Forty-four years ago as I prepared to graduate from High School I faced some important decisions. Should I go to college? Yes. Later, with the Viet Nam war raging, I questioned whether I should enlist in the Navy and go to war? Again, yes.
A few years later I met the girl of my dreams. I faced a most important decision, was this the girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with? Yes! And I asked her that most important question, “Will you marry me?”
Now she had to ask herself, “Do I want to spend the rest of my life with this man?” Thankfully she did. Thirty-eight and a half years later we’re still a couple.
Together now we faced other life-changing questions: should we return to college? Should we have children and when? Together we made the decision to go into business for ourselves.
Almost 13 years later we again faced another, extremely important question, was God calling us into full-time Christian ministry?
I have to admit this decision caused many sleepless nights, long conversations between us, and tears shed before we said, “Yes Lord.”
The point is that as we go through life, we each answer questions that affect the direction of our lives. In my devotional reading for today Joe Stowell wrote, “As a kid one of my favorite pastimes was skipping stones across the surface of a smooth lake. Inevitably, ripples would flow from the impact of the stone.
“It’s like that with choices. Every choice we make creates a ripple effect on our lives as well as on the lives of others. The choices we have made through life determine where we are and what we are becoming. “Choices are also telling. What we really want, love, and think show up in the choices we make. “As a friend of mine wisely told me, our lives are not made by the dreams we dream but by the choices we make. Let’s make excellent ones!”
You can look back in your own life and see those important decisions you’ve made that have made such a difference in your life’s direction.
But understand that in all the very important questions that you must decide about in life, there is one that is most important of all—“What must I do to be saved?” (Read Acts 16:22-31).
Paul and Silas were thrown into prison and placed in stocks because of their witness for Jesus (see vv. 16-21). The scene inn prison is different than you would expect. I would expect them to be crying and moaning, and saying, “Why me God?”
Instead Paul and Silas are singing and praying to God (v. 25). In a miraculous turn of events a mighty earthquake opened the prison doors and loosened all the prisoner’s chains. But not one prisoner escaped.
The jailer, thinking the prisoners he was responsible for were gone, prepared to kill himself. If even one escaped he would face the same penalty of that one.
But from the dark recesses of an open prison door Paul calls to him to stop. This hardened, calloused jailer recognized that Paul and Silas had something that he didn’t have. Their singing, prayers, even the earthquake all conspired to soften his heart to God.
So he asks life’s most important question, Acts 16:31, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” As we prepare for this New Year, look at these three little, but most important words: “must I do.”
“must I do” The word “must” communicates urgency. It tells us that the question of salvation cannot be escaped by any of us. Sooner or later every person faces it.
Fifty-three or 54 years ago a man looked me in the face and said, “Bob, Jesus loves you, and He died on a cross so that your sins would be erased, and God raised Him alive three days later, and He wants to be your Savior. Will you ask Him into your heart?
There is was, laid out right there before me—the most important decision I would ever face in my life. It is a question and decision each of us must face, “What must I do to be saved?”
I faced this question in the relatively unstained innocence of my childhood. Many of you did also. There are children today talking to mommy or daddy or grandma about Jesus. They are facing the question.
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Of course I’m talking about the teenage years. Many young people face this question during the turbulent times of their teenage years.
Young adults are confronted by the question as they start to recognize their frailties and inadequacies. Now they face real life. Mom and dad can’t make decisions for you any more. You are raising families and all that entails. You are facing the question.
Some of you are in your mid-life as you begin to realize that life hasn’t been all you had hoped it would be, and your dreams are unfulfilled. There’s so much you wanted to accomplish, but it isn’t going to happen.
Or, perhaps, your dreams have been fulfilled and you have been successful. But in all your success you realize something is still missing; there is a void in your life. You must face the question.
It could be in the twilight of your life, and death is looming ever closer and closer, and you are beginning to think about going through death’s doors and facing your Creator.
Whenever it is, every one of us must face the question, “What must I do to be saved?” Why? Because there is no way to be relieved of your sins; there is no way to be right with God; there is no way to have assurance about eternity, unless you are saved! It is a very urgent, pressing question.
“must I do? The jailer asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Even though I am talking to all of us, and the room is full of people, the question is personal—it can only be answered by you.
There is no salvation by proxy. No one else can answer the question for you. Mommies and daddies cannot answer the question for their children.
This church can’t make you a Christian; nor can your wife or husband or your friends, not even your children. You must answer the question, make the decision for yourself. It is personal.
In John 3 a man named Nicodemus visited Jesus one night. He was an important man in the Jewish community. Jesus called him Israel’s teacher. As an outstanding teacher he knew the Old Testament and what was needed to be saved.
He was a good and godly man. Jesus knew who he was and where he came from. Yet Jesus said, even to Nicodemus, “Nicodemus, you must be born again.”
In John 4 Jesus met someone at the complete opposite end of the social scale from Nicodemus. We don’t know her name. She was a Samaritan, ostracized by her village because of her immoral life. She came to the well for water, and there was Jesus.
He told her the same thing He told Nicodemus. He told her that He, Jesus, was the living water that would satisfy the deepest longing of her life—how to be right with God.
Then there was the rich young ruler who was very religious, kept the laws, and came from the correct family. Jesus told him to make a decision between his possessions and Jesus.
Each of these three were told they must make a personal decision concerning Jesus. All came to Jesus with the unspoken question, “What must I do to be saved?” It’s a personal question.
The jailer’s life had been turned upside down by the earthquake. All of a sudden he realized his vulnerabilities. His life was in jeopardy, but he wants what Paul and Silas have, salvation!
“must I do” The word “must” made it an urgent question. “I” was personal—he was asking for himself. But he was also being very practical: “What must I do to be saved?”
Notice he didn’t ask, “What must I feel to be saved?” He didn’t say, “What must I think to be saved?” He didn’t ask, “What must I say to be saved?” He said, “What must I do to be saved?”
Our guidebook the Bible, talks at length about God’s love and grace. Because God loves us, His wonderful grace offers us the free gift of salvation.
But you must understand—there is something you must do in order to be saved. You don’t just wake up some morning and discover that somehow in the night you became a Christian.
You don’t go to church and somehow Christianity rubs off on you and you are saved—you don’t catch salvation like a cold. There is something you must do. You must accept God’s gracious gift of salvation.
If you didn’t open your Christmas gifts, then you didn’t truly receive them. They have no meaning to you. In the same way you must accept God’s gift of salvation.
Hours before this hardened jailer had probably ridiculed Paul and Silas because of their Christian witness that brought them to his jail. He ordered them stripped and beaten, taken to a cell in the middle of the dungeons, and their feet placed in stocks.
He may heard them singing and praying to God. He heard the other jailers talk about these strange prisoners.
Now they stood before him undisturbed by fear even amid the earthquake; men who were undismayed at their punishment; who, in fact were praising God for it.
The jailer had looked death right in the face when they stopped his suicide attempt. He knew there was something different about these two men—and he wanted that same peace, that same salvation.
So he asked a very practical question, “What must I do to be saved.” He may have thought he needed to be baptized in the Jordan, or give more money to the synagogue.
No, what he had to do was Acts 16:31, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.” Paul told him that at the very moment of believing in Jesus Christ, he would be saved.
Is that all? Yes! He’s alive! Believing is an act of your will by which you express your faith in Christ and ask Him to come into your life.
It means to put all your trust and confidence in the Lord Jesus. It means to trust Him completely to deliver you from sin, death, and hell.
Jesus’ salvation is offered to everyone. It is offered to you. What must you do? Believe in the Lord Jesus. You don’t have to feel a certain way to be saved.
You don’t have to say certain words to be saved. You don’t have to change and live a righteous life in order to be saved. If this were true, you would never have the assurance that you were good enough. All you have to do is believe in Jesus Christ.
Life’s most important question is, “What must I do to be saved?” Romans 10:13 says, Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Believing in Jesus is accepting God’s gift of salvation. The minute you do, whether you are six or sixty, whether you laugh or cry, whether you understand the doctrine of the Trinity or not, whether in the church or your bedroom, you are saved. It may be a dramatic conversion, such as the Apostle Paul’s, or the simple act of faith of a child. When you call on Jesus as your Savior then, the Bible says, you are saved for all eternity. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing less and nothing more than that!