There are things that my father said which I will remember as long as I am able to remember things.  Some of them came in moments of a lot of pain and sorrow.  Some of them were hilarious and came while we watched “Jeopardy” together.  I carry them with me, and many have shaped me.  Some came while we were in the car.  To the best of my recollection, I was driving to or from church with my mother and father one Sunday, and the topic of Christian fundamentalism came up.  My father said, “We are not fundamentalists, but we believe in the fundamentals.”

The good news of Jesus comes to a whole new geographic area in our story today.  Philippi by way of a sea trip to the island of Samothrace, the port of Neapolis (modern day Kavalla) and Philippi.  I want us to consider the question today, “What or who will save us?” To make it even plainer, “What or who will get me out of the mess I am in?”  What or who will get me, you, our church, our city/province/country, the world, out of the mess we’re in?  The good news before us, before we go any further, is that salvation has come to Philippi.  Salvation, rescue, deliverance has come to Blythwood Road Baptist Church.  Salvation, rescue, deliverance has come to me and to you. 

We hear it in the words of Paul and Silas to that likely retired Roman soldier jailer in Philippi.  “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”  Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved/delivered/rescued/made whole/made right/ransomed/healed/restored/forgiven, as the great old hymn goes.  If you have not taken up this invitation, it is before you now.  Trust Jesus.  If you took up this invitation long ago and have forgotten it, it is before you now.  If you have taken it up recently, it’s still before you.  It’s before us all every day.  Now you might be saying, “Why is it that you keep on talking about trusting God/walking on the way with Jesus?  Do you think we don’t know that already?” 

There are two reasons that I want us to consider today as we look at these stories from Philippi.  The first is this:  When we consider the question “Who or what will save us?” there are a lot of competing voices with answers, and they’re loud as we go through our days.  Dear Lydia from Thyatira was a woman of means.  Business-wise, she had it going on.  She was in textiles.  A dealer of purple cloth.  Expensive cloth due to the dye needed in the manufacturing process.  Purple cloth that was reserved for the highest segment of society.  A dealer in Range Rovers.  These are the people who surely aren’t in need of saving.  If you’re doing well financially, you’re well right?  This is not casting any aspersions on Lydia’s wealth or anyone else’s wealth per se.  Lydia welcomed Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke into her home.  I’m sure her financial support for the young church in Philippi was welcomed.  Her business was not her foundation.  She didn’t worship her wealth.  She was a worshiper of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  She went down to the river to pray every Saturday.  Paul spoke and it must have been something like “All the promises made, the whole delivering plan laid out in scripture has come about in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and Son of Man, God with us, who was lived and died and rose again and promised never to leave or forsake us and promised to come back and has sent the Holy Spriit – God in us – that we and all creation might be rescued!”   The Lord opened her heart and she is baptized along with her household.

Subjugating others will not save humanity.  The profit motive will not save humanity.  Knowing the future will not save humanity.  “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.”  This happened again and again over the course of many days.  She would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”  You might think at this point, “Well, this is good, no?”  Ironically, what she is saying is true.  It’s coming from a force within her from which she is unable to extricate herself, and that is not of God.  A force which has led others to use her for their own profit.  One day, Paul turns around and says to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ (our deliverer) to come out of her.”  And it came out of her that very hour.

I said that voices of opposition can be loud.  They can actively work against God and the ways of God, particularly when money and the ability to make it is involved.  The profit-motive won’t save us, and those who look to the profit-motive for salvation don’t like this.  “But when the 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 Romans to adopt or observe.”  Will xenophobia be the thing that saves us?  Will appeals to nativism and fear of “the other save” us. They’re not like us!  They don’t love our country.  Is this where rescue lies?  The crowd is appealing to the magistrates – the rulers.  Will government be the thing that saves us?  Will legislation be the thing that saves us?  We heard stories in the news about the Canadian government considering a ban on social media for children under 16.  UK PM Keir Starmer made an appeal to Apple and Google to prevent children from being exposed to and sharing explicit photos.  We can debate the effectiveness/enforceability/ of such measures and how we weigh protection vs. privacy rights and all the other things that go into these conversations.  I’m not saying legislation doesn’t have its place.  The question remains: Is this what will save our children?  In Christ, we’re living another story, you see.

In this story, Paul and Silas are stripped of their clothing and beaten with rods.  After being flogged severely, they’re thrown into the town prison.  The jailer put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet into stocks.  Paul and Silas are stuck.  Roman prisons were dark, dank places. Filthy.  Infested.  Paul and Silas have been severely beaten.  They’re bloody.  Bruised.  Trying to find some way to position themselves so their pain might be lessened.  They’re stuck.

What should they do?  Feign illness to get the guards’ attention and attack?  Not a lot of sympathy for illness in a Roman prison.  Wait for Timothy and Luke to hatch an escape plan?  Unlikely.  Give up, maybe?  This whole Jesus thing is not working out very well, it seems.  Let’s forget it and go our own way for however long we have left to live. 

What are we going to do?  Are you feeling in any way stuck or trapped – not knowing what to do in some way?  Maybe it’s something macro like “the state of the world and all that’s going on.”  The pace of change.  The unknown. Maybe it’s a personal situation that you or something you love is in the middle of, with seemingly no way out.  Our church is in such a situation.  Too much building.  The building is a burden.  The budget is a burden.  We’re not making a budget.  What are we going to do? What’s the first thing we should do?

We need to keep this truth in front of us all the time.  What’s our first response?  When I was very small, we used to sing a song in Sunday School.  I liked it.  I’m not saying I liked it because I thought it was about me, but it was called “Only a Boy Named David,” and I mean, I was only a boy named David after all.  This is how it started.  “Only a boy named David/Only a little sling/Only a boy named David/But he could pray and sing.” 

“About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.”  We don’t know what they were singing, but I like to think it was something like “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name!  He has done great things, he has done great things, he has done great things, bless his holy name!”  Suddenly, the earth is shaking, doors are opened, and everyone’s chains were unfastened. 

No more “stuckness”.  What should Paul and Silas do now?  Get while the getting is good?   No.  Lives need to be saved, starting with the jailer who’s about to kill himself in light of this apparent jailbreak.  “Stop stop!” shouts Paul.  “We’re all here.”  Bringing them outside he asks, “Sirs (Lords/Masters – same word), what I must do to be saved?”  Paul famously responds and let us cling to this – “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”  That night deliverance meets this jailer and his entire household in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  “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.”

Do we know what to do when we don’t know what to do?  Paul and Silas knew.  Here’s something else that Paul and Silas knew in that prison when they were stuck.  They had been called to that place.  They were right where God had called them to be.  They had been called to Macedonia – remember Paul had that vision of the Macedonian man saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”  Have you heard Jesus call you to himself?  Have you heard Jesus say, “Follow me?”  Then take up that call and hold onto that call.  Has God called you to this family of faith?  Then we are exactly where God has called us to be. 

What are we going to do now?  We’re going to be like Paul and Silas and get to prayer and praising.  Notice how much prayer is going on in this story.  The group arrived in Philippi, and the first thing they did was look for the place of prayer.  They encountered a once possessed, now delivered slave girl while they were on their way to the place of prayer.  They prayed in prison, and deliverance was the result.  I feel called to this family of faith, and my prayer for this family is that we become a place of prayer.  That we become known for being a place of prayer in the coming weeks and months and years (should the Lord tarry). 

We’re going to start right now.  Take some time to listen to what God is saying to you this morning. Take some time to give thanks to God for the great things he has done.

Take some time to name before God what has you stuck today.

Thank God for calling us to him.  Help us to be faithful to your call.

Amen