What must I do to be saved?

That’s the question posed to Paul in Acts 16:16-40. It’s asked by a Philippian jailer who had no familiarity with God or with the Bible.

The jailer was just a regular guy working a regular job for Rome. He guarded all kinds of prisoners in that jail: thieves, trouble-makers, insurrectionists, political activists—you name it. But then one day, he gets a prisoner unlike any he has ever seen. He’s short and unimpressive. He’s ugly. His nose looks like it’s been broken and reset a few times. He’s missing teeth. Nothing about him seems criminal, and yet he has stirred up quite a riot in Philippi. Apparently, he had tried to convert people to a strange new faith and had even bested a local fortune-teller in a religious duel. This earned the strange man an arrest and beating, and yet, when he and his friend were put in the stocks, they began to sing!

Late into the night, the two prisoners prayed and sang hymns. The jailer had never seen anything like it. Who were these guys? As he reflected, he must have fallen asleep, because he awoke to an earthquake shaking the foundations of the jail. Looking around, he saw the prison doors had all opened! The strange prisoner assured him that the inmates were all accounted for, but the jailer figured the gods had to be behind this strange occurrence. Whoever this man was, the Most High God was with him. He had to find out more.

“What must I do to be saved?” he asked the strange prisoner.

Come find out what the jailer found out. See you Sunday!