Sunday, September 15, 2024 AM

Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for gathering us to worship you, to give you praise. Thank you for your grace in our lives. Thank you for the way in which you have shown mercy, the way that you renew your compassions every morning and your blessings every day.

I pray that you would teach us and help us to rejoice in you. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter 16. Acts 16 verses 25 through 34.

We'll be reading together this morning. Acts 16 verses 25 through 34. We have been thinking about this series of events, the interactions of Paul and Silas and the folks in the Roman colony of Philippi.

We've thought about why demons are so annoying and why magistrates are so corrupt. And now we're considering why Christians are so joyful, thinking about Paul and Silas and their behavior, indeed, their hope and their belief that they have even while beaten and put in prison there in Philippi.

Joy is characteristic of the spread of the gospel. As we go through the book of Acts, we find this to be the case. In Acts chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost, there were many who were praising God and rejoicing in the grace of God and their fellowship together as they continued in the apostles' doctrine and the breaking of bread and prayer.

In chapter 3, we find a man who was granted the faith to believe upon Christ and he was healed, though he was born lame, and then he went walking and leaping and praising God through the entirety of the temple.

In chapter 5, we find the apostles rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ, having been beaten by the Sanhedrin. In chapter 8, there was joy in the heart of Samaria and joy in the soul of Philip as the gospel began to spread to new areas of the world.

In chapter 13, we find the Gentiles rejoicing at the preaching of Paul in the synagogue of Antioch at Pisidia, that they too were included in the salvation plan of God. And even after persecution drove Paul and Silas away from Antioch and away from Iconium, the saints still rejoiced in the Lord.

And in chapter 15, when Paul and Barnabas were heading to Jerusalem, they shared the good news of how the gospel was spreading to all the Gentiles and the saints rejoiced there as well. There was joy amongst those who were newly born again, joy amongst the new converts, and there was joy amongst the faithful saints as they gathered together to consider the grace of God and the wonderful things that God was doing.

Joy, joy, joy as the hymn sings. Well, there's more joy to be had, so I invite you to stand with me as we read God's holy word. Stand if you are able. We're going to read chapter 16 of Acts, verses 25 through 34.

This is the word of the Lord. But at midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 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 chains were loosed.

And the keeper of the prison, awaking from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself. But Paul called with a loud voice saying, Do yourself no harm, for we are all here.

Then he called for a light, ran in, fell down trembling before Paul and Silas, and he brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? So they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.

Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes, and immediately he and all his family were baptized.

Now when he had brought them into his house, he set food before them, and he rejoiced, having believed in God with all his household. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated.

You know, the best part about nightmares is it's when you wake up and you begin to remember, you begin to remember how many blessings you've been taken for granted. Oh, that isn't true. I'm not suffering through that.

That awful dream I just had was just a dream, and that's not true of my life. Best part about nightmares, waking up and remembering the blessings of God that we do have. I wonder how active and how ample is our remembrance of our Lord, our remembrance of his glory, our remembrance of his gospel, our remembrance of his of his grace.

We were talking last week about Paul and Silas hymning the night and hymning each other and hymning the prisoners, bringing the truths of God and singing them to one another in the middle of the night, in the middle of their tribulation.

Is that our manner? Is that the manner of our spiritual warfare? In Psalm 143, in verse 4, the psalmist says, my spirit is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is distressed. And this is the word of a believer.

This is the word of a saint. Have we ourselves experienced this? My heart is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is distressed. What is the response? He says in verse 5, I remember the days of old.

I meditate on all your works. I amuse on the works of your hands. I spread out my hands to you. My soul longs for you like a thirsty land. Selah. Think about that. Meditate on that. Reflect on that. The saint is overwhelmed.

His spirit is down. His heart is breaking. And yet what does he do? He meditates upon the works of God, the greatness of God, who He is and what He has done, and expresses His longing for the Lord, for that fellowship, for that communion.

The joy of the saints reflects our awareness, our meditations upon the grace of our salvation. We must, by the Spirit, remember our Savior rejoicing in our salvation. We should hymn by the Spirit. We should pray with the Spirit and thus with understanding.

We should sing with the Spirit and thus with understanding and rejoice in the truths of God. We need to recall the good of the gospel, the news of the gospel, and let that bring us to joy time and again like water that satisfies.

Why are Christians so joyful? Because we have such a great God. We talked about last week. Look at Paul and Silas. They're in the prison in Philippi, but they have such a great God. We have such a great God.

That's why we can be so joyful. But the second reason, which is very related, is that we have such great grace, which is the focus of verses 29 through 34. Why are Christians so joyful? Because we have such great grace.

This is brought home to us if we will consider the simplicity of the gospel, if we will consider the scope of the gospel, and if we will consider the seismic shift of the gospel. This will bring home to our minds and will plant in our hearts that we have such great grace, and this will bear the fruit of joy in our lives.

We need that. We need that remembrance because it is the forgetfulness, it is the forgetfulness in our busyness and the forgetfulness in our unconfessed sin. It is the forgetfulness that causes us to live a waking nightmare, a waking nightmare where we embrace and we cultivate when we think that our problems and our persons, when we insist that our lives are simply too complex or too cut off or too concrete for God's grace.

I'm no simple sinner. It's not that simple. Or we think that it's just too far off. There's not, there's just too distant from the love of God, too distant from the grace of God, or things are too permanent.

They're just never going to change. What a waking nightmare we live in when we forget the grace of God overcoming all these things. We need to remember something very simple. When we think that things are too complex or people are too cut off or problems are too concrete for the grace of God, let us remember this very simple truth.

Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Can we remember that? Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. We have such great grace. So we can wake from that nightmare. Ephesians 5 .14 says, awake you who sleep, awake from the dead, and Christ will give you light.

Let's live in that light, live in that grace, keep that at the foremost of our minds. Think about the Philippian jailer. I want us to think about this keeper of the prison. He is employed by the magistrates of the city of Philippi.

He is a keeper of the prison in this Roman colony. He is, in this case, a tool of tyranny. We thought about why magistrates are so corrupt and the fear of man. The magistrates of Philippi have unjustly thrown Paul and Silas into prison, and this Philippian jailer is simply one of their tools to exercise their tyranny upon Paul and Silas.

And we also think of him in the same way. He has a sword into his chest. Think about this Philippian jailer, a tool of tyranny. He has settled his mind on suicide, and yet God intervenes and he is raised to new life.

He is woken from his nightmare. I think it would be an awful tragedy if this man were to ever forget that night, to ever forget what happened, to ever live in an active forgetfulness, not just the informational forgetfulness, but the active forgetfulness, that he were ever to live as if this had never happened.

How sad that would be. What a nightmare that would be. What a tragedy, and the same is true of us, that we would ever live as if we do not have such great grace. Let us rejoice in the simplicity of the gospel.

This earthquake shook the jail, loosened the stones, the chains that were embedded into the stones, they are loosened, they fall out of the cracks, the doors are all put ajar, the doors all open. The jailer is awakened by the rumbling earthquake and the sound of all this metal under stress.

He wakes up, and as he comes to survey his dominion, as he comes to look at all that he is in charge of, his stewardship, he sees his doom. He sees all the doors open. The chains have fallen out of the wall.

This is his nightmare, and he is moments from ending himself, and here at the end of himself, Paul calls out and says, don't do yourself any harm. Paul knows it's the way of the Romans to commit suicide.

I mean, Philippi is the colony that was established after the victory where Roman generals killed themselves. This is embedded in the thinking of this jailer. Paul knows it because he himself is a Roman.

He knows how they think. He says, do yourself no harm, for we are all here, and so the Philippian jailer has been shaken by the earthquake, shaken by the thought he's lost his life, but he has stayed at the moment, at the critical moment, and he calls for light, and he comes to Paul and Silas, and he says, what must I do to be saved?

Consider his question, what must I do to be saved? Slightly different question, isn't it, than the rich young ruler, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Slightly different. He just says, what must I do to be saved?

And we certainly say amen to the must. He must be saved. He's a sinner created in the image of God under the wrath of God. He must, he must be saved. And we say, of course, he must deal with God. He's made in God's image, so there's an I, when he says I, that is correct, but when he says, what must I do to be saved?

He uses a word that means, what must I produce to be saved? He uses a word that means, what must I acquire to be saved? The very word means, what manner of production, what manner of perfection must I attain in order to be saved?

He wants to know. He's in crisis. He was willing to kill himself. He here is willing to do whatever it takes, no matter what. And with this word, we disagree. With this word, the Scriptures say something different.

Because Paul simply responds, Paul and Silas both say, believe. They don't say, do. They say, believe. Believe. The focus, therefore, is not on what the jailer must do, but on what the Lord Jesus Christ has done.

The focus is not upon who the jailer is, but on who Jesus Christ is. The call to faith is not a call to acquire something, or to produce something, or to perfect something. It is a call to hold fast and look towards and trust and know the one who has perfected, who has produced, who has acquired.

The grace of faith is in view. It's very simple. We must remember this. Paul says, remember that Jesus Christ, the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to the gospel. Remember that. The simplicity of it all.

Not what we must do, but what Jesus Christ has done. Not who we are, but who Jesus Christ is. Notice the compelling call, believe on. Notice the gospel declared in the name, in the titles, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is Lord. He is Lord. He's the King. Paul might be in a Philippian jail, Philippi, a Roman colony, under the authority of Caesar, who is considered Lord, and he was Lord of the Roman Empire, and venerated as Lord.

But there is someone else who has a higher throne than Caesar, and his name is Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And this Philippian jailer is accountable to Caesar, and that's why he was about to kill himself, because he's a Roman jailer, and if he lets his prisoners go, then he's accountable to the death penalty, to Caesar, who is Lord.

But Jesus, who is Lord, is calling to save his life, where Caesar, who is Lord, wanted him to end his life. But this man cannot save his life without turning to Jesus Christ, and finding in him his everything.

So the Lord is King, Jesus Christ is the Lord, and this is Jesus, who is, who else? This Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Son of David, according to the flesh, and he is the Christ. He is the Messiah. He is the Anointed One.

He is the Great Prophet. He is the High Priest. He is the King of Kings. He is the one to whom all the scriptures have attested. By saying the Lord Jesus Christ, by declaring his person, Paul necessarily invokes his work.

He is declaring the good news. Paul and Silas are preaching the good news to the jailer by talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel means good news, and the good of the good news is the Lord Jesus Christ, and the news of the good news is the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's the gospel. Notice the call for response to the gospel. There's a distinction here. Don't confuse them. When somebody says the gospel is repent and believe, they mean the response to the gospel. Jesus came preaching, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

The time has been fulfilled. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. He's saying repent and turn from everything who you are. Make a pile of your good deeds. Make a pile of your bad deeds.

Flee them both and believe and trust in the gospel. But repent and believe are not the good of the good news. Repent and believe are not the news of the good news. Jesus Christ is. He saves. Your repentance does not save you.

Christ saves you. Your faith does not save you. Christ saves you. Believe in him. Trust in him. Turn to him. When they say believe, believe on Jesus Christ, that's the response. Here's the promise. You will be saved.

You will be forgiven. I mean, this man would about kill himself and sent himself into perdition. And there was this massive earthquake that just happened. He knows he's on the brink of judgment. It is brought home to him.

He's on the brink of judgment. But if he believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, he will be saved. He will be forgiven of his sins. He will have life instead of death, light instead of darkness, and he will have the spirit and joy instead of despair.

But what does it mean to believe? What does it mean to believe? Belief, this called for response, this grace of God to have to have faith and to entrust oneself to the Lord Jesus Christ is not simply a matter of having a feeling of sincerity.

Oh, I'm a person of faith because I like to believe things. I'm just naturally trustful. That is not what it's talking about. To believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ, first of all, is to know who he is and what he has done.

You cannot believe in the Lord Jesus Christ if you don't know who he is. Who is he? Consider who he is in his names and his titles. Consider what he has accomplished in his life and his death and his resurrection.

Turn your attention to his person and work. You must know the truth of who Jesus Christ is and you must be persuaded that, in fact, it is true. Persuaded that, in fact, yes, indeed, Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

I don't only know the information, but I think that that information is the truest thing I've ever heard. I'm persuaded of its truth. And not only that, I'll go farther than the demons who believe that much and tremble.

I will entrust myself to this Savior as if everything in my life hangs upon one nail and he's the nail upon which everything hangs. I entrust myself to this Savior. And if you know the graces of that faith, you are saved.

But it's simple. It's about Jesus Christ. It's about who he is. He's he's the Savior. This is challenging. It is challenging to unbelief. It is challenging to self-centeredness. It is challenging to bitterness.

It is challenging to so many aspects of what we have begun to think. Is essential to personhood, somebody hears the simplicity of the gospel is something simply believe on Jesus Christ and you will be saved, turn away from yourself and turn to him, trust in him, know the truth, believe that it is true and entrust yourself to him entirely and you will be saved.

That's too simple. Someone says, I am too complex of a person for that. There's a lot more to me than just that. My problems are too complex. You have no idea. You have no idea what I've gone through.

You have no idea about the emotional problems that I have. Someone someone hears the simplicity of the gospel and say, well, I have a history. You don't understand. I have a history. I have feelings. I have experiences.

I have I have failures that are in my life. I have I have friends who would who would definitely be offended by this. And I have I have hurts that have not been handled. And I have concerns and I have objections.

Sounds like you have it all. But one thing you lack. One thing you lack. Lay all of that personal richness aside that is no wealth at all and lay hold. Of Jesus Christ, Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me, deny himself.

Well, I have this and I have that, and I'm of this kind of person, I'm of that kind of person. Deny yourself. Take up the cross. The old man must die. Seek to save your life. You will lose it. Lose your life for Christ.

And you will find it. Whoever desires to come after Jesus Christ, let him deny himself, take up his cross. And that's how we follow Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our. Savior, the simplicity of the gospel, he's the good of the good news, he's the news of the good news.

Turn to him. He's the savior. We need to we need to. Remember that and rejoice. The psalmist says Psalm 51, verse 12, restore to me the joy of your salvation. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit.

This will wash away the gall of your bitter night when you remember. When you remember the risen son. By the spirit in the Scriptures, turn. To Jesus Christ, he's the savior. You don't you don't have to answer every single proposed complexity to know that he's your savior.

You don't have to know every step of the plan of deliverance to know that he's your good shepherd and that he's the savior of your soul. It's not about us and our complexities, it's about Christ and his excellency.

The gospel is is safe enough for a child to wade. It is deep enough for an elephant to drown, but you don't have to fathom the depths of it to know that Jesus Christ is your savior and hold fast to him.

We are to rejoice in the simplicity of the gospel when we are to rejoice in the scope of the gospel, as Paul and Silas say to him, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, verse 31, and you will be saved, you and your household.

And look at verse 32. Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all to all who were in his house. The joy of Christ's gospel reaches beyond self, the complexities of self in in another way, in that it's not just you who need to know the gospel, who need to believe in Jesus Christ.

It's also those in your household, meaning that there's not somebody who stands in the place for everybody in the household and believes for them in their place and for their sake. We only have one mediator between God and man, and that's the man Christ Jesus.

There's no other mediator that we have. You can't latch on to your husband or latch on to your wife or latch on to your parents or latch on to your children or somebody else in your household and think that because they're spiritual and because they believe then that then I'm good.

I had a man tell me that one time. I tried to talk to him about Jesus Christ. He said, well, my wife really is the one who kind of knows all that stuff. She's the one who I just kind of defer to her, you know, and I'm good with whatever she believes.

She's not your mediator. She's not your mediator. No, the gospel is for not just you. It's also for all those in your household. That doesn't sound like a lot of people, but consider this. Consider the meaning of the household concerning which Paul and Silas mean when they speak to this Gentile Philippian.

They're meaning salvation is for husbands. Salvation is for wives. Salvation is for parents. Salvation is for children. Salvation is for free men. Salvation is for slaves. That's a lot of different people in a household in ancient Rome.

And look, they spoke the word of God to those in the household. They went to those in the household and they said, you must be saved and you must be saved and you must be saved. You must believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

Why? For whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?

The gospel is the scope of the gospel. We should rejoice in how the gospel is preached to all manner of people. And look what happened to the members of the Philippian jailer's household, hearing they believed, believing they were saved, being saved, they were baptized and there was joy.

And they rejoiced that they had believed. Wow, this is amazing. New life. We have the hope. We have the joy. We have the light in Christ. So no representative salvation except in Jesus Christ alone. He's our Savior.

He stands in for us. Nobody else can. Nobody else does. And it is those notice in the text, those who hear the word of God, understand it, know the truth of it, persuaded of the truth of it and entrust themselves to Jesus Christ as Savior.

They're the ones who get baptized. Do you notice that? They're the ones who are baptized. So this gospel is not for adults only. It's also for children. It's not for Jews only, but also for the nations.

It's not for intellectuals only, but also for the simple-minded too. Salvation for all kinds of people. And consider this, salvation for generations cursed. In Acts 2 .39, Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost and he's pointed at the people he's preaching to and says, you crucified the Lord of glory.

And they said, what must we do to be saved? So he told them to believe in the gospel, to repent of their sins, believe in the gospel and be saved from Acts 2 .39, that perverse generation. And not only to be saved from that perverse generation, but this promise of salvation was for them and for their children, even though they were chanting in the courtyard for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, demanding His blood and saying, His blood be upon us and our children.

They've cursed themselves and cursed their children. But then the gospel came and said, no, you can be saved from this perverse generation, you and your children. So the gospel, think about the scope of the gospel, the gospel goes to generations who are cursed.

How many times has a whole generation been written off as worthless and cursed? The gospel is for such generations, but not only for generations cursed, but also salvation for nations at their worst. Titus 3 1 -7 is a beautiful passage declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ for all kinds of people.

But it's even better when you think about the fact that the gospel of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sins and the right standing before God, all the free grace of God is for the people that Titus was ministering to, a bunch of cretins.

These were awful people. They made Americans look sophisticated. The gospel is for them, too. Gospel is for these kinds of people, for nations when they're at their absolute worst, the gospel is for them.

So what a nightmare we invite when we forget the grace of God and the scope of the gospel, that we would think a person is too cut off or a problem is too distant. Think of a person as being too cut off from the grace of God.

Tell me what national under what tyranny is too far from God's grace to reach? What child indoctrinated in what madrasas can't be saved by the grace of Jesus Christ, whether they be from Iran or Syria?

And what zealot amongst the radical fundamentalist left is too far out to forgive, too far out to save, though they had the blue hair and the big glasses and all the surgeries and all the hormones. You think they're too far off for God's grace to save, too cut off from God.

We lose our joy in grace when we deny its hope to the world. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. How amazing it is. And let us not get over this wonder that Jesus Christ came into the world to call the not to call the righteous, but to call sinners to repentance.

Best way to have this joy is to remember and to be humble. Humility and joy are conjoined twins. If one is missing, the other is to find one. You find the other. Humility and joy are conjoined twins. What joy we have.

When we consider the grace of God for such as these, because I know that I am not more worthy than they. And should one of these come to Christ's table, I'm not better than they are. I can get up and pull their seat out for because I'm not better than they are.

I'm not more worthy than they are. I don't have more merits than they do. I'm not a better fit for Christ's kingdom than they are. The joy comes back as the humility is entrenched, as we remember the scope of the gospel and the grace of God.

We should rejoice in the simplicity of the gospel, rejoice in the scope of the gospel and rejoice in the seismic shift of the gospel. How often we find earthquakes attending the gospel's dawn. An earthquake when Jesus died upon the cross, earthquake with Jerusalem's demise, earthquake with the jailer's salvation, earthquake with a new covenant's advance.

Think about the seismic shift, though, in the life of the Philippian jailer. Consider the difference. He went from a tyrant to a brother. He went from suicidal to joy filled, where once he put them in stocks in the inner prison.

Now he's full of hospitality, love and warmth. Where before he was despairing, now he is filled with gratitude. You know, in the next chapter, Paul and Silas get accused of something when they're in Thessalonica, and in Acts 17, verse 6, the Jews are very upset, and when they did not find them, they're looking for Paul and Silas, couldn't find them.

So they grabbed a brother named Jason. They dragged Jason and some of the brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out,. These who have turned the world upside down have come here, too. They knew about the earthquake in Philippi, but that earthquake in Philippi is not how the world is getting turned upside down.

It's the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's Jesus turning everything upside down. There is real change because Jesus Christ is a real Savior. There's real change because Jesus Christ is a real Savior. The change, the transformation, is his power and his saving and his working in our lives, which pushes us when we begin to label certain problems as too concrete.

Oh, that's never going to change. Oh, that's just never going to go away. Oh, there's no hope for this, no hope for that. How weak is our faith and how little is our joy? 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11 says, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived, nor the fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. We should have joy in the seismic shift of the gospel.

The stars have not set our course, nor is our doom carved into the stone. We come to Jesus who is truly the unshakeable and everything else shakes around him and shifts around him until it all comes underneath his feet.

So remember and rejoice. He's the one who changes and we see the changes. And if you can't see the change in your own life, then look around to the others, your brothers and your sisters, and see what God does in their life and rejoice in the change there.

If you're too critical about yourself and you're always condemning yourself, look to somebody else. Look at what God does there and rejoice in what God does in their lives and know and have your faith heartened that Jesus Christ does indeed change and he changes even you.

For our joy, oh saints, we should think upon the happy conversion of this jailer in wonder anew at God's grace. Remember that you once were without Christ. Remember that once you were without God in the world.

Remember that once you were strangers from the covenants of promise. Remember that once you were without hope. But now in Christ, we who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ and remember that he is our peace and remember that he has reconciled us to God and remember that we have access to him by the spirit.

Remember and rejoice. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this day. I pray that you would help us to remember what great grace you have given to us. Please lead us in joy and help us to rejoice that you are such a great God and you have given us such great grace.

Pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.