VBS Closing Service at Epiphany on July 12, 2009

Acts 16:23-33 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?" ³¹ They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved-- you and your household." ³² Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. ³³ At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized.

“What must I do to be saved?”

The game warden noticed how Sam consistently caught more fish than anyone else. Whereas the other guys would only catch three or four a day, Sam would come in off the lake with a boat full. Stringer after stringer was always packed with freshly caught trout. The warden, curious, asked Sam his secret. The successful fisherman invited the game warden to accompany him and observe. The next morning the two met at the dock and took off in Sam’s boat. When they got to the middle of the lake, they stopped the boat and the warden sat back to see how it was done.

Sam’s approach was simple. He took out a small stick of dynamite, lit it and threw it in the water. The explosion rocked the lake with such a force that dead fish immediately began to surface. Sam took out a net and started scooping them up.

You can imagine the reaction of the game warden. When he recovered from the shock of it all, he began yelling at Sam. “You can’t do this! I’ll put you in jail, buddy! You’ll be paying every fine there is in the book!” Sam, meanwhile, set his net down and took out another stick of dynamite. He lit it and tossed it in the lap of the game warden and said, “Are you going to sit there all day complaining or are you going to fish?”

The poor warden was left with a fast decision to make. He was yanked, in one second, from an observer to a participant. A dynamite of a choice had to be made and be made quickly! Life is like that. Few days go by without our coming face to face with an uninvited, unanticipated, yet unavoidable decision. They disorientate and bewilder. Immediate. Sudden. No council, no study, no advice. Pow! Like an avalanche, these moments of indecision tumble upon us without warning.

Want a good example? Look at the jailer in Philippi. Paul and Silas were in prison because an uproar ensued when Paul freed a slave girl from a spirit of divination and thus deprived her owners of income. About midnight the prison shook from a violent earthquake. Prison doors flew open. All the prisoners’ chains fell loose.

The jailer woke up and was immediately filled with panic. He was disoriented. Bewildered. Were the prisoners still there? Would any of them have stayed or did they all take this opportunity to escape? A moment of indecision followed by the decision to kill himself. The jailer concluded that there was no hope and he was better off dead. He was about to fall on his sword when a voice from the darkness shouted, “No! Don’t harm yourself! We’re all here!”

The jailer shouted for a light to shed some clarity on the situation. But, truth be told, lights had already been shining. Those same lights had shouted to the jailer and kept him from doing something very foolish – killing himself.  And even long before that, those lights had been brightly pointing everyone within earshot to God. The light of Jesus had been shining through the singing of Paul and Silas. Prisoners Paul and Silas were shining like the Christian lights that God had called them to be. Instead of whining and complaining about being unfairly thrown into prison, they had been spending the night in prayer to God and hymns about God. Now Jesus’ light was shining out of the darkness upon the jailer.

God sent the earthquake. In a few split seconds all of the jailer’s chains broke loose. Yes, I said the jailer’s chains broke loose. The jailer had been resting comfortably on the job because he had found his security in his work, his prisoners, his family, in his false Roman gods. But then in an instant, all of that changed. The evening had shaken the jailer. He knew he was standing on unstable ground. All of his safety and security were taken from him. He asked the all important question, “What must I do to be saved?”

What is your prison? What sins are chaining you down? Everywhere in our world people are sitting in the darkness of sin and in prisons of their own making: selfishness, fear, anxiety, doubt, unbelief. We try to find security and happiness in relationships, in our career, in athletic or academic achievements, in stock portfolios and real estate investments, in having plenty of possessions. In an instant, God all of that can change. God sends an earthquake or a heart attack or a stroke or a tumor or an accident or a job loss or a terrorist attack or a recession. Then all of your securities are gone. God is shouting to you, “Wake up! Repent!”

The jailer cried to Paul and Silas, “What must I do to be saved?” God had finally gotten the Philippian jailer to take his eyes off of himself, to see that he had to answer to God. He would someday meet his Maker. The creation standing before the Creator. It made him afraid. When you arrive at this point in your life, then God has gotten you right where He wants you. This is the essential point. If all you can think about every day is how popular you are or how much you weigh or how much money you have in the bank, you need to wake up. If you never feel any guilt about how you talk to people or how you’re treated people or how you’ve failed to obey and worship God, you need to wake up. In order to be set free, you have to look death and hell in the face and realize – that’s where I deserve to go. That’s where the jailer was at.

A little word association exercise. What’s the first word that comes to your mind when I say the name Linus? Let me guess - blanket. Of course. In the classic “Peanuts” comic strip, Linus always has his ever-present security blanket. And I mean ever-present. Everywhere this boy goes, he’s dragging his precious blanket. Trying to separate him from his blanket is a hopeless cause. It’s like, “Who am I without it?” Maybe we shouldn’t be so amused by Linus and the security blanket he can’t do without. Because most of us – maybe all of us – have a blanket of our own. Not literally, of course. But we’re all pretty attached to something or someone that we really, really need ... that defines, to a significant extent, who we are. Unfortunately, there comes a time in all our lives when we can’t hang onto that blanket anymore. Sometimes, it’s literally ripped from our hands.

For some of us, our job, our career, our title is an important security blanket. We don’t realize how much it defines who we are until one day it’s taken from us. Maybe it’s your looks, your wealth, your physical ability, your children, your parents, that are a big part of who you are. A security blanket can be something very good, but losable. And when things beyond your control tear your blanket from your hands, you’re left wondering “who am I without it”? The great myth is that anything or anyone we can lose can ever give us ultimate security.

There is a rock-solid security that is defined in Paul’s answer to the jailer’s question of “what must I do to be saved?” Here is the true beauty of this story we learned in VBS this week. We don’t have to do anything to be saved. Salvation has nothing to do with us. Salvation has everything to do with Jesus. “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved – you and your household.”

There it is – unloseable love. Security beyond the reach of every disease, downsizing, divorce, depression, or disaster. When Jesus Christ died on the cross, the wall of sin that had separated you from your God was torn down. Jesus made it possible for you to know you belong to God, to never live a moment here or in eternity without being loved by Him. Without knowing it, you’ve been looking for this love all your life.

You don’t have to do anything to earn salvation. You don’t have to say certain prayers or live a certain life or make up for your past sins. Jesus did it all for you. He earned your salvation. He lived the perfect life you could not live. He died on the cross to make payment for your past, present and future sins. He rose from the dead to assure you of eternal life in heaven. You don’t have to do anything. Jesus did it all. All that is required of you is faith. And Jesus is the one who even sends the Holy Spirit to give that faith to you.

If you think about it, it couldn’t have been any “easier” for the jailer. God sent Jesus to live and die for him, brought the apostles to him, and even provided the earthquake. God did all the work to bring him to faith. He continues to do the same thing today. It may have been at your baptism that the Holy Spirit cut through your chains to give you faith or it may have been when you first heard the gospel as a child when your parents brought you to Vacation Bible School. Whether you came to faith at your baptism or through the spoken Word, it was God who did all of the work. The Holy Spirit still continues to use both the preached Word and baptism to give us faith and free us from our chains. That’s why we can thank God. He is the one who set us free from our chains and prison of sin.

What happens when you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and you are saved? All of your obsessions with material possessions are now loosened. The chain of your house that the devil had put around your ankle, is now removed. The chain that your money had around your heart, is now broken. The chain of God’s law that held you captive to fear has been taken off of your wrist and put on Jesus. You don’t live for material possessions. You don’t have to be terrified of God’s wrath on Judgment Day. You don’t need to fear Satan. All your chains are off. You have been set free to live.

Now you don’t have to live in darkness and depression any longer. The light of Jesus shines in your heart. The light of love chases away the gloom. The radiance of Christ’s glory consumes all your darkness. The blaze of the Spirit’s power sets your heart on fire. And you begin to sing. You begin to serve. Like the jailer, you become a changed person.

He immediately went home, woke his family, told them what had happened, shared Jesus with them, and they were baptized as the sun’s rays of the early morning began shining on them. With Christ in your life and in your heart, you are different than what you were before. You will love more. Live more. Praise more. Pray more. Trust more. And testify more. Basically, you’ll be like the fifty children we have been blessed to be with this past week in VBS. Because I’ve just described each and every one of them.

If you’ve lost a security you were depending on, it may be so you could finally realize how much you need Jesus – how much you’ve always needed Him. And this could be your day, your moment to finally put your total trust in Him to be your Rescuer from your sin – to lose the shackles of sin and experience the unloseable love of God.

Ultimate security is knowing you belong to Jesus Christ. And what you’ve lost may be what finally leads you to find Jesus – the One you can never lose. He is the One who saves. Amen.