May 20 2007 sermon - Freedom Acts 16:16-40

May 20 Sermon Freedom
Acts 16: 16-40

You hear this story about Paul and Silas and it has to make you wonder some times. There is a little girl walking behind them yelling out the truth. Why in the world would Paul want to shut her up? Well with a cursory reading, you would think the obvious. This little kid is bugging the heck out of him and he wants her to stop.

That could very well be true. Even though she is telling the truth about the two men, she could just be annoying them so much, Paul wants it to stop. Another option is that maybe they did not want all the attention brought on them immediately. Christianity is a great faith to pass on one-on-one. Stadium conversions do happen and Billy Graham is one of the greatest evangelists of our time.

A great illustration of this is the movie Pay It Forward. Young Trevor McKinney is caught up by an intriguing assignment from his new social studies teacher. The assignment: Think up something to change the world and put it into action. Trevor conjures up the notion of paying a favor not back, but forward…repaying good deeds not with payback, but with new good deeds done to three other people.

Trevor’s effort to make good on his idea brings a revolution not only in the lives of himself, his mother and his teacher, but in the ever widening circle of people completely unknown to him.

One person affecting 3 other people who each affect 3 other people, so on and so forth. Let me ask you a question. How many people have you shared your faith with in the last 6 months? 1 Peter 3:15 says to “Always be ready to give a reason for the hope that lies within you, and do it with gentleness and respect.” If you said (in your heart) zero, do you really have the hope within you that Peter is talking about?

But let’s look at it another way. There are approximately 300,000 churches in America. Now let’s say that every one of these churches took Jesus serious when he said “Go and make disciples”. This isn’t a “maybe people from other churches will start coming to our church” or “yeah, we send out post card invitations to our church every year.”

It’s a “This person is an unbeliever and they come to believe the truth because we share it with them.” Each one of these 300,000 churches reaches just 3 people in 2007. Holy Cow. The Holy Spirit just moved 900,000 people to join the kingdom of God. Since the average church in America has 100 people in it, it’s like adding 9000 churches to America.
85% of the people in America say they are Christian. But let’s be honest. There are many people in that 85% that have never had a transforming experience for Christ; just like there are people in this church today that have never had a transforming experience. Our total population is 300 million. Let’s say 60% are real Christians.

Each of those new converts shared their faith with 3 people. The church still does what it’s supposed to do, making 3 other disciples. Do you see what an awesome impact the church and the transformed Christians could make in America by sharing their faith??

Back to Paul and the slave girl. Paul was not looking for some cultural catch-phrases that, while true, did not convey the gospel in a way it would be heard by (as Jesus said) “people who had ears to hear”. This girl was yelling out “these men are servants of the Most High God. They are showing the way of salvation.”

The statement was true, but it was disruptive. There was no message. There was no depth. It was a catch phrase. “God is Good. All the Time. All the Time. God is Good.” Having the sign out front of our church that says “Sardis United Methodist Church” tells everyone around that we are a congregation meeting to worship the one and only Triune God based on Christian scriptures and beliefs.
The building/the sign/the cross outside are not the message. It’s the surface. It can be a distraction or it can be a help.

The slave girl was a distraction. Paul’s discourses were well thought out and flowed where everyone who heard could understand, but this girl made that a problem. To free her, Paul went up to the girl and said “In the name of Jesus Christ, come out of the girl.” And the demon did.

Did you hear the 6 most important words known to humans and angels. IN-THE-NAME-OF-JESUS-CHRIST. We flippantly throw these words around without thinking about them. We add them to the end of our prayers thinking “well in scripture it says to pray in the name of Jesus so if I say that at the end of my prayers then I know God will act on them.”

Or we add it to the end of letters and other correspondence. It doesn’t matter if the letters have no reference to God or even if the letters go against everything God would want, we still add those 6 words in our desire to speak the “Christianeze” and sound like some one else we want to emulate. These 6 words are the most powerful words we can ever use.


In our scripture today, these words call a demon out of a girl and free her from that burden. Unfortunately, not everyone wants to see freedom. Not everyone desires the light. Those in the darkness like the darkness. It’s comfortable there. There is no truth, but there is no responsibility either. Ignorance is bliss and those in the darkness are some of the most ignorant people you will ever meet.

Verse 19 - “But when the slave girl’s masters saw their hope of profit gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.” The darkness loves money doesn’t it? It’s not “Praise God our slave girl is free from the torture she has endured for so many years.” What is more important?? Money or freedom? Slavery or salvation? Status Quo or Transformation? Death or life thru Jesus Christ?
PAUSE

Paul and Silas are thrown into jail where the hardened criminals are kept and locked up real tight. Then they do what anyone would do when locked up like this…they sing hymns. OK…maybe that’s not a normal thing to do. But when things look bleak and its dark all around and you’re shackled to a stank dungeon of hopelessness, you must go back to what you know.

Prisoners of War would sing hymns and say the Apostle’s Creed and the Lord’s Prayer to keep them going and keep them sane when all else looked bad. Paul and Silas praised God that they were able to be an example to those around them even in this dank dark prison. They were more interested in pleasing God than pleasing men, and God gave them great boldness and confidence even in that awful place.

Paul actually remarks about this same experience in 1 Thessalonians 2. He says:
“You know how badly we had been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. Yet our God gave us the courage to declare his Good News boldly, in spite of great opposition. So you can see we were not preaching with any deceit or impure motives or trickery. For we speak as messengers approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts.”

Imagine the impact of these things Paul and Silas said on the jailer and other inmates. It was a far cry from the oaths, threats, and curses usually heard in these places. The message had its effect on the listeners…… it always does. The kind of effect depends on each individual heart, but it is always there.

Marilyn Oden tells in her book Abundance about a prison in the Czech Republic. She says that “Though hardened criminals are sent there, the prison does not harden them further. They are treated with respect, many for the first time in their lives. As we entered, I noticed that neither the guards nor the warden wore guns. There were no “prison” haircuts, uniforms or cells.

They lived in unlocked dorm style rooms that opened onto a large locked hall where they were free to socialize. Capital punishment is illegal in the Czech Republic and the warden took Marilyn and her husband into the murderer’s section. The 3 mingled with murderers. The only guard, unarmed, was at the entrance. It was amazing that she did not feel afraid. These men respected the warden and engaged in easy conversation with him.” Through the Christian warden and some Czech United Methodists, these men experienced the healing presence of God’s love.

Have you been a healing presence to anyone this week? Each day offers us an opportunity to journey in compassion with our sisters and brothers and, through God’s grace, to be windows thru which others can see God’s love. When we experience God’s transforming love and our lives reflect it, we see with our souls.
PAUSE

It was midnight, and an earthquake shook the jail, and all the cells opened and chains fell off. When the jailer woke up and saw what happened, he did what was expected of him. He had failed his job and in this heathen society he was expected to do the ‘honorable’ thing and take his own life.

The tables turned. Paul and Silas were freed and the jailer was under the law, even if it was ignorant law. Paul stopped him from killing himself. And the jailer knowing this could only be by the power of God, fell at the feet of Paul and said what any one of us would say “What must I do to be saved?”

That is a proper question to ask. There is something we must do to be saved. The Word of God tells us what to do. The jailer needed to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s more than knowledge about Jesus. A lot of smart people (and those who think they are smart) get it wrong. Even the devil knows Jesus is the Son of God – the 2nd person of the trinity – God himself.

To believe in the Lord Jesus Christ means to give your entire life over to Jesus as your Lord and Savior. It means total submission and obedience. Transformation has to happen. Turning from your old crabby pain in the butt self and being transformed into what God wants you to become. God loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to leave you that way. PAUSE
Who do you identify with in this scripture today? The slave girl and Paul and Silas are in chains. The slave’s master and the jailer hold the keys and are free. But is this really the truth, or is it just a front? Thanks to Paul and the power of the name of Jesus, the slave girl becomes free. Yet she is not free in society. She is a piece of property. And instead of her “free” owners rejoicing in her healing, they desire to lock up the apostles.

When Paul and Silas are beaten and bloody and locked up in a dark cell, they are strangely free to sing. But the jailer is not free. When the chains come off, he decides suicide will be the best way to die if his prisoners have escaped. Having a key to someone else’s cell does not make you free. By the end of the story, everyone who appeared to be free, the slave master and jailer, is a slave. And everyone who first appeared to be enslaved, the girl, Paul and Silas, is free.

Those who are free, live for the truth. Those who are in slavery (and maybe don’t know it) live for the lie. Are you in bondage right now? Do you go thru your day and sometimes saying “This is wrong. What I am doing is wrong. What we are doing is wrong”? The transformation Christ calls us into is counter-cultural. It’s not normal, in the worldly sense of the word.

Would an outsider walking into a group of people be able to pick you out of the crowd as a Christian? Has the transformation happened in your life? Are you counter-cultural or do you look and act like everyone else in society yet go to church on Sunday morning?? Are you free?

If true freedom and transformation has occurred in your life, YOU ARE DIFFERENT. Otherwise, you are a slave? “Well I’m not a slave to anyone pastor.” If you’re not free (and therefore a slave to God), then you are a slave to this world and all the seduction it has on you……and you have no part in the Kingdom of God.

If you desire to be free….that is, if like the jailer you see the state your in and want to yell out “How can I be saved”, you can today. If you recognize your bondage and slavery and want to be free and you want to be transformed, come up to the alter rail during our last hymn. No I didn’t bring my baptism water gun, but even if you have been baptized before, transformation and freedom can still come today.

Everyone stand up and we will sing this last hymn.



Acts 16:16-40
One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave-girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, ‘These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.’ She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And it came out that very hour.
But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market-place before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, ‘These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.’ The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell 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. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, ‘Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.’ The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ They answered, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’ They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
When morning came, the magistrates sent the police, saying, ‘Let those men go.’ And the jailer reported the message to Paul, saying, ‘The magistrates sent word to let you go; therefore come out now and go in peace.’ But Paul replied, ‘They have beaten us in public, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and now are they going to discharge us in secret? Certainly not! Let them come and take us out themselves.’ The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens; so they came and apologized to them. And they took them out and asked them to leave the city. After leaving the prison they went to Lydia’s home; and when they had seen and encouraged the brothers and sisters there, they departed.