Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast,
where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.
My name is Pastor Josh, and I want to thank you for listening to
this podcast.
I hope that this podcast can be a blessing to you and strengthen
you in the word of God.
Now, come along.
Let's look into the Bible and see what God has for us here today.
Well, we're going to go ahead and turn to the Book of Acts.
If you have your Bibles, turn to the Book of Acts.
And we are going to be looking at one of my favorite stories in
all of the Bible.
Bible.
Now, some of you have said.
I've heard you say that a million times.
True.
Okay.
I've got a lot of favorite stories, but this is one of my favorite
stories.
And you can know that by the fact that one of the characters here,
one of the individuals that's in the story, we named someone in
our house with that name, Silas.
And I love this story.
This is the story of Paul and Silas in prison and how God miraculously
worked through them to have individuals come to Christ.
And so this has been a couple of weeks since we've looked at this
passage of scripture.
So I need to remind you about where we are and what's happened.
We see Paul and Silas in prison because they were preaching
the gospel, because they cast out a demon in this girl.
And she obviously at that point stopped doing the things that
her masters were having her do.
And they lost their money.
And so therefore what they did was they said, we're upset with these
guys.
We're going to beat them, and we're going to throw them in jail.
That's where we left off.
And we left off in verse number 25, and it says, and at midnight,
Paul and Silas prayed.
And so of all the things that Paul and Silas could have done, they
could have complained, they could have gotten upset and tried
to break out themselves.
But the response to this difficulty, the response to this
trial, the response to this beating, the response to the imprisonment
was that they would pray.
It's a complete reliance on the Lord.
And I'm going to tell you that as believers, we have the opportunity
to completely rely on God at all points.
But specifically in times of difficulty, there's going to be times
in your life where you might say, you know what?
I don't know what to do.
I don't know what God has in this for me.
I don't know what God is trying to teach me.
But one thing that you can do is say, I'm going to lean on him
through this.
I'm going to trust in him through this.
And so therefore, they demonstrate their trust in God by
praying.
It says, and they prayed.
And they didn't just pray.
What do they do?
It says, and saying praises unto God.
Now, now, I don't know about you, but it's very hard for me to
truly sing praises to God if I'm angry, if I'm bitter, if I'm
discouraged.
But what they do here is they say, you know what?
We trust in God so much that we are going to praise him not necessarily
for the circumstance that we are in, but we are going to praise
him for who he is.
We're going to praise him for his love, we're going to praise him
for his provisions.
We're going to praise him for his power.
And that's what they do here.
They pray and they sing praises unto God, though they were
arrested, though they were beaten, though they were imprisoned
for doing good.
By the way, Paul and Silas were, as we see here, filled with
joy.
They were filled with contentment.
They were filled with the love of God.
And so it seems as if nothing could stop them from praising God.
And this is a question that I would want to pose to you here this
evening.
And it's a question that I'm posing to myself.
What in my life stops my praise to God?
What in my life makes me think about that instead of praising God?
And, you know, a lot of times it's what we would call legitimate
things.
Hardships, pain, suffering, doubts, whatever it could be.
There are things in our life that pull us away from praising God.
And what the Bible says is that we have to relinquish our grip
on those things and turn our eyes and turn our hearts to the Lord.
I'm going to say this.
Anybody can be happy when the circumstances are looking good, right?
Anybody, like an unsaved person, can be excited when things
are going well for them, right?
But the true challenge of a believer to have the joy of the Lord
is to say, I'm going to have the joy of the Lord in the midst
of a difficulty.
And so the joy of the Lord is not given to believers only when
things are going well.
The joy of the Lord is given to believers in the midst of all
difficulties, in the good and in the bad, in the easy and the difficult.
And it says there at the end of verse 25.
And the prisoners heard them.
And so this lifestyle, this public display of worship to God
was a testimony to those around them.
I mentioned this morning in my Sunday school class that, That a
trial in and of itself is not a bad thing.
It's only a sin when we deal with that trial in a selfish, sinful
way.
So, for example, I have a difficulty coming to my life.
I can choose to use this difficulty to point people to Christ
to praise God through this, or I can choose to face it in bitterness
and anger and totally point people away from the goodness of
God.
And the true test for us is, are we willing to be a testimony
to the Lord in the good or in the difficult?
And they are.
They're.
They're a testimony.
The prisoners hear them.
And we see the result of this in verse 26, says here, and suddenly
there was a great earthquake.
So that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately
all the doors were open and everyone's bands were loosed.
This.
I believe this earthquake was a supernatural earthquake given by
God because of the timing and the location.
And so what happens here is that this earthquake comes and all
of the prisoners have an opportunity to run, including Paul
and Silas.
This is.
This is the.
If this was a Hollywood story, this would be, hey, the earthquake
came, our chains were loose, the doors are open, we're going to
run out, and we're going to be free.
That's what we all would do, right?
I mean, that's what I would do.
I mean, I'm just to be completely.
Like, I could be transparent with you tonight.
If I was in prison for doing good for the Lord and these doors
opened up and my chains fell off, I'd say, great, this is God
answering my prayer.
And selfishly, I'm going to leave.
I'm going to go back to my family.
But what do they do here?
This is.
This is an amazing thing, what Paul and Silas do.
Their focus is not on their own freedom.
Their focus is on winning people to Christ.
Verse 27.
And the keeper of the prison awakening out of his sleep and seeing
the prison doors open, he drew out his sword and would have killed
himself.
Supposing that the prisoners had been fled.
So what happens here is that while this is all going on, there's
a prisoner, a prison guard there, and the prison guard sees
the doors open, he goes, oh, boy, they're all going to leave.
Now, why was he going to turn the sword on himself?
Because if these prisoners left and he did not hold them in
captivity, he was going to lose his life.
He was going to lose his life.
His superiors would have killed him, and so he was going to
kill himself.
And so the jailer did this for a reason.
Under Roman Law and under the customs that they were in, the guards
who allowed prisoners to escape would have the penalty of
the escaped prisoners, which would be the penalty of death.
But then we see something very interesting here, because they could
have left.
Obviously, this is why the prisoner, the prison guard was going
to go ahead and turn the sword on himself.
But it says in verse 28, but Paul cried with a loud voice saying,
do thyself no harm, for we are all here.
Paul holds everyone there, and that's an interesting thing.
He assured the jailer that nobody was going to escape.
And so he says, don't.
Don't harm yourself.
We're all here.
Then he called for a light and sprang in and came trembling and
fell down before Paul and Silas.
And so we see this jailer, he calls for a light.
He comes in, as it says here, trembling, and he falls down before
Paul and Silas.
So.
So this prison guard, this one who is a hardened soldier, falls
down trembling.
This was.
It was a dramatic moment for him.
This man was more affected by the love demonstrated to him from
Paul and Silas than the actual earthquake itself.
He falls down before Paul and Silas because this demonstration
of love was something that he was not used to seeing.
And we know that Paul and Silas have a motive here, and the
motive is to win him to Christ.
And so this man was affected by their love.
And so he falls down before him, and he.
And it says in verse number 30, and brought them out and said,
sirs, what must I do to be saved?
This is a wonderful question.
This is a question that we all should be desiring to have given
to us, right?
Would you be able.
This is a true question here tonight.
I want you to think about this.
I don't want you to answer right now.
I want you to raise your hand and say, oh, yes, I know, exactly.
But what if someone came to you and said, what must I do to be
saved?
Would you have a succinct answer, a clear answer to give them?
Or would you be able to say, well, come back and I want you to
talk with my pastor?
It's okay.
I'd love to talk to him, but sometimes we don't have that luxury.
And I think about this, and I've read this passage of scripture
many times, but I thought about what would I say if someone
came up to me, said, what must I do to be saved?
Some folks would say, well, you gotta do xyz.
You gotta clean up your life.
You gotta make sure that you are in church.
You gotta make sure you're doing this.
And Doing that.
There's a lot of things that have been said over the years to
how can you get saved?
Well, you gotta.
You gotta make sure that you do the sacrifices.
You gotta make sure that you religiously come before the church
and do all these things.
That's not what they say, though.
Verse 31 is a very clear and basic explanation of what an individual
does to understand salvation.
Says, and they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou
shalt be saved.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now we know by context that doesn't just mean believe that he
exists.
It means believe that he is your savior.
Believe in Him, Believe in His sacrifice.
Believe in his life, his death, and his resurrection.
Believe in everything that he is.
Believe in what he has done for you.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
There's another passage in the book of Romans that very similarly
looks to this as Romans chapter 10.
Most of you know this.
Romans chapter 10.
I want you to see it, though, because I don't want you to think
that I'm making this up.
If you know the Romans Road, I'm sure you are familiar with this
verse, but it says in Romans chapter 10, verse 9, that if thou
shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thine
heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
And so a lot of times what we do is we convolute, we cloud up the
explanation of what a person must do to come to Christ.
Now, are there steps after salvation that allow for spiritual
growth?
Of course.
But the initial step of salvation is just believing in faith
that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, he rose again
on the third day, and that we as sinners, need salvation.
We need his salvation in our life.
And so that's how they respond to him.
They say, hey, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt
be saved.
Very clear mention of the Gospel here.
And so we would stop there, but there's more to the story.
Says thou shalt be saved.
And then these three words at the end of verse 31 have actually
caused some confusion with a lot of people.
Says here in verse 31, and thou shalt be saved and thy house.
Now, there are some people out there that teach and use this passage
as a proof text that if you are saved, that your whole family
is saved.
And I would clearly explain to you in context as we look later on,
that that's not what this is talking about.
What?
What is this talking about?
What is he talking about?
With his house being saved.
Well, I believe in this case that this is speaking prophetically
through the Holy Spirit, that if he got saved and that he would
allow his family to be introduced to the gospel, that they
would be saved.
But we do know that odds are going to go up in our family that
if we are saved, statistically speaking, our family is going to
get saved because we are a testimony to them.
And so there's a couple of different ways that you could look
at this.
But essentially what they're telling them is telling him is this,
yes, you believe on Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
And it will influence your house.
It will allow you to see your family come to Christ as well.
I'm going to tell you that one of the greatest decisions that you
can make, the greatest decision that you can make is your
personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
But the second most important decision that you can make is sharing
that decision with other people, specifically the people that
you love, your family.
Like I see it, obviously, I'm a preacher of the gospel of Jesus
Christ.
And so my job is to preach the gospel to everyone that I come across
in this world.
Okay?
But I will say that my number one ministry, and I'm going to unapologetically
say this right now, and frankly, it's.
It sometimes rubs people the wrong way.
My number one ministry is sitting on that pew right over there
in my home.
If I cannot clearly demonstrate the gospel to my wife
and to my children and to my family, I am missing the point.
And so what we can see here is that the gospel decision that we
make impacts our family for the cause of the gospel.
It doesn't automatically mean that everybody in my house is going
to get saved.
But my decision that I make for the Lord, if I truly believe
that and if I truly live the gospel message out, will impact my
family for the cause of the gospel.
I can tell you, you know what, there have been a lot of people that
have preached the gospel to thousands of people around the world,
but miss the closest people to them because of the big focus, and
they miss the eternal decree that I must be a missionary to my
own family as well.
And so we see here this message in verse 31, that he would
be saved if he believed on the Lord Jesus and thy house.
Now, we do know that prophetically, his house does get
saved.
And so Paul's answer to the prison guard is a classic statement
of the gospel.
This is what we would call salvation by grace alone, by faith
alone.
Grace alone, through Faith.
Ephesians, chapter 2, verses 8 and 9.
There's no works involved with this salvation.
And so what we can say here is that it's very clear that salvation
is through trusting in what God has done for us.
Some have actually really gotten upset with this passage of
scripture because they believe that Paul is making it too easy to
get saved.
You've ever heard of a phrase, easy believism?
Well, a lot of people are concerned with this passage that,
hey, Paul's making it too easy to come to Christ.
You have to be repentant.
Well, folks, yes, you had to be repentant.
I believe the jailer already demonstrated repentance.
Go, go back.
What happens here?
He falls before Paul and Silas and is trembling, and he says, what
must I do to be saved?
Now, repentance is not what saves you, but repentance brings
you to a place in which you're able to receive and understand the
message of Jesus Christ.
Repent and believe.
And so there must be a time in our life where we recognize our sin
condition.
And then what we say is, lord, I need you in faith.
And so he comes in a place of repentance, and he comes in faith.
And what we see is that he trusts in the Lord.
So Paul specifically gives him the catalyst, the beginning to the
Christian life.
And that is faith.
And so Paul did not necessarily say, hey, you have to
believe that he exists.
You have to be a good person.
He says, trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So we move on.
It says here in verse 32, and they spake unto him, the word of
the Lord.
Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
He's not going to just get saved because the earthquake.
He's not just going to get saved because Paul and Silas are
good people.
Paul and Silas have to present to him the Word of God.
That's.
That's sometimes where we fall short.
Sometimes we think, well, you know what?
Someone's just going to get saved by watching my life.
Well, that's going to be an impact for them to see the difference.
But just watching a Christian person is not going to save you.
The Word of God must be presented.
Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
So.
So there must be the Word of God presented.
And so the Word of God is presented here, says that very clearly.
They speak unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were
in his house.
If his house was just saved, automatically, he wouldn't have needed
to preach to them.
But he preaches to all of them.
He preaches to everybody in the house and all of them make a
decision for the Lord.
And so this seems to be a specific promise for the jailer here
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul says, hey, as you
trust in Jesus, so will your family as well.
This is a promise made specifically to this jailer, but
it's a promise that the Holy Spirit may very well allow us to
bring the gospel message to our own family.
So they're all saved.
They all trust in the word of God.
And Jesus is revealed through the word of God.
I want you to remember that.
I want you to remember that Jesus's truth, Jesus's love, Jesus's
sacrifice, Jesus's forgiveness is extended to us through the Word
of God.
We cannot, we cannot eliminate the word of God from preach, from
our preaching, right?
So, so if someone comes to me and says I want to get saved, and
I say, okay, well let me tell you Jesus loves you and let me just
tell you that he doesn't care what you do.
He doesn't care how you live your life.
All he wants you to do is just believe that he exists.
I have now undercut what the word of God says.
I haven't presented the truth of the word of God.
I haven't presented the whole complete message.
So the complete message of the gospel is yes, Jesus loves you, but
yes, Jesus does not want you to stay the same.
He wants you to be transformed.
And so we must preach the whole word of God.
And that's what they do here to this jailer and to his family.
And so verse 33, and he took them the same hour of the night and
washed their stripes and was baptized.
He and all of his straightway.
And so what we see here is that the same jailer who punished
them, the same jailer who threw them in jail and was holding
them captive is now cleaning them up, he's now taking care of
them.
This shows how a repentant sinner will be changed.
He followed the example of the love of Paul and Silas and now he's
reciprocating that love to them.
You see how Paul and Silas could have just left and missed this
opportunity.
How many opportunities in my life have I missed just because I'm
so self focused?
But Paul says, no, we're going to stay.
Silas says, no, we're going to stay and we're going to minister
to this jailer.
And therefore we see that their love demonstrated to the jailer,
allowed the jailer to then demonstrate his love to them.
And that's the whole point.
After we're saved, we're called to serve.
The service is not what saves us, but we are called to serve after
we are saved.
And we see that this jailer doesn't hesitate.
He says, I want to be baptized.
I want to follow in obedience.
I want to serve.
And so the jailer and his family saw no reason to delay service.
They saw no reason to delay baptism.
They were baptized that very night, and they begin their service
to the Lord.
I don't know when you were saved.
I don't know.
Maybe it was decades ago, maybe it was recent.
But what I will say to you is that you are qualified to serve God.
You were qualified to serve God.
The moment that you've trusted in Jesus Christ as your Savior, you're
immediately qualified for the job that he wants you to do.
Now, not all of us are qualified to do everything right.
We wouldn't say, like, let's say, for example, someone came up
this morning and they got saved in our church.
They.
This is the first time walking into church.
They.
They walk in and they hear the gospel.
They get saved.
We don't say next Sunday.
All right, you're the one preaching.
Get on up there, right there.
There's levels of maturity that we look for when it comes to
different areas of service.
But the Bible says immediately we can start to serve God in the
capacities that we're ready for.
And so what we see here is that he's ministering to Paul and
Silas by washing their stripes, washing their wounds.
Verse 34.
And when he had brought them into his house, he set me before
them.
So we see his hospitality there.
He's giving them what they need.
He's giving them food.
And so he brings them there.
He sets meat before them and rejoice, believing in God with all
of his house.
This man was.
I want you to see this path that this individual was on, okay?
He was on a path of persecuting Christians.
Then he went from the path of persecuting Christians to being suicidal.
Then he was from suicidal to saved and from saved to abundant
joy.
And then he was going from abundant joy to service and hospitality.
His script was flipped.
His life was changed.
The Holy Spirit used Paul and Silas and their courage and in their
adversity, in their difficulty to minister this individual.
And this individual has.
Individual has a life that has changed for the cause of the Gospel.
And so his life is changed.
And he went from a place of evil and rejection and eventually
self harm to a place of salvation, a place of joy and a place
of service.
That's the testimony for all who Believe in Jesus Christ.
He's believing.
He's rejoicing.
His rejoicing is the fact that he's believing in God and that his
house is believing in the Lord.
Verse 35.
And when it was day, the magistrate sent the sergeant saying,
let those men go.
And the keeper of the prison told this, saying to Paul, the magistrates
have sent to let you go.
Now therefore depart and go in peace.
But Paul said unto them, they have beaten us openly, uncondemned
being Romans, and have cast us into prison.
And now do they.
Do they thrust us out privily?
Nay, verily, but let them calm themselves and fetch us out.
And the sergeants told these words unto the magistrates, and they
feared when they heard that they were Romans.
The irony of all of this is that Paul and Silas didn't even have
to go through this.
They could have claimed their Roman citizenship before all of this,
but they allowed themselves to go through all of this for the cause
of the Gospel.
They were Roman citizens.
They didn't have to be treated this way.
But yet they humbled themselves, allowed themselves to
go through this pain and this suffering so that they could be a
testimony.
That one is a struggle for me, because I don't know if I'm at the
place in my life where I would do that.
I would have claimed my Roman citizenship a lot earlier.
And we know that in other places Paul did.
But in this case, he allowed himself to be a messenger of the
Gospel.
So Paul and Silas left the prison to minister to the jailer,
yet they returned to the prison willingly to spare the jailer's
life.
This is again, more love.
And so if Paul and Silas were released the day after their beating,
arrest and imprisonment, why did God send the earthquake?
That's a good question.
I believe that the earthquake had nothing to do with freeing Paul
and Silas actually, but it had everything to do with the salvation
of the jailer and his household.
And so I think that sometimes we think of a situation as our perspective,
but obviously God has a different perspective.
And in this case, they needed that, that event to bring that jailer
to a place of fear and a place of repentance so that they could
be a Gospel message.
So, so.
So Paul and Silas claimed the Roman citizenship.
Why didn't they claim their citizenship earlier?
Maybe, maybe, just maybe, they didn't get a chance to.
But I believe it's more likely that they were led by the Holy Spirit
to not reveal it at that time for a purpose.
And I thought about it this.
A commentator put it this way.
Our Rights are not as important as our obedience to the
will of God.
You think about that back when that idea of exercising our Christian
liberty, our rights are not as important as our obedience to the
will of God.
God may ask us to lay down our rights for the good of another.
I've thought about that a lot.
And I've thought about, am I willing to say, you know what?
I have the authority.
I have the right to do this, but for the sake of the gospel, for
the sake of the furtherance of the truth of Jesus Christ, I'm willing
to die to my flesh, die to my rights, and go through a difficulty
so that the furtherance of the Gospel can be seen.
And so that's what happened here.
That's what happened.
They were willing to go through that so that someone could
get saved, so that this house could be saved.
And it says in verse number 39, and they came and besought them
and brought them out and desired them to depart out of their
city.
And they went out of the prison and entered into the house
of Lydia.
And when they had seen the brethren, they comforted them and
departed.
So Paul and Silas are called to leave here.
They're called to leave this area after the work of God was done,
not before.
And what did they do when they left?
They encouraged.
They encouraged them, they comforted them and they departed.
Paul and Silas, really, what we can see in this passage of scripture,
we're able to be.
You remember where this started?
You remember where this passage started?
It was, Paul didn't want to go here.
Paul wanted to go somewhere else.
You think about that.
Paul wanted to go to Asia, and the Holy Spirit closed the door.
And because of that roadblock and because of that detour, Paul
was able to go to a new place that he didn't even expect.
And we see Lydia is converted.
We see that they cast out the demon of this young girl.
We see that Paul and Silas preach to the jailer, and he's saved,
and the jailer's house is saved.
And I think the message there in chapter 16 is that sometimes God
is going to change our path, and sometimes God is going to allow
us to go through difficulties.
It doesn't mean that he's taken his hand off of us.
It doesn't mean that he stopped loving us.
It means that he's allowing us to have a different path so that
we can see opportunities that maybe we would have never imagined
if Paul would have pressed forward and said, you know what?
Even though the Holy Spirit's stopping me, I'm Going to move forward.
He would have missed the opportunities here to minister to
Lydia, to minister to this jailer, to minister to his family
and folks.
So many times, at least in my life, I push forward so hard and
just push and push and push and say, you know what?
I'm just going to do what I want to do, and God's going to bless
that.
No, we need to be sensitive to what God has for us.
And if he closes the door, it's there for a reason.
He changes our path, it's there for a reason.
And we can see that as they leave, they leave with fruit.
It was.
It was strange how it worked out, but ultimately it was a blessing.
And I would encourage you to think about those times in your life
where maybe things are not added up the way that you want them
to be.
Maybe.
Maybe God has changed the path in your life.
Maybe God has closed doors.
Maybe God has allowed a very difficult thing to happen in your
life.
Maybe you feel like Paul, maybe you feel like Paul and Silas.
You've done what's right, and now you're in a difficult place.
You know, it would have been a lot easier if I would have just not
been truthful.
It would have been a lot easier if I would have lived for
the Lord.
I would have been away from that.
And they could have said that, right, man, why did we go do that?
Why did we go there?
And now they're going to throw us in jail.
But no, they looked to the Lord, they prayed, they sing praises
to God.
They were a testimony in the midst of a difficulty.
They were looking for the gospel message to be presented.
I often think about this.
I often think about, am I in the midst of my trial, looking for
an opportunity for God to work through me?
Most of the time I'm not.
I'm gonna tell you really what happens in my life.
And maybe this is for you, maybe it's not.
But a lot of times when I'm going through a trial, I'm just looking
to get out of it.
I'm just holding on tight and just say, lord, get me out of this.
Lord, get me out of this.
Instead of just saying, lord, get me out of this.
I might need to say, lord, what are you teaching me through
this, Lord?
Lord, who can I minister to while I'm in this struggle?
We hear a lot of people, including myself, I've asked this
question just transparently, Lord, why?
Why do I need to go through this?
Why are you allowing this to happen?
And you know what?
You Might not get an answer.
You might not get an answer.
There have been people in Scripture that have asked the why
question, not got an answer.
But we know through Scripture, we know that God has a plan and a
purpose for our lives.
And ultimately that plan and purpose is for the furtherance of
his gospel message.
And so as I'm going through a difficulty, as I'm going through
a struggle, am I willing to say, lord, I'm going through pain,
but who can I bless in the midst of this pain?
Who can I reach?
Who can I share this message with?
You ever think about the fact that you're going through this struggle
so that later on, when God gets you through this struggle, that
you can help somebody else who is in that same struggle as you?
That's the point of the church.
Some of you folks that have a lot more maturity are looking around
and you see a lot of people, a lot of people with less maturity.
I'm not trying to use old and young, but that's what I'm saying,
okay?
We have older people in our church, and we have younger people
in our church.
All right?
A lot of the older people in the church have gone through experiences
that the younger people have not gone through yet.
Or maybe they are going through it, but they're not handling
it biblically.
You know what the Bible says for you to do?
The Bible doesn't say for you to go, well, they'll figure it out
one day.
Not my problem, not my issue.
The Bible actually says for you, this is in the New Testament.
There's multiple passages of scripture, talk of this, but Titus
2 would be one that you would say, look, no, I want to be a blessing
to this family.
I want to be a blessing to this individual by helping them,
by teaching them what I have learned.
You know, that's.
That's like, hey, I've gone through a trial in my life.
God got me through this trial.
He can get you through this trial.
And you know that.
That.
That speaks volumes.
You know, as a pastor, let's say I'm going to be honest with you,
sometimes when a other pastor comes up to me and says, hey, you
know what?
I've gone through this, too.
It doesn't make me feel good that he went through that, but it
makes me feel good that he got through it.
And he's telling me that you're going to survive, okay?
That that's how it goes sometimes it's like, hey, you know
what?
I know that other people have seen the power of God in their life,
but through the Redeemed of the Lord, say so.
And so it's, yeah, that's what the testimonies are about.
The testimonies are not about, hey, look at me.
Look what I have done.
The testimonies.
Look what God has done.
And he can do that same thing through you.
I love when folks in our church share their salvation testimony.
I love that.
Because you know what that is, that that's the moment that you came
to life.
You know, I, I, I love to tell stories about when my children were
born.
I, I love that.
Right.
You know, back in the day, they used to have the wallets and
you'd have, you, you put your, you know, all the pictures out and
you go, there's all my pictures.
I have a phone now so I can show you all the pictures of my children
when they were born.
I love telling those stories.
The greatest days of my life outside of my salvation and my wedding
was the days that these children were born.
Right?
And it doesn't, it doesn't hurt me, doesn't.
It's not a challenge for me.
No one has to poke me or pry me to tell the story about my children,
their new life.
You know what?
When we tell people about our salvation, that's what we're doing.
We're talking to people about a new life, that we were reborn in
Christ.
And so I would encourage you to think about times in your life
where you can point people to Jesus.
And that's what we see here, Paul and Silas, where we're in the
midst of a prison, they're in the midst of being beaten, but yet
they say, we're going to sing praises, we're going to pray, and
we're going to allow ourselves to preach the gospel.
They could have left, but they didn't leave the call of the gospel.
They saw an individual that needed Jesus Christ.
They walked circumspectly.
They had compassion.
I want, I want to go to another passage of scripture because
this is, this is, at least for me, one of the most challenging passages
of scripture.
Go to ch.
Matthew, chapter nine with me if you're like me, which some of
you are not like me, which is a good thing.
I struggle with the area of compassion.
Okay, you say what?
You should not struggle with compassion.
I struggle with compassion because you know what?
I look at somebody and I go, oh, I can't believe this.
I can't believe they did this.
Instead of saying, wow, I don't know what they're going through
right now.
They need Jesus or they might need my love.
They Might need my grace.
But we see here In Matthew chapter 9, Jesus says something so,
so important at the end of chapter nine, it says in verse 35,
and Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in
their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing
every sickness and every disease among the people.
Jesus in his humanity is exhausted.
I mean, he's been preaching, he's been healing people.
But when the multitudes.
But when he saw the multitudes, this phrase here, he
was moved with compassion on them because they fainted and were
scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.
Jesus was moved with compassion.
Literally here in the Greek, it's that his bowels were aching
for them.
That was the seed of their emotions back then in that culture.
And so he's moved with compassion towards them.
He's like, I got to do something for them.
And though we know he can do something for them, he says in verse
37, then saith he unto his disciples, the harvest is truly plenteous,
but the laborers are few.
Pray therefore, the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth
laborers into the harvest.
Jesus has compassion, and he realizes that.
I want my followers to have the same compassion for those people
that need Jesus Christ.
We are never going to be able to minister to people in the midst
of our difficulties unless we have compassion for them, unless
we have compassion for the loss, unless we have the same eyes
that Jesus had there in Matthew chapter nine.
Because you know what?
At least for me, sometimes it's like, well, I will do those
things.
When everything's going right in my ministry, when I have a little
bit more free time, I'm going to tell you, sometimes people will
come up and say, hey, Pastor, you know, do you have any free time?
No, not really.
I don't have any free time.
Uh, I can budget some time out, but there.
There isn't just a lot of time.
I'm just sitting around, right?
Everybody's busy.
We live in a world that's too busy, admittedly.
But what we should do is we should say, you know what?
There's no excuse to put off what God has for us.
There's no excuse to put off the number one mission.
The number one mission is to point people to the gospel of Jesus
Christ.
Paul and Silas could have been so focused on their own issues, on
their own problems, and they could have missed this opportunity
for this jailer here to be saved, at least to be presenting
the message of the gospel to him, but yet they were willing and
ready to preach that gospel in the midst of the Difficulty.
I would say to you, and I would say to me, what's our excuse?
What's.
What's pulling our attention and our time away from demonstrating
compassion to those around us?
For me, it's busyness.
For me, It's.
It's the 9 to 5.
For me, it's trying to get.
Accomplish my checklist for the day.
And Pastor Spicer, some of you know, Pastor Spicer, he was.
He was here for a long, long time, one of the.
One of the great guys that I really look up to, and he preached
a sermon one time about God's interruptions.
And it was this.
You know what?
If you knew Pastor Spicer, he always had a little thing in his
pocket, and he had a checklist for the day.
And he would.
He'd always would tell me, pastor Josh, you need to be writing
down everything.
You need to be having a little thing in your pocket right here.
I'm like, well, Pastor Spicer, I've got my phone.
He goes, no, no, no, you need to have a paper right here.
And he had his checklist.
But he said, you know, there's times in my life where I'm going
about my checklist, and I gotta say, yes, this is an interruption,
but this is God's interruption.
I need to put away the checklist, and I need to focus on
that person.
I think so many times in our life, we get so busy with what we
have to do that we miss out on what is needed around us.
And so Paul and Silas were not busy.
Even in the sake of, we would say, justified busyness, like, I
need to not die here in this prison, they were willing to say,
hey, you know what?
This is my opportunity to preach the gospel to this man.
You know, I don't know who your Philippian jailer is, but there
might be someone that's coming up in your life that while you're
going through a difficulty, he or she could be that gospel opportunity
for you.
And I pray that we can all see those gospel opportunities around
us.
And so that's Acts, chapter 16 started with a detour.
It started with a closed door.
It ended with lives that were changed, regions of the world that
were impacted for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Who knows?
One decision that you make, one decision that you don't make
that God makes for you, could impact a whole family, could impact
a whole world.
I use.
I use this all the time as an example.
I am so, so, so thankful for that Pastor.
His name was Raymond Hancock.
I'm so thankful for Pastor Hancock that he witnessed to My grandfather,
that he was willing to go up to a man that was a rough guy, and
my grandfather was a rough guy and he preached the gospel to him.
My grandfather got saved, my grandmother got saved.
And there's some crazy stories about who they were before they were
saved and how they changed after.
And then I'm thankful for that.
My dad grew up in that same church and my dad got saved and my
dad preached the gospel to me.
And that's a legacy that I'm able to pass down to my children,
that I can preach the gospel to them.
And then, Lord willing, if God tarries, that my children will pass
on to their children.
Who knows how long the line that we can impact by just sharing
the gospel to one person.
And I know that all of you probably have stories about that.
Aren't you thankful for that person that shared the gospel with
you?
Could have been your parents, could have been your father, your
mother, could have been a grandparent, could have been a Sunday
school teacher, could have been a preacher, could have been
your friend.
I don't know who it was, but someone loved you enough to give
you the gospel.
Who knows if they were having a good day that day.
Who knows if everything was going well.
Maybe they're going through a struggle, but yet they loved you
enough to tell you about Jesus Christ.
Let's be those ones that are willing to do that.
Folks, in 2025, we are going to have a lot of opportunities here
in Middletown Baptist Church to preach the gospel, to share the
gospel, to show the gospel, to serve in the gospel.
And yet, folks, we have to understand that it's not motivated
out of, you know what?
I gotta be there because Pastor Pastor has a checklist.
And if I'm not there, I don't get my Baptist bucks for this week.
That's not what this is about.
What this is about is I want to have a heart for the gospel.
I want to have a heart for sharing my faith with people.
No one was forcing Paul and Silas to do this.
And the gospel being spread.
The gospel was never spread through force.
We've never seen that successful effort.
You can't be.
I can't take a sword with me and make people believe in the gospel.
It must be done out of the motivation of love and sacrifice.
And so that goes the same in the church.
I cannot force anybody in the church to be a good soul winner.
I can't force anyone to be a good father.
It must be the change that happens in your heart because of
the gospel of Jesus Christ.
All I can do is try to show you in the word of God what it means
to be a good godly Christian.
But folks, I'm going to tell you that we're all going to fall
short.
We all fall short of this.
But what we can do is we can strive to be compassionate.
We can err on the side of compassion, we can err on the side
of grace.
And we can say, you know what, we can see the loss come to Christ
because we can demonstrate that love, the love that was demonstrated
to the jailer was then demonstrated to those around him
and then was demonstrated through his life, through his salvation.
So I encourage you to think about that when we come to this.
These passages of scripture that are just so life.
Life changing.
If you read this passage of scripture as reality, a lot of times
we look at Bible passages and we see it as a story.
I'm even guilty of this sometimes.
I'll say the Bible character here, but they're not characters.
They're real people, right?
They're the real individuals that walked in real places, that
dealt with real emotions, real pain, real suffering.
But we have a real God who was working in their life.
And all the more the reason why I encourage you to try to take.
I know today, with the climate of the Middle East, I understand,
but the trip to Israel, by the way, the trip to Israel changed my
perspective on things because I always heard about Bethlehem and
Jerusalem and I was like, okay, yeah, I have my picture of
like, I thought that's what the manger scene looked like.
Now, I didn't see the real manger scene, but.
But the reality is, is that what we sometimes have in our minds
as a concept is not really what was true.
And what I can say to you is this, what we, what we must do is
we must say, okay, you know what?
As a believer, the same God that helped Paul and Silas, what
we would say break out of jail, but didn't really break out
of jail.
God just worked them out and worked their favor up.
But the same God who worked that miracle through them in that
prison is the same God that's working in your life.
He's the same God that's dealing with you in your workplace.
How many of you don't raise your hand?
How many of you would say, my workplace seems like a prison sometimes.
My boss is like the Philippian jailer.
You might feel like, man, I can't get out of this.
I can't find any hope in this.
Maybe for some of you, you say, you know, you don't know my
family life.
You don't know my struggle, my physical struggle.
Pastor I wake up in the morning and it takes everything for
me to even get out of bed and get to a place.
And sometimes I'm not able to get out of bed.
I don't understand all of those things.
But you know what God does understand, and the same power that
allowed Paul and Silas to do these miraculous things is the same
power that's living within you as a Christian, the Holy Spirit indwells
you.
The same power that rose Jesus from the dead is the power that's
living within you.
That's the same spirit.
So I'm not saying that God's going to send an earthquake tonight,
but what I am saying is that God can do miraculous things and
will do miraculous things in your life if you submit to him and
his will.
And so I want you to think about that.
I'm going to think about that here this week.
I'm going to encourage you to do the same.
So we're going to go ahead and close here now for the for the next
few.
We're going to take a break here in the Book of Acts.
For the next few weeks.
We're going to be talking about some different stories revolving
around the Christmas story on Sunday night.
So this is a good place to stop acts, chapter 16.
And it's somewhat of a halfway point here.
It's not exactly the halfway point, but it's, it's somewhat of
the halfway point.
And so what we'll do is when we start the new year, we're going
to get into more of the Book of Acts.
And I encourage you to see that the Book of Acts not just as
a history, which it is, by the way, it's real history, but see it
as an opportunity for an example of how these Christians relied
on the Lord through the midst of a very, very difficult times.
And you know, we are not exempt from difficult times.
We sometimes feel like we are, you know, whether we know it or not,
we are so blessed.
The fact that we can meet here in a building and project the God,
this isn't even guaranteed in other countries in our world.
You know that, right?
And I think that so many times we don't utilize our freedoms, we
don't exercise what we should do.
No one is going to get thrown in jail by preaching the gospel in
our country.
Not right now.
At least not right now.
It could it's not always guaranteed.
But you know how many people that live in other countries would
say, wow, you get the, you had the freedom to pass out Tracks.
You had the freedom to preach the gospel.
You had the freedom to share your faith.
You guys must be doing that 24 7.
And we go, well, you know, someone might, you know, call me
crazy if I tell them the gospel.
They're going to, yeah, okay, great call.
Let them call you crazy.
And so I've been challenged all the more to say, you know what?
I want to use these freedoms that we have been given.
God given freedoms, by the way, that I think we should have.
Praise God for that.
Let's use these freedoms for the cause of the gospel, not for
the cause of me, not for my own whims, my own desires.
And so that's what we're going to be looking into in 2025.
I'm going to tell you that in January, we're going to have a Sunday
called Vision Sunday.
And we're going to take the Sunday morning service and the Sunday
evening service and talk about really what the direction of Middletown
Baptist really is.
How are we going to move forward as a church in 2025?
We cannot stay still.
We cannot stay stagnant.
We have to be a missionary church.
A missionary church is a church that's focused on presenting
the gospel to a lost and dying world.
We don't want to be a country club church.
A country club church is, hey, we're just all getting together and
we're social folks.
We can be social.
That's a good thing.
But there's the social aspect of church and there's the missional
aspect of church.
Are we willing to say that we have a mission?
You ever.
You ever seen a movie?
I'm rambling, but I'm just going to finish this right now.
You ever seen the movie that.
Any movie that they have a mission, like, you have a mission,
and they.
The guys, they're like in a dark room and they've got a computer,
and they're like, all right, it's a secret mission that you're
going on.
You've got to complete this mission.
Right?
Those are the kind of movies I like.
They go out on a mission and they do something and they complete
the mission.
That's how we are.
God has given us a mission just for us.
We have an exclusive mission that's called the Great Commission.
And God says, I don't care if you meet on Sunday morning at 10:30
or you meet at 9:30.
I don't care if you sit in pews or chairs.
I don't care if you know, he says, but all I care about is that
you do this mission right here, right?
However you get this done, get this done.
And that's how we're going to look at it as we move forward as
a church.
So I will stop here and thank you for your patience.
Thank you for your attention.
I do appreciate you all.
It's exciting to see God working in your lives.
I do thank you for the opportunity to be a part of it.
Thank you again for listening to the Middletown Baptist Church
podcast.
I hope that this sermon has been a blessing for you.
If you would like to find out more information about our church
or this sermon, you can find us at middletownbaptistchurch.org
or find us on Facebook or YouTube.
You can also email me directly at Josh Massaroiddletownbaptistchurch
dot com if you've enjoyed this podcast.
Please subscribe and follow along for future podcasts and updates.
Thank you so much.
God Bless.
Have a wonderful day.