Well, good morning, Menlo Church. So glad that you are with us. Welcome to one of our favorite weekends around here, where we get to be a part of watching people take the step of making a personal faith public through the act of baptism. We have baptisms happening at all of our campuses today, and we are cheering them on together. Some people are so ready to get baptized, they're like, "Phil, do you really need to preach? Can we just get to the next part?" But thanks for being patient.
Speaking of campuses, we are one church in multiple locations throughout the Bay Area: in Saratoga, Mountain View, Menlo Park, San Mateo. And we have people that join us online every week. So wherever you're joining us from, we're so glad that you're here. I hope that you have a hot cup of coffee, a good donut, and that God is already encouraging you today.
Last weekend, we also had a pretty major day around here, where we capped off a month-long series at the end of a year-and-a-half-long process about the future that we believe God is calling us to, with something that we call the Hope for Everyone Initiative. This initiative is a down payment over the next three years to help us take steps towards the ten-year vision that we believe God is calling us to be a part of: to reach 3% of the Bay Area, 250,000 people over the next ten years, with the good news of Jesus.
Last weekend, we took a step to commit to this first phase together, and every day since, we've had people sending in cards and committing their commitments online. It's been amazing, with stories that in the coming days, weeks, and months, I'm so excited to share with you. God has done amazing work in the lives of people.
The next major day in this initiative is November 10th, which is what we're calling Giving Weekend. There are going to be some people who will set up giving for the first time ever in their life as a follower of Jesus, and other people on the other end of the spectrum will be setting up a significant gift as a part of honoring their commitment, maybe from some stored resources. I'll announce the total commitment amount on that day, but I wanted to remind you of our initial goal first.
The first goal that we have talked about over the last several weeks is participation. We believe God wants to see 100% of people who call Menlo Church home—100% of people participate, to pray, serve, and commit. We have seen some great responses and some incredible, incredible steps of faith that have been taken, and we are really, really encouraged by this.
But we also know that sort of the general trend in church world—not just Menlo, but in church—is that a small percentage of people do a lot of the work. Typically, the way you hear about it in church world is that 20% of the people do the work that 80% requires. So we knew that that would be sort of a push we were going to have.
Over the next few weeks, I'm going to really zero in on the percentage of participation against that goal of 100% before I tell you the total financial amount when we get to November 10th. As of today, we are at 18% of participation across all of Menlo. And this is Menlo Church, so people before were like, "What's the sample size? Tell me how you got the data science." You know, it's like all the questions, which I love, by the way.
That percentage is against the number of active and engaged households at Menlo over the course of any one-month period. That's how we got that number. It's the same number we'll use all the way through. So between now and November 10th, I'll continue to update you on what that percentage is. Hopefully, we'll celebrate it growing as people are taking those steps.
I believe that God will honor this when we all ask Him what He wants us to do, and we respond in obedience to what God calls us to do, with a bold faith for the season ahead. Not only do we believe that the best days of Menlo are ahead, but the best days for you are ahead, and the best days of what God wants to do through you and through Menlo here in the Bay Area.
If you need more information or you want to even make a commitment today, you can do that at Hope for Everyone stations. You can go to Menlo.Church/Hope anytime. If you're watching online or if you're at one of our campuses, we really want to remove every barrier possible to help you take the step that God is asking you to take.
Now, all of that that I've just mentioned is really for people who call Menlo Church home. If you're still trying to figure out if Menlo Church is going to be your church, if this place is your place, or maybe you are here celebrating somebody getting baptized, we're so glad that you're here.
I want to encourage you that on weekends like this, we are really intentional to make sure that we are as prepared as possible for you. If you have decided to follow Jesus at some point in the past but you have never been baptized, it isn't too late. We're so thankful that you're here. After I'm done, you're going to really have it kind of broken down for you a little bit by your campus pastor, who will let you know what it looks like if you feel the pull from God to take this step today.
Wherever you are in your faith, I know that maybe you think, "Well, I'm not sure. I have some questions. I'm not sure what steps to take." There will be somebody that can answer questions for you. There will be clothes for you to change into, a place for you to do that. We've tried to remove as many barriers as possible for you to take that step today.
But before we get started, I'm going to pray for us. If you've never been here before or if you've never heard me speak, before I speak, I pray kneeling. Part of the reason that I do that on a weekend like this one is this beautiful and incredible thing that God continues to use moments like these on days like these to create momentum in the lives of people spiritually.
So I'm praying that God would do that in your life today. Would you pray with me?
God, there are people that came into this room today on autopilot. It's just what they do every week. I pray that you would bring them out of autopilot and engage their soul, God. Show them how much you love them in a fresh and new way.
There are people that are here today, God, and they are ready to take a really significant step. Would you give them encouragement? Calm their spirits if they need it, God. Give them just a small dose of how you love and celebrate this choice in their life.
And there are people who, God, maybe don't even know you or what you've done for them, and they wandered into a room around the Bay Area, or they're here celebrating someone who's getting baptized. God, would you help it be that as they walk out today, they would know beyond a shadow of a doubt the great extent of your love for them as well.
It's in Jesus' name, Amen.
So one thing, if you know me very well, that you probably know is that I am pretty comfortable with technology. I have been my whole life. I don't really know where it got started. It was kind of a unique thing in my family growing up. Part of that has been helping people find deals on technology all the time, like people I haven't talked to sometimes in years that I'll get a text message from, and they're like, "Hey, I'm looking for a 75-inch television that can handle mild glare, and I want to spend this amount."
I don't know why, but I'm like, "Oh, I probably know the answer to that question." It's like a weird side hustle that I don't get paid for. I don't know, you know? So I actually get texts like that, and I will know, like leading up to Prime Day or leading up to Black Friday, people are going to ask me about it. I don't usually buy the deals, but I know what the deals are and can refer them to other people. I can answer pretty quickly. I try to share them even if I'm not using them.
For some of you, you think that's crazy, and you're like, "Why are you consumed with technology like that?" But if my example wasn't technology, but it was clothes or it was travel deals, or if I can step on some of your toes, wine—some of you have more wine club memberships than I do pairs of shoes, okay? I'm just saying before we judge, you know?
And so we all have these areas of our life that are areas of interest or passion that we sort of feel like, "Well, it adds value in the lives of other people. I'm going to share it." Because as I share this thing, it adds value. It naturally comes off of me and out of me. It's easy.
Here's the tough part, though. The tough part is that while there are areas in our life where we do this naturally, oftentimes our faith is not one of them. Some of us, we've been following Jesus for decades, but our faith isn't just personal; it's private. We become secret agents for God. You have people at your school or in your neighborhood or at your work or in your family who would be surprised to discover that you are a follower of Jesus at all.
Now, don't get me wrong. Our faith is absolutely designed to be personal. It's a decision we need to make individually, but it was never designed to stay that way. It was never designed to become private. As a matter of fact, Jesus has some pretty strong warnings for us if it is. He says it like this: "But whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven."
Now, I'm not saying that to scare anyone. That's not the intent of this at all. See, we are supposed to be thoughtful witnesses of the work that God is doing in and through us with our very lives.
What we're going to see from two early Christians is that hope spreads when personal faith becomes public. It actually can't help but do that. That's the model that God has been doing for thousands and thousands of years.
We're going to look at a passage in the Bible that follows the early church in the first century, called the book of Acts, specifically a time when two leaders were put in prison after helping a little girl who was being victimized by owners as a slave, and they essentially got her free of that.
First, they model that faith can't be imprisoned, that no matter what happens in our life, no matter what restrictions exist around us, at the end of the day, it's going to be set free. Some of you hear that and you think, "Yeah, but Phil, you don't know where I work. You don't know where I go to school. You don't know the house that I live in or the family that I'm a part of."
But bear with me, because our faith starts inside of our hearts and our minds, and it spreads from there as we make it known in thoughtful ways throughout our life. The book of Acts is kind of like a travel journal for the early church. It's written by a guy named Luke, who was a first-century physician, and he is believed to have been someone that's writing two different books in the New Testament to a government official that some people think actually became a Christian between the book of Luke, which is an account of Jesus' life, and the book we're about to dive into, the book of Acts.
Because of reading Luke's historically verifiable accounts of the events, we join this travel journal at about the same time that Luke does. Before this, he had been writing based on the eyewitness accounts of others, but just before the passage we're studying, he joins a group of them in what's considered the second missionary journey. Just before this passage, Paul and Silas, two early leaders in the church, have been thrown in prison after being beaten because they had helped a young girl who was a slave to a rich family that was profiting off of victimizing her. That's what they were beaten for.
This is where we pick up the story. It says, "About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's bonds were unfastened."
When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried with a loud voice, "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here."
Now we're introduced to the jailer after Paul and Silas are beaten with rods, and he was given very strict and specific instructions about keeping them safe. After the scene had unfolded, that feels very parallel in some ways to what we see ultimately when we look back at the account of Jesus, where there's this mob of people that have turned on them. So he's keeping them safe, and at this point, they are singing and praying in prison while they are bleeding.
Bleeding and imprisoned, singing and praying. I don't know about you, but that's pretty humbling. There are days where I'm fighting traffic in the Bay Area, and my first instinct is not to sing and pray. Can you think about what it would take in your life for you to not turn to God but turn to bitterness and frustration and anger? I'm guessing it would be something short of being beaten and thrown in prison.
Yet for Paul and Silas, they had seen God show up so many times and in so many ways that being thoughtful witnesses for Him became second nature. I wonder what they were singing. There were already songs being circulated in the early church, and historians have made some guesses. But can you imagine sitting in a jail cell as another prisoner, listening to Paul and Silas sing and pray out loud all night?
One of the things that we say about musical worship around here is that worship is a weapon in the war for our souls. It realigns our focus to the actual reality that the kingdom of heaven is—not just the one that we can see. Paul and Silas, they knew that. That's still true today.
The other prisoners, if you look at the language that this was originally written in, they weren't just passively listening. It's like they were interested. They saw Paul and Silas doing things and behaving in ways that were so different than they would expect Paul and Silas to behave. They didn't let their faith go from personal to private because it was in prison. They stayed public even when it cost them.
I wonder if they were doing like a cadence. I've been in church world for a long time. You know there's like this way you can sing a song, and then you can pray. You can sing a song, and then you can pray back and forth. I don't know what song they were singing, but it was like, "Great is your faithfulness," like back and forth, back and forth. And then they started praying, like, "God, this smelly guy next to me, I don't know what he did, but would you remind him that you love him and that he could know you right now?"
And the guy's like, "You know I can hear you." And they go back and forth and back and forth. All night they're praying. All night they're worshiping. And then something happens. In the midst of that, an earthquake shakes the prison.
Now, an earthquake in this region at this time was not unusual. What was unusual was an earthquake that was so powerful that it shook the foundations of the prison. Not only did it shake the foundations of the prison, it opened the doors of the prison. It broke the shackles of the prisoners. They were free. That was unusual.
As we kind of see this, the guard at some point must have been singing good enough that you could fall asleep to it because the jailer had fallen asleep. He didn't wake up until the earthquake had at least gotten to the point where he assumed everyone had left. He assumed the worst. See, at this time, if you were a jailer and your prisoners had escaped, the most common consequence for that was your execution.
So the jailer, rather than being executed himself, decided he would execute himself. As he's preparing to do that, Paul stops him by shouting, "We are all here." Now, when he says, "We are all here," he's not talking about Paul and Silas. That feels like it was probably easy to assume.
Although some of us as Christians, when God does something and it opens a door that we know would be disobedient to walk through, we go, "God provided," and we still do it anyway. But they wouldn't do that. But they also somehow kept all the other prisoners in the prison. I have no idea how they did this. I don't know if they restrained them. More likely, they convinced them.
These other prisoners didn't flee, and the impact of Paul and Silas' public faith—worshipping and praying with open wounds from their last unjust incident still oozing—had spread hope into the hearts of everyone around them. Part of being a thoughtful witness for Jesus isn't just about getting to heaven someday; it's about bringing the hope of heaven with you every single day.
One thing that we say around here is that personal faith will bring you to heaven, but that public faith brings heaven here. Some of you, you do this. You're amazing at it. You bring heaven with you to work. You bring hope with your friends. You bring hope anytime you interact with people, whether they're followers of Jesus or not. Your thoughtful witness brings the vision and values of the kingdom of heaven naturally into the conversations you're a part of.
You bring hope everywhere because you know that hope spreads when personal faith goes public. It's called that. It's just intuitive because you've been doing it for so long.
So now we're at the point where the prisoners have actually spared the life of the jailer in this crazy role reversal. We see that when we bring hope, we find faith. That faith is actually waiting in the people, places, and circumstances all around us. That God is working in our waiting, that He's been working since before the foundations of the world in every circumstance and situation that you have walked in and that you will walk in.
We find faith waiting. See, it's made visible as we bring the hope that God has placed in us with us wherever we go. Another famous quote from Jesus about the role of public faith comes from the Sermon on the Mount, one of Jesus' most famous sermons. It says, "You're the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."
See, Jesus was a master storyteller. So anytime He was preaching or teaching, He could tap into these ideas and visuals that people had. Ways at the time people would have thought about a city literally on a hill casting light down for regions around it. Over the course of history, the way that we think about that evolves and morphs to the context and situation we think about it today.
For a lot of people, this is just a good metaphor. But for us, if you live in the Bay Area, we get these amazing examples called lighthouses, like the Point Bonita Lighthouse, constructed in the mid-19th century after more than 300 boats ran aground near the Golden Gate Bridge. The lighthouse was never claiming to be the path; it simply illuminated that the path existed all along.
When we are thoughtful witnesses to the hope of heaven in us, that's what our public faith does. You stand as a beacon of light, showing people that there is a path. We get to be lighthouses, showing people the way of Jesus that's always been there. That's what Paul and Silas did that night in prison, and it changed everything.
The story continues this way: "And the jailer called for help. He opened their lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' And they said, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.' And they spoke the word of life to him and to all who were with him in his house. And he took them that same hour of the night and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them, and he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God."
See, the jailer is probably still holding his sword when he finds out that the prisoners—at least one of them that's calling out his name—are still there. He had just been ready to use the sword on himself, and now he's wondering if he's going to have to use the sword to quell a rebellion of prisoners who are now unshackled.
As he walks in, he finds a group of prisoners, probably some of whom were very rowdy when they went in there, peacefully sitting in the dark. Unprompted, he asks a question that really I think all of us ask: "What do I have to do to be saved?" Whether you're a person of faith or not, we are all seeking some version of salvation. Some people do that through accomplishments at work or through acquiring success in this world. Some people think that a vision of relationship or family or personal fulfillment will achieve that.
But he could tell that there was something different about Paul and Silas. This question, "What must I do to be saved?" reveals two things that he already knew. First, that he needed to be saved from something, which again I think all of us intuitively understand. And second, that Paul and Silas had a unique perspective on the answer.
We know from the rest of the Bible the passage that they hadn't shared all the details of the good news of Jesus or the gospel yet, but that their life and their witness were so compelling that hope spread supernaturally. It had spread supernaturally to the point that the other prisoners were still in the prison with them, and it had spread supernaturally to gain influence with the jailer.
Their answer is very simple. It feels too simple, right? "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved." But it carried some really important immediate cultural resistance that maybe has some parallels to us today. You see, they were in a Roman colony where the greatest crime that would have been most likely leveled against people was being subversive to Caesar, in which the most common way to reaffirm your allegiance to Caesar was this line: "Caesar is Lord. Caesar is my ruler. Caesar is my greatest allegiance."
Paul was saying that in order to be saved, Jesus would need to become that authority in his life. And that hasn't changed. He would still be a citizen of Rome, but his greater citizenship, his eternal citizenship, would be the kingdom of heaven. And that's still true today.
When you vote in a few weeks, which you should do, remember that your deeper identity isn't your national or political identity. That if you're a follower of Jesus, it's that you view your politics through the lens of your faith and not the other way around.
The jailer would have understood the profound cost that this call of faith would have represented, and he still agreed to it, even with very limited information. Not only that, but he wanted his entire family there to hear about it. So in the middle of the night, after an earthquake in a partially collapsed prison, they join in or around the prison and share the gospel with them.
It likely included their own story of meeting Jesus, which is pretty powerful all its own, but it also shared these simple ideas of what it means to understand and begin our experience with Jesus by understanding the gospel. See, if you don't know this, the gospel is the good news of salvation. That God made all of us in His image, with infinite dignity, value, and worth, no matter where you've been or what you've done or what time in history that is true.
It's also true that we have all sinned. We have all fallen short of the standard that God set to maintain a relationship with Him. But because He loves us so much, He sent His only Son to live the life that we couldn't, to die the death that we deserve, and to come back from the grave to offer us true life in His kingdom that starts now and lasts forever.
That concept of what it meant to turn from their way, believe and receive, and choose to follow Jesus—that's what Paul and Silas shared with the jailer and his family that night. Not only did he believe it, but it's likely that his entire family believed it.
And there's this wild moment that we see in the text where after that, the jailer, probably still feeling bad at this point and seeing the open wounds from their beating earlier in the day, offers to wash their wounds. Part of me wonders, does Silas look over to that wound water, that basin that they're being washed from, and think, "Hey, speaking of water, do you want to get baptized?"
So that night, in the middle of the night, the jailer went to work, and by the morning, Paul had spared his life, and Jesus had saved his soul. He had offered his life back to Jesus in worship and demonstrated his newly personal faith publicly through baptism. All of that had taken place.
Now, as crazy as this sounds, they even had a reception for the baptism, which is pretty good. I don't think it was a potluck, but it was like, "Let's have some food now." It's been in us for a long time, this amazing celebration of what God did through this jailer, Paul and Silas' thoughtful witness.
That's amazing, right? Church historians believe that this jailer and his family would eventually join the church at Philippi, which is a church that Paul would later preach to and write to. Think about that amazing connection. Every time something is getting read or heard, this jailer thinks back to that night. Imagine him talking about his story of what it meant for him to find and follow Jesus from the least likely of circumstances and how that night in prison was a part of the process.
Think about all the excuses that this jailer could have used for not taking these steps. He could have been fired from his job for the incident. This would have been really professionally embarrassing for him. He hadn't studied enough. He hadn't studied all the teachings of Jesus yet. His wife might get mad at him. You know, seriously, there are more reasons for him to reject this message of hope than to accept it.
But with all the reasons that there were to reject it, there was one that was worth accepting that really moved him, and that was that the God that spared his life had offered to save his life. And that was enough.
See, baptism isn't this thing where in our life we look at it and go, "Well, God hasn't shown up that dramatically." If you're a follower of Jesus, I bet that you have midnight of the soul moments where you can think back and you go, "I didn't know how we were going to get through this. I didn't know how God was going to show up." And He still did.
If you're somebody that's thinking about faith for the first time or for the first time in a long time, God loves you, even if you feel like you're in the middle of one right now. Baptism isn't a sign of maturity; it can't be. I mean, this jailer is minutes old of following Jesus. It's an act of obedience. It's the choice to move your personal faith to a public place for the sake of spreading hope.
Maybe you have your own excuses. You don't understand everything about God or the Bible. Join the club. There are people who aren't here right now that you really want to be here. You didn't bring the clothes that you need to wear. You have questions you need to ask. We have tried to remove every possible barrier.
If you feel like God is calling you to get baptized and take that step to make your personal faith public today, that we might be able to join the party in heaven in your honor. A few days ago, we heard Jesus utter these exact words: "There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not repent, or at least don't think they need to."
So with that in mind, I want to offer you a chance to say yes to Jesus. In just a second, through a simple prayer. But before I do, I want to tell you a little bit of a confession. One of my personal goals this year is to get my California driver's license. I know, I know. Immediately a retired police officer told me I had 10 days just a few minutes ago, so let's just keep it between us. I have a driver's license; it's just for another state.
Part of acknowledging my residency in this state is getting a license for it. I understand that. And I have lots of good excuses, like really good excuses. But none of them will matter if I get pulled over by a police officer who asks me how long I have lived in this state. If they are like, "Hey, you have 10 days to do this. How long have you been here?" Like that would not go great for me, right?
Some of you, you have been following Jesus for a long time, and today, out of love, the Holy Spirit has pulled you over and asked when you are going to take this step. Baptism is a simple act of going under the water and coming up out of it as a way of publicly communicating that Jesus is your Lord, just like He was for that jailer.
And today is the day you can have a midnight experience with God to follow Him for the first time, no matter how long or short you have had it. So if you have never chosen to follow Jesus, I am going to pray a simple prayer. If you are a follower of Jesus and you call Menlo Church home, I am going to ask you, as we give confidence to those praying this prayer for the first time, to repeat this prayer out loud with me to give some confidence to those around you.
This prayer is not a magic spell; it is simply a way to put words to a decision. If you are ready to make that decision to follow Jesus, would you pray these words after me? Menlo, repeat these out loud with me:
"Thank you for loving me. Thank you for sending your Son Jesus to die in my place. Today I choose to trade my life and my plans for yours. I surrender my place as Lord of my own life and give that power to you. Thank you for a brand new start that begins today and lasts forever. In Jesus' name."
You know the thing I love about praying prayers like that across Menlo is I know that God still works and He still moves. There are people in the last few moments that just went from death to life—not just about going to heaven someday, but about addressing the hell they are walking through today, about bringing the hope of heaven with them every day. That is such good news.
If you just prayed that prayer for the first time, even you are qualified to go public with that faith through baptism in just a second. Campus pastors will come up and direct you as to how. But please know you are loved by God, no matter where you are in your walk with Him. The stories you are about to hear just underscore that reality that is still available to you.
Would you pray with me?
God, thank you so much. Thank you for the working power that you still have today that you extend in and through our lives. Thank you for the incredible hope and promise that we have from you and in you. Right now today, would you do the work that only you can in the lives of those that you are and we are wishing to take another step with you?
For people, God, who maybe just made a decision to follow you, would you help them to hear from you clearly if you are calling them to take this step right now, here today? And for those stories that we are about to hear, God, would you help infuse in our hearts as a community a love for these people, your sons and your daughters, that we are adopted brothers and sisters of?
That God, together, we would continue to grow in community like only you can provide. We thank you so much. Amen.
on Oct 20, 2024
