, verse 26, there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's bonds were unfastened.
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Not just Paul and Silas, but everyone's bonds were loosened.
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All the doors opened up.
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Now you would think because most of the guys in the jail, I'm going to imagine, weren't saved at this point.
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You'd think, I mean, if we went downtown and went to the jail and hit the button that made all the doors open up, that place would be a ghost town in five minutes.
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But nobody left.
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You've got to think that the praising of God from Paul and Silas may have brought some conviction in the jailhouse.
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Maybe they didn't want to leave these men.
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The only men they'd ever seen sing in those stocks.
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Maybe they were moved by those men from departing.
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But verse 27 says, when the jailer awoke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword.
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And the word here is actually the word for dagger.
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So it wasn't like he drew a long fighting sword.
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He probably had a little short sword that he kept with him to keep the prisoners in line, defend himself if necessary.
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But he took out his little short sword and he was going to kill himself supposing the prisoners had escaped.
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Now, there is a common teaching.
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And I'm going to challenge some of you today.
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There's a common teaching that the reason that this man was so quickly, immediately ready to commit suicide, because he knew that by allowing prisoners to escape, he himself was subjecting himself to their punishment.
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And according to Roman law, if a soldier lost a prisoner, he was then subject to that prisoner's punishment.
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And so by seeing the jail open, he realizes, well, I'm dead, so he's going to go ahead and end it quick so he doesn't have to go through all the punishment later.
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And that's a very common teaching.
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But there is something else to consider here.
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F.F.
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Bruce gives a slightly different interpretation.
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He says, for a man brought up to a Roman soldier's ideals of duty and discipline, there was only one honorable course, and that was suicide.
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See, we always paint the picture of the jailer as a man, oh, I lost my prisoners.
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I've got to die.
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I've got to die because they're going to kill me.
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I might as well kill myself first.
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But you've got to think, in the ancient world, the ideas of honor and duty were much higher often than they are today.
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And a man sees what his responsibility was with those men.
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They are gone.
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I don't think he's about to kill himself out of fear.
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I think he's about to kill himself out of dishonor.
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And there's a difference.
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Killing himself because of the inevitability of punishment is not in the text.
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That's something we assume.
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But I don't think we have to.
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I think that what we see here is a man who, in a sense, has seen dishonor fall upon him.
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Think about the way, and some of you don't know this, but obviously, spending so many years studying martial arts, think about the old samurai culture.
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Do you know what the samurai culture was? If you experienced dishonor in any way, they had the same thing.
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They took their short sword, their short blade, and they took their own life because dishonor was more important than anything.
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But there's something even further to think here.
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This is this man's livelihood.
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This is what this man does.
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Even if he's not afraid of them taking his life as a punishment for losing the prisoners, even if he's not afraid of that, because he can't control an earthquake, right? Maybe he could get away with that.
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And maybe he's not concerned with honor.
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But you know what he could be concerned with? He's just lost his livelihood.
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Think about what happened during the Depression era.
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Men threw themselves out of windows.
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Why? Because they saw all that they had worked for in life go down the toilet.
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They didn't have anything to live for anymore.
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So they threw themselves out of their buildings.
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My point is, I'm trying to personalize the jailer here because I think there's a reason why he runs in and says, What must I do to be saved? Because here is a man who's lost everything of value.
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At least he thinks.
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He has nothing else.
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He's opened his eyes.
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His jail that he was responsible for has been busted open and his thought is, Every prisoner is gone.
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I don't have any reason to live anymore.
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I don't have any reason to stay here anymore.
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My position, my livelihood, my respect, my honor, my everything is gone.
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And then he hears a little voice from inside, Do yourself no harm.
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We are all here.
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See, that's the moment when God broke his heart.
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That's what drove him to his knees.
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And he'd come into those men, and verse 29 says, and he called for lights, and he rushed in, and trembling with fear.
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Why is he trembling with fear? Because he's never seen anything like this in his life.
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He was expecting that every one of those men would have been like lightning bolts out of that jail, but they're all there surrounding Paul and Silas, hearing what they're saying.
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The stocks are broken loose.
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They could have run, but they didn't.
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And he looks at them, and he falls down before them, and he says, verse 30, What must I do to be saved? You know what the inference is in that statement? Men, I am lost.
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Because no man asks what I must do to be saved until he knows he's lost.
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He is broken.
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He is broken before God.
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And like a good Calvinist, Paul says you can't do anything because God has preordained all of this and you do nothing.
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No, that's not what he said.
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He said believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
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You see, we can't ever let our Reformed theology make us give up the simple answer.
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Yes, it's God who opens the heart.
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It was God who opened the jail.
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It's God who has orchestrated all of this.
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But yes, when somebody asks you how can I be saved, don't be afraid to tell them believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
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Don't be afraid to tell people that simple truth.
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That's the Scripture.
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That's right.
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Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
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You will be saved.
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You and your whole house.
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Now what does that mean? Paul knew.
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Paul knew that this man's faith was genuine and he knew it was going to have an effect on his family.
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And he knew that this wasn't going to stop with this man.
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This is going to go home with you and this is going to affect everyone you live with.
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And Paul knew that and God saw that through because we see in verse 32, it says, they spoke the word of the Lord to him and all who was in his house.
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That's the part that a lot of people miss, verse 32, because Paul didn't just say believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved.
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But then after he said that, he went to his house with him and he taught him the Bible.
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You see, here's another thing.
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If somebody says, sir, madam, what must I do to be saved? Say believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved, but don't stop there.
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Because that's not where it ends.
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That's where it begins.
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Paul didn't just stop there.
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Paul didn't say believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and leave the jailer wondering what that meant.
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But he went back home with him and he opened up the word of God with him and he showed them what it meant to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And he told them the word of God so that they could have a substance to their faith.
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It's like we talked about in Sunday school this morning.
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You ask people, what do you have to do to be saved? They say believe in Jesus.
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You say, why do you believe in Jesus? Well, He died on the cross.
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Why did He die on the cross? He died on the cross for our sins.
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What does that mean? I don't know.
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It's what I've been told.
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And their faith lacks substance.
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Paul didn't want this man's faith to be devoid of meaning.
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He wanted it to be full and fruitful.
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And so he goes back to his house and he spoke the word of the Lord to him.
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And this man is radically changed, y'all.
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This is no easy believism here.
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This is a man, you see it in v.
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33, and he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds.
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You've got to think, he might have helped inflict some of those wounds.
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He certainly helped make them worse when he fastened them in the stocks.
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He was responsible for the very blood he is now washing off.
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That's change.
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That's radical change.
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And it says he was baptized.
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That's beautiful.
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Love to see someone baptized because that's that public proclamation.
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He's being baptized with his family, but also in front of his family.
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I believe in Jesus.
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And in a sense, he's severing himself from his Roman belief because the Roman belief and the Roman trust was in Caesar as Lord.
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No, Jesus as Lord.
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And everything's changing.
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This man's life is changing.
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Then he brought them up into his house and he set food before them.
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This is the Word of God right here.
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Because in James it tells us, it says a man who says he has faith and sees another person going hungry and doesn't help that person, doesn't have faith, because that's what faith is.
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His faith is demonstrated by loving other people.
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This man is demonstrating his faith by loving them.
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These are prisoners, man.
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These are guys who 10 hours earlier, he was part of putting them in the stocks and now he's got them at his table.
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Things have changed.
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And he rejoiced.
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Along with his entire household that he had believed in God and his household now, along with him is rejoicing.
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This is the fruit of true conversion.
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He loved Paul and he loved Silas.
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He rejoiced in God and in his salvation and he was a radically changed convert.
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Now, having said all that, I want to just make a couple of comments about what happens next.
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And then I'm going to make an application.
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Because verses 35-40 give the aftermath to all this.
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This is what happens to get Paul and Silas out of jail.
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Because the next morning, the magistrates come in and say, let those men go.
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They've suffered long enough.
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They know now not to mess around with us.
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See, the magistrates don't know about all this.
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They don't know this guy got saved.
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In fact, one of the things that I was considering this week, I was reading the text and listening and different people preaching things.
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One of the things about this text that's very interesting is there was an earthquake that opened the jail.
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But it was very localized.
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Nobody else seems to know anything about it.
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This was the hand of God opening that jail.
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And it was very, very, very centralized.
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These guys come in.
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They don't know anything's happened.
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It says, when it was day, the magistrates sent the police saying, let those men go.
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And the jailer reported these words to Paul, probably happy.
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The jailer's probably excited coming to Paul.
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Hey, Paul, they're going to let you go.
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But Paul said to them, wait a minute.
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Slow down.
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Again, this is the key standard version.
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But this is what Paul said.
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He's like, slow down.
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You're telling me they're going to beat me in the street, put me into prison for nothing, and then come in and let me go and think I'm going to go quietly? As my mama used to say, you got another thing coming.
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You think that's going to happen? You got another thing coming? No.
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And this is interesting because he says, we are Roman citizens.
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You tell them to come let us out.
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And when they reported it back to them that they were Roman citizens, those guys were not happy because it was against Roman law to beat a Roman citizen publicly because it was considered to be a humiliation.
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And it was illegal to humiliate a Roman citizen publicly.
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If you were going to punish him, it had to be done privately because Roman citizens were considered up here and everybody else was down here.
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And if you're a Roman citizen and you're beat publicly, that's against the law.
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These guys had broken the law.
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Now you kind of wonder, why didn't Paul say this before he took a beating? You know? Paul could have said the day before, hey, we're Roman citizens, and everything would have stopped.
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All the beatings would have stopped, but Paul didn't.
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There's a couple of reasons why maybe not.
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It could have been that it was such a massive confusion.
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All these guys are yelling out and shouting and all this stuff, and they're coming in to beat him, and Paul might be saying, hey, we're Romans, and nobody's listening.
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But it could also be that he was kept from that because God knew there was a jailer that needed saving.
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Sometimes we do go through trials and tribulations because there's somebody on the other side that needs it more than we do.
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You don't ever know.
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We know this, though.
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He went there for a reason.
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He went there because that jailer in his house needed some saving.
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That's the Southern way of saying he needed some saving.
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That's what it was.
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So they came in to apologize to them.
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They took them out and asked them to leave the city.
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I love verse 40.
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So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia.
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And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.
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I say I like verse 40 because of this.
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The men come in and say, leave the city.
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Leave.
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Okay, we messed up.
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Leave.
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Did they leave? Not right away.
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They went to Lydia's house.
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They went around encouraging the brethren.
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Then they left.
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Because what are they going to do now? Paul is like, yeah, hit me again.
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You're not going to do nothing.
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Now I only point that out because I think that Paul teaches us something here.
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We're going to learn this in the months to come as we go through Acts a little further.
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Paul uses his Roman citizenship to his advantage several times.
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And he unapologetically appeals to his rights when the situation is important.
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And I only bring that up for this reason.
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In America, we have certain rights.
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Mike gets to go out and preach on the street because there are rights that allow us to do that.
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Now, if the rights weren't there, we'd still do it.
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But there's no reason why he should be embarrassed if somebody says, you can't do that here, for him to say, yes, I can.
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I have the right to do this.
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I'm a citizen, and according to the Constitution, we have the speech right to do this.
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When I go and hand out tracts to people, there's actually a law that says I can do that.
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You know those little non-soliciting signs? Doesn't count for tracts because tracts is not soliciting.
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It's not.
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So you hold up your non-soliciting sign, and I'm just going to hand you a tract.
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I'm going to use the law where it's lawful and good to help me do what I'm going to do.
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That's what Paul does, and there's no shame in that.
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I just want to point that out.
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That's extra.
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You're going to have to pay for it.
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But that's just a little extra.
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We can take advantage of our rights and use them for the furtherance of the Gospel.
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That's what Paul does.
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He takes advantage of the fact that he is a Roman citizen, and he uses that for the advantage of the Gospel.
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There's nothing wrong with taking advantage of a right and using it for the furtherance of the Gospel.
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Again, that was extra.
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Let me finish.
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Let me move now to the application.
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We'll draw to a close.
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The salvation of the Philippian jailer stands as one of the great conversion stories in history.
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Here is a man who began his day in one condition, and he began his day with no intention to change.
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But God shook his world, opened his eyes, unstopped his ears, and brought him to his knees.
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And as a result, he cried out, Men, what must I do to be saved? Please do not be confused.
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This is not a picture of easy believism.
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This is a beautiful picture of a man who is radically converted.
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And what radical conversion can do even to the hardest, crustiest, oldest Roman soldier, God can change a heart and He can change a life.
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I know sometimes people say, I don't know if I can witness to that person.
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He's so set in his ways.
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You think this Roman soldier wasn't set in his ways? Man, he was like cement in his ways, and God broke the cement.
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He was beautifully broken before the Lord.
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And we all know people like this dealer.
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Maybe an older person, well-established, basically content.
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We know they need Christ, but they have no desire for Him.
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It is not wrong to ask God to shake their world.
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God, shake His world, open His eyes, unstop His heart, make me a voice of truth in His life that He might hear me, and when you do break His heart, He'll know who to ask, what must I do to be saved? You see, Paul and Silas weren't singing to the man, hey, come and ask us, hey, come and ask us.
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They were saying, Lord, Lord.
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We don't know what they were singing.
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They could have been singing the Psalms, could have been singing an early hymn of the church, could have been singing Philippians 2, the Karma and Christy.
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They could have been preaching.
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We don't know what they were singing, but we do know this.
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When that man was broken, he knew to whom to come, and he went in with a broken heart before the only people he knew who had the truth.
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Let's be ready for that.
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Let's pray for that.
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For the people in our lives who seem the hardest, for the people in our lives that seem the most set in our ways, let us pray that God would shake their world and they would know who to ask.
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My friend.
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My brother.
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My daughter.
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My husband.
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My son.
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My friend.
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What must I do to be saved? And let us share Christ with them.
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Father in Heaven, I thank You for this wonderful story of conversion.
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And I pray, Lord, if there are men and women here who are set in their ways, and their way is opposed to Christ, I pray You'd rock their world this morning.
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I pray that You would overturn their heart this morning.
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Lord, remove the heart of stone.
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Give them a heart of flesh that beats for You.
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And God, draw them to Yourself as You drew that jailer.
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Draw them today.
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And Lord, for the believers in the room, Lord, make us beautiful voices of the Gospel that people would hear us proclaiming the truth.
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And that way when You open their hearts, they will know to whom to ask.
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Sirs, friends, what must I do to be saved? We ask all this in Jesus' name.
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Amen.