Message of Christianity

There's a story about a man who was at the airport one day, and he was on his way flying to work. The airport was the Los Angeles Airport, and he was rushing to get to his plane because he was afraid that he might miss it. He had no watch on his hand and this was before the invention of mobile phones. And he couldn't find a clock on any of the walls there. So he didn't really know how bad he was traveling, how late he was.

And he hurried up to a total stranger, and he came and asked the guy, "Excuse me. Could you give me the time, please?" The stranger smiled and he said, "Sure." He sat down his two large suitcases that he was travelling with, put them down, and he looked at the watch on his wrist. He said, "It's exactly 05:09."

"The temperature outside is 22 degrees, and it's supposed to rain tonight. In London, England, the sky is clear and the temperature is 28 degrees Celsius. The barometer reading is 29.14, and it's falling. Let's see. Mount Everest has a clear and calm sky with no breeze."

"It's a perfect day to reach the summit. Oh, and by the way, you should go fishing on the pier tonight. There's gonna be tons of fish out." "Your watch tells you all that?" the man interrupted.

"Oh, yes." He said, "and much more. You see, I invented this watch, and I can assure you there is no other timepiece like it in the world." "Well, I really would like to buy this watch off you," the man said. "I'll give you $2,000 right now for it."

The man said, "Sorry. It's not for sale." And he went to pick up his suitcases again. And he said, "Wait. Wait."

"Wait. $4,000. I'll have got a check. I can sign it for you right now." He said, "No."

"I can't sell it. I want to give this watch to my son for his 20th birthday one day." "Okay." He said, "Well, how about $10,000 for this watch?" The man relented and he said, "Okay."

"For 10,000, alright. It's yours. For $10,000." So the man, absolutely thrilled, signed the check, gave it over to the man. He took the watch, snapped it over his wrist, and he said thanks as he turned to leave.

"Wait," said the stranger, looking down at the two heavy suitcases at his feet. "Don't forget the batteries." This morning, we're going to be looking at Acts 16. It's an incredible event, where we see Paul, the apostle Paul, his travel companion, Silas. I don't know if he was silent, maybe.

Silas. They were preaching through Philippi. And after converting a rich woman called Lydia in Philippi, they started a small house church in her house. She seems to be a wealthy merchant. She was a dealer in purple cloth, the Bible says.

And they were starting this house church then. During their stay there, they also met a slave girl who was being pimped out, for lack of a better word, by some people as a fortune teller. And it says she was actually a really good fortune teller, and the Bible makes it clear that it was through the acts of demons, through demon possession that she was able to do this. For days, she kept on hassling them, funnily enough, and they didn't do anything until one day Paul's patience wore a bit thin and he commanded the demon to leave her and it did. And there ended her fortune telling abilities and the pimps obviously were very upset and they caused a huge commotion which caused Paul and Silas to be thrown into prison.

So that's where we find the next part of our story that I want to look at this morning. It's in Acts 16, and we're going to be reading from verse 22. Acts 16, verse 22. "The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks."

"About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, all the prison doors flew open and everybody's chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, 'Don't harm yourself. We're all here.'"

"The jailer called for the lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' They replied, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.' Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night, the jailer took them and washed their wounds."

"Then immediately he and all his family were baptised. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them. He was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God, he and his whole family." So far, our reading. The jailer comes to them, falls on his knees before them and says, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"

And they replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved." Christianity is so immensely simple and yet so profound. The story of Christianity is the most powerful, the most moving story that you will ever hear or experience. Yet not everyone knows the story. Not everyone wants to accept the story.

Unlike the amazing wrist watch that anyone could have and that could do anything, it came with hidden baggage. And unlike that wristwatch, Christianity doesn't have any strings attached. It doesn't have any strings attached. That amazing message, friends—believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved—is the message of Christianity. Have you heard someone talk about a car or a painting or even a piece of music and say its beauty comes from its simplicity?

Well, the gospel's magnificent radiant beauty comes from that simple phrase: Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. That's why I love to preach it. That's why I love listening to sermons, and it can be any sermon as long as the gospel is preached and it warms my heart every time. It doesn't matter how old I am. It doesn't matter how many times I've heard the gospel.

I can hear it again and again and again, and it's beautiful every time. Yet unfortunately, the greatest stumbling block for some comes from the very fact that it is so simple. Because it's so simple, it leads us into two possible deceptions. The first one is that because it is so simple, its simplicity makes us want to think, "Hey, wait a minute. There must be a catch."

"There must be a catch. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Life is never this simple." We listen to the funny story about the wristwatch and we go, "Yep, that makes sense. That's just, you know, how things go sometimes."

We tend to want to add something to the promise of salvation. It's just what we want to do. It's too easy otherwise. Life isn't easy. It's too easy.

I can't trust that this is a real deal. So whether that is by trying to bring our side in the equation, trying to be nice enough, smile enough, look good enough, preach well enough, raise our kids in a good way, whether we want to live up to a certain standard, sometimes we want to add to earn this salvation because it's too easy. It's too simple otherwise. The other extreme is that we think, "Well, because it's so simple, it's not worth very much." Everything that we want in life comes at a cost.

And the more valuable, the more prized it is, the higher that cost is. If something comes for free, well, it's probably not worth very much. Only complicated, interesting things are worthy in our life. We'll take salvation. That's all good.

But it's not something quite as difficult as training and, you know, gyming for the perfect physique, like myself. Or studying for hours on end to be the top student in the class, to be number one in your year level. If it's not as hard as attaining that, then it's not worth having, we say. But God has said that salvation is a gift.

It's a gift. Gifts cost something, it does. Whether it be in time in making it or money in buying it, cost, gifts cost something, but the cost is not for us. And John 3:16, I mentioned it last week again, God so loved the world that He gave. And that giving did cost something.

So Paul and Silas, they're confronted by this man. He's a big brute of a guy. A jailer in those times was not a very cultured, sensitive new age guy. He was probably used to flogging people, used to seeing, you know, people dying and dead and no mercy whatsoever. He was just doing his job.

He was probably a vicious, foul mouthed, rough as guts sort of guy. And here he falls on his knees and begs and pleads with these guys saying, "What must I do to be saved?" Now, theologians and scholars, they question just how much this guy must have known when he asked this question. Here is a guy that was a Gentile. He wasn't a Jew.

Probably not a God-fearing Gentile that existed in those times, that sort of knew about Judaism but didn't really want to go into it because they needed to go the full hog and get circumcised. So they understood Judaism, but this guy probably wasn't one of those guys. And so for him to ask the question, which is a very Christian sounding question—"What must I do to be saved?"—theologians and biblical scholars, they don't really understand why he would have said this. Now my thinking, however, is if you were in a thick walled prison block carved into the side of a mountain, which the Philippian jail was, and you witnessed this whole entire mountain with its thick walls and cast iron bars shaking and rattling around you, the doors flinging open, chains falling off people.

If you saw this happening, you would definitely make sure your theology was right. It would change your theology. No matter what you believed in, you would want whatever those guys were having. If it happened to me, I'd be begging for rescue pretty quickly.

Whether it be begging for his physical life, however, or his eternal life. So some say, "Well, it was just to be saved from this impending earthquake that was going to destroy him," or whether it was for his eternal life. The Philippian jailer realised that he needed the power of God in his life. "What must I do to be saved?" he asked.

Paul replies, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. You and your entire household." And isn't that so simple? It's such a refreshing statement. Believe in the Lord Jesus.

Believe in Jesus as Lord, in other words. It means that you place your trust, your dependence—your, you know, everything about your pride or anything like that—you don't place it in yourself anymore. You don't boast in yourself anymore. You place that dependence, that trust, that pride on the work of Jesus Christ.

If you are someone prone to want to work, to earn salvation, want to work to earn good things in life, then the gospel and this message says your pride, your self righteousness, is going to be shattered. If you believe in the gospel, essentially, you will become humble. If you are someone who doubts that there is such a thing as a free lunch, it absolutely shatters the philosophy by introducing a concept called grace. A system that not only allows God to show Himself, reveal Himself through His sending of His own Son Jesus Christ, to die on a cross for us, but a system that shows us how we ought to live towards other people around us, to live in a system with a philosophy of grace. No such thing as a free lunch, if you've ever heard that before.

It's an economic theory. It's an economic theory. It says that you gotta give something to get something, but grace trumps that philosophy. It destroys that philosophy. Grace is exceptionally different to our ordinary human response.

In Christ, we receive and we perceive that we have indeed received the free lunch. I want to share with you some of the amazing truths about salvation, and we're going to be reflecting on that again as we share the Lord's Supper this morning. Salvation is as simple as coming when you have been called. Salvation is as simple as coming when you have been called. Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, "Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest."

Salvation is as simple as drinking water. Jesus stood out and cried out, "If anyone is thirsty, let them come to me and drink. Let them come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scriptures have said, streams of living water will flow from within him." Salvation is as simple as eating bread.

Jesus said, "I'm the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never, never go hungry again." Salvation is as simple as entering a door. "I'm the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved.

He will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. But I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." Salvation is a gift. "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

And then one of my favourite verses of all time, salvation is as simple as calling out for help. Paul says, "For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord, everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved." If we understand this, if we understand the simplicity of the gospel, it means that we cannot be ashamed. We cannot be ashamed of sharing it. We can't shy away from it because it's not difficult to explain.

It's not difficult to share. It's not difficult to live out. If you're ever one worried about people asking you or explaining to them what the gospel means or what Christianity is all about, you can quote Acts 16. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. The power of God that rescued Paul and Silas from the physical prison that they were in is the same power of God in the gospel that led that jailer to be released from his prison.

It wasn't Paul or Silas really who were the ones who were captured and held in chains. That's the irony of the story. It's the man who was sitting on the other side of the jail bars. That was the real captive. That was the real—sorry.

The real person who was in bondage. He was the one who wasn't free. He was the one that wasn't free. All his life, he had spent keeping convicts confined, but all the while, he was the one who needed freedom. And the key, the key to his escape lay in the words that Paul said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved."