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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus

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Christ. Amen.

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Our scripture reading this morning from the book of Acts describes how Paul and Silas

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were arrested, stripped of their clothing, severely beaten, and then locked away in prison.

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Our reading also describes how despite all of that, they were singing praises to God.

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Now, doing such a thing after receiving such treatment is, humanly speaking, doesn't make

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sense.

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Most of us, or all of us, have been baptized.

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We have received God's grace.

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We've come to faith in Christ.

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But most of us have not been tortured.

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Most of us have not been stripped, beaten, thrown into a dungeon, and locked in stocks.

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And despite the most important thing, our baptism and our faith, if you and I had just

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received such treatment, likely we would probably not be quite as joyful.

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And rather than singing songs and praises at that moment, we might probably be saying

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something else like, ouch.

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And we'd probably be nursing our wounds with our tears and with our fears that this type

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of treatment is going to continue.

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So, how in the world could Paul and Silas do what they did?

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And why would Paul and Silas do this?

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I'm going to answer my own question with a question.

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The question is, why does this seminary exist?

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Why does this seminary exist?

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Does it exist for the teaching, teaching people how to live a holy life?

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Does it exist for teaching people how to live a life of church leadership?

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Does it exist for teaching people how to live out a rewarding and respectable vocation of

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faith?

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Somewhat maybe, yes.

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But the seminary exists not so much to teach us how to live, rather to teach us how to

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die.

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To teach us how to die to self so that you and I are now capable of living for God and

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others.

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Now, we can be like Paul and Silas.

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We can do this because the only reason they were able to do this is that they had died

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to self and they were living for Christ.

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They were living to serve God and others by living the gospel and sharing the gospel.

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Doing that is not possible until you have died and until I have died to self.

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I am an alumni of this seminary.

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And before I ever set foot on this seminary, before I ever applied to be accepted at this

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seminary, when I was talking to my pastors at my home church about the possibility of

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maybe coming here, I was talking to those two pastors and I knew them well.

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And they were telling me how great this place was, how much they enjoyed it.

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But then I interrupted them and I said, I hear all that, but I know you guys.

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I know you.

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And I know that you work all day, every day, seven days a week.

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And I know that into the night, in the middle of the night, in the middle of mealtime with

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your family, in the middle of mealtime at our house, you get calls and you get up and

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you leave.

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You leave your wife, you leave your family, you leave whoever you're with and you go back

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to work.

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I said, I know you guys and you guys don't have a life.

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And their response to me was, this is your life.

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They said, if you get into public ministry, this is your life.

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To this day, that echoes through my mind and through my wifey's mind when I get up and

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lay in the middle of anything and everything all the time.

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And so Paul and Silas' experience in our reading today actually fits into my pastor's explanation

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to me about their life, your life, our life of following and serving Christ.

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Paul and Silas had what the Bible explains is the peace of Christ that surpasses all

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human understanding.

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And because they had that peace, they knew that the cross of Christ is everything.

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It's big enough, not just for all their sins, but for all their challenges.

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They knew that they were sinners and they did not deserve God's grace, but despite their

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total unworthiness, they knew that they were forgiven.

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They knew that they were redeemed and they knew that they were His, that they belonged

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to Him.

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They knew that their jars of clay, temporary, earthly, breakable bodies will crack and will

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suffer and will die.

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But they also knew that their spirit, their soul would never, ever die.

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They knew that the resurrection of Christ, the cross and the resurrection of Christ guaranteed

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their resurrection in Christ.

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They knew all of that and they knew that the torture that they had just experienced in

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the world that they were still in were only light and momentary little challenges compared

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to the eternal glory that awaits them and far outweighs all of their sufferings.

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They knew that everything Jesus had said was true, especially the part of, if they hated

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me they will hate you.

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They knew that.

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And so they knew that picking up their cross and following Him is actually a good thing,

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not a bad thing.

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The suffering that they're enduring is actually evidence that they are indeed following Christ.

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And so they did not attend this seminary but they had a glimpse of the theology of the

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cross rather than the theology of glory.

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They attended a better seminary, if there is such a thing, excuse me, professors.

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But God Himself in them helped them to know all these things that they knew.

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And they knew again that everything they were going through and had to go through and they

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might still be about to go through worse, even worse right then, was again a blessing.

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A blessing that if you ever are wondering, am I following Christ well?

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This is evidence.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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You are following Christ well and what He promised, can you drink from the cup that

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I can?

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They were drinking from that cup.

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And so all of us, whether we are in public ministry or in any believer's daily Christian

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living, followers of Christ will never live out a more powerful witness for Christ than

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when others are watching us go through suffering with our eyes on Christ as we go through that

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suffering.

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Nothing will ever be a more powerful witness coming from you or coming from me than what

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we live out in front of them while they are watching and while they are listening in our

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worst and darkest hour.

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If anyone had good reason to be sad, defeated, scared, and crying, it was Paul and Silas

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at this moment that we read about this morning.

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But instead, they were praising the Lord and praying.

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And one of the coolest parts about this scripture we read this morning, while they were doing

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this, the scripture says, and everyone was listening.

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Everyone was listening.

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Some of you may have been there in hospital rooms watching some of your congregation suffer

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dying.

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And some of you have seen this.

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Some of you have seen the doctors and the nurses and the technicians standing around

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wondering what's wrong with your church member because they've got every reason to be sad

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and defeated, yet they're smiling and they're happy and they're confident in Christ.

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Some of you have seen exactly what's read to us in our scripture today.

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And so that witness of Paul and Silas and that witness of your church members when they

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are suffering with their eyes on Christ, touched the hearts of the jailer and the other inmates.

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They all came to faith and they were all baptized, their entire family, infants and everything.

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And the passage of scripture here today is not only powerful, but it's powerful for us

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today.

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You know, we read something like that and we shiver, especially you wives thinking,

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is this going to happen to my husband and to us?

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Yes, yes, in some way or another.

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When I entered the seminary, the president of the seminary, my first day here, he said,

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I got good news and bad news for you guys.

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He said, from the moment you enrolled in the seminary, and especially when you took the

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first step on the seminary, Satan drew a bullseye on your forehead because he hated you as a

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believer and now he really hates you that you're in the fight against him.

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He said, and I'm sorry to tell you this, but he's going to draw a bullseye on your wife

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and your kid's forehead and he's going to attack you to try to keep you from keeping

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your eyes on Christ.

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And so this scripture is for all of us and it teaches all of us how to die, how to die

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to self so that we can not only personally have the peace that surpasses all understanding

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personally, but so that everyone around you, anywhere in your sphere of influence, watching

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you, listening to you, will want what you have.

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They'll want the feeling of knowing that they are forgiven and that they are His.

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They'll want the Christ in you to be the Christ in them.

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They will want that because of the way that you are facing suffering.

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When our response to the gospel is to receive God's grace by faith, we are forgiven.

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We are saved and we are redeemed.

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And after we receive God's free gift of grace by faith alone in Christ alone, our gratefulness

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for that free gift of grace, our gratefulness for the cross should provoke a response and

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that response should be a desire to follow Christ in season and out of season.

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Let's all be in prayer that God will enable us to live a witness of following Christ that

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compels others to do the same, especially when it humanly doesn't make sense.

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Amen.

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Please stand.