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Midnight Questions
Sermon 02
June 27, 2010
What really gets your attention? What would cause you to sit up and take notice? This last decade has seen the rising popularity of several reality TV shows like American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. Even those of us who are not followers of those shows aren’t really surprised to learn that Pussycat Dolls singer, Nicole Scherzinger, won this year’s dance competition. We’re not surprised when a Carrie Underwood or a Taylor Hicks wins American Idol. Some of the stars on this year’s Dancing with the Stars included: Actress Shannen Doherty, Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Reality TV star Kate Gosselin. But would it have gotten your attention if former Chicago Bears lineman William “the Frig” Perry, had outdanced all the other stars and won? Or, if Roseanne Barr had won this year’s American Idol? That would really get our attention.
We’re shocked when someone who seems to not fit the picture, who doesn’t seem overly talented – wins what should require extreme talent. That was the case with Susan Boyle who had everyone buzzing after she appeared on Britain's Got Talent in April of 2009. In case you missed her debut, here’s the clip, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY.
Something that always gets everyone’s attention, even the most hardened criminals, even cynical prison wardens – Do you know what it is? It’s Suffering Singing Saints. An unbelieving world hears someone who should be moaning, who should be crying about their lot in life, about unjustified suffering – and instead they’re singing praises to God – and a cynical society can’t figure it out. It gets their undivided attention. They want to know…How? How is this possible? What does this person have that gives them that kind of hope in the midst of horrible suffering? They have Midnight Questions. That’s the scene we find in Acts 16 (p. 784).
In the still dark night Paul and Silas are locked in a dirty dungeon jail cell. They’ve been falsely accused of instigating a riot. They have been beaten mercilessly. They’re backs are bleeding, their feet are locked in stocks – and at midnight, in the pitch black silence – this baritone duet is singing praises to God.
Men have sung before in prison – songs of obscenity and drunken intoxication, screams of an enraged prostitute, groans and gripes of criminals – but this is a tune that that prison has never heard.
It would have been a marvelous thing to have heard Paul preach. I would have loved to have been on Mars Hill when he preached to the Greek philosophers and sages. It would have been something to have heard him preach the Gospel in the governor’s palace and King Agrippa trembled as he cried out, “Almost Paul, you have persuaded me to be a Christian!”
But the sweetest sound that ever came out of Paul’s mouth was when he and his missionary partner, Silas, sang from the pits of the prison in Philippi. They sang the psalms of David – “God is our refuge and strength…I will bless the Lord at all times…The Lord is my Shepherd.”
At first their songs were met with cursing and coarse jests. Murderers and thieves mocked them but the apostles kept right on singing. Human excrement was hurled at them but they never missed a beat. And a quiet hush began to fall over the other prisoners in that dark, dismal dungeon. Tears began to trickle down cheeks that had not known tears in decades. Thoughts of innocence and hope began to lighten darkened hearts. Cynical souls began to soften. Sighs were uttered that were nearly prayers. The prisoners heard them; the prisoners listened and hard hearts were stirred.
Paul and Silas were singing for their own hope and encouragement, but as they were comforting themselves, they were comforting others. My friend, never forget that on the other wall of your suffering, across from the street from your pain, in the cubicle next to your heartache – there are others who are listening and will hear you if you sing the song and lead the life of Christian faith and hope even as you make your way through the valley of the shadow. What do life’s prisoners hear from you as you pass by?
On a balmy October afternoon in 1982 in Madison at the Badger Stadium, 60,000 diehard U-W fans are watching their football team take on the Michigan State Spartans. It wasn’t long before they realized they were really there to watch their team lose, and lose badly. Yet, on that day, a very strange thing happened. As the score became more and more lopsided, the Wisconsin fans started to cheer more and more loudly! At odd times, there would be these bursts of applause here and there throughout the crowd, even though their team was getting clobbered! But there was a reason for this applause that had nothing to do with that particular game. You see, 70 miles away the Milwaukee Brewers were beating the St. Louis Cardinals in game three of the 1982 World Series! And sprinkled throughout Camp Randall Stadium were little groups of people gathered around portable radios, responding to something other than their immediate circumstances!
That’s exactly what Paul and Silas were doing. Their eyes were not darkened by the dungeon but lit up by their glorious Savior. They truly counted it a privilege to suffer for His sake.
Paul and Silas’ Story: How did they get here? Paul is on what is known as his 2nd missionary journey. The Apostle Paul and his fellow mission team members had wanted to share the Gospel in parts of the Asian continent, but God closed the door. Prompted by a vision in the night of a man from Macedonia they went through the only open door to them and set sail for the European continent. Paul had a vision that directly affects you and me: He saw a man of Macedonia appealing to him to come there and help them, so the gospel came to Philippi and other cities of that region.
The reason that vision affects us is that in turning west, the Gospel spread into Europe and from there eventually came across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. If Paul had instead turned back toward Asia, who knows whether the gospel would ever have moved in our direction as it did.
Acts 16:11 says that when they put out to sea, they “sailed straight. The Greek term is a nautical term for "sailing before the wind." In other words the wind blew them straight toward Europe and the people of Macedonia. So God not only opened the door; He gently "blew" them through it!
When God calls us to do something, He often providentially opens all of the necessary doors. With His help they sailed quickly to the port city of Neapolis and then walked ten miles inland to the city of Philippi, a very important Roman town in Macedonia and part of modern day Greece.
The city of Philippi, founded by Alexander the Great's father, Philip of Macedon, in 356 B.C., was a gateway between Europe and Asia. Its population reflected its location, being a mixture from east and west. Philippi was proud to be a Roman colony, which meant that while its citizens enjoyed the protection of Roman law, they were exempt from paying taxes, and they were free from the provincial governor, answerable only to Rome. Roman army veterans were often given property there.
About A.D. 50, Paul and his companions arrive in Philippi. In spite of the broad mixture of the population, there weren’t many Jews in Philippi. We know this because it required ten men to start a Jewish synagogue, but Philippi lacked a synagogue. After a few days, Paul and his team went to the riverside, where a small group of Jewish women met for prayer. As Paul spoke about Jesus as the Messiah, the Lord opened the heart of a woman named Lydia to respond in faith. She was a businesswoman from Thyatira in Asia Minor who sold purple fabrics. She was probably a widow and Lydia and all of her household (any children and relatives, plus servants) believed in Jesus Christ and were gloriously saved.
Salvation always results in a change of your worldview toward your material possessions. Verse 15 records that Lydia said to Paul and his team, “If you consider me a believer in the Lord…come and stay at my house.” God had opened her heart so she opened her home. Apparently, she had a large enough house to accommodate the four missionaries who stayed there. Later, the church seemed to meet there (16:40).
But whenever the gospel begins to take root, the enemy becomes active in opposition. In this case, it was a demon possessed slave-girl who brought her owners much income through her ability to tell fortunes. As with the demons in the Gospels who recognized and shouted out Jesus' identity, this demon recognized Paul and his companions and begin to crying out to the people around them. Verses 17-18, “This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, ‘These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.’ She kept this up for many days.”
Satan doesn’t want the lost to hear and turn to the Gospel, so first he attacks this mission team with this covert strategy. While what she said was true, it was coming from a witness that hurt the message. This slave girl was possessed by “a spirit by which she predicted the future” (v. 16). The Greek text literally says, “a spirit of python.” Python was the mythical snake who guarded the Oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece, but who was slain by Apollo, the god of prophecy. As the language developed, Python came to refer to any spirit that enabled a person to predict the future. Satan has certain limited predictive capacities like fortune tellers or card readers which he sometimes enables people to enjoy who are devoted to him.
This girl was a case in point. Her owners would blindfold her and invite people to challenge her to predict the color of the person’s robe who would soon appear around the corner of some building in the public square, and they were making good money doing this. This kind of thing is still going on today. While not every fortune-teller is demon possessed, some are. And fortune-tellers and things of the occult always distract people from the gospel of Jesus Christ. They’re dangerous for a Christian to be involved in.
What she was saying was true. “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” So why did Paul object to this slave girl saying them? First, the quality of the voice proclaiming the truth is important. Jesus Christ does not need demonic affirmation. Secondly, what this girl was doing was removing the uniqueness of Christianity. The spirits were constantly proclaiming the ancient pagan Greek gods. For this girl to continue to do what she was doing was to put Christianity on the same level with the other pagan religions of that day.
This went on for several days until finally Paul was so grieved that he cast the demon out of her. Jesus Christi and His Word is more powerful than the worst Satan can do. This young woman was thus freed by the authority of Christ from enslavement to spirits, and the proclamation of the gospel was put back in the hands of those who really believed it.
At this point it’d be tempting to think that Satan disappeared or retreated in Philippi. But he didn’t. Satan is a vicious enemy. He’s a snake and a lion. Whenever the preaching of the gospel deprives greedy sinners of their money, there’s going to be trouble! Those unscrupulous slave owners who lost their source of income dragged Paul and Silas before the local authorities and trumped up a smorgasbord of false charges. The hostility evidenced itself three ways.
It was an economic hostility. Look at verse 19: “When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities.” There’s an economic side to satanic strategy. Do you want to see people get upset? Do you want to see them angry and motivated? Just mess with their money.
It was an ethnic hostility. “They brought them before the magistrates and said, ‘These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice’” (v. 20). Don’t miss the duplicity. They drag them before the magistrates because the exorcism took cash out of their pockets but do they mention that in their accusation? No. Their accusation is ethnic and cultural. It was about this same time that the Roman emperor Claudius had expelled all Jews from Rome. Anti-Semitism would have been strong in this colony that prided itself on Roman citizenship.
It was a political hostility. “The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten” (v. 22). Finally, there’s the manipulation of the crowd to brutally mistreat Paul and Silas, who were presented as threats to the civil order of the community. If there’s ever official persecution of Christians in America, this is probably the guise under which it will appear; that Christians are troublemakers. The crowds become tools in the hands of the enemy.
So where was God in all this? Remember, the Lord had seemingly led them to Philippi in a distinct way. Had He forgotten them? Had Paul gotten the signals crossed? No, they are suffering for doing God’s will.
Please don’t misunderstand this. What Paul and Silas are doing here as they pray and sing hymns to God is not denial. They know they’re in pain. This is not mind over matter. But they are merely expressing their gratitude that the things that really matter in this life can never be taken from them.
Years later Paul wrote a letter to the Christians at Philippi. In that letter, he told the Philippian believers to rejoice constantly. Those Philippian believers knew that Paul wasn’t an armchair theoretician when he spoke of rejoicing in the midst of trials. They remembered what happened to him during those early days when the church was founded, and they knew that it was possible to rejoice under the worst of circumstances.
As they’re singing, God miraculously intervenes. There’s a huge earthquake. All the cell doors fly open and everyone’s chains fell off. God produced an earthquake strong enough to blast open the doors of the inner prison. That timely, powerful earthquake showed that God was still in charge! But then another miracle happens – no one bolts for the door. There’s no prison break. But the jailer doesn’t know that. He pulls out his sword and is about to take his own life because the penalty for an escaped prisoner on your watch was death, probably crucifixion. He’d rather take his own life than be publically humiliated and executed. Paul sees what he’s about to do and yells out to him: “Don’t harm yourself! We’re all here!” The jailer called for lights, rushes in to Paul and Silas, falls trembling before them and asks, “What must I do to be saved?”
Singing during suffering led to an earthquake that brought about the dramatic conversion of this jailer and his household. Remember what I said earlier about salvation changing your worldview about your material possessions. This jailer, after he comes to Christ, takes care of Paul and Silas’ wounds, then he brings them into his own home and feeds them. Later on we find that the church at Philippi had a reputation for generosity. What a wonderful reputation to have! When Paul and his team leave town, he leaves behind a small, but powerfully converted young church.
The next morning the magistrates send a message that Paul can go on his way but Paul points out that they’ve violated Roman law. He’s a Roman citizen and it was unlawful for him to be scourged and not receive a fair trial. He insists that they come and make things right.
Now Paul's insistence that the local magistrates personally come and apologize was not a case of asserting his rights for his own sake. He did it to protect the church. If he’d quietly been let out of jail and left town, the church would have been ridiculed as being started by some Jewish rabble-rouser. But when news of the magistrates' mistake spread, it gave protection and credibility to that new church, because the word spread that it was founded by a Roman citizen.
This wonderful account centers around that vital question: What must I do to be saved? In a world concerned about oil spills, sacking of generals and an economic crisis, it’s easy to overlook that simple life, as well as eternal destiny, altering question. It’s the most important question in the world: How can I be saved?
1. It’s the most important question because apart from Jesus Christ, we are all lost! "Lost" is a frightening word. I don't know if you've ever been lost, but it can be a harrowing experience. When our son, Ben, was about seven, we were at the Mall of America at Camp Snoopy, standing in line for a ride – and Ben is missing. I panicked! We quickly searched in the sea of people and couldn’t find him. We’re in a metropolitan area. News of child abductions and murders were not uncommon and for about twenty frightening minutes that seemed like twenty hours, we frantically searched for our lost son, until we found him in a line for a ride. But far more frightening than being lost at Camp Snoopy is to be spiritually lost, separated from God.
Ironically, probably like our lost son, most lost people don't even realize that they’re lost! They're going through life pursuing all of the things that make life enjoyable, but they're oblivious to the impending reality of eternity and the fact that they will stand before the Judge of all the earth. But whether they feel it or not, it is a fact. The Bible declares, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23); and, "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23), which means, eternal separation from God.
The Philippian jailer was in the dark until lights could be brought to see into the prison. Darkness is a biblical picture of being alienated from God. People who are lost and are in the dark need help! They can't see where they're going and don't know the way even if they could see. God must make a person aware of his desperate condition so that he/she will cry out for help: "What must I do to be saved?"
2. It’s the most important question because we all are just a breath away from eternity! We all just hang on to life by a thread. Just last week a four year-old little girl in Minneapolis died after choking on a grape. A first grader in Philadelphia was struck by a bus and killed. This past Tuesday three members of a South Carolina church choir died in a wreck as they returned home from practice. They were 20, 16 and 11 years of age. We erroneously think that only the old die. We're all so frail and yet we think that we're invincible…we're not! Not one of us has a guarantee of being alive tomorrow.
3. It’s the most important question because nothing else will matter when we stand before the righteous Judge of the earth. Money matters a great deal to most of us, and we spend our lives trying to get enough to live comfortably. You can pile up a fortune as large as that of Bill Gates, but it won't get you into heaven. You can work out and eat healthy meals to make your body fit, and you might (or might not) extend your life a few years. But it won't do you a bit of good when you stand before God. You can devote your life to piling up good deeds, but they all will be consumed in the burning heat of the holy presence of Almighty God. You can enjoy the love of a family that cares for you deeply, but even that will not matter when you stand before God. The only thing that will matter on that soon-coming day will be, "Are you saved?" Are you reconciled to God?
4. It’s the most important question because it must be answered personally. That’s what this jailer did. He asked it personally, "What must I do to be saved?" Paul answered simply – if he’d believe in Jesus Christ, he would be saved. Each of us has sinned; each of us needs to be saved personally. Coming from a Christian home won't do. Attending church won't cut it. It is incumbent on each person, and therefore urgent, to answer this crucial question.
5. It’s the most important question with a very simple answer. Thankfully, even though it’s a profound question, it’s one for which even a young child can understand the answer. Paul didn't say, "You'll need to enroll in a seminary course on advanced theology, and by the end of the semester, if you study really hard, you’ll discover the answer." He didn't haul him a list of 12 steps, with the promise that if he worked hard at following them, by the end of his life he’d be saved.
Instead, Paul answered the jailer in a simple sentence, and then, because this was all so new to him, Paul sat down with the jailer’s entire household and explained things more thoroughly…and they all trusted Christ.
Conclusion: The biblical answer to that Midnight Question: “How can I be saved? is, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved." That simple answer stands apart from all other religions in the world. They all offer complex plans of how a person can work their way into heaven. His answer even stands apart from many claiming to be Christian, who say, "Get baptized, receive the sacrament of communion, give money to the church, and do good works and you may get in." Sadly, even many pastors who claim to be Christians would say, "What is all this talk about being saved? There is nothing to be saved from! God loves everyone; He would never condemn anyone. Just try to be a good person, and you have nothing to fear." But Paul's simple answer stands apart: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved."
The jailer though asked the wrong question. He asked, "What must I do to be saved?" Salvation is a matter of believing, not doing. Paul didn’t answer with something to do, but instead with Someone to believe in. That’s because believing is not a matter of human effort, but rather of ceasing from our efforts and relying on God alone. Saving faith means I cease from my own efforts to save myself and trusting in Jesus Christ to save me. But, our faith must be in the right person and salvation centers on the person of Jesus Christ. Paul didn’t say, "Just believe and you’ll be saved" or "Believe in a Higher Power, however you conceive it to be, and you’ll be saved." He said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved."
So how can a person know if he truly believes? We’ve seen it throughout Acts 16 – true salvation always results in changed lives. If a person claims to believe in Christ as Savior, but their life is no different, their claim is suspect. There were several changes in Lydia, as well as this jailer and his household. Lydia opens up her home and gives generously to support the work of God. The jailer immediately began ministering to Paul and Silas, washing their wounds and setting food before them.
Before he was saved, the jailer could throw these wounded men into prison, lock their feet in the stocks, and go to bed without any concern. Now, he humbly serves them in these practical ways.
Salvation always reorients a person so that rather than living for himself only, he begins to be sensitive to the needs of others. His attitudes and deeds change out of gratitude to the Lord for His gift of salvation. In fact the entire family is overflowing with joy because of their new faith in God (16:34).
Salvation affects our emotions. A short time before this jailer was suicidal. Now, he's overflowing with joy in the Lord. No doubt the entire family was terrified by the earthquake. Now they were singing praises along with Paul and Silas, even if there were strong aftershocks. True salvation changes us from the inside out, affecting every area of our lives.
The most important question in the world is: How can I be saved? And the only answer is: Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved.
My friend, is that the most urgent matter in your life today? We too easily become focused on some present situations and problems but ignore the most urgent matter of eternity. It’s only when you are ready to die that you are truly ready to live properly. The most important question in the world is, "How can I be saved?" The only answer is, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved." Is that your answer? Have you believed in Jesus Christ? Have you committed your life to Him as your Lord and Savior?