Introduction from Acts
Acts 16:9-34
Acts 16:9-34
Let’s pray…
Tonight we will begin a study of the book of Philippians. This series will likely take us into the New Year, with obvious brakes for holiday messages and stand alone sermons that might come up.
Otherwise we are going to delve into one of my favorite books in the New Testament, and the entire Bible for that matter.
Philippians is a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Philippi. Out of all of the letters to churches, this is the most encouraging. In fact, this is the one letter where we don’t see Paul having to correct the church or an individual on some errant behavior or teaching.
It is praise, and prayer, and gratitude, and warnings to stay on guard, and admonitions to stay on mission.
So, let’s dig in now to our study of Philippians by turning to Acts 16.
In Acts we see the formation of the church, the first recorded conversions of believers in Philippi. And I think that we should find out what we can about the church’s beginnings so that we can learn all that God would tell us about this place.
So we’re going to go through more text than usual and I’m just going to freeze frame along the way to point out some vital nuggets — some take aways — for us tonight.
And remember, this is a teaching time, but it’s not just some academic exercise. I don’t harp on you to take notes because I much rather make sure that this stuff is sinking in, into your hearts, amen.
There’s not a pop-quiz after the message. Instead I’ve been praying that the Holy Spirit will use these next few minutes to cause life change — heart change — right where you are.
If you’ve had something in your head about the faith that wasn’t true, I pray that those strongholds and misconceptions would be broken down and you might see the amazing beauty of God in these verses.
And just for a hint, the big ideas from this are first, the all-encompassing love of the Father, He doesn’t care where you came from, only where you are going.
We’re going to see three people with strong God encounters, one’s a rich lady, one’s a possessed woman and the other is a common blue-collar type guy.
And secondly, the sovereignty of God; how He can use what seems to us like a hardship or a trial to advance His Kingdom and His plan of restoration in the world.
So let’s dig in. And we’ll read and unpack as we go.
Acts 16:9-34 (New International Version)
Now before verse 9, we see Paul and Silas trying to reach into other areas to do mission work, but they keep getting pushed back on, there is something keeping them from moving on their planned route.
9 During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." 10 After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.
Unpack: When God says, GO. We go, Amen? We don’t argue. We don’t weigh out all the pros and cons, no! IF YOU'VE CONCLUDED THAT GOD HAS CALLED YOU to a task, Do IT!
That’s how this church in Philippi was to begin. And listen; if it is not of God, He will set you straight. But if you feel a compelling from God and the call doesn’t violate what Scripture teaches, Go For IT.
We don’t have enough Christians living out bold, dangerous faith. We’ve made faith so safe, so pedestrian, so sensible that it has become anemic, and impotent.
Go! What are you waiting for? Moving on…
11 From Troas we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day on to Neapolis. 12 From there we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days.
13 On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there.
Okay, now we’re going to meet the first of a handful of people that are key in the history of the Philippian church.
14 One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. 15 When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. "If you consider me a believer in the Lord," she said, "come and stay at my house." And she persuaded us.
Now, when we look here at Lydia we find a foreigner who by all accounts is wealthy (Purple cloth) and independent (her household, not a man’s household), both of which in their time, were not very common.
The next thing that we see is that she was a worshiper of God. Some say this means that she was a God-fearer, which was the distinction of non-Jews who believed what the Jews taught about the one true God.
I’m not sure that this holds water, because there is no mention of Jews living in Philippi at the time. In other towns, Paul always began his ministry in the synagogue.
He didn’t find one in Philippi, so he found where people were worshiping, here at the river.
It is possible they were god-fearers, just as likely though, is that Lydia was to a point in her life where she had come to realize that there was a god, but she didn’t know who He was yet.
We see this in Romans 1:18-20, where Paul writes:
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
So, Lydia knew, someone, somewhere created all this, and she was looking for answers. And when God puts that thirst in your heart, it means He is pursuing you and He will get you. Praise God! Look how easy it is for Paul:
14b The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. 15 When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. "If you consider me a believer in the Lord," she said, "come and stay at my house." And she persuaded us.
Now look at this, the Lord opened her heart, He made it possible, her very faith, the thing that saved her, was a gift in itself from God.
And what happens, she responds, she goes public with her faith, she is baptized, the faith quickly spreads to those in her household, they are baptized and then she becomes the encouraging, hospitable co-laborer that God designed her and equipped her to be.
Now we are moving on to the next encounter. And while we don’t know that this next girl gets saved, it’s a pretty good assumption.
16 Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune telling. 17 This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, "These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved." 18 She kept this up for many days.
Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!" At that moment the spirit left her.
A few things to note here, first, this girl, unlike Lydia, was not independent, she was possessed by demons, the Greek text called her a pythoness, or one with the spirit of a python, which referred to their belief that the snake had powers to discern the future.
Second, not only was she was under the control of Satan, of demonic spirits; she was also being pimped out to do her fortune telling by her owners.
As Tim Keller says, she was owned internally, in her spirit, which led her to be owned externally.
We still see this today, there are many women who are spiritually so possessed by self-doubt, or guilt or shame, that they allow themselves to be taken advantage of. There are those too, men and women, who have been spiritually devastated by their addictions to drugs and drinking and that dependence causes them to do things and come into contact with people that they would never in there right mind (or right spirit) come into contact with.
And those are worldly answers; I believe that we in the church are too apt to write off the demonic possession as a factor.
I have never seen it or discerned what I have seen as possession, but we shouldn’t scoff at that either.
The next thing we should note is that while possessed, the girl doesn’t lie does she? No, she spells it out pretty clearly “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.”
So what does that tell us? The same thing we learned in the temptation of Jesus in the desert. Satan used Scripture to try to trip up Jesus. He used it falsely, but still He used Scripture.
In this case, Satan uses the girl to tell the truth and the truth annoys Paul, why? First off, she was following them and shouting, now I wish we could know what tone she had (was this shouting like a royal announcer in the king’s court or like an antagonistic sibling on a long car ride?).
Either way, she was shouting and she did this for many days. That would annoy anyone.
Secondly, she was doing this in an area where Paul and Silas were trying to bring people to Christ. Who wants to join an outfit with that loudspeaker going off in their ear?
Finally, this is probably the most important, God sets aside His people to proclaim the truth, if it is coming from someone that is demon possessed, it is for bad motives. Possible the demon wanted to get at Paul’s pride. Maybe the shouting was like a royal proclamation. Maybe that made him feel a little too big for his britches and he knew how dangerous that could be.
I know a pastor, who doesn’t want their name on the church sign because they know that it becomes a source of pride that goes after their heart.
Regardless, Paul nips it in the bud with a direct and powerful Jesus encounter. With Lydia, Jesus was delivered through reason. With the demon-possessed girl, the presentation was all about power. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!" At that moment the spirit left her.
And again, this text doesn’t say that she was converted, but I tend to favor that interpretation. We may not know until we are in Heaven and can ask for ourselves. Anyway, moving on…
19 When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities.
Why did Paul and Silas get the rough treatment? Because, they got to the pockets of the people. If you want to know how someone feels about God — if you want to know how you feel about God — wait until money comes up.
What happens when faith means leaving a job that pays well? What happens when the church folk hear a sermon on giving in the church? What happens when the public finds out the church wants to help the homeless in the area? Arguments start arising about how helping the homeless with a shelter or soup kitchen in their neighborhood will hurt property values.
As one pastor put it recently, your wallet will be the first to call you a liar, if you are serving money, but claim to serve Christ.
In this story, we aren’t seeing this in believers, but notice that Paul had been in Philippi for at least several days preaching the gospel, bringing in converts — all for several days.
All that time the fortuneteller’s pimps were fine with Paul, but once their revenue stream dried up they get a mob together.
20 They brought them before the magistrates and said, "These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar 21 by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice."
22 The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten.
Notice the racial dynamic here. Again there was no synagogue that we know of in Philippi, so the Jewish culture was not well know, there were a lot of questions about these Jewish people.
And if history has proven anything it’s that the culture that is not understood is not trusted and is treated in a sub-human way.
Paul and Silas are not given a fair trail; they are disgraced and beaten in public. This will backfire on the Philippian rulers later if you read on past where we are going tonight, but let’s move on…
23 After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. 24 Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
So we are introduced to the third major player in Paul and Silas’ story. If Lydia was the aristocratic, white-collar, upper middle class person; and the fortuneteller was on level with a prostitute today; then our Jailer would fall into a blue-collar type factory worker or maybe even a guard at the correctional facility.
This guy has some gusto in the way he treats Paul and Silas. Maybe it is because he’s got some racist tendencies toward the Jews like the Philippian mob.
Or maybe he just likes to be cautious. Either way, these two have just been heavily beaten. They weren’t going anywhere. But he still sends them to the inner cell, and then in stocks, an incredibly uncomfortable device that spreads their feet apart and makes laying down or even sitting comfortably impossible. It was a form of torture.
But, what do they do? They sing. They praise God. This is so important and it is a key to understanding Paul, they guy who wrote the letter of Philippians. In Romans 5:3-4 Paul writes:
3…we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope.
And in Romans 12:11-12 he tells the believers (He tells us):
11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
And in Colossians 1:24:
24 Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.
Today, we are so used to throwing in the towel when things get rough
Rough in our work, in our marriages, in our families as parents or as children caring for aging parents, or even in the church. A person skips from one congregation to the next if the preaching makes them uncomfortable.
We don’t deal with trials today, we run away.
Paul, when he was establishing this church — The healthiest church that we see in the New Testament — began by showing them how to handle the persecution and lashes and suffering that was sure to come.
Back to Acts 16:
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.
Do you know how much gospel you can slip into people’s lives by song and prayer? Use every opportunity. Every opportunity. Listen, when you are being persecuted, everyone is going to want to see how you respond.
WHEN the world comes up against you, WHEN you get squeezed, look at that as a small soapbox. Somebody’s listening for a reaction.
Don’t use it to fight for your rights. Don’t use it to tear down the other guy. Use that moment; that chance; that divine appointment; that strategic placement to SAVE SOULS!
Get the Gospel Out! And then watch God move where He will.
26 Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody's chains came loose. 27 The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul shouted, "Don't harm yourself! We are all here!"
29 The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 He then brought them out and asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
31 They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household." 32 Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. 33 At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized. 34 The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole family.
This is amazing, the power of God grabs the man, and it infiltrates his whole family. Why, because these two nameless prisoners showed him a power that he had never seen before.
He was a slave to the job, to the position, to the post, but what he swore his allegiance to never produced the power that these men found in their God. When he saw God reflected in their courage and their character he wanted it.
Listen we could keep going, I wanted to go through verse 40 because it is amazing the strength and courage Paul and Silas continued to show in this situation. But there’s no time this week.
If you have a bible, go and read it for yourself tonight when you get home, dwell in the word tonight all right?
Before we dismiss, though, again there is a lot to digest in these verses. My question is, where are you in this text that we read tonight?
Are you Lydia. Are you the person who has achieved worldly success, only to find out that it doesn’t satisfy? If so, know that the only thing that will ever really satisfy you, the only thing that will ever offer lasting fulfillment is a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Or are you the possessed woman? Maybe you are possessed by an actual demon that can be discerned. But maybe something else, or someone is calling the shots in your life.
I know where you are coming from if this is you. I used to be enslaved, possessed by alcoholism. It controlled where I went, how long I stayed, who I hung around with, you name it. The drink owned me. It was my god.
Maybe you are in the same boat, or maybe you are controlled by drugs or
fear, or
debt, or
past mistakes and guilt from those mistakes or family history,
or an abusive past.
We’ve talked about this before. What owns you? What or who calling the shots?
If you are like I was, the answer is not to just stop subjecting your self to that other thing, No!
Jesus teaches in Matthew 12:43-45 that:
43 "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44 Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45 Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first..."
Listen I see a lot of drunks who just stop drinking, they put the plug in the jug and they think that will fix everything. What Jesus teaches and what several now-dead alcoholics have taught me is that if you just try to stop bad behavior, it may work for a time, but it will eventually creep back in and it will be stronger than ever.
Instead replace that old slave master with the bigger better, more loving REAL God. That’s Jesus Christ.
Maybe that’s not you. Maybe you are a thoroughly practical person like the jailer. And maybe you’ve put all your eggs in the basket of your work or your family or whatever. When that one thing that has always worked and has always brought you a level of contentment fades away or is taken away in an instant, what will you fall back on?
When the earthquake came and the prisoners were freed from their chains, the way that the jailer defined his life disappeared. Rome didn’t care about excuses or reasons, there was satisfactory performance or the sword.
I would urge you, don’t wait for the economic catastrophe that takes away the job, or the tragedy that takes away the family, or the accident that takes away you health or abilities.
And don’t wait for time to take away all of those things, which it will. Don’t wait for that moment to find out you have nothing else to live for. Turn to God and LIVE for Christ.
Finally, if you are already a believer, which I think that most of you are, then can I plead with you to live the prison life with Paul and Silas. Live the prison life.
No matter what, sing the praises and rejoice in the Lord. When things are going well and when the world is crashing down around you. Let your praise fill the air.
You never know how or when God will position you to usher another soul into the Kingdom through your living testimony. So, for the sake of the lost and the searching, LIVE the Gospel.
Let’s pray…
