The Christians Hour

Aaron Brockett: You are listening to The Christians Hour. Thank you for joining us today. We are so glad you've chosen to spend time with us. The Christians Hour is a ministry of Gospel Broadcasting Mission, where we proclaim the hope of Jesus Christ around the world using radio and media until all have heard.

Well, today, we're concluding our series, Some Things Never Change. Over the past several weeks, we've been reminded that while the world around us is constantly changing, God still remains faithful. His truth never changes. His promises never fail. And the good news is that his power to save is just as real today as it's ever been.

Well, that's the focus in today's message: Jesus Still Saves. In Acts chapter 16, we find the Apostle Paul and Silas sitting in a prison cell after being brutally beaten. Yet in the midst of their suffering, God moves in a remarkable way. Through a divinely timed earthquake and the faithful witness of these two believers, a hardened Roman jailer is brought face to face with the grace of God. Just hours earlier, this man had overseen their imprisonment, and now he finds himself asking one of the most important questions anyone can ever ask: "What must I do to be saved?"

It's a question people are still asking today, and the answer has never changed. No matter your past, your failures, or your circumstances, Jesus Christ still forgives sins. He still transforms lives, and he still offers eternal hope to all who place their trust in him. So open your Bible to Acts chapter 16 as Pastor Gene Appel of Eastside Christian Church in Anaheim, California, shows us why, in a world where so much has changed, one thing remains forever true: Jesus still saves. Here's Gene to share more.

Gene Appel: A number of years ago when our kids were little and we were living in Vegas at the time, our family was making our annual summer road trip to our family cabin in northern Minnesota. July was always a great time to escape the 115-degree heat in Vegas. I know you've heard it's a dry heat, but so is a blowtorch.

One morning, we were driving along Interstate 80 in the state of Nebraska, and Barbara and the kids were asleep in our conversion van. I thought I'd try to make some really good time while everybody was conked out, and I made real good time until I saw the flashing lights behind me. I pulled over and the officer got out, and I rolled down the window and he leaned in. He said, "Do you know why I stopped you?" I said, "Because you were having trouble finding a donut shop?"

No, I didn't say that. I wanted to, but I love my law enforcement friends. Anyway, he explained I was in a 55-mile-an-hour zone and I was traveling many miles an hour. He proceeded to write me a ticket, and I attempted to mention that I was a pastor on vacation and I was probably just thinking about the Bible and praying, but he wrote me the ticket anyway. Within a few weeks, I sent my check to the state of Nebraska, and my penalty was paid in full.

The very next summer, I drove over that same stretch of I-80 again in Nebraska. Do you think I was sweating it? Do you think I was worried, "Oh, what if the same officer is around? What if he recognizes me? What if he throws me in jail?" Not a chance. Why? Because the penalty of the past had already been paid in full, and I was set free.

All throughout this series, I've been praying for today. I've been praying that today would be like a day of celebration of freedom for many of you because today, I want to conclude this series, Some Things Never Change, on the topic: Jesus Still Saves. He saves us from our past. He sets us free from our mistakes, from our regrets, because he paid the penalty we should have paid.

Today, I want to unpack a story for you about a guy who I think, in one way or another, we'll all relate to from Acts chapter 16 in the Bible. 2,000 years ago, this guy gets up, gets dressed, has his donut and coffee, goes to work, and his day begins like any other day. But what he didn't know is that before he goes to bed that night, that day is going to change everything in his life.

In fact, he and everyone in his family were about to experience the saving power of Jesus, and they were all about to be immediately baptized, and they didn't even know it. I mean, he and his family started their day, if you think of it, paralyzed by their past and ended the day set free for their future. They literally started their day all dry; they ended their day all wet, celebrating that Jesus still saves. They celebrated in a baptism pool at the end of this day, just like this.

I'm convinced that as we look at this guy in Acts chapter 16, God is going to speak to many of you today. He's going to move in your life, and you're going to experience that Jesus still saves. The guy in Acts 16, he's a prison warden. As the text begins, it's about midnight. To this point, there's been nothing particularly unusual at the prison that night.

Maybe one thing a little unusual is there's a couple of prisoners named Paul and Silas who are singing songs to God and they're praying prayers. What's crazy about that is earlier in the day, both of them had been brutally tortured by this prison warden. He had savagely stripped them, beat them with rods, ripped open their flesh. You say, what was their crime? They were simply talking to people in that city about how Jesus transforms and saves them.

Now it's midnight. They're singing, they're praying, obviously not your average prisoners. During this night shift, the prison warden begins to doze off and just drift asleep. Then the Bible says suddenly, there was a massive earthquake, and the prison was shaken to its foundations, and the doors immediately flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off.

A number of years ago, I was speaking in a Sunday morning service in Vegas when an earthquake hit. It wasn't massive, but the building was rumbling and light fixtures were swaying in the room. I can just tell you this, a lot of people got saved by Jesus that morning. Suddenly, this earthquake hits and this prison warden panics. The next verse says the jailer woke up to see the prison doors wide open, and he assumed the prisoners had escaped, so he drew his sword to kill himself.

You say, why is he so despondent? Why is he suicidal? Because for one thing, the punishment for allowing your prisoners to escape was execution. But also, I want you to think about this. Earlier in the day, he'd been torturing these guys, beating these guys, abusing these guys, and now it says they're free. So, who just might be carrying a grudge? Who might be looking for a little revenge?

Who might be ready to rumble, who might be ready to inflict their own pain on somebody? He thinks if my superiors don't kill me, these prisoners certainly will. So he draws his sword to end it all. I imagine in that moment, he'd like to go back and do things differently. He'd like to have a do-over with his life, with that day, but he's paralyzed by his past and believes there's no hope for him.

True story: at the church that I served in Vegas, I did a baptism one day in our baptism pool. I had just finished the baptism, and I went into a changing room area. I was dripping wet, and I reached for a towel and I pulled it out of the stack and unfolded it. You'll never guess what it said on the towel, right in the middle of it: Holiday Inn. I thought, how did that get here?

I laughed to myself, and I just started imagining a scenario where some person's sitting at home feeling guilty every time they open their linen closet and they see this Holiday Inn towel. Maybe initially they thought, "Oh, I'm just going to throw that thing out," and then they thought, "No, the trash people might find it, report me, and I'll go to jail." So, I'm just imagining all this. To ease their guilt of the sins of their past, they thought, "I'll just slip it in among the baptism towels at church to absolve my guilt."

Sometimes the mistakes of our past can be overwhelming, right? The people we've hurt, that we've wounded. Some of you wish you could have your teenage years back. Some of you wish you could have your twenties back, your thirties back. You have so many regrets. For some, it's the cheating in school that still haunts you. For some, it's the guilt of a sexual encounter or maybe many sexual encounters.

For some, it's marriage vows that you violated. Haunting questions that you carry about the abortion. For some, it's the divorce, and you still haven't forgiven yourself. For some, it's your secret escape into provocative images on a smartphone. For some, whatever it is, it occurred years ago, but it still dogs you and haunts you, and you still lose sleep over it. For others, the memory is as fresh as last night.

This prison warden is so undone by his mistakes, he's just about to say, "I don't want to live another second." A split second before he thrusts that sword into himself, the prisoner named Paul, the Apostle Paul, shouts, "Stop! Don't kill yourself. We're all here, buddy." What? I mean, that's not what this prison warden expects to hear. He thinks they're out the door.

He has to be thinking, "Any guys that will spare my life after what I've done to them today, any guys that are singing songs at midnight after being tortured and chained today, they have something I desperately want and need in my life." The next verse: the jailer called for the lights and ran to the dungeon and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas.

Isn't this word "trembling" interesting? Because just a few minutes earlier, the earth had been trembling. Now he's trembling. It's in this humbling moment, this broken moment, that he makes his first little step toward letting go of the past. He comes clean to admit his need. He just humbly admits something he's really known inside for a long time. He admits life isn't working on his terms.

Then he asks Paul and Silas the most important question you'll ever ask in your lifetime. He says, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Someone said this: the sin we want to conceal the most is the sin we need to reveal the most because there's no healing in hiding. So what does this prison warden do? He admits his need and he asks Paul and Silas the single most important question anyone can ever ask: "What must I do to be saved?"

The answer to his question is not long, it's not complex, but it is profound. They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be..." What? Say it. Saved. Because Jesus, Jesus saves. What does it mean to believe in the Lord Jesus? The fact of the matter is you can intellectually believe up here that Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior of the world. That won't save you.

James chapter 2, verse 19 says even the demons believe that and shudder. When Paul and Silas say, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved," they're talking about moving that knowledge up here in your head about 18 inches south to your heart. They're saying after you come clean and you admit your need, you must humbly believe in Jesus.

I had a conversation a while back with a sharp, intelligent, educated, highly accomplished professional woman who said to me, "Gene, I've gone to church my entire life. But until three years ago, no one had ever told me I needed to believe in Jesus in here to be saved." To believe this in your heart means you totally trust the fact that Jesus was the Son of God.

He made a payment with his blood on a cross for you that you could never pay for yourself. He died, and he was buried, and he rose from the dead to overcome it all. You see, we're really good at sinning, but Jesus is a lot better at saving. We're good at regretting, but Jesus is better at rescuing. We're good at denying, but Jesus is better at delivering. We're good at failing, but Jesus is better at forgiving. Jesus is just better.

So what does this prison warden do? He comes clean. He admits his need and humbly believes in Jesus. This was so sincere, this inner transformation. It was so genuine, so authentic, that Acts 16, verse 33 says even at that hour of the night, the jailer cared for them, the prisoners, and washed their wounds. Are you kidding me? Like, can you feel the irony of this?

Hours earlier, he inflicts these wounds, and now he's tenderly caring for them. He's disinfecting these wounds. You see, people who believe in the Lord Jesus, they demonstrate sincerity by heading in a new direction. There's a change in their life. A while back, I attended a board meeting in Orlando for an organization that I serve that helps equip pastors to be healthy and growing because healthy and growing pastors lead to healthy and growing churches.

I had an early morning flight on a Boeing 757, and just before we boarded, the gate agent called my name. So I go up and I found out they had bumped me up to first class. All of a sudden, my day got a lot better. When I boarded the plane, I found out these weren't like the wide, cushy first-class seats that I always walk by feeling jealous of all those elite people sitting in them. No, these were the individual pods that recline into beds.

I'm thinking, can my day get any better than this? So we board the flight. The flight attendants go through all the pre-flight instructions. We line up for takeoff. The engines are roaring, the RPMs at full throttle. I'm about ready to fly into air travel bliss, and we're roaring down the runway, and the wheels are just about to lift off.

Suddenly, the pilot just locks up the brakes at full throttle. I mean, the tires are skidding and we're careening. I don't know if we're careening toward another plane, if we're about to crash, or what. Then the plane comes to a complete stop. My heart, along with every other heart on that plane, was about pounding out of our chest. Then the pilot came on. We sat there for about a minute. It seemed like an hour.

The pilot comes on and says, "I'm sorry about that, folks. We had a warning light come on in the cockpit that something was wrong, so we're going to have to turn around and go back to the gate." You know what? Your regrets in your past, they're like warning lights that send a signal: something is wrong that needs attention. So what do you do when you get that signal? You put on the brakes, you turn around, and you head in a new direction.

The Bible calls it repentance. It's when you stop heading in your own direction and you turn around and you turn back in the direction of your heavenly Father, depending on Jesus to help you make changes in your life. That's what happens when a person sincerely believes in Jesus. It's not just business as usual. Repentance says, "I once beat prisoners, and now I tenderly care for their wounds. I once financially cheated people; I now pay them back with interest. I once said hurtful and wounding things to my kids or my spouse; now I say words that build them up and speak life into their soul. I once didn't take my marriage vows seriously; now I honor the one to whom I committed till death do us part."

Why? Because Jesus died on a cross to save us from our guilt, and our failures, and our sins, and our past. Listen, you can't reach for anything new in your life if your hands are still carrying yesterday's junk. I believe some of you know it's time. God is calling you today to move in a new direction and to let go of the past so that you can reach for something new.

Look at what happens next. Immediately, he and all his household were baptized. Now notice, it's the middle of the night, gang, and they are immediately baptized. Notice that they didn't say, "Hey, after we get some sleep," or "Someday when it's convenient," or "Someday when we don't have anything better to do," or "Someday when I remember to shave my legs," or "Someday after I've had four weeks of baptism classes, I should be baptized." No.

On the very night that he admits his need and humbly believes in Jesus, he immediately expresses his faith in baptism. It's the middle of the night, and we also read in the passage then how his whole household, his family, were all coming to faith, and all of them as a family were baptized in the middle of the night, too. They were all saved by Jesus together that night.

Isn't that amazing? And again, this day began like any other day. Didn't seem like anything special. It ended up being one of the greatest moments of life and eternity for him and his entire family. Can I ask you to look at this a minute? Where are you in this sequence? Have you humbly admitted you have a need and believed in Jesus in here? Have you demonstrated your sincerity by heading in a new direction?

Is it time? Is it time to immediately express your faith and be baptized, just like they did? Some of you have thought about baptism for a long time, even said, "I'm going to do that someday." I just wonder when is your someday going to turn into today? The Bible says today is the day of salvation. Some of you have wrestled with that decision. You've listened to two, five, ten, twenty... you've listened to thirty sermons that have encouraged you to be baptized.

I believe that for you, finally, today is your day. Your day is today. I know a question many of you are wondering about right now is why? Why be baptized? I could give you quite a number of reasons straight out of Scripture. Really, I think there's only one, though, that ultimately matters. You see, the one who hung naked and bled and died on a cross for your sins so you could be saved and let go of your past and have hope for your future, he asks you to. Jesus asks you to. Do you need another reason?

Acapella Ministries: Man of Sorrows, Lamb of God,

By His own betrayed.

The sin of man and wrath of God

Has been on Jesus laid.

Silent as He stood accused,

Beaten, mocked, and scorned.

Bowing to the Father's will,

He took a crown of thorns.

Oh, that rugged cross, my salvation,

Where Your love poured out over me.

Now my soul cries out, Hallelujah,

Praise and honor unto Thee.

Sent of heaven, God's own Son,

To purchase and redeem.

And reconcile the very ones

Who nailed Him to that tree.

Oh, that rugged cross, my salvation,

Where Your love poured out over me.

Now my soul cries out, Hallelujah,

Praise and honor unto Thee.

Now my debt is paid,

It is paid in full

By the precious blood

That my Jesus spilled.

Now the curse of sin

Has no hold on me.

Whom the Son sets free,

Oh, is free indeed.

Now my debt is paid,

It is paid in full

By the precious blood

That my Jesus spilled.

Now the curse of sin

Has no hold on me.

Whom the Son sets free,

Oh, is free indeed.

Oh, that rugged cross, my salvation,

Where Your love poured out over me.

Now my soul cries out, Hallelujah,

Praise and honor unto Thee.

See the stone is rolled away,

Behold the empty tomb.

Hallelujah, God be praised,

He's risen from the grave.

Oh, that rugged cross, my salvation,

Where Your love poured out over me.

Now my soul cries out, Hallelujah,

Praise and honor unto Thee.

Praise and honor unto Thee.

Aaron Brockett: Well, how about you? What is your next step of faith? Perhaps you've never placed your faith in Jesus Christ. Like the jailer in Acts 16, you've heard the good news today and now God is calling you to respond. If that's you, don't put it off. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. Today can be the day you surrender your life to Christ and experience his forgiveness, his grace, and salvation.

Or perhaps you've already made that decision, but you've never taken that step of baptism. And we've heard in today's message, the jailer didn't wait. He responded in faith and obedience. So maybe today is your day to do the same. Whatever God is calling you to do, I encourage you, do not ignore his voice. Take that next step.

And if you have, we'd love to celebrate with you. Shoot us an email and let us know. And if you don't have a church home or someone to walk you through the next step of your faith journey, we'd love to help. Again, email us. You can do that at thechristianshour@gmail.com. And what we'll do is we'll help connect you with a Bible-believing church in your area.

Well, our thanks to Gene Appel for sharing that message today. And our thanks as well to Acapella Ministries for their music of worship. If you'd like to hear this program again or listen online, visit us at thechristianshour.org. There you'll find today's message as well as every message throughout this series. And if this ministry has encouraged you today, we invite you to consider partnering with us.

The Christians Hour is a listener-supported ministry, and we depend on faithful friends who share our passion for making Christ known through radio and media. To learn more about our ministry here in the United States and around the world, or to make a gift, visit our website again; that's at thechristianshour.org, and then go on and click that give button. Be sure to follow us on our social media platforms as well. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram simply by searching The Christians Hour.

Well, thank you again for listening today. We hope you join us again next week.