The Gospel For Everyone (Part 2)

At this time, our children can be dismissed down to our children's church downstairs.

Our leader is waiting for you.

So make your way out there now.

Again, thanks for being here on this very early Sunday morning.

We have been studying the book of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament on Sunday mornings.

And we have a sermon outline if you'd like to use that.

Our ushers have them handy for you if you didn't get one.

Just lift your hand.

Also, if you want to borrow a Bible to follow along in the passage, you can also get one.

Just raise your hand and let them know.

As we've seen in our study of the book of Acts, the early church Christianity grew exponentially in the first century through evangelism and discipleship.

It exploded.

What is an evangelist?

Someone has said that an evangelist is nobody who is trying to tell everybody about somebody who can help anybody.

That's a good definition, I think.

Right?

Pastor Dennis, that's good.

The apostle Paul was certainly an evangelist.

We've been following him on his missionary journeys.

And when Paul was discipling the young Timothy, his protege, he told him to do the work of an evangelist.

You see that in his second letter to Timothy in the New Testament.

Implying, he implies by that that doing the work of an evangelist is what every disciple should do.

Even though we may not have the gift of evangelism.

If we're a disciple of Jesus, a follower of Jesus, he's asking all his followers to be an evangelist.

In other words, to what is what does that mean?

What's the work of an evangelist?

Well, the Greek word evangelist means someone who preaches, heralds, shares the good news of the gospel, which is that Jesus Christ died for our sins on the cross, and that he rose again three days later, and he gives eternal life to everyone who believes in him.

That's short summary of the gospel.

An evangelist tells people about that.

And it's basically an announcement.

It's not advice, it's an announcement.

Here's what Jesus has done.

And really, it's how we respond to that that makes all the difference in the world that we've been looking at in the book of Acts.

Today we continue the story of Paul's second missionary journey in Acts chapter 16.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

If you brought a Bible and want to follow along, uh, and they are traveling around the Roman provinces uh preaching the gospel.

They're doing evangelism.

They they start in Jerusalem, they plant a church in Syrian Antioch, then they start moving through the European cities, and then we we've been looking at this, and they finally end up in Acts 16 in the city of Philippi in Macedonia.

And when they're there, they're going to evangelize people in Philippi.

Most likely, Luke Luke, who's writing the book of Acts, doesn't tell us all the details of what's happening.

He's intentionally choosing the things he wants future readers to see and understand to help them understand not only uh what a Christian is, but how Christianity exploded in the new in the in the new uh early Christianity.

Uh most likely there are many conversions to Christ in Philippi, but Luke here, as we started last time, gives us three case studies of conversions to Christ in Philippi to show us how the gospel is spread to different people by different means.

First, there was the woman Lydia, who was uh converted to Christ.

Then we looked at the unnamed servant girl, and then we uh will look at the unnamed jailer today.

Last time in part one, we saw how the gospel can reach a religious person like Lydia through a reasoned explanation of the gospel.

She responded, opened her heart, and the Lord saved her.

We also saw how the gospel can reach an oppressed person, like the slave girl, through a power encounter with the forces of darkness in the name of Jesus Christ in prayer.

Now, in today in part two, we're gonna look at the third case study of how the gospel can reach a secular person like the Philippian jailer.

I'm gonna read the passage today, um, and I'm gonna back up to get us into the context.

Acts 16, beginning in verse 16.

Um, we start with Lydia again.

A woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatire, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshipper of God, in other words, a religious person, was listening, and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.

And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, saying, If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay.

And she prevailed upon us.

It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave girl, having a spirit of divination, met us, who was bringing her master's much profit by fortune telling.

Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, These men are bondservants of the Most High God who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.

And she continued doing this for many days, but Paul was greatly annoyed and turned and said to the Spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.

And it came out at that very moment.

But when her master saw that their hope of prophet was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.

When they had brought them to the chief magistrates, they said, These men are throwing our city into confusion being Jews, and are proclaiming customs which is not lawful for us to accept or observe being Romans.

The crowd rose up together against them, and the chief magistrates tore their robes off them and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods.

When they had struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely.

And he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks, chains.

But about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there came a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's chains were unfastened.

When the jailer awoke and saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped.

But when Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying, Do not harm yourself, we're all here.

And he called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas.

And after he brought them out, he said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?

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 together with all who were in his house, and he took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds, and immediately he was baptized, he and his household, and he brought them into his house and set food before them, rejoiced greatly, having believed in God with his whole household.

Evangelism.

Here's the third case of uh totally different situation and in how we see Paul and Silas meet this person.

I have two main points today: jailed for Jesus, and uh Jesus meets the jailer.

Uh when Paul liberated the slave girl in the name of Jesus Christ, as I said last time, uh Jesus frees her across the board, spiritually, psychologically, socially, just like he did the demoniac in Mark chapter 5.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

However, when Paul exercised the evil spirit from the slave girl, he also exercised the source of her master's income, their money.

That's gone as well.

And we've just read the masters who were exploiting this slave girl for profit, making money off her, were furious.

And brought Paul, they drug Paul and his team right into the Agora, the main marketplace in the city of Philippi, uh, where every all the business took place in the city, in the center of town, and they charged him, charged them before the civic authorities.

The slave owners charged Paul and Silas with throwing the city into uproar by advocating unlawful customs for Romans to practice.

You see, they're being very clever.

That's not the real reason they wanted them jailed from losing their profits.

Uh they they are very clever.

The slave owners uh not only concealed the real reason uh for their anger, which was economic, they presented a legal charge that appealed to an anti Semitism of the people and their national pride.

He says, These men are Jews, we're Romans.

Oh, that got them going.

Yeah.

It didn't take long for the crowd to absolutely join in and want these guys, you know, taken taken out and charged and whatever.

According to Roman law, you see, Roman citizen could not practice any alien cult that hasn't been sanctioned by Roman authorities.

At this point in time, that included Christianity.

The crowd then joined the attack on Paul and Silas, fueled by anti-Semitism and national pride, and the authorities ordered Paul and Silas to be stripped and beaten, publicly flogged.

And then they were thrown into prison.

And because of the uh what they told the guard, the guard was saying, okay, we better put these all the all the way in.

So make sure hold them in there.

They're held by chains uh and kept under close guard.

When they were their backs were beaten, bruised, lacerated, uh, in a lot of pain.

And yet instead of writhing in pain and protesting their innocence about midnight, they started praying and singing to God.

Hymns.

While all the other prisoners were listening.

By the way, uh singing hymns in public is a great way to grab people's attention.

I don't know if you've ever done it.

I had the experience a couple of times.

The first time I remember doing this was I was away at a national pastor's conference in Atlanta.

Uh, you know, hundreds of other pastors from all over were there.

And uh back this was back in the 90s, not the 1890s.

This was okay.

So you can imagine in Atlanta, large groups of pastors are traveling place to place in the city on buses and so on, we'd have to wait.

Groups of us would be waiting for a bus to come, and I remember a couple of times one of the guys would just start singing a hymn, and the rest of us would join in, and people would walk by, and they'd you know, wow, that's they they loved the music.

There was just it was just funny.

And you know, if you know uh one of our missionaries, Bill Rupier, missionary to Africa, and where Lucas is going soon, um his his uh he's got a way, he he loves to sing when he's there.

And if he's in a long line of Africans waiting to go across the border, he'll start singing African songs.

And it gets everybody's attention.

And one time I was there with him, he started singing, we were way back in the bottom, back of the line, uh waiting to get processed through the uh you know the visa stuff, and uh he started singing.

Well, the person behind the counter heard it and he said, Come up here.

We went we went all the way to the front of the line, and he started.

It was just amazing to watch people respond to this.

And I I can I now call him the singing evangelist.

He's led a number of people to Christ through his singing.

Anyway, that's not part of Acts 16, but uh Paul and Silas are singing, prisoners are listening.

There's something about singing, uh, and so far we looked at the conversions of Lydia and the slave girl.

Now Luke turns our focus to this third case, the Philippian jailer.

While Lydia, we talked about last time, she was a very successful businesswoman.

Um the slave girl was just the opposite.

She was poor, oppressed, demon-possessed, a slave.

Wow, the jailer is strikingly different from the other two.

The jailer is a blue-collar, secular everyman.

Most likely the jailer at this time was probably a retired Roman soldier.

Uh, civil service jobs were given to retired Roman soldiers.

Um, and the the jailer was a secular, no-nonsense man doing his job for his country.

In contrast, Lydia in this in the slave girl, the jailer's life was neither a success nor a mess.

Just every man.

Um we can be pretty sure he probably would not have paid too much attention to a long reasoned discourse of the gospel that Lydia listened to.

Nor would he have probably wanted any kind of deep spiritual encounter.

He was a gentile, an idol worshiper, an ex-soldier, a blue-collar kind of guy.

Well, how does the gospel reach him?

Notice how he responds when he thinks the soldiers have escaped.

He draws his sword.

Why?

What matters to him is not sentiment or logic.

What it matters to him is honor.

His honor.

He lost the prisoners.

Or he thinks he did.

So he's gonna fall on his sword as a matter of honor.

He's a practical man.

And he's not emotional, spiritual, or rational.

He's just practical, secular.

In contrast to the other two conversions we looked at, the the jailer has no spiritual interest whatsoever.

He's not a god fearer like Lydia.

He's not seeking God at all, he's just doing his job.

He puts in his time, goes home, and his life is good.

Notice the difference in how Paul and Silas bring the gospel to these three different people.

Paul brings the gospel to Lydia through a rational explanation of the gospel in the scripture.

Paul brings the gospel to the slave girl in a spiritual encounter with the forces of darkness, freeing her in the name of Jesus Christ, but not this guy.

This guy has to come to Paul.

Why?

Listen to me very carefully, because probably this is the kind of person we may encounter the most.

I know I have.

Because you don't tell the gospel to somebody who doesn't care.

You show them the gospel.

Show it to them.

Um I could tell you stories of this happening with me, but in the sake of time, I won't tell you that the story.

The jailer receives listen, listen to this.

If you heard it, the jailer receives these two prisoners who are all beaten up by rods, dripping with blood.

He did nothing for their wounds, he put them in chains, a mild form of torture, because when they did it, they spread your legs all the way apart and held them in tension.

How do Paul and Silas respond?

Two things happen that the jailer has never ever seen before.

The funny thing the jailer sees is how these guys respond to suffering.

Acts 16, 25.

But about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying, singing hymns of praise to God, and all the prisoners were listening to them.

The other prisoners are listening, they're praising God in the midst of their suffering.

They had a joy rooted in something so deep, it wasn't, they couldn't understand it.

Their freedom was taken away, their bodily health was taken away, they're possibly gonna lose their lives to Rome.

But the joy was still there.

Even though most everything they had was taken away.

Their freedom, everything.

That's the first thing the jailer saw, the response to suffering.

The second thing the jailer saw happened after the earthquake.

Yep, earthquake is prominent enough, but after the earthquake, in Acts 16, 26 and 27, suddenly there came a great earthquake.

Foundations of the prison were shaken, immediately all the doors were open, everyone's chains were unfastened.

The jailer awoke, saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and is about to kill himself.

Thinking the prisoners had escaped.

The jailer saw the doors open according to Roman law.

If you were a guard, charge of prisoners, and they escaped, you were executed.

Point blank.

That's it.

No argument, no jury trial.

You're simply executed.

You lost those prisoners.

The reason the jailer's about to kill himself because he was saving his own humiliation of being executed.

Paul and Silas knew that once those doors were opened, they could escape.

Now think about this.

What would you have done?

After all, they don't deserve to be there.

This must, hey, this must be God freeing us.

But they also knew if they escaped, it would cost the jailer his life.

We are all here.

What?

Paul and Silas stayed, and they also kept the other prisoners there.

You know why?

Because even if one escaped, it was the jailer's death.

They kept them all there.

The jailer never saw anything like that.

For this working class, secular every man to hear and understand the gospel, a rational argument wouldn't have worked.

An emotional encounter wouldn't have worked.

This man is shown something he doesn't have and he wants it.

You show them the gospel.

Something, by the way, I was gonna say that was the way the gospel came to me, in a sense.

I wasn't in jail or anything at the time, but at least not then, but many of you heard my story before, but it I was a freshman in college at Michigan State University.

And before that, uh Christian people would try to share the god, they were evangelizing, they would evangelize me, share the gospel with me.

I heard reasoned explanations.

I uh I don't know how many times, and it just kept going.

If I didn't do this, I would go to hell.

I I was it was all over the map, people trying to evangelize me with the gospel.

But um in college and as a freshman, God brought a person in my life who was different from anybody I'd ever known.

Um he was a Christian and he just invited me to a brief Bible study with some other students.

I said, okay.

But he became my friend.

We did things together, and there was something about him I couldn't place.

He he he was always joyful, he was encouraging, he was kind.

And it bothered me.

It's like, what I can't explain this.

What is it about this guy that I don't see uh in others?

Um, well, I think it was Jesus, you know, and he led me to the Lord, he showed me the gospel.

What I really did want deep down, that kind of joy, that that kind of perspective in life.

I wanted that.

Jesus gave it to him, and he gave me Jesus.

The jailer saw something that had come into Paul and Silas' life that gave them what they needed for the most horrible time in their life.

And it showed.

Oh, it showed to handle and overcome suffering and abuse in a way that the soldier never could as a soldier.

Lydia got words, slave girl got a power encounter.

This jailer got the embodiment of the gospel shown right in front of him.

He wanted to know how to get that.

That's what that's that's why he said, uh, sirs, what must I do to be saved like that?

And you know what?

Circle verse 31.

The answer, my friend, is always the same, always the same.

Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.

You and whoever else in your household believes in him.

And then verse 32, they spoke the word of God to him.

Now he's getting a rational explanation of Christ in the scripture and what he did, what he how he came.

And uh in Acts 16, 33, 34, the jailer then took Paul and Silas.

Get this.

Uh he washed their wounds.

No, remember when they came in, he just threw them in the cell.

He didn't care about them.

Well, now he does.

Washed their wounds.

He's baptized, he brought them into his house and set food before him.

Rejoiced, he's he's got the joy now.

Having believed in God.

Isn't it amazing?

That's the third case study of true conversions to Christ.

It's not just words, not just a power encounter, it's the embodiment, the incarnation of Christ's life in us being shown through what other people wouldn't be doing.

So, what do we learn from these three case studies of conversion to Christ?

First, we learn, uh and it's kind of the title of this whole thing: the gospel is for everyone.

Wealthy people, business people, uh, oppressed people, poor people, uh blue-collar working stiffs.

Doesn't matter.

It's for everybody.

Uh there's no religious type of person that qualifies for the gospel.

There are no typical personalities of people who become Christians who are receptive to the gospel.

These three cases actually represent three different races of people who are converted to Christ.

Lydia was from India.

The slave girl could have been from anywhere.

She's a slave.

The Roman jailer was a European.

Do you realize that Christianity is the only religion that has never been dominated or centralized in one just one part of the world?

Islam has always been centered in the Middle East.

Hinduism's geographic center has been India.

Buddhism's demographic center has always been Asia.

Confucianism's graphic center has always been China.

Christianity started in the Middle East, migrated across the Mediterranean into the Hellenistic Greek world, then it migrated to Northern Europe, then to North America.

Now there are more African, Latin American, Asian Christians than there are in all of Western Europe and North America combined.

It's for everybody.

Only religion that can claim no, there's no one country that claims it.

Why?

Because Christianity is for the world.

Jesus came to save the world.

There's no typical race, culture, personality, human factor that is Christian.

Therefore, we can never say that person could never be saved.

Can't say it.

Everybody.

Now, what's interesting to me that you just gotta, you just gotta respect God.

Uh, and if you want to, you know, sometimes you guys groan at my jokes and stuff.

You guys know God has a a sense of humor, my friend.

He does what's happening here has a the gospel has had a powerful effect in the life of Paul, the Jewish Pharisee.

You remember his conversion in Acts chapter 9, but it goes further than that.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

God is continuing to show him how broad and wide the gospel is.

You see, there's an ancient prayer that Jewish men, this would include Saul, Paul, uh, they prayed every morning.

Oh Lord God, I thank thee that you did not make me a woman, a slave, or a gentile.

Does God have a sense of humor?

All three case studies we looked at know now become part of the church in Philippi, brothers and sisters in Christ, a woman, a slave, and a gentile.

Take that, Paul.

Yeah.

The third thing we learn in these cases is that sharing the gospel is done differently with different people.

There's not a one-size fits-all.

There is only one way of salvation, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the evangelizing depends on the person you're talking to.

What will they understand?

How will they be reached with the gospel?

Jesus always spoke to people based on what their different personality and needs were.

If you look at what he does in the gospels, it I don't think there's a miracle he does the same way twice.

Um Jesus was presented in the gospel by Paul and Silas uh as the gospel was presented as a rational, logical, beautiful uh explanation, and it reached Lydia.

Jesus was presented in the gospel powerful enough to free the slave girl.

And Jesus was presented in the gospel practical and down-earthed enough to save the jailer.

In Philippi, sharing the gospel was not a matter of one size fits all.

While the gospel is the same, that there's only one way through Jesus Christ to be saved, but the way we share to whom we share can be vastly different.

In these three case studies, we've seen three different ways.

People here respond to the gospel.

And if you're a born-again Christian, let me ask you, because I've asked myself this, what did God use to bring the gospel to you?

I guarantee you there's some unique factors in each one of our lives that got to you.

What was it?

And if you're not a born-again Christian and are still seeking the truth about God, about salvation, let me ask you, what would it take to convince you that the gospel is true?

That Jesus can forgive you and free you and give you the fullness of life found in God only.

You know, the one thing that helped to me cross that line when uh my friend and I were together, we he just said, just pray and ask God.

I said, Okay.

And that was it for me.

I bowed my head and I asked God.

So let's pray right now.

Father, thank you that you sent your son Jesus for everyone.

None of us is deserving of the sacrifice he's made for us so that we could be reconciled to you.

And this morning we humbly ask you to give the gift of salvation you promised to everyone who believes in you, even here today.

And would you give us who know you, who've come to faith in Jesus, the sensitivity, the wisdom, um, the insight to share the gospel boldly in a way that would connect with people clearly.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.