Into unanticipated places
Acts 16:11-40
We have just seen together a dramatic sketch of Acts 16:25-40 recounting the story of a former Roman soldier who, in the latter days of his career, had become a jailor in the Roman city of Philippi. We hear of him coming to faith in Jesus and having his life and his family's lives turned around.
This truly is a beautiful miracle story of God sending an earthquake powerful enough to break prison chains and open prison doors. It's a story of the faithful and joy-filled witness of Paul and Silas who praised God and sang songs to God in the night in the midst of injustice and physical pain. It's the account of men who refused to abandon a cruel crusty jailor to his fate once their chains were gone. Because of it all, a family was saved and a church was launched that included some very, very unlikely people and became one of the most vibrant churches in the world. For centuries now, God's people have told and retold this story.
But, when you think about it, the story by itself raises all sorts of questions. Among them:
• What are these Jewish Christian men doing in Philippi?
• Why were Christians in a Philippian jail?
• In what ways would a religion rooted in Judaism have anything to offer a Roman jailor?
These kinds of questions take us back to what Luke, the author of Acts, has been telling us throughout his book. The Book of Acts is a remarkable story of how God is at work in this world. Mostly, I want you to see today how God's gospel message that was clarified in the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 stays the same at all times and in all places. The gospel of Jesus Christ never changes. But, at the same time, the gospel breaks forth into different lives in amazingly different ways. When it does, people's lives are transformed. We'll look at the three stories of very different kinds of people coming to Jesus in the city of Philippi. As we do so, I pray that you'll consider your own response to the Gospel as well as your privilege to carry God's good news to all people. I'll begin by taking us back to that seminal decision made in Acts 15.
The Divine Butterfly Effect: A Wise Decision Made in One Place May Impact the World.
In Acts 15, we saw the early church, made up of almost all Jewish Christians, engaged in a challenging conflict about what was at the heart of the Christian faith. Do you remember it? As people began following Jesus from all people groups, they had to lay the foundation of the essential things that all believers everywhere would have to embrace. I pointed out several essential things in my message from this text:
• That people are saved not by works but by the grace of God received by faith alone in Christ alone. I hope you remember the point that the Apostle Peter made, i.e., "We Jewish people have never been able to earn our way to God by keeping the law. Why should we put that yoke on Gentiles now that God has declared he cleanses us and receives us all by faith?"
• That all people receive the indwelling presence of God's Spirit when they place their faith in Jesus. Peter, Paul and Barnabas all gave testimonies about how God was doing this among Jewish believers, Samaritan believers, and Gentile believers. The point was that if God himself chooses to dwell within people, on what basis could we deny that they are in his family.
My point today is that this decision was made in a gathering of all Jewish men, men who were a minority in their own society because they were Christians, and men who were meeting in one city that was far away from the big cultural centers of the ancient world – like Rome and Alexandria. However, the faithfulness of this group to seek the Lord together and follow God's leading would soon be used in ways they surely never could have imagined. It's like that old movie Butterfly Effect that was based on a tenet in chaos theory that says that material or sense dependency of things in the universe on one another makes it so that a small change at one place can result in large differences in a later place. http://dubemmenakaya.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/butterfly_effect__by_systemize_erick-d313xnn.jpg
The Bible takes the idea of a "butterfly effect" out of the realm of random material cause and effect and teaches that God is personally involved in the world in such a way that he will use your faithfulness in small things to do more than you could ever ask or imagine. God's call upon your life is to seek to obey him in the small things – even when you cannot fathom how he will bring blessing out of your faithfulness.
Now we will see three very different kinds of people in Philippi who were affected by this decision.
#1: Lydia's Story: God's Gospel Fulfills (16:11-15)
In 16:1-10, we see how God used a vision to send Paul to a place Paul had not wanted to go to. Instead of going to Asia as he had planned, he ended up going to a relatively new city in what is now Greece claimed by the Caesar Augustus less than a century before Paul went there and used as a Roman outpost. The emperor had populated the city with Roman citizens, largely former Roman soldiers and their families. http://holylandarchive.com/section_images/329_PhilippiMap041117.jpg
This brings us to a very unanticipated encounter reported in 16:11-15. I imagine Paul and his companion Silas walking through the city and wondering, "Here we are. This is where God has led us. But we don't know anyone. We have few resources. What do we do now?" What would you have done?
Paul began with one thing that was natural for him but then had to do something that went against his human inclinations. The thing that Paul did that was fully consistent with his life before meeting Jesus was that he looked for a Jewish synagogue. That's where other Jewish people would have been. Paul almost always started ministry by going to a synagogue. But, there was no synagogue in Philippi. He somehow got a tip telling him that what was called a "place of prayer" outside the city and alongside the river. This location reveals what a marginalized group the Jewish people were in that Roman city. In addition, to have an official synagogue required having ten men. Obviously, there were not enough Jewish men in the city committed enough to Jehovah to form a synagogue. In that situation, the gathering of Jehovah worshippers was called a "place of prayer". So, Paul and Silas went to look for it.
That brings us to the faith-filled decision that Paul made. He offered the gospel to women. When Paul got to the place of prayer, he discovered there were no men there at all. Remember that Paul had been a Pharisee. Before meeting Jesus, he would have been taught that women could not be educated. No credible rabbi would ever teach a woman. So, think about it: God had sent Paul to this city. But, the only connections Paul could find were people so marginalized they had to meet outside at a river – and there were only women there! We see how meeting Jesus changes people when we read what Luke records in v. 13: "We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there."
I doubt that these Jewish Christians could ever have imagined what God would do through their faithful obedience. Could you have? One of the women at the place of prayer was a remarkable woman named Lydia. She's called "a worshiper of God". This was a term used for a person who once was a polytheist but now thought there was only one God. She was probably seeking to learn about him. Matt Barnes calls her a sojourner, i.e., one who is looking to know God in her life's journey. As I read this story, I see immediately that Lydia was enormously successful in her career. She is also a natural and gifted leader. But, it's also clear that something is missing in her life. She knows there is one God – but she doesn't know God. Like all of us, Lydia is a human being made to have God in her life – but she was still seeking.
Notice this: The decision made back at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 opened the door to Paul and Silas to bring the gospel to her. At that gathering, they had clarified that that Jew and Gentile, men and women, rich and poor need only receive Jesus by faith to be born again, made alive to God. And Lydia did receive Jesus. I love how Luke wrote about it in v. 14: "The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message." This may have seemed like a chance encounter. But, no, it was a divine appointment. Who could have known? There had been a longing in her heart and the gospel of Jesus filled that longing.
Lydia was baptized. And her whole family was baptized. Then she opened her home to Paul, Silas and Luke. Lydia must have been quite a woman. Read v.15. I don't think she would have been easy to say "no" to. She was a businesswoman and leader. Lydia was either widowed or divorced but she was not in despair. She had her business, her home and headed her family. I envision her as being the owner of a successful boutique in Beverly Hills who had come to Pasadena because the Chamber of Commerce wanted her to open up a shop down at Old Pasadena too.
What we see is that Lydia had the same natural gifts and resources as a believer as she had possessed beforehand. But now, she dedicated all she was and all she had for God! She used her home to be the center for a new church that was about to be formed (cf., 16:40). She used her leadership gifts to bring people together. I imagine we all know people like Lydia. You may even be like Lydia. Maybe you go to church knowing that there is a God – but you do not know him personally. You've come because you are ready to meet him. Let me tell you: God is ready to meet you to. He asks you to turn from whatever sin is in your life and place your faith in Jesus. Is God "opening your heart" to him even now? Then believe – believe now.
And for the rest of us, when you leave today, never think that the person you meet in the coming week is a random or unimportant encounter. It may be a divine appointment. God simply asks you to stop and give witness to his reality. Meet people with respect – even people very different from yourself. Sit down and share with them about Jesus. You may never be able to imagine what God will do.
#2: The Slave Girl's Story: God's Gospel Sets Free (16:16-21)
Paul, Silas and Luke kept going out to the "place of prayer" to tell about Jesus and to teach the new believers in 16:16-21. This brought about another unanticipated "divine appointment". Read vv.16-18a.
Note this: If Paul had not chosen to go to Philippi in keeping with God's leading (16:1-10), and then to go and give witness to these marginalized women by the river (16:11-15), and then to keep going out to teach and give witness 16:16a), what we read about in these verses would never have happened.
Let me tell you about this girl: A "slave girl" like this usually got herself into slavery because of a financial debt either she or her family had. She had to work off that debt by serving those she was indebted to as a slave. In Homer and other Greek and Roman writing, this kind of person was never was able to gain freedom and often ended up in prostitution. Of course, this girl had a paranormal gift to be able to tell the future. The word Luke used for the spirit in her was a "pythonic spirit", a word used for powers coming not from God but from the occult. So, the girl was very different from Lydia. Lydia was in control but this girl contained nothing. Like Lydia, she earned money but the money belonged to someone else.
Like the demons who encountered Jesus in Mark 1, the spirit in her knew something about the "Most High God" and rightly knew that these men offered God's way to salvation. However, the way the girl made these things known only drove people away from the gospel. For many days, she kept yelling the same thing over and over and over! Finally, Paul could handle it no longer. The Bible tells us be became "annoyed" in v.18b. This word "annoyed" is never used positively in the ancient world. It means agitated or worked up. Remember that Paul is still human and in his frustration, he casts the spirit out of the girl in the name of Jesus. This seems to have been weak moment for Paul. Still, the girl is set free from demonic oppression.
The Bible tells us nothing more about the girl. It doesn't tell us whether she became a Christian or joined the church. It doesn't tell us whether her owners set her free. It doesn't tell us any of the things we wonder about her. But, as you might imagine, later traditions fill in the story. What later Christians say about her is that she became a Christian that day and that she became an active part of the church. They say that Lydia took her into her home, paid off her debt and set her free from slavery. And, I think that rings true to many, many lives of people who have met Jesus over the centuries.
Here was a young woman made in God's image who was only valued for the money she could make others. As such, she is like countless people in every part of the world including our own. I have heard the stories so often of people who work for decades in a firm to help the company to be profitable. But, when their salary seems too high or they seem no longer to be useful, they are cast off. I know people whose own self-worth is dependent on continuing to be the moneymaker in the family, the productive one at work, or even the CEO that everyone depends on for their livelihood. When that job is gone, they feel worthless. Of course, we still have many, like this woman, who are trapped in trafficking industries with no apparent ways out. We all need an identity in Christ that can never be taken away.
What we see is that it is Jesus who sets free. Lydia needed God to bring her good news that her longing for him could be fulfilled. He was ready to come in and fill her life. This girl needed to know that she had value more than just being the moneymaker for her slave-owners. It was the same Jesus and the same gospel. But, each of these women had different needs. And the answer to those needs both started with Jesus.
#3: The Jailor's Story: The Gospel Rescues (16:22-40)
The most detailed part of Luke's testimony is recorded in 16:19-40 and happens in, of all places, a Philippian prison: https://unbound.biola.edu/acts/images/prison.gif When the girl is set free from the spirit in the name of Jesus, this sets off a chain reaction. The slave owners lose their moneymaker and seize Paul and Silas. They unjustly accuse them before the magistrates. To appease the crowd the authorities have them stripped, brutally flogged, and thrown into prison. The prison guard, a retired Roman military man, was even more brutal as he placed them in the worst part of the prison and fastened their feet in stocks, which were a part of Roman torture because it stretched them in ways causing incredible pain.
Here's what I want you to notice: Paul and Silas would never have been in this place:
• had they not obeyed God's call to go to Europe rather than Asia,
• had they not valued women as being made in God's image and spoken to women in an obscure place,
• had they not sacrificed to go back day after day to teach new believers at the place of prayer,
• had they not set a young girl free from oppression in the name of Jesus.
Being in this prison was a divine appointment. It was due to God's leading. In that place that they never would have chosen, God sent to them a man they could never have imagined would be open to the gospel. God asked them only to be faithful in that difficult place – and they were. They were praying out loud and singing songs in the night in v.25. Everyone had to listen to them. And, in the midst of their pain and bleeding and torture, God sent an earthquake strong enough to open prison doors and break prison chains.
And God gave them compassion for the prison guard who tortured them. If a jailor lost his prisoners, he would have been killed. Paul and Silas knew this. So they did not abandon the one who had been so cruel to them. This decision required the power of the Spirit, don't you think? And God gave them favor to somehow keep the other prisoners from running away too. So this hardened military man, so different in every way from Lydia and the slave girls, was in trouble. And, he knew he needed to be saved.
This man was would probably be played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in a movie. He was strong and independent. But, God opened his heart in ways very different from the others. The jailor had heard the singing and praying and the message of salvation. Paul told him, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." And he believed. And his family believed. And his life was changed. See vv. 32-34. No longer a brutal torturer, he took care of their wounds and brought them into his house. And they went and they ate together. Jewish men in a Roman soldier's home having table fellowship. It's a miracle! The gospel changes the lives of wealthy business people, of those who feel trapped and worthless, and who feel strong and independent. It's the same gospel and it saves and transforms all who receive it.
What might God be saying to you from his Word today? Let me leave you with a few thoughts:
• God is at work throughout his world – and that includes your life. When you end up being in a place you never would have chosen or in a situation you never would want, you can know that God is still ready to do a work in that place and situation both in you and through you.
• Each person you meet has a need to meet God. All human beings have been made to have God at the center of their lives. God loves people and is ready to enter in and set them free no matter what their background may be. And, his work begins when people trust Jesus.
• The gospel is sufficient for each need. But the same good news that is centered in the person of Jesus spoke into each life in such different ways. The gospel of Jesus is sufficient for you today – and everyone you meet this week.
• Your calling is to be a witness to Jesus in word and action. You might want to live in one place and then find yourself in another. You might want to have one profession and find it's not open to you. You might want to go to Thailand as a missionary and find yourself still in Pasadena. Would Paul have chosen any of this that happened in Philippi? (The answer is no.) But look what God did.
The Rest of the Story: From this unlikely group of characters, God build one of his most effective churches. Can you imagine a small group with these three people in it? They represent what our Father's church is like. No human being is beyond the saving reach of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Have your received Jesus as savior? If yes, then go and notice the people God brings into your life. Stop and talk with people for a while. Ask God to lead your words and actions. And never forget: Every encounter in life might be a divine appointment. And every appointment is an opportunity to bring glory to God.
To His glory,
Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor
Greg Waybright • Copyright 2014, Lake Avenue Church