The Simplicity of the Gospel

This morning, we're going to jump one chapter later than where we were last week, which was chapter 15, and therefore we are in chapter 16. In this chapter, we find Paul and his companion, Silas, preaching throughout a city called Philippi. We find them this morning converting a woman called Lydia and starting a small church in her house. During their ministry in Philippi, a slave girl who was a fortune teller, Luke tells us, through the help of a demon, this girl becomes obsessed with Paul and Silas. And she keeps following them, telling everyone as loudly as she can, "These men are servants of the most high God who proclaim to you the way of salvation."

He's literally a walking billboard as they're sort of walking through the city. After days of this, however, Luke tells us that Paul becomes, quote, greatly annoyed. And one day turns to her and commands the evil spirit to leave her. Immediately, the evil spirit leaves her. Now because this spirit left this fortune teller slave girl, she loses the ability to tell fortunes.

And her owners become very angry because they lost a good source of income. So Luke tells us they stir up the entire city saying that Paul and Silas were trying to start a revolt. And so that caused Paul and Silas to be captured by the villagers, beaten up, and put in jail. And that is where we find them this morning. Let's turn to Acts 16:22.

The crowd joined in attacking them, Paul and Silas, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods. And when they had afflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken.

And immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's bonds were unfastened. When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried with a loud voice, "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here." And the jailer called for lights and rushed in and, trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"

And they said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household." And 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 wounds and he was baptised at once, he and all his family. Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them and he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God. But when it was day, the magistrate sent the police saying, "Let those men go."

And the jailer reported these words to Paul saying, "The magistrates have sent to let you go. Therefore, come out now and go in peace." And Paul said to them, "They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens and have thrown us into prison. And do they now throw us out secretly? No.

Let them come themselves and take us out." The police reported these words to the magistrates and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens. So they came and apologised to them and they took them out and asked them to leave the city. So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.

So far, our reading. A man at a Los Angeles airport was worried about missing his plane. He had no watch on, no wristwatch, and couldn't locate a clock. So he hurried up to a total stranger and said, "Excuse me, could you give me the time, please?" The stranger smiled and said, "Sure."

And he put down two large suitcases he was carrying and looked on the watch on his wrist. He said, "It is exactly 17:09. The temperature outside is 22 degrees and it is supposed to rain tonight. In London, England, the sky is clear, the temperature is 28 degrees Celsius. The barometer reading currently is 29.14 and is falling.

And let's see, Mount Everest has calm and clear skies with no breeze. It's a perfect day to reach the summit, in fact. Oh, by the way, you should go fishing on the pier tonight. There's going to be tons of fish out. And remember, buy your wife some flowers because she's in a bad mood at the moment.

Your watch can tell you all that?" the man interrupted. "Oh, yes. And much more. You see, I invented this watch and I can assure you that there's nothing like it in the whole world."

"I want to buy that watch. I'll pay you $5,000 right now for it," the man said. "I'm sorry, but it's not for sale," said the stranger as he reached down to pick up his suitcases. "Wait. $10,000.

I'll pay you $10,000 cash." "I can't sell it. I want to give this to my son for his 20th birthday." "Okay. Listen.

$50,000." Stranger paused. "$50,000. Okay. It's yours."

The man, absolutely thrilled, transferred the money to this man's account, took the watch, snapped it on his wrist with glee and 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." There are many things in life which seem to come with strings attached. But one of the most amazing things when you hear about Christianity is that the central message of the gospel is staggeringly simple and strings free.

The story of Christianity is the most powerful and moving story that the world has ever known. Unlike the wristwatch that could do anything but has hidden baggage, the hope of the Christian message is summed up in the statement Paul made to the Philippian jailer we read this morning: "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved." This truth is true for jailers as much as it is for everyone in this world. Two points for us to think about this morning.

And really it's tied so much with last week's message on Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Council as well. Firstly, the situation where, in our natural selves, there's a temptation to downplay the simple gospel of free grace. Have you ever seen a beautiful car or a beautiful painting or a beautiful home and heard someone say the beauty comes from its simplicity? Well, the gospel's magnificent radiant beauty comes precisely from its simplicity. That's why I love to preach it because I don't have to be too smart.

That's why, as Christians, we love to hear it over and over again and we are moved every time. It's so simple yet so profound. Yet unfortunately, the greatest stumbling block for some comes from the very fact that the gospel is so simple. Because it often leads to two deceptions. Those who reject the gospel because of its simplicity are guided by two deceptions.

Firstly, its simplicity makes us want to think, "Wait a minute, there must be a catch. Life is never this simple. There's no such thing as a free lunch." We're taught, I was taught that in economics. Rule number one: no such thing as a free lunch.

We listen to the story of this amazing watch which cost a lot of money and made you lug around two massive batteries and we go, "Yep, that makes sense. There's always a catch." So this morning, whether you consider yourself a Christian or simply exploring Christianity, there's a tendency in us all to add something to the promise of salvation which God gives in the Bible. Even as very, very mature Christians, we might be happy to receive this salvation as a gift, but as we saw last week in Acts 15, now that we're a Christian, we should pay back something to God. We should show that we can now earn His favour, retrospectively perhaps.

We saw this happening last week. The church had to figure out whether circumcision and obedience to the law of Moses, not necessarily got you into the kingdom. Jesus does that. But it keeps you in the kingdom. That was the question.

So one extreme tendency is to want to add to this free thing that is so precious. We do this so that we can warrant salvation. The other extreme is that we think, "Well, because it's so simple, it mustn't be worth very much. Because only complicated and intricate things are worth giving my life up for." We'll take salvation, but if it's not something as difficult as gyming very hard to get a perfect physique, or if it isn't studying really hard to be number one in the class, or whether that is working long hours to afford that perfect home in the perfect neighbourhood.

If it's not as hard as attaining those sort of difficult things, we ask naturally, "Is it really worth striving for? Is it really worth having?" If all the best things in life come from hard work and determination, can the gospel of free grace really be that precious? And so because of this simplicity and its radical freeness, we can downplay, we can ignore, we can be unmoved by, or we can even reject the gospel by either trying to make it really more difficult to receive or making it more costly to accept. We may not realise it, but by doing this, we actually sabotage the power of this very gospel and we shipwreck our eternal future.

Again, that was established last week. Now we find a beautiful cameo, a snapshot of that dynamic taking place in the story of the Philippian jailer where we investigate what's involved in this free radical grace. Well, at the essence, at the core of this free grace message is this concept of salvation. Salvation. Christians love talking about it.

This is the promise that Paul gives the man: "You shall be saved if you believe in the Lord Jesus." In the quietness of the midnight hour, Paul and Silas were confronted by a big brute of a man. Imagine it. Probably uneducated, a vicious, foul-mouthed, rough as guts man standing before them with a sword in his hands. But that sword wasn't there to cut them down, it was aimed to be plunged into his own belly as he readied himself to commit suicide.

He thought his prisoners had escaped that evening and he knew that his bosses would do something terrible to him if they found out. He would definitely be executed if not tortured beforehand. And this vicious, foul-mouthed, rough as guts brute has a family. He knows, perhaps even in that moment, that he would miss them and they would miss him. But he was good as dead anyway.

And so falling on his sword would simply speed up the process. But in the nick of time, Paul and Silas step out from the darkened shadows. "Sir, do not harm yourself. We are still here." Just as that voice pierced the shadows, so the hope of the gospel would pierce the shadow of this man's inner darkness.

Falling to his knees at their feet, he asked Paul and Silas, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Now, scholars debate whether the man actually really understood what he was to be saved from in asking this. I mean, it's a good question to ask: what does a non-Jewish, gentile, ferocious brute of a man like this jailer know about the things of God? How does he understand his lostness? How could he understand his desperate situation living apart from God and under the tyranny of the devil?

But I think if you were to see thick prison walls shaking, as Luke says, to its foundations in the middle of the night, if it's the same jail that has been discovered by archaeologists in the Philippi city, it was a jail built into a mountain. So on the one hand, you have pure granite of a mountain and on the other hand, have thickened reinforced walls. These walls shake so that you think it's going to fall in on you. If you saw these walls and this mountain shaken by a power, it doesn't matter what your theology is, you'll be begging for rescue pretty quickly.

And so it's probably a bit of a moot question to debate what was the jailer hoping to be saved from? Because ultimately, we will conclude the Holy Spirit opened his eyes, regenerated his heart to have an awareness of a power, awareness of a God, and he sensed a peril that he had desperately needed to escape from. And so whether it is begging for his physical life or his eternal life, the Philippian jailer realised he needed God's pleasure in his life rather than His wrath. He needed God's pleasure rather than His wrath. "What must I do to be saved?"

Paul replies, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household." At the heart of this frantic rescue lies the reality of the gospel. We need to be rescued from something. We need to be rescued. Ultimately, Scripture tells us this rescue is from divine judgment.

It's probably what the jailer feels, realises, senses in this moment, whether in his mind judgment of the physical power of God that can cause a mountain to shake or a judgment that sends people to hell for all eternity. At the heart of the request, "What must I do to be saved?" is a request to be spared from the judgment of God. And this concept of salvation, which we Christians love to talk about, is a salvation, a rescue from divine judgment. And this theology surrounding the word salvation, to be saved, is actually a key theme in the book of Acts and in Luke's gospel. So Luke loves using this word salvation. In summary, Luke expresses that divine salvation, divine rescue is needed because of this one thing: human rebellion against God.

What does this look like? Well, firstly, moral failure. Humanity will be judged in having failed to live to the moral requirements that God has for us. The second reason we will be judged is because we have refused to recognise and to receive God's messengers that He has sent to us over the past years and even in the present. I am a messenger to you this morning.

Remember Stephen's speech before he was killed? We dealt with that a few weeks ago. In Acts 7, he said, "You stiff-necked people, which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? You received the law as delivered by angels and you have not kept it." One of the reasons we will be judged is because we have rejected God's word and His messengers.

Another reason humanity will be judged is for our rejection and betrayal of the Messiah. Peter says in Acts chapter 2, "This Jesus who was delivered up according to the definite plan and full knowledge of God, you crucified, you killed by the hands of lawless men. You, us." Fourthly, humanity will be judged for our idolatry and determination to worship everything but God. Paul says in the next chapter, Acts 17, to the Greeks in Athens, "Being then God's offspring, he tells them, we ought not to think that God is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and the imagination of man.

The times of ignorance God has overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness." Humanity will face judgement because of idolatry, worshipping everything but God. So Luke says, for all of these reasons and more, without a way of rescue, we all will face the judgment of God and the outcome will not be great. That's why the central aspect of salvation, the core element of this salvation, this rescue is forgiveness. It has to be forgiveness.

God has to forgive us and this is why the gospel of grace can only ever be free. It can never be earned or added to. Think of it in this way: when we have seen or we have experienced a mortally wounded relationship, when we have harpooned relationships, what amounts of gifts or kind words or acts of service can restore that relationship? Can mowing their lawn and doing their dishes save that friendship? We all know those types of relationships, marriages, friendships, business partnerships, decimated by wrong actions or words.

Nothing fixes it unless the wrong party is willing to be reconciled and to forgive. Whether the Philippian jailer realised the significance of his rescue that evening, this is the reality facing him and us. We need to be saved from the alienation we have from God. We need to be saved from the alienation we have in our attitude towards Him, our attitudes towards our self and our fellow man. And so the initial dynamic involved when you and I said we believed in the gospel is that firstly, we are saved from an alienation from God which will be translated into an eternal alienation which is hell.

That's the first dynamic of salvation. When we say we are saved, we are saved from damnation. But then the second element, and we also see this in the story of the Philippian jailer, is that we are saved into something else. We are saved from and then we are saved into. Once the jailer is told where his rescue could be found, believing in the Lord Jesus, the jailer took Paul and Silas to his home to have this truth explained a bit more.

Like, they've heard, "Okay, this is what you do, believe." Okay, I'm willing to do that. Come and explain what that means. And so they spent the whole night talking and discussing the gospel. They needed to hear that Jesus died for their sins.

They needed to hear that He bore their punishment. But then notice what happened afterward in verse 33. They all believed and trusted in this message and then what happened? They were baptised. That very hour of the night, it says, they were baptised.

We had Kirsty and Maddie's baptism last week. It was a beautiful event. And apart from it being just a wonderful expression of an age-old tradition, something spiritual is being signalled in that moment. It's the same thing that was signalled in Philippi that same night. And that is that these people have entered into a spiritual family called the church.

They have entered the visible expression of the kingdom of God. Remember, Acts is about how God is building this kingdom, the church of God. Baptism is an initiation rite. We go through baptism to initiate us into the church. Through baptism and corresponding faith in Jesus, we become a part of the church.

And when we are saved, therefore, we are not saved only from judgment, we are saved into the precious and the vital thing called the church. When the jailer and his family were saved, were baptised, Paul and Silas doesn't then cut them loose and then leave. They would have been added to that tiny little church that we're meeting in Lydia's house. The same Lydia that at the end of this chapter, Paul and Silas go back to and encourage before they leave. I believe that they would have shared the story of the Philippian jailer and his family and said, "Please follow them up.

Go and get them. Bring them into the family." When the jailer and his family are baptised, they don't become loose solo Christians trying to figure things out by themselves. They are grafted into, they are bundled up into the people of God known as the church. That is what they are saved into.

They are not just saved from, they are saved into. You know where this is going though, right? Have you taken stock of what it means to say that you are a Christian saved by the Lord Jesus? Do you realise what your reality is?

If you believe that you are saved from the coming judgment, then you must also believe that you are saved into the kingdom. Biblically, a Christian existing without his church, Paul writes to the Corinthians, is like a hand severed from the body. It is not a hand anymore. It is a piece of flesh. A leg amputated from the body is not a leg anymore.

And Christian, you and I have to remember that we have been saved into the body of Christ. Some of us listening to this, probably from home, there are some who haven't been to church since the pandemic began. And I understand there have been all sorts of disruptions and livestream has made things a lot easier, but it's time to come back to church. You need to be with your family. It's time to belong again.

It's not possible to be saved from judgment and not into the kingdom. Philippian jailer and his family are saved from God's judgment, but on that very night, they also demanded to be baptised and thereby they entered the body of Christ, the visible expression of the kingdom. Friend, belong somewhere because you've been made to belong. In finishing, we see that that night when Paul and Silas shared the gospel with the jailer's family, they would have explained the threat from which they had been saved from and they would have explained the hope into which they were saved. They were saved into a family to belong to, a people on the road with God together.

They were saved into a group of people that could pray for you and equip you, people to help you mature you out of your immaturity. That's what we all need and that's what we've been given in the church. When the gospel tells us "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved," we come to understand that we have been saved from judgment into His kingdom. Like I said, in closing, a man paid a ransom for a tiny miraculous watch only to discover that it came with strings attached, two gigantic batteries that he had to carry around all the time. The truth of the gospel, the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

His work in His ascension, His resurrection to the right hand of God is nothing like that watch at all. There are no strings attached. They can't ever be because forgiveness cannot be earned. It can only be received. It is a gift by the grace of the One who has been greatly offended.

And so if you are a Christian, you must know that you have received that gift and you must believe that your life has been changed forever. You see, it was the power of God that rescued Paul and Silas from their prison cells that night. But it was the power of God and the gospel that led to the release of a jailer from his own eternal prison. It wasn't Paul or Silas who were in chains. It was the man sitting on the other side of the jail bars free to come and go as he pleased.

He was the one who was really in chains. He had spent his whole life keeping convicts confined, but all the while, he was the one who needed to be set free. And the key, the key to his escape lay with the simple words, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved." Remember, dear Christians, what you have been saved from and what you've been saved into. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we pray that You'll do the work of purifying our hearts. And Lord Jesus, we know that that work has begun now as You have preached Your word to us. As Your word has come to us in this time, in this moment of many other things that can possibly come across our path. This moment is sacred. This moment we need to hear.

For some of us, we have never fully believed and accepted what we have been saved from. We have never fully believed that we are a brood of vipers, selfishly pursuing our own salvation in doing just enough to save us, being just good enough. But we have never borne the fruit of our repentance. Lord, I pray for those of us who need to hear and believe that it is only because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Paying for my sin.

The sin that I have committed against a holy God that causes me rightly to spend eternity away from Him. Lord, that is mine. But I thank You, Lord, that You have taken it on Yourself. And I thank You, Lord, that my sin was punished in You. And now all that is left is forgiveness and grace.

Reconciliation with my God. Eternal lasting peace. Our God, thank You for that. Then there are some of us, Lord, who need to remember what we have been saved into, let alone what we've been saved from. And God, we have been saved into Your wonderful kingdom, the kingdom of Your Son, the kingdom of light.

Help us, Lord, to believe that the church is that kingdom. Help us to see it as precious. Help us to see it as worthwhile. Help us to see its importance in our life. And what if we need to repent?

Lord, and if we need to shore up our defences and become brave, and Lord, if we need to humble ourselves to be obedient to Your word, then let us do so. Lord, may You do what You need to do in this beautiful part of Your kingdom, Open House Church. We thank You that You are as powerful now as You were in those days of Paul and Silas, that You cause mountains to shake at Your will, and You can cause any one of us to be transformed by this word. In Jesus' name, amen.