What Must I Do to be Saved? – Acts 16:16-31

We come, this morning, to one of the more preeminent passages in the Book of Acts.

It’s always with fear, trepidation and joy that I come to scriptures like these.

I have a bit of fear, because I know that many of you already know this passage very well.

And so, unless you are doing your part in prayer for me and for yourselves,

I might not be able to keep your interest as well as I would like.

(It discourages me and cools my ardour when I see God’s people falling asleep during my messages.)

I guess that it’s a matter of my sinful ego.

But this kind of scripture also fills me with joy, simply because it is so well-known.

The fame of scriptures like these indicates their importance.

In this case, the work of evangelism was proceeding smoothly in the bustling city of Philippi.

That good work began in a prayer meeting on banks of the nearby river.

There were no preachers in the area to begin with, just a desire to fellowship with the Lord.

After the arrival of the God-sent missionaries the prayer meetings not only continued, but grew.

Any true church of God will flourish if it will take its prayer meetings seriously.

But when prayer becomes a mere habit, the church or the Christian will suffer.

But of course, the god of this world hates both the work of evangelism and the work of prayer.

An unfortunate creature, possessed by a demon, was chosen by Satan to disrupt the work of the missionaries.

For several days she followed Paul and the others, croaking and shrieking,

“These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.”

When Paul could stand it no longer he took the offensive.

With the authority of the Lord Jesus, he ordered the demon to leave the woman.

“And he came out the same hour.”

Whether the poor young woman initially understood it or not, this was a blessing of the highest sort.

But Paul and Silas were rewarded by being arrested, beaten with many stripes, and jailed.

Spurgeon once said that in this Paul was driven from the shallow waters into the depths where the bigger fish could be found.

It could be that the only way that this jailor of Philippi was ever going to be touched with the gospel was through the painful suffering of Paul and his friend Silas.

This man wasn’t going come to the church house or prayer meeting of a fragmentary Jewish sect.

He was a Roman, and so he through that it was not lawful for him to receive or to observe such things.

He certainly didn’t have any care for the malefactor named Jesus, from that insignificant Jewish town of Nazareth.

A lot people paint this jailor in the darkest of all possible colors.

I’m not so sure that he deserves the opprobrious comments that he sometimes receives.

“Opprobrious” is one of my new words; it means “scornful, abusive reproach.”

I’m not so sure that the jailor deserves much in the way of opprobrious attacks.

In some ways he’s very admirable.

We see that he was obedient and dutiful; he carried out his orders promptly and explicitly:

“And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely:

Who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks.”

We note that he did his job well, taking his responsibilities personally.

When the earthquake struck, he knew that his primary responsibility lay in the prison and the prisoners.

In other words, he was faithful to his employers.

And, right or wrong, he preferred death to any kind of dishonour.

“The keeper of the prison awaking 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.”

Suicide is not Christian behaviour, but at the very least it displayed the man’s seriousness.

By the words of the text it appears that the jailor was a man of few words.

He was an hard, all-business sort of person.

And He was a man of action, decision and precision.

Even the Lord can use people with the general character of this man – especially when sanctified by grace.

What a shame it is when multitudes of professing Christians are filled with dishonor and self-satisfaction.

Why is it that many of the people with the best Christian character are outside of Christianity?

This man of action and decision asked the most important question that any human can utter:

“What must I do to be saved?”

If one of our children asked that question, we would be delighted, but not surprised,

Because they have heard the word “saved” used over and over again at church and at home.

But I wish that I knew how this man came to know and use it.

And what exactly did he mean when he said it?

The word “saved” generally implies two things: to be HEALED, or to be made SAFE.

The word “saved” generally talks about deliverance from disease or some other sort of danger,

But in religion it speaks about deliverance from the penalty of sin.

It is unlikely that the man knew that he was dying under the weight of his transgressions against God.

So it appears that he was referring to deliverance from some other kind of danger.

But it was not the danger of DEATH, because he was willing to die and even to take his own life.

He had no more fear of death than an eagle fears a mouse.

Unfortunately, that was because of the other danger and his ignorance of his sin.

It might have been that he was thinking about his punishment if any of the prisoners had escaped,

But he had just been told that no prisoners were gone.

No, I think that his fear was over the fact that for first time in his life he had come face to face with the conviction of the Holy Spirit intensified by the earthquake.

This man had likely heard the stories of the what the demon-possessed woman had said:

“These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.”

It was probably through her that he had been introduced to the strange new use of the word “salvation.”

At that point he didn’t care in the slightest about the arrest of those men – or their “most high God.”

But then after the earthquake, he had seen and felt the power of that God.

It was not so much in the earthquake, which have always been common in that part of world,

But rather it was in the effect of the earthquake within his prison:

Doors wide open and he heard the sound of broken chains.

But more than that – every prisoner was still there, none had left or escaped.

This was a miracle of an exceptional order, and he knew it.

This man of insight and decision could see the hand of the unseen Jehovah.

He also came within an inch of eternity without any hope in his soul.

The sword was placed against his chest, and half an inch below that blade lay his heart.

Indeed we are “as a vapour that appeareth for a little time and the vanisheth away.”

Our days on earth are as a shadow.

With the utmost respect, this man said to his prisoners, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

How would you answer that question?

How would the average priest answer?

How would the atheist? The Muslim?

How would Robert Schuller answer that question?

How would Alexander Campbell or Brigham Young answer?

“Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

The answer to the man’s question is condensed and recorded for us in six short words.

I’m sure that there was more to the answer, perhaps before and certainly after,

But it is my joy to tell you that this is the answer to the question of salvation – in a nutshell.

What must you do to be saved? “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Anyone can understand these words, if they have been given a heart to turn to God.

Believe.

The Bible says that sinful souls are saved by God’s grace, understood, received and appreciated by faith.

That word “faith” describes what is meant by “believe” on the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is far more than a simple understanding that Jesus Christ once lived and that He died by crucifixion.

The words “believe on Christ” speak about a DEPENDENCE and RELIANCE upon Him.

Several months ago, we voted to send a some money to Pastor Sergey Mocholav in Siberia.

I don’t know if it concerned you, but I spent quite a bit of time thinking about how that money was supposed to reach him.

I thought about mailing it, but I have no FAITH in the Russian postal system.

I thought about sending it by way of Western Union,

And I had done that some months earlier with a small gift from my wife and I,

But that procedure was expensive, and it worried me.

Our little gift was sent to an other Western Union office (or would that be Eastern Union office?).

I had to specifically identify Bro. Mocholav and send him a secret password.

But with the translation process, I wasn’t sure that we could accurately communicate.

So with this larger gift, I decided to use a bank transfer: our bank to his bank.

But that had to go through a third bank in New York, and then to the headquarters of his bank, and then to his local branch.

I had been given his bank account and routing number, but again, I wasn’t sure about translations.

Then I was told that the process could take as much as a week.

There was a ream of paper work which further worried me,

And THEN I was told about the procedure necessary to trace our money if it somehow got lost.

Lost? Needless to say, I was concerned.

It takes faith to send money to anyone, but especially a lot of money to a foreign country in a foreign currency.

But, you know what?

It worked just fine.

The TRUST that I put in the system did exactly what it was supposed to do,

And the money reached Irkustk in half the time that I was told to expect.

Similarly, the God-proscribed method of approach of a sinner to God is through TRUST in Lord Jesus Christ.

We must commit and trust to Him the care and keeping of our eternal soul.

The thought might be scarey, and the theologian might try to make it sound complicated, but it is very simple:

Forget about walking to Russia, determining the right postage, understanding the translation, and learning to write in the Russian Cyrillic language.

Humbly commit your soul to Christ and let Him take care of all the details.

“BELIEVE on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The second word within this tried and tested formula is even more simple – “ON.”

Amazing as it seems, this is the key word to understanding this verse.

The other day, Judy was telling me about one of the little girls that she teaches.

This little, loveable creature has problems.

She will never be as smart as the kids her age, and she’ll have lots of problems as an adult.

Someone was working with her the prepositions: “over” and “under.”

Somehow she temporarily forgot the difference between them.

When she was reminded and shown the relationship of those 2 words, she just started giggling & giggling.

Prepositions like “over” and “under” are easily understood by the simplest of children.

And the word “on” is just as easy.

BELIEVING in the ability of the banking system to transfer money from one account to another, is not the same thing as actually COMMITTING a big sum of money for them to transfer.

It is one thing to believe “in” the ability of Christ to save the sinner;

But it’s something else to put our soul “into” the hands of the Saviour.

And yet to understand the words themselves is easy.

If that jailor had heard and believed the message of the demon-possessed damsel:

That Paul and Silas were servants of the most high God.

If he had somehow learned that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of sinners;

Those absolutely true facts would have done him no good whatsoever.

It was essential for him, as it is for each of us, to cast himself in dependence “on,” or “upon,” the Saviour.

We must TRUST the Lord Jesus Christ.

You see we’re all vile sinners in the sight of that Most High God.

“There is not a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not.”

“All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

But Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners like us; that was the purpose for His birth.

It was never His intention to clean up bad government, to stamp out poverty or to eliminate illiteracy.

And the “Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.”

But salvation comes only to those who BELIEVE the facts and who TRUST themselves to the promise.

Those who don’t give up what they perceive to be their personal goodness

And put their eternal souls into the hands of Christ

Have no claim in the promise that the Lord was giving to this man.

Now notice the simple article “The”

This reminds us that Jesus Christ is UNIQUE – He is THE Lord Jesus Christ.

“Never man spake like this man;” no man preached like Him, and no man died like Him.

He was, and is, the eternal God in human flesh.

“The word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the old begotten, full of grace and truth.”

This One we must trust is the Creator of the universe, Who came to His creation in a humble form.

“Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

This Jesus is Jehovah, the light of the world, the king of kings and Lord of Lords.

And He is THE only one who can save sinners like this jailor, or you and me.

“Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under Heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved.”

The people of Philippi might have talked about their god Apollos, but they would never have spoken about Him as their saviour.

Other people might talk Buddha, Mohammed, or Krishna but their followers wouldn’t talk about them as their saviour.

But then there are others who do talk about salvation from sin through people other than Christ.

They talk about Mary, the mother of Jesus; they talk about the leaders of their particular cults.

Those poor people are more confused and foolish than the Muslims or Buddhists.

In Christ alone we have redemption, through His blood and the forgiveness of sin.

And by him alone “all that believe are justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses.”

It is impossible to reach heaven holding Mary’s hand, Peter’s, or mine.

And this verse certainly says nothing about baptism, church membership, service to God, or anything other than faith in Christ.

Without THE Lord Jesus Christ we are helpless and hopeless with an eternity in Hell looming over us.

And then we come specifically to the Saviour Himself: “THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.”

Jesus once said, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.”

Who is this one who is “made unto us, wisdom, and righteousness, sanctification and redemption”?

He is the CHRIST, the anointed of God.

This is His office, His eternally ordained task – His job you might say.

“He was delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.”

He was ordained and anointed for this responsibility.

He was set apart from before the Creation to be the sacrifice and to become the salvation of sinners.

Jesus is His name, and it literally means “Jehovah saves”

He is the only means of salvation

And when you go to him remember that He is LORD.

He is the same Lord that the Old Testament talks about.

“Thou even thou, art Lord alone.”

“All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.”

He is the eternal God.

As the Apostle Thomas said when looked at the risen Christ, “My Lord and my God.”

If you want salvation from sin, you must come to the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Saviour.

And you must completely entrust your soul to Him.

No starving, half-saviour whose name is “Jesus,” can save you.

It must be the LORD Jesus Christ.

Come to Him in the way that He has commanded, and I can assure you: “Thou shalt be saved.”