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Amen.
Well, dear friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word, and I do promise
you we will return to our study of the book of the prophet Isaiah.
We’re scheduled to go back to that on the next Lord’s Day, but this morning I want us
to consider what may be a familiar passage from Acts chapter 16.
This is the conversion of the Philippian jailer.
I’m going to read the passage that we’re going to consider is Acts 16 verses 25 through 34.
You’ll find that on page 989 in your Pew Bible, so I’m going to begin reading at verse 20
to fill out the context a little bit.
Let us hear God’s holy word from Acts chapter 16, again beginning at verse 20.
The magistrates, they said, these men are Jews, and they are disturbing our city.
They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.
The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and
gave orders to beat them with rods.
And when they had inflicted 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.
He was baptized 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.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of his word.
Our dear Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you once again for your amazing grace and
kindness to us in Christ.
And we thank you that you are the God who saves.
And we thank you, Lord God, that you have given us your scriptures.
They are a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.
And we pray that by your spirit, you would illuminate this portion of scripture that
we will consider this morning.
We ask that your word that we consider today would be implanted in our souls and would
bear spiritual and saving and sanctifying fruit in our lives that bring glory to your
name.
And we would also pray once again that you would set a guard over my lips, that I, your
unworthy servant, may speak forth only that which is faithful to your word.
Be with us now and bless us.
Be present, Lord Jesus, by your spirit in the proclamation of your word this day.
We pray these things through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said, Amen.
You may be seated.
Title of my sermon this morning is You and Your Household.
And there are six key words to be listening for in my sermon today.
The words conversion, question, promise, household, family, and faith.
Family matters.
Perhaps you’ve heard that statement before.
Family matters.
Dear ones, I imagine that most of us would agree with that statement.
Besides our loyalty to and our love for God himself, there is arguably nothing more important
than loyalty to and love for one’s own family.
Now over the years in our culture, there have been ongoing debates about the meaning and
the significance of what is sometimes called family values.
And there’s debate about the role of such family values in our society.
But friends, wherever folks end up landing on that particular debate, it would seem that
almost everyone agrees that family does indeed matter.
Obviously family matters and it should matter to us.
But the particular question that I would like to have us reflect upon this Lord’s Day morning
is the question, does family matter to God?
Or to be a little bit more specific, does God work redemptively and covenantally within
the context of our family lives?
Or does He only work His saving grace and covenant mercies within His people, considered
as isolated, disconnected individuals?
When God through the gospel of His Son converts a sinner, bringing that sinner to saving
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, is there a sense in which God also saves that sinner’s
family or household?
Or at least is there a sense in which the Lord brings that believer’s family under the
sanctifying influences of His gospel and of the covenant of grace?
Well dear ones, on this special Lord’s Day when we had the joy of witnessing the baptism
of a precious lamb of Christ, little Anastasia, our passage for today, which recounts the
conversion of the Philippian jailer and his household, serves to underscore the biblical
truth that family matters not only to us, but family matters to the God who Himself
created the family in the first place, the God who Himself defines what a family is and
what marriage is too, and the God who chooses to bring the natural family under the umbrella
of His covenant mercies and saving grace.
Now in terms of the setting and context of our passage for today, the event that is
recorded in our passage took place during the Apostle Paul’s second missionary journey.
If you read earlier on in this chapter, in verses 6 through 10, Luke, the human author
of Acts, recounts how Paul had received a vision in which he was called by God to preach
the gospel in the area of Macedonia.
And then we learn in verses 11 through 15 that Paul and his missionary team go to Philippi.
Philippi was a Roman colony in Macedonia, and in that region they preach the gospel
to some women who are gathered for prayer, resulting in the conversion of a woman who
is named Lydia.
Now in the course of their ministry in Philippi, the Apostle Paul performs an exorcism on a
slave girl who had been possessed by a demonic spirit of divination, and who as a result
had brought her owners a great deal of financial gain through her fortune-telling abilities,
which she was unable to engage in through being possessed by this demonic spirit of
divination.
When her owners discover that their slave girl can no longer bring them profit from
her fortune-telling, they drag Paul and Silas before the local magistrates.
When the magistrates heard that Paul and Silas were Jews, their anti-Semitism kicked in and
it got the best of them, and so they had Paul and Silas beaten without proper legal process,
and then turned over to the jailer who put them in the inner prison and fastened their
feet in the stocks.
The stocks were sometimes used as a torture device, so we can imagine that Paul and Silas
were at the very least probably extremely uncomfortable, if not downright in pain from
having been put in the stocks.
Well that brings us to our passage for this Lord’s Day morning, and as we turn our attention
to this conversion story, I want us to consider that this is indeed a powerful conversion
story.
This is a powerful conversion story.
Luke’s dramatic account of the conversion of the Philippian jailer serves as quite a
contrast to the more subdued, quiet, less dramatic conversion of Lydia, of whom we are
told simply in verse 14, we are told of Lydia that the Lord opened her heart to pay attention
to what was said by Paul.
There was no earthquake.
There was no drama to her, outward drama at least to her conversion, but nevertheless
the Lord does open her heart to heed the gospel as it was preached by the apostle Paul.
And that instructs us in the fact that whether someone is converted to Christ dramatically,
as we will see in the case of the Philippian jailer, or whether someone is converted to
Christ more quietly, as in the case of Lydia, it is ultimately the Lord who opens hearts
to receive Christ as Savior.
Now what can we know about this jailer?
Well he was a man who was very likely a retired soldier.
Jailers typically tended to be retired Roman soldiers.
F.F.
on the book of Acts comments that while the training of a Roman soldier developed many
fine qualities of character, these did not include much of the milk of human kindness.
Roman soldiers were rough and tough individuals.
They were good at what they did, and what they did was kill and enforce Roman law.
Bruce goes on to say of this Philippian jailer that he was a totally different character
from Lydia and the fortune teller, and it took an earthquake and imminent danger of
death to make him take thought for his salvation.
Yet it was the same gospel as had blessed these two women that now brought blessing
to him.
So let’s dive into our text.
Let’s look first of all at verse 25.
You know the setting, Paul and Silas had been dragged before the magistrates, they had been
beaten without proper legal procedure, and by the way we learn later that they shouldn’t
have been beaten before they were Roman citizens, and the Roman citizens were not to be treated
in such a way.
In any case, they’ve been put into the inner prison, they’ve been fastened into the stocks,
they are secure, they’re in pain, no doubt they’re aching from the rough beating that
they had received, and here’s what we learn that they are engaged in.
Look at verse 25.
It says about midnight, Paul and Silas were doing what?
Moaning and groaning and bewailing their awful situation, no.
About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners
were listening to them.
I often wonder what was going on in the minds of those prisoners who were listening to Paul
and Silas sing, you know maybe they thought these guys are crazy, what’s going on?
And probably the jailer had heard them as well.
So they are singing praises to God, even though their bodies were no doubt aching from the
beating that they had received.
The joy of the Lord sustained them and served as a powerful witness to their fellow prisoners
and probably to the jailer himself as well.
So that’s the situation.
Probably they’re not able to sleep because of their pain and discomfort.
So might as well pray, might as well sing praise to God.
And then notice verse 26, it says, 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.
Now of course an earthquake is a natural providential event, and yet the timing here and the effects
of this natural event were clearly divinely directed in a special way, they were clearly
supernatural.
You know, and that reminds us by the way that God is just as capable of accomplishing his
work through ordinary providential means as he is through extraordinary miracles.
But nevertheless, this earthquake occurs, Paul and Silas are freed from their chains
and all of the prisoners are, the prison doors fling open, and what is the result?
Well we learn here that the jailer had been taking a little bit of a nap.
It says in verse 27, 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.
Now why would he want to do that?
Why does he consider suicide?
Why is that the first thing that comes to his mind?
Well we need to understand that the policy back then was that if a prisoner escaped,
the life of the guard was required in the place of the prisoner.
So by committing suicide, the jailer hoped to avoid the shame and pain of facing the
penalty of execution, which no doubt he would have faced if any of the prisoners had escaped.
But then something amazing happens in verse 28, it says this, but Paul cried with a loud
voice, do not harm yourself, for we are all here.
Why does Paul do that?
Paul no doubt knows about the policy, he sees what’s going on, and he has concern for the
life of this jailer, this jailer who had mistreated him and Silas.
Now ordinarily in our fallenness, we might be tempted if we were in Paul and Silas’
place, we might be tempted to think, well I’m not going to say anything, I mean he mistreated
us, he’ll get what he deserves, he’ll get what’s coming to him, but no, no, they show
compassion.
Here is an example of loving one’s enemy, even though the jailer had no doubt treated
Paul and Silas rather roughly, and even though the jailer had been a party to their persecution,
nevertheless Paul shows compassion and concern for the life of this man who had been a party
to their persecution.
And he says don’t harm yourself, we’re all here.
And that must have been jolting to the jailer.
Imagine you’re getting ready to plunge your sword into your chest and all of a sudden
you hear a voice saying stop, don’t harm yourself.
And so what does he do next, what does the jailer do next?
He says this in verse 29, and the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling
with fear, now look at that, he’s trembling with fear, this jailer who again was probably
a retired Roman soldier, probably a really tough, rough and tumble guy, he’s trembling
with fear.
This is a man who very likely had faced enemies in battle, was bold and courageous, and yet
here he is trembling, he’s shaking like a leaf, and he trembles with fear and he falls
down before Paul and Silas, perhaps in his pagan mind he imagines that Paul and Silas
perhaps are divine beings or what have you.
But in any case, whatever he’s thinking, he falls down before them, and then he brought
them out and he said, sirs, what must I do to be saved?
The Lord has brought this tough jailer to his knees, the Lord has made this man teachable,
the Lord has made this man aware that he needs salvation, and then the Lord in his providence
leads this man to ask the most important question with respect to our eternal destiny that any
man or woman, boy or girl could ever ask, and that is what must I do to be saved?
I’ll talk more about the significance of this question in a few minutes, but let’s go on
to verses 31 and following.
In response to that question, how do Paul and Silas respond?
It says, and they said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved and your household.
And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.
Paul and Silas answer the jailer’s question directly, but then they give the jailer further
instruction in the gospel, which Luke here describes as the word of the Lord, and the
gospel is the word of the Lord because it originates from God, it is of divine origin
as a revelation from God.
The gospel is not an invention of men, it is indeed the word of the Lord, it comes from
God on high.
And then what happens?
The jailer obviously comes to believe, and so we read in verse 33, and he took them the
same hour of the night and washed their wounds.
He takes them to a place where there’s a water source, he washes their wounds, and then it
says he was baptized at once.
He and all his family, obviously the jailer’s family matters to God.
The church father Chrysostom in commenting on verse 33 says of the jailer, he washed
and was washed, he washed them from their stripes and was himself washed from his sins.
And then notice verse 34, then he, the jailer, brought them up into his house, this same
jailer that had put them in the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.
Now welcomes them into his home.
What a great radical change has taken place in his heart and in his actions.
And it says in verse 34, he brought them into his house and set food before them, no doubt
they were hungry.
And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.
This newly converted jailer was already beginning to show the fruits and evidences of his conversion
by showing hospitality to these men whom only a short time ago he had so callously persecuted.
What a powerful and mighty change of heart the Lord had wrought in the heart of this
Philippian jailer.
And then our passage ends with the statement, he rejoiced along with his entire household
that he had believed in God.
Our passage begins with rejoicing in verse 25 as Paul and Silas in spite of their painful
circumstances praise God and pray to him.
And now this passage ends with the Philippian jailer rejoicing in the Lord.
The joy that he had heard Paul and Silas expressing in their jail cell just a little while earlier
was now a joy that he was able to experience and to enter into himself at a personal level.
Just a few lessons I think we can learn from our passage so far.
First of all brothers and sisters the joy of knowing Christ and his gift of salvation
can sustain us even in the midst of the most painful of times and the most painful of trials.
Dear listener, if you know that you are loved with an everlasting love, if you know that
all of your sins past, present, and future have been nailed to the cross of Christ, buried
in his tomb, if you know that God no longer looks upon you as his enemy, as one who is
a rebel and thus deserving of his wrath but is a blood bought child, if you know that
all of your sins are forgiven in Jesus, that his righteousness is credited to you, that
you are his adopted child, that his spirit, that spirit of adoption by which you cry Abba
Father is conforming you more and more into the image of Christ, and if you know that
because you are in Christ there is therefore now no condemnation for you, that every day
of your life, every day that goes by is a day closer to the day when you will be welcomed
into the presence of your Savior.
If you know that then how can you avoid having joy in your heart?
That joy can be mitigated because of circumstances and because of sin, but that joy of the Lord
is always available to the true believer.
Dear listener, do you know the joy of the Lord?
The joy which the Bible describes as a joy inexpressible and filled with glory.
The joy that comes from knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as your very own Lord and Savior.
Jesus Christ not only offers forgiveness and salvation in the Gospel, he offers us joy.
Joy inexpressible and filled with glory.
Come to Jesus Christ, turn from your sin to Christ, rest in him and him alone for your
salvation and then you will enter into, you will be able by the grace of God to enter
into the joy that the jailer experienced when he and his household had believed in God and
rejoiced before the Lord.
Let us also take encouragement brothers and sisters from the conversion story of the Philippian
jailer.
If God has the power, think about it, there maybe is someone in your life, maybe someone
in your family, maybe a neighbor, a co-worker, a friend, an acquaintance, someone that you
care about who is hardened and unbelieving and unrepentant in their sin.
And you think oh, they would never come to Christ.
Take encouragement from God’s sovereign grace that intervened and even sent an earthquake
to bring this hardened, rough and tumble Philippian jailer to himself.
If God has the power to convert a rough and tumble pagan like the Philippian jailer and
to humble him and make him teachable and change his heart, then God has the power to soften
the heart and convert that family member, that friend, that neighbor, that co-worker,
that loved one who is still hardened in their sin.
So don’t give up praying for them and don’t give up showing them the love of Christ.
So we see here a very dramatic conversion story, but next as we focus especially on
verse 30, I want us to briefly consider a poignant, important question.
A poignant, a heartfelt, intense and important question and that question is found on the
lips of the Philippian jailer when he says in verse 30, sirs, what must I do to be saved?
Now that may raise the question, how does this man who is very, very almost certainly
a pagan, how does he know about salvation?
How is that even on his radar screen as a Roman pagan?
Well that’s a good question and Luke doesn’t give us the answers to such questions.
There might be differences of opinion on just how much the jailer understood the question
that he asked.
It is almost certain, as I said, that he was a pagan prior to his conversion to Christ.
Perhaps he was remembering what the slave girl who had been possessed with a spirit
of divination had said about Paul in Silas back in verse 17.
Back in that verse we read this.
It says of this slave girl before she was exorcised of this demon, it says she followed
Paul and us crying out, these men are servants of the most high God who proclaim to you the
way of salvation.
So maybe he’s thinking about what the slave girl had said about these men proclaiming
the way of salvation.
Or perhaps he had simply heard Paul in Silas testifying to the Lord’s saving grace as he
heard their prayers and the songs that they had offered from their prison cell.
As it said in verse 25, about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns
to God and the prisoners were listening to them.
I know that the jailer at some point had nodded off because he had to awaken when the earthquake
happened but nevertheless perhaps that’s where he got this concept of his need for salvation.
Whatever the case may be and whatever may have been the depth or the clarity of his
understanding, the question itself is of utmost importance.
It is the most important question of all when it comes to our eternal destiny.
For it is a question that assumes that we are sinners in need of salvation and indeed
we are.
A sinner is simply someone who has missed the mark, who’s fallen short of living up
to the standard that God has revealed in his holy law and the Bible says that’s all of
us.
All of us is included.
There’s one man who never sinned or fell short of the glory of God and that man’s name was
Jesus.
Jesus of Nazareth, the God man, the word made of flesh.
This passage causes me to reflect upon what Jesus said back in Mark chapter 8 verses 36
and 37.
I’d like you to turn there if you’d like to.
Mark chapter 8 verses 36 and 37, the Lord Jesus says this.
He’s speaking about denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following him and he says
this, for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
For what can a man give in return for his soul?
Indeed friends, what profit is there if we spend our entirety, the entirety of our brief
lives, pursuing things like the gaining of wealth and fame and power and prestige and
the indulgence of our passions and pleasures without reservation?
What is the profit of all of that if we spend our lives pursuing those things only to die
in our sins and to face a Christless eternity under the righteous and holy judgment and
wrath of Almighty God?
May God grant that we would have this eternal perspective that the jailer had suddenly gained
in these circumstances as evidenced by his asking that all-important question, sirs,
what must I do to be saved?
Well that’s the question.
That’s the important question.
What answer is given?
Well that leads me to my last point based on verse 31.
We see here in verse 31 a gracious promise, a gracious promise.
Paul and Silas answer the jailer’s question with these words and they said believe in
the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household, you and your household.
Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.
Dear friends, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is the one and only God-appointed Savior
for sinners.
Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No man comes to the Father except through me.
He’s the only one who is ever qualified to serve as the mediator and Savior.
For He is God the Son who took upon Himself our humanity.
He is the living Word made flesh who came to dwell in our midst.
He is the God-man who mediates who is the go-between between the Holy God and sinful
humanity.
He is true God and true man in one person yet without sin.
He is the sinless, spotless lamb of God.
And so personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the only instrument, the only means by
which we sinners receive God’s gift of salvation.
And you know, the Bible says that our faith is not our contribution to salvation.
There’s nothing that we contribute to our salvation except our sin.
Even saving faith itself is a gift of God and faith is simply the empty hand that reaches
out to receive God’s gift of salvation in Jesus.
As we are told in Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 through 10, again a very familiar passage
but a very important passage where the Apostle Paul writes these words.
He says, for by grace you have been saved through faith and this, which includes faith,
this is not your own doing.
It is the gift of God not a result of works so that no one may boast for we are His workmanship
created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk
in them.
But what is this saving faith?
Is it simply intellectual acknowledgement of who Jesus is and what He’s done for us?
Certainly that’s an important component of true faith.
It is important to understand at least at a basic childlike level who Jesus is and what
He has done.
That Jesus is the Son of God in the flesh.
That He was crucified to pay the penalty for sin.
That He was raised from the dead so that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have
everlasting life.
Certainly everlasting life.
Certainly these are important gospel truths to understand.
But saving faith involves more than a mere intellectual assent to the gospel truth about
Jesus Christ as important as that is.
Saving faith also involves a personal trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as He is offered
in the gospel.
And that’s why sometimes in the Bible faith in Jesus is sometimes described by a preposition
that means to believe into Jesus.
Saving faith entrusts your soul into the hands of Jesus and receives from Him, rests upon
Him and Him alone for salvation.
Some may look at this promise and this call to faith and say, well, yes, believe in the
Lord Jesus and you will be saved, but pastor, how do I know that my faith is strong enough?
To which I would, if you’re thinking that, I would respond, dear friend, by saying that’s
actually the wrong question to ask.
It’s not the strength or weakness of your faith that ultimately matters.
It is the object of your faith.
In whom are you trusting?
Don’t focus on the smallness or weakness of your faith.
Focus on the greatness and omnipotent strength of your Savior, the Savior who stretched out
His arms upon the hard wood of the cross to embrace broken, humbled sinners just like
this Philippian jailer, just like you, just like me.
But I want you to notice, and this brings us back to the question I opened my sermon
with today.
I want you to notice that God is in the business of saving not just isolated individuals, but
entire households.
Now, certainly God deals with us as individuals.
We must personally, we must all personally trust in Christ and repent of sin if we would
be saved.
And that includes our covenant children.
The fact that they are baptized covenant children will not save them on the final day if they
are not personally trusting in Christ themselves.
But they have the wonderful blessing of being raised under gospel influences, raised under
in the covenant community, raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Notice again the promise.
Paul and Silas, they don’t just stop with saying believe in the Lord Jesus and you will
be saved.
They go on to say you and your household.
The Greek word for household here is the word oikos.
I believe it is the word from which we derive the word ecumenical, which speaks to the household
of faith throughout the world.
Our biblically Presbyterian belief in the legitimacy of infant baptism, which is sometimes
called pedo baptism, pedo means infant.
This can more accurately, I would suggest, be described as oikobaptism.
Our position is oikobaptism.
We are biblical oikobaptists.
We believe in the baptism of entire households.
Why?
Well, because we see that God deals covenantly and redemptively and savingly with family
units and not just with isolated individuals.
And while Baptists and Presbyterians might debate about whether there were actual infants
or small children in the jailer’s household, that debate is an example of a debate that
kind of misses the point.
There may or may not have been infants or young children in the jailer’s household,
but that’s not really what’s at issue.
The point is the fact that God is dealing salvifically with the jailer’s household.
That’s where the focus is.
This means that when God saves the head of a household, there is a sense in which he
saves the whole household.
It doesn’t mean, again, that each and every individual in that household will necessarily
come to faith in Christ, but the household as a whole, as a covenantal unit, as a corporate
unit is a saved household, a Christian household.
Praise God that family matters to God and that in his covenant of grace, he continues
to promise to be God to us and to our children after us.
Much more could be said about this important biblical principle, but we praise God for
his amazing grace and for his covenant promise to be God to us and to our children after
us.
And all of God’s people said, amen.
Let’s pray.
Our Lord and Father in heaven, we give you praise and thanks for your glory and goodness
to us in Christ, and we thank you, O Lord, that while you indeed deal with us as individuals
and we have individual responsibilities, and yet you also deal with us as those who are
in a family context as well.
We thank you, Lord, for your gracious promise to be God to us and to our children after
us, and we pray your blessing, especially this Lord’s Day, on the covenant children
of this congregation and the covenant children in our lives.
Bless them, Lord.
We pray and journey with them as they walk in the pilgrim way.
We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen.
Let’s rise and close our worship today by singing together number 351, How Deep the
Father’s Love for Us, 300.