Life is full of questions. What am I going to do with my life? How will my children turn out? What will happen to the economy and my job? Will I find a soul mate? How can I retire? Jesus added, “What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear?” Many TV commercials strive to answer all of
those questions for us. A third of them
will answer the questions with food, a third with purchases, and the other
third with medication.
But there’s one question that TV
rarely addresses, and certainly seldom answers, and that’s the question the
jailer asks in Acts 16:23-35. The
question is brief. It’s only seven words
in English and nine words in Greek, “What must I do to be saved?” It’s the same question the rich young ruler
asked twenty years earlier. It’s not
dissimilar from the questions of Nicodemus or the woman at the well. Unlike every other question human beings ask
this question has eternal import.
Can you imagine the frequency with
which this question has been asked inside and outside American churches over
the past one hundred years?
It’s a great question. For a significant number of evangelical
Christians the question and the answer are not far from their minds. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What must I do to be saved?” “How can an old man like me be born
again?” “Can you give me this living
water so that I will never have to come back to this well again?” It’s all the same question and the answer is
always the same – “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be
saved.” And it’s that answer that Paul
gives in Sunday’s text.
I can’t tell you how many times
I’ve heard sermons preached on this text.
But what I’ve never heard explained is the joy of the jailer. That’s our title for Sunday – “The Joy of the
Jailer”.
Our companion text is Psalm
77:1-13. This psalm is one of twelve
psalms attributed to the sons of Korah.
Perhaps their most famous psalm is Psalm 46 where they poignantly
proclaim, “Be still and know that I am God.”
The reason I say “poignant” is because of the lesson their father taught
them in Numbers 16 where he’s anything but still!
Psalm 77 is one of the 80 psalms in
the Book of Psalms that is a lament.
Think of it. Out of 150 psalms, eighty of them are laments, i.e.
expressions of grief and pain. Who says
that joyful Christians can’t experience all the pain and suffering that goes
with living in a fallen world? But pay attention to how almost all of those
laments end. The psalmist rarely leaves
the psalm the way he entered. Almost always
his cries have turned to rejoicing.
Why? His eyes have shifted from
looking at himself and his circumstances to looking to God and His awesome
provision.
The reason we’ve selected Psalm 77
as our companion text this Easter is because of verse 6. The psalmist says,
“Let me remember my song in the night…” That’s what Paul and Silas do in that
Philippian jail. Their singing is
followed closely by an earthquake. The
earthquake opens the prison doors and the shackles on their ankles. But it’s not the singing or the earthquake
that prompts the jailer to ask his famous question. It’s something else. Can you identify what it is?
This Easter Sunday we will dig down
into this text to see the Man, the Miracle, and the Message. In preparation for our study you may wish to
consider the following:
1. Recall
the reason Paul and Silas are stripped, beaten, and thrown in to prison.
2. Judging
from this account, how would you characterize the jailer as a man? Brutal?
Blood thirsty? Or conscientious?
3. Why
does he put Paul and Silas into the innermost section of the jail in shackles?
4. Why
are Paul and Silas singing?
5. Does
the jailer hear them singing?
6. What
is the catalyst for the jailer’s question?
7. What
is the evidence that he believes in Jesus?
8. What
is the significance of his household being brought into the transformation?
9. What
evidence is there that the jailer sees Paul and Silas as his brothers?
10. What
does this story tell us about the lordship of Christ in the face of our
suffering and our resulting joy?
See you Easter morning!
