Preached by Rev. Ivan Foster (Rtd) at a service marking Hillsborough FPC opening its first church building.
“And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard 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 every one’s bands were loosed. And 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. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm: for we are all here,” Acts 16:25-28.
Last Lord’s Day afternoon, Rev John Morrow preached at the first meeting of a special week of gospel meetings in Kilskeery. He read this passage and I remarked to myself that it was the very passage I had settled on to preach from here tonight.
However, I noted in the margin of the old Bible I had with me at the meeting, an outline I had jotted down many years ago but which I had never used in a sermon.
The Lord said to me: ‘Use that outline in Hillsborough’!
So I intend to obey Him and do just that. My text comprises what is contained in the verse 26-28.
Many years ago I had noted:
I. THE LORD HAD ILLUSTRATED THE PURPOSE OF THE GOSPEL IN THIS WONDERFUL MIRACLE.
In my first year as a student for the ministry, I remember Dr S B Cooke pointing out to us in his class, that this earthquake was most remarkable for it only effected one building, did not demolish it and no one was hurt in anyway!
That is not what usually happens when an earthquake takes place! But this was a special one and it was all part of God’s way of saving this jailer!
1. When God moves by His gospel in the lives of sinners, he shakes them to their very foundations! The woman of Samaria was thus ‘shaken’ by the Saviour. She reported to her friends: “The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?”
John 4:28-29. The apostolic gospel preachers had the reputation of turning “the world upside down,” Acts 17:6.
2. Prison doors are opened by the gospel. Luke 13:11-13, 16. The devil and sin snare people but Christ opens the doors and lets them out. “From heaven did the LORD behold the earth; to hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death,” Psalm 102:19-20.
3. Unbreakable chains are loosed by the gospel. There is no better illustration of this than the conversion of the ‘man of the country of the Gadarenes’. “And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid,” Mark 5:15. What a startling transformation!
4. Sinners are awakened from sleep. The spiritual state of the unconverted sinner is likened to that of the sleeper: unaware and uncaring about what is going on around them! The gospel is designed to awaken sinners to their lost condition and that they facing hell if they do not believe the gospel and repent.
II. WE ALSO SEE ILLUSTRATED THE FOOLISH REACTION OF MEN AROUSED BY THE GOSPEL
1. The jailer responded by natural reasoning. “Seeing the prison doors open.” He applied human understanding and logic to what he saw! He jumped to a conclusion suggested by his eyes. Open doors meant only one thing!
Sinners judge the gospel message to unbelievable by their limited human reasoning. “Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” John 3:4.
A ‘spiritual birth’ was beyond his understanding. Men see and think only in the ‘physical’ realm!
2. He ‘supposed’ the prisoners had all escaped! He wrongly assumed that the prisoners had acted as they normally would when the doors of the cells would be opened and their chains broken off! He was entirely wrong!
Human reasoning has no place in God’s plan of salvation. (Recent visit of ‘saint’s bones to Lisnaskea).
3. He conclude that it was wisest and best to kill himself. As a Roman jailer, he knew he would likely forfeit his life if a prisoner escaped! How wrong he was. How many, as a result of human reasoning have damned their souls, thinking that rejecting the gospel was the wisest thing for them to do! How may left our gospel mission here, back in the 1970s, and went to hell and are lost and realising what fools they were to reject God’s message?
III. THE MERCIFUL INTERVENTION OF GOD IN MAN’S FOLLY.
“But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm: for we are all here,” verse 28.
1. Man is his sin is engaged in harming himself. Daily, we read of the reports of men and woman and children harming themselves by living out the wicked desires of their hearts. Their appetite for alcohol, drugs, immorality, gambling and every fleshly pursuit is but a bringing of misery, suffering and death upon themselves!
2. The voice of the gospel preacher is God’s instrument in stopping such folly. You sit in church pew but if you are engaging in refusing the message preached you are harming yourself, damning yourself!
3. Note Paul cried with a loud voice. That denotes ‘urgency’ ‘alarm’, ‘fear and concern’. News reports of accidents, fires, bombings — much shouting for there is great danger and shouting is a natural reposes to such!
Tonight, heed God’s Word. Forsake the path of ‘self destruction’ that your rejection of Christ has you on and turn and believe the kindest, most loving words you can ever hear. “And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house,” Acts 16:31.