All Shook Up
October 16, 2022 Morning Service
Immanuel Baptist Church, Wagoner, OK
Rick Boyne
Message Point: God may use extreme measures to get our attention.
Focus Passage: Acts 16:22-34
Introduction: On October 1, 1987, I was in Los Angeles for a moderate earthquake. I had felt a few tremors before, but this one was different. It violently shook the building I was in and everyone hid under their desk. It seemed to have lasted an eternity, but the news said the first one shook about 40 seconds. After it was over, I jumped up to check on people and access the situation. Fixed lighting fixtures had come loose from the suspended ceiling and were hanging by wires. Wall were cracked. Things had toppled over. Our phone system was out. Then came the first aftershock. It felt as big as the first! Same routine except this time, some of the women were so scared they wouldn’t come out from their desks. They were crying and quite hysterical. Then another aftershock. Under the desks again. Afterwards, I thought about the guys in the warehouse with all the stock that could fall on them. I led a delegation to check on them. Another aftershock. This time, as I was on the ground floor, I ran outside. I remember seeing all the telephone poles swaying and the wires jumping. Made it back to my office and on a hunch, tried a phone that wasn’t routed through our PBX and sure enough, it was working. I dialed many numbers for the women to get in touch with their family. Another aftershock. Then another. Then another. When I had returned to my desk, because I didn’t really know what else to do, we had a huge aftershock. A baseball from another guy’s desk rolled off and made it’s way to me. At that point, I was gone. I was too shook up to do anything else that day. So was everyone else. They closed the office and we all went home.
I. Jailer – going about his business
a. Charged with keeping the prisoners in prison
b. The earthquake came and he was about to take his own life
c. You don’t ask “what must I do to be saved” unless you know you are truly lost
d. He had a radical life transformation. It was their lives or his. He took them back to his own house to care for their wounds
e. It was a spiritual spark for the spiritual chain reaction for his family
II. Lydia – going about her business (Acts 16:11-15)
a. She was a seller of purple cloth. Very expensive and rare.
b. Her cloth was perhaps worn by kings, or governors or senators or people of high rank.
c. It is supposed that she was wealthy from her business.
d. She had gone to pray as there was no synagogue and she was not a Jew, but she worshipped God.
e. She heard the news, received it with joy and became the spiritual spark for the spiritual chain reaction for her family.
III. The Prodigal son – he had gone out of business (Luke 15:11-32)
a. He asked for his inheritance which was basically saying “Dad, you are dead to me.”
b. It was an extremely unusual request and would have shocked the listeners of this parable
c. He had wasted all his fortune on fair weather friends, wine and prostitutes.
d. He was working to take care of some pigs, which was a ghastly service for Jews.
e. He was so hungry, he was about to eat some of the pig slop. He had an earthquake moment and realized that his father’s servants were treated better than this and he could go ask for a job.
Application/Call to Obedience: Are you so out of step with God that He’ll have to use an earthquake, of sorts, to shake you up? What will it take for you to become that spiritual spark for the spiritual renewal in your family, work, and church? The Bible says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. (Romans 10:9-10 NASB)
