Greetings
Good morning, brothers and sisters, I’m very glad to be opening God’s word with you this morning.
But before we do, let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we give you thanks and praise that out of your love and mercy, you’ve given us your only Son as the perfect sacrifice. Through him, we are not only redeemed from our sins, but we are also saved from the Lordship of Sin into the Lordship of Christ. Father, as we seek to serve you and to love you better, please help us this morning as we open your word. Help us see clearly both the cost and the joy of following Jesus and what it might mean for each of us, as we continue to discern and to do your will. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Introduction: Is it worth living for Jesus?
I believe all of you will agree that we’re always making decisions, conscious ones, unconscious ones, big ones, small ones, bad ones, good ones.
According to a paper by Harvard Business Review, an individual makes approximately 35,000 decisions per day.
Now, you might want to question that number or the research behind it.
But I think for me as a pastor, the question I’ll want to ask is: do those decisions honour Christ?
Now Luke is not a pastor himself, he did write both Luke and Acts for Theophilus, a fresh Christian who is still figuring out what Christianity is.
Luke wrote it for Theophilus so that he ‘may know the certainty of the things about which he has been taught’ (Luke 1:4).
So perhaps the key question that Luke is trying to address is not how Theophilus would make God honouring decisions in life, but he wants to help Theophilus see why it is worth living for Jesus.
Now, if you turn to your Bibles and look at verse 12, you’ll find that Paul and Silas are in Philippi, and in verse 15, we are told they are staying in Lydia’s house.
Now, if you skip over chapter 16 and go to chapter 17 and continue reading from verse 1, you’ll find that it reads quite smoothly, and I believe that Luke added these events for good reasons.
Notice the first word in our passage today, Luke writes: ‘once’.
Luke signals to us that these events deserve special attention; these are things that stood out from Paul’s time in Philippi.
And Luke wrote them down for Theophilus, and for us, so that we may know with certainty that it is worth living for Jesus, that the best thing anyone can do is to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God.
In our passage today, we see, in particular, what the cost is, how we may find joy, and how suffering relates to Christian sacrifice.
And those will be our three points this morning!
1) The cost of Christian Sacrifice (v.16-24)
2) The joy of Christian Sacrifice (v.25-34)
3) Christian Sacrifice and Suffering (v.35-40)
The Cost of Christian Sacrifice (v.16-24)
So let’s begin with our first point, The Cost of Christian Sacrifice.
Earlier this week, I went to the House conference, which is organised by Youthworks. It is a conference for Kids and Youth ministers, and here’s a photo I took from the conference.
Let’s see if anyone can read what’s on the screen in that photo.
Now, if that was too hard, here’s a close-up.
I guess now we all know how I came up with the three points for my sermon today.
The theme for this year’s conference is 'The Cost and Joy of Sacrifice,' and we were hoping to be more effective in teaching Christian sacrifice to young children and youths. Because the Bible tells us that there is a genuine cost to following Jesus, this is true for all Christians, and we want to teach this abstract idea to our kids and youth well.
And in the first part of our passage, we see Paul bears the cost in a surprising way.
Please come with to Acts chapter 16, verse 16.
Here, Paul and Silas were on their way to pray, but they were bothered by a slave girl who wouldn’t stop yelling, “These men, who are proclaiming to you a way of salvation, are the servants of the Most High God.” And this slave girl did it for days!
Now, before we go further, let’s look at two things.
First, what she is saying is not wrong. Paul and Silas are missionaries who proclaim salvation everywhere they go. And they are servants of the Most High God.
Second, isn’t this good? This is free publicity for Paul and Silas! Imagine if I followed David around every day just yelling, “Hear the gospel at St. Paul's Kogarah!” or “Salvation is found in the words of David at St. Paul's Kogarah!” Surely, it’ll help the gospel mission, would it not?
However, if we look closer, this slave girl is not just enslaved to his master, but she is also enslaved by the evil spirit. Through the evil spirit, the slave girl was able to predict the future, and her master then used her to make a large profit. And it is this spirit that recognises Paul and Silas as servants of Jesus Christ, not the slave girl herself.
What’s more troubling is that even though on the surface what the slave girl or the spirit says is accurate and perhaps aids in Paul’s mission, the slave girl and her master have, in fact, monetised the gospel and Paul’s missionary work.
As Paul preaches a free gospel that Christ has won for us, the slave girl and her master is making a profit off the message that Paul proclaims.
This goes against the very nature of the gospel.
The Pharisees were rebuked by Jesus in the Gospels for this very reason. No one should buy their way into heaven, and no one can.
The good news is for everyone and anyone who places his trust on Jesus are a child of God.
And so, in verse 18, when it says Paul was greatly annoyed, it wasn’t just because of the things the slave girl was noisy, but also because the evil spirit was hindering God’s work.
Paul then commanded the evil spirit in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her, and immediately she lost the ability to fortune-tell.
Her master then seized Paul, as we read in verse 19, and dragged both Paul and Silas to the authorities.
In the following verses, we see Paul and Silas being stripped of their clothes, beaten with rods, and in verse 23, it is only after they have been severely flogged do they finally make their way to their prison cell.
In these verses, the Bible shows that being a Christian is not always easy. Striving to do God’s will above all else is a costly sacrifice.
Sometimes, it may involve making that one difficult and costly decision that will completely transform your life.
But most often, it is about persistently pursuing God’s will above our will. As Philip Jensen had said at our young adults camp, the Christian life is a marathon, but we run as fast as we can.
For some of us, pursuing God’s will means pursuing life-long ministry. For others, it might mean purposely choosing a career path that allows for more opportunities to serve God, rather than pursuing a career that prioritises financial gain over the needs of God’s kingdom.
And in our day-to-day lives, for those of us who are children, it might mean listening to our parents, not because that’s demanded of us in the Chinese culture or by anyone, but because we know that it is honouring to God. Yet at other times, we will disagree with our parents lovingly when what they say or do contradicts what the Bible says.
For those of us who are parents, I encourage you to always apologise for the things you’ve done wrong to your children and try to be the first one to move towards reconciliation, being the first to ask for their forgiveness. It may feel very uncomfortable and very costly mentally or culturally, but the best way to help our children understand forgiveness is to model forgiveness ourselves.
Now at this point, as we are talking about our cultures, I think it’s also good to point out that the personal sacrifices we make for God are not transactional.
We do not make costly sacrifices because we are trying to get something from God.
And I say this because the concept of grace is often misunderstood within Chinese or Eastern cultures, where a gift is often expected to be reciprocated.
That is, when a friend gives you a gift, you are expected to return a gift of similar value.
If you fail to give a return gift, then you have essentially rejected your friend’s gift.
And so, when it comes to the gospel, there is this tension in our minds that we must do more, we must be more thankful, because the gift that we received is Jesus, the Son of God!
Therefore, under this framework, it is especially easy to slip into legalism or moralism.
Not only because we falsely believe our works can contribute to our salvation, but we may also start to use our works to justify ourselves and be increasingly self-righteous. This is what happens when the gospel is reduced to being about just obeying a set of rules or fulfilling some moral obligations.
Instead, anyone who repents of their sins and receives Jesus as their Lord and saviour, is no longer under the law but is now under grace, as Paul says in Romans 6.
It means that everything that a Christian does is not to fulfil a law, but rather it is a response to the grace that we have received in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Therefore, in a sense, there is no real cost in following Jesus because the cost has been paid for by the blood of Christ.
This is also why the line between the cost and joy of following Jesus can be very blurry or even non-existent for the Christian who loves God.
Because through the gospel, our relationship with God is not just about laws and obligations, but it is primarily about love. It is a mutually loving relationship between a gracious heavenly Father and his most beloved children.
That’s why, as we move to the second section of our passage and consider the joy of Christian sacrifice, we see that Paul and Silas are not protesting and grumbling in the prison, but instead they are praying and praising God.
The joy of Christian Sacrifice (v.25-34)
As we begin our second point, let’s turn to our Bibles and look at verse 25:
About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
The evening after Paul and Silas were beaten and placed in prison, instead of grumbling or resting, they were praying and singing hymns to God.
Paul and Silas were able to find joy, even in such weary hours and despite the pain from their bruised and exhausted bodies.
They were mistreated by the crowds, by the magistrates, and by the prison guards. None of it was fair or legal.
However, all we heard from Paul and Silas were words of prayer and sounds of praise.
Furthermore, Luke tells us in verse 25 that while Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns, the prisoners were listening to them. In their expression of joy, Paul and Silas were witnessing Christ to the prisoners.
And joy is often something that we overlook when we share Jesus with others.
We often say that God loves us, the church is great, or that God hears our prayers.
But we rarely expressed our joy as followers of Jesus.
We focus a lot on putting off our sins, and that is a good and beautiful thing.
However, we should also allow ourselves to enjoy God, to make time to pray, and to experience the love of God.
As we look at Paul and Silas, they are not praying in the prison because they have nothing else to do, or because they don’t have Wi-Fi.
If we look back to verse 16, this story began when Paul was on the way to pray. Praying is central in Paul’s ministry, and it is very obvious as you read Paul’s letters in the New Testament.
Unsurprisingly, this is also true of Jesus. In his ministry, Jesus would regularly retreat to a quiet place to pray.
And I think, the very gift of prayer is the key ingredient in having joy in Christian sacrifice.
Prayer reminds us that we are not orphans living here on earth, but we are known and loved by our Heavenly Father. Even though living for Jesus this side of heaven can be costly and exhausting, prayer enables us to have joy.
Because through our prayers, God shares our burden, God hears our struggles, and he gives us His Spirit so that we can continue in joyful worship.
And as this joy overflows from our lives and into the lives of our friends, neighbours and colleagues, then they will see how beautiful and attractive Jesus is.
They may not yet know Jesus or may still be unsure about Christianity, but because of the joy that they find in your lives, they are one step closer to knowing Jesus and the true joy that he brings.
And this is certainly true of the visitors that we welcome to our church.
When we greet them with a smile, when we eagerly sit next to them during the service, when we bring them a cup of tea during morning tea.
What they see is not you smiling at them; what they see is Jesus welcoming them into his family. It’s like the prodigal son coming home, or like the lost sheep being found.
And as we go back to our passage, we find that there was a sudden earthquake, and all the jail doors opened, and everyone’s chains came loose.
Then in verse 27, the jailer woke up and thought to himself he must be a dead man, because all the prisoners had escaped.
So rather than have the death sentence being served to him, he sought to end his own life.
And at once Paul called out to him, “Don’t harm yourself, because we’re all here!”
Somehow, the prayers and praise of Paul and Silas not only witnessed Christ, but they also ministered to the prisoners, and as a response, none of them sought to escape.
In verse 29 the jailer rushes in to see Paul and Silas and in verse 30 he asks the question that would be music to our ears, the jailer asks, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
And this is the second reason why there is joy in Christian sacrifice, because we get to witness the marvellous work of God first-hand. And when it happens, we can’t help but be filled with joy and praise the greatness and goodness of God in our hearts!
During my recent trip to Hong Kong, I baptised not only my grandpa, but also another distant relative who is in her old age, around 90 years old.
Even though her body is weak, her mind is as sharp as a 20-year-old.
And as we reaffirmed her faith and explained to her what baptism means, she interrupted us a few times and asked questions, such as, "What is the difference between saying the Son died for us on the cross versus saying God died for us on the cross?" “What is the difference between full body immersion baptism and baptism by sprinkling?”
At that moment, I was thinking, let’s get on with the baptism; these questions can wait till after.
However, now that I think of it, she is in essence asking the question, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” She wants to have clarity and assurance that her faith is placed on a correct understanding of the gospel and of the sacraments. She wants to be sure that she believes in the Lord Jesus rightly, because salvation is only found in the name of Jesus.
And so in verse 31, Paul and Silas waste no time and answer the jailer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
Afterwards, they preached the gospel to the jailer and his household. In verse 33, in that same hour, the jailer took them home, washed their wounds, and seizing the moment, Paul and Silas baptised his whole family.
And in verse 34, we find our third and final reason why we have joy: it is when we see others find joy in knowing and following Jesus for themselves.
Personally, I think that seeing another person come to Christ, seeing another person being saved from the wrath of God and the eternal fires of hell, brings me more joy than knowing that I am saved!
But still, who would have thought that Paul and Silas’ joy could find its way into the jailer’s home?
Last week at KOG Youth I was giving a very brief summary of the Trinity and was scribbling on the whiteboard.
To be honest, I was not too hopeful about teaching it well, but I was thrilled that the senior youths were keen and were trying their best to follow.
Later, when the KOG kids finished and the leaders walked past our room, a few of them stood outside, curious to know more about what the Bible have to say about the Triune God.
Even though ministry is hard and tiring, it’s often moments like these that keep me and my family going. And we thank God that as we pour ourselves out to do his work, he graciously renews us by putting many moments of joy in our hearts. We thank God because He always reminds us that He is good, that he knows, and that He loves us.
And this heavenly joy far outweighs the cost of living a life of sacrifice for our Lord Jesus.
But now, as we finish, let’s briefly go through the final few verses and see what the Bible has to say regarding Christian sacrifice and suffering.
Christian Sacrifice and Suffering (v.35-40)
So let’s move to our third and final point, Christian sacrifice and suffering.
The last five verses of our passage show us that Paul clearly understood the difference between Christian sacrifice and suffering in general.
In verses 35-36, the magistrates declare that Paul and Silas may be released.
But in verse 37, Paul said to them: “They beat us in public without a trial, although we are Roman citizens, and threw us in jail. And now, are they going to send us away secretly? Certainly not! On the contrary, let them come themselves and escort us out.”
Which I think it’s a bit bold and over the top. However, in verse 38, we find that the magistrates were very afraid because if Paul escalates the situation, the magistrates themselves may be in trouble for imprisoning Roman citizens without trial.
So, in verse 39, the magistrates come and appease Paul and Silas and escort them out of prison.
Now, what Paul does here clearly illustrates the principle that Christian sacrifice may involve suffering, but suffering is not the goal of Christian sacrifice.
Depending on the circumstances that God has placed us in, Christian sacrifice may look more like going around the fire rather than going through it.
In this passage, Paul could have walked out of prison, but as a Roman citizen, he knew he was entitled to a trial before being punished. And he wanted to set an example to the magistrates, to let them know they had made a mistake by too easily trusting the crowd. What Paul has done here will cause the magistrate to think twice before mistreating the Christians in Phillipi.
Furthermore, Paul has also set an example for other believers, showing that there is a distinction between pursuing Christ and pursuing suffering. And so, what Paul does here benefits the church by strengthening the body from within and lessening the persecution from without.
And finally, before Paul leaves Phillipi, he made sure to stop by Lydia’s house to encourage them once more, giving them the spiritual fertiliser they need to grow during Paul’s absence.
Conclusion
To conclude, this morning, we began our time by asking, ‘is it worth living for Jesus?’
And I hope that with our passage today, we are assured once again that it is worth living for Jesus, even if it means living a life of sacrificial worship.
From Acts 16, we have seen how even though there may seem to be a cost in living for Jesus, the greatest cost has been borne by Jesus when he died for us on the cross. And therefore, to live under Christ’s lordship is not a chore but a loving response to his grace and mercy.
Secondly, we have seen how Christians can find joy in God through prayer. Moreover, Christians have the privilege of witnessing the work of God firsthand, both in their own lives and in the lives of others.
And finally, we are reminded that to live for Jesus is not to pursue suffering, but rather to be prepared for suffering when the time comes.
I pray that our time in Acts has been encouraging, and like Theophilus, we now have more certainty regarding things that God has taught us through his word. Amen.