THEOLOGY AT MIDNIGHT
Acts 16:22-32
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR: IF ONLY 4 WEEKS TO LIVE
1. A Bible study group was discussing the possibility of sudden death. The Group Leader asked, "What would you do if you knew you only had 4 weeks of life remaining before your death, and your Judgment Day?"
2. One man said, "For those 4 weeks, I would go out into my community and tell everyone the Good News of Jesus." "That’s wonderful," said the group leader.
3. A lady said, "For those 4 weeks, I’d dedicate all of my remaining time to serving my family, my church, and my fellow man with a greater conviction." "Great!" the group leader said.
4. A truck driver at the back spoke up, "I would travel throughout the United States with my mother-in-law in a Ford Escort, and stay in a Motel 6 every night."
5. Everyone was puzzled by his answer. "Why would you do that?" the group leader asked.
6. "Because," the man smiled sarcastically, "it would be the longest 4 weeks of my life."
B. TEXT
22 The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. 23 After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. 24 Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. 25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody's chains came loose. 27 The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul shouted, "Don't harm yourself! We are all here!" 29 The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 He then brought them out and asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household." Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house.” Acts 16:29-32
C. THESIS - YOUR FAITH: REAL OR THEORETICAL
1. You discover your theology at midnight. Until then, it's all theoretical. When midnight comes, you discover the difference between theory and reality.
2. The story as told in Acts 16 goes like this. After casting an evil spirit out of a slave girl, Paul and Silas were thrown into prison for disrupting the peace.
3. They were beaten, thrown in jail, put under close guard, and placed in the inner cell with their feet bound in stocks.
4. Parallel: a college student who studies the game of baseball in kinesiology gets a pretty good understanding about how baseball is played, but until they actually get on a field and play the game – it’s only theoretical
5. We can read the Bible, gain knowledge, form beliefs, acquire faith – but it’s never until we’re put in a trial that challenges our faith that we find out how genuine it is.
6. At that moment it’s too late to search the Scriptures; you probably won’t have time to send an email or contact your friends on Facebook or Twitter.
7. It’s in that lonely moment, you discover your “Theology At Midnight.”
I. RESPONSE TO TROUBLES
A. COMMITMENT TO OUR MISSION
1. The first thing we notice, is that Paul & Silas didn’t begin to question whether God had messed up or whether they had miss-heard God. They assumed that since God had led them there, that was still God’s will for them.
2. Major Ian Thomas, founder of Torchbearers International, told what his fundamental philosophy of the Christian life was:
Go where you're sent,
Stay where you're put,
Give what you've got.
3. This eliminates the “Me-centered” attitude of most Americans whose main thought about church is, “What’s in it for me?” instead of “Where do you want me to serve, Lord?”
4. American churches are plagued with lack of commitment. People change churches over the most trivial
complaints: “I’m not fed” “This church doesn’t have the programs I want.”
5. God has called us to First Assembly of God Church. This is the field God has called us to work. Yes, there are others fields and some may be better-looking fields, but God has called us to work THIS FIELD!
6. We should “Go where we're sent, Stay where we're put, and give what we've got.” If God’s the Boss, we should listen and obey what He says.
7. P.S.: You don’t want to be Jonah, running from your assignment! Here comes the storm & the whale. God doesn’t bless disobedience!
B. HUMOR: FAITH TRANSLATES INTO COMMITMENT
1. “Has your son decided what he wants to be when he grows up?” I asked my friend.
2. “He wants to be a garbage-man,” he replied.
3. “That’s an unusual ambition to have at such a young age.”
4. “Not really. He thinks that garbage-men work only on Tuesdays.” [Source: guy-sports.com]
5. If you DON’T believe in a God who numbers the hairs on your head (Matthew 10:30), then you may think that something terrible has happened to you and get bitter & angry.
6. But if you believe in the sovereignty of God, then you know that nothing can happen to you by accident. In that case, your reaction is likely to be quite different. You may even pray and sing hymns at midnight.
C. REAL LIFE EXAMPLE: CANCER
1. A 53 year-old Christian man went in for a routine checkup and discovered he had colon cancer and that it had spread to his lymph nodes.
2. What do you say to that? How does the godly man respond? The answer is, it all depends on your theology. You never discover it in the good times, only at midnight.
3. The Christian man said, “This isn’t what I wanted, but it is what the Lord has for me and I'm at peace with that. [My wife & I] are confident and trusting [in God] and…I think the Lord has much to teach me in these days. My doctors are very hopeful…. but that's where the Great Physician comes in. We're just putting it all in His hands. The Lord is my Shepherd…we shall not want!”
4. Paul and Silas prayed and sang hymns. They knew that God had sent them to bear witness for their faith.
5. They didn’t know an earthquake was about to set them free (vv. 26-28). Nor did they know that soon they would lead the Philippian jailer and his whole family to the Lord (vv. 29-34). As far as they knew, they’d be in prison a while.
6. Paul and Silas were “blooming where they were planted,” not trying to change planter-boxes!
II. RESPONSE: STANCE OF FAITH
A. ILLOGIC OF PRAISING GOD
1. What would you feel like doing?
a. Would you be singing, “I Feel Good?" or "Joy Unspeakable and Full of Glory”
b. Or would you jump to the bars and cry, "I want my lawyer! My rights have been violated! I'm going to sue! You'll be behind bars soon yourself!"
c. Compared to that place, the Good Shepherd Mission would look like a good place to stay.
2. They had a major decision to make: how to react.
a. If you get around some people -- complainers -- they'll have to jack you up to bury you!
b. If Silas had been like a lot of us, he'd have said; "Paul -- why did you have to mess with that girl? I knew something like this would happen! You’re such a hot-head! Don't pick me as your partner next time!"
3. IMPOSSIBILITY OF PRAISE: Many times it seems contrary to all logic, emotions, and circumstances to praise God.
a. Conversation between Paul and Silas:
*"Paul -- what should we do?"
*"Sing praises to the Lord."
*"Sing? In here? Praises to God? Are you crazy? Did they drop you on your head on the way down here?"
b. Sometimes, to praise God seemed as appropriate as:
1). Lighting a match in a gasoline plant;
2). Going sailing in a hurricane. Why praise God for disaster?
B. WHAT IS THE POWER IN PRAISE?
1. Praise allows the New Nature in us to gain control.
2. Praise bypasses the unregenerate mind, sidetracking its wrong assumptions & ideas.
3. Praise is the sparkplug of faith – it moves it up to the level of victory over circumstances.
4. God inhabits the praises of His people.
5. Praise gives God His proper place
& us ours.
6. ILLUSTRATION.
a. A man struggled to establish a cabin on the side of a mountain in Alaska. After a year and a half, he finally
got it finished and praised God for helping him.
b. Two weeks later a terrible storm came that dumped 9 inches of rain on the mountain. A flashflood ensued that rushed down the canyon and destroyed his cabin.
c. He sat on the now bare rock where his cabin had stood and asked God how He could have allowed this and made him destitute.
d. After some time he looked down at the rock and noticed a vein of gold. He began pushing back the dirt and discovered a major lode of gold ore.
e. Had the storm never come to his life, he would never have discovered the gold that was right beneath his feet. So it is with our trials; they are necessary to expose the gold that is in our souls!
III. EXAMPLE BEFORE OTHERS
A. DEMONSTRATING PRIORITIES
1. One product of Paul and Silas praising God was that a crowd of prisoners heard them and were amazed that two men, so mistreated, would seem so cheerful and full of faith. In jail! At midnight! They were impressed with it’s reality!
2. Some of God's best work gets done in prisons.
John Bunyan went to prison for preaching the gospel and wrote Pilgrim's Progress. Dietrich Bonhoeffer went to prison in World War II and died testifying to God's grace. Chuck Colson went to prison and God gave him the vision for Prison Fellowship.
3. John Piper said, "The universe exists so that we may live in a way that demonstrates that Jesus is more precious than life."
4. Sometimes we have to be put in the position of losing things from our lives or being mistreated. That’s when the world sees what our true priority system is.
5. When tragedy strikes, when life caves in, when your plans are dashed on the jagged rocks of reality, that's when you discover what you really believe.
B. REAL CHRISTIANITY
1. Anyone can sing "Shout to the Lord" when life is good, you've got money in the bank, your marriage is strong, your kids are doing well, you're happy in your job, you love your church, and all is right with the world.
2. The challenge is to Praise God when everything is crazy. If you can sing praise to God with Paul and Silas at midnight IN JAIL, then what you've got is real.
3. Not only will YOU discover -- in Crisis times – what YOU believe, but the WORLD will discover it too. Either Jesus is enough or he isn't. Either He’s more precious than life or He isn't.
4. That’s when the people see the difference that Jesus makes in the worst moments of life, and that's when they want what you have.
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION
1. A number of years ago Norman Cousins wrote an editorial in Saturday Review in which he reported a conversation he had on a trip in India.
2. He was talking with a Hindu priest named Satis Prasad. The man said he wanted to come to our country to work as a missionary among the Americans.
3. Cousins assumed that he meant that he wanted to convert Americans to the Hindu religion, but when asked, Satis Prasad said, "Oh no, I would like to convert them to the Christian religion.”
4. “Christianity cannot survive in the abstract. It needs not membership, but believers. The people of your country may claim they believe in Christianity, but from what I read at this distance, Christianity is more a custom than anything else.”
5. “I would ask that either you accept the teachings of Jesus in your everyday life and in your affairs as a nation, or stop invoking His name as sanction for everything you do. I want to help save Christianity for the Christian." B. Clayton Bell, in Preaching, May-June, 1986.
6. Even the heathen are wanting to provoke our faith!
B. THE CALL
1. Is God still in the business of shaking places? Yes
God wants to shake this church and our lives with His Holy Spirit.
2. God’s desire is for us to be bold and courageous.
Bold in the way we pray and courageous in the way we share the love of Jesus.
3. CT STUDD: "Some people love to dwell near church with choir and steeple bell. But I want to run a rescue station a yard from the gates of hell.’"
4. Prayer for salvation, rededication, and infilling of the Holy Spirit.
[Some parts of this are derived from Ray Pritchard’s message of the same title]
