Acts 16:11-40 (2)

Expedient : something done or used to achieve a particular end usually quickly or temporarily : an expedient action or solution.

We often times try to circumvent the difficult stuff. What is the best way to make a pizza? I love to try new things and often times make things more difficult on myself than they have to be, but but I have learned through trails and pains the best way to make a pizza in a wood fired pizza oven. When I say pain I mean it. Once I was really proud of myself because I had made this pizza dough and put all of the toppings on it. It was a hawaiian pizza with ham and pineapple. I was excited so I have my fire going and I have my pizza on the peel and I was ready to do the cha cha cha like they showed me in the video and on the last cha my pizza flipped over landing upside down on the coals. A sacrifice to the fire gods.

But I learned through trial and error that the best way to make the dough is to let it rise slowly over 3 days. Sure you can make a pizza crust with instant yeast in an hour, but for the best and most flavorful neopolitan pizza it takes time. The yeast has to have time to eat and digest all of the sugars in the dough.

What is the best way to win Macedonia for the Lord? Well certainly not the most expedient way according to mans wisdom.

Paul in Philippi… Hospitality and Hostility towards the Gospel.

What really amazes me is thinking about the reaction of the people and the Macedonian vision. It is clear that the Holy Spirit wanted Paul and his companions to go straight way to Macedonia, which they did and which Luke makes very clear. One gets the sense of urgency from verse 10 “immediately” and verse 11 says the made a “direct” voyage to Samothrace a small island and then straight to the port city of Neapolis. Philippi was not the capitol, but it was a very important and influential city. It was famous for its school of Medicine which perhaps Luke had studied at or at lest was familiar with. Philippi was like a microcosm of Rome itself, citizenship was highly prized. It was almost exclusively gentile in its demographics. There was almost certainly no synagogue because Luke makes mention of the “place of prayer” outside of the city. Synagogues in ancient times required a minimum of 10 males in order to be established.

Fringe cults and all religious sects were relegated to places outside of the city gates and the few Jews there likely met for prayer at the Gangites river on the Sabbath day.

The Hospitality of a Gentile woman. (vs. 11-15; 40)

The salvation of Lydia.

The sovereign hand of election is written all over the story of Lydia and even the conversion of the jailer. The Holy Spirits, promptings and the phrase mentioned in verse 14 “ the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul”. We don’t know exactly how the Spirit of Christ works in a person to irresistibly call them to faith, but we know that He does.

John 3:8 (ESV)

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

We know that Lydia was a woman who worshipped God, likely influenced by her home town of Thyatira, worshipped at the synagogue there. What we do know is that the Lord is the one who opened her heart to receive the words which Paul would sow in her heart.

This is consistent with other passages even from Acts.

Acts 11:18 ESV

When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

2 Timothy 2:25 ESV

correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth,

The Substance of her faith.

Her prevailing upon Paul and his company was evidence of the genuineness of her faith. This is what faith is made of this is what faith does, it pours out ones resources to advance the cause of Christ in the world. Lydia was evidently a woman of great means, she was likely from the city of Thyatira a city famous for purple dye. They would extract the dye from the juice of the madder root or perhaps from a particular shell fish. There is evidence that this technique and trade had developed into a guild and the skill passed down to others.

Verse 40 likely implies that Lydia was very helpful and useful that that perhaps her house had become a place central to the early stages and growth of the gospel in Philippi. We know no less than this that she was hospitable and offered up her resources to help Paul and his company in their missionary endeavors.

How many of us think in the these terms?

Transition: If Paul were playing the monopoly game then he just landed on the go to jail spot. “ Do not pass go, do not collect $200. He did however have one stop along the way.

The Hostility of the crowd. (vs. 16-24)

In this point I fail to mention the hostility of the slave girl, because the text indicates that this girl was being controlled and manipulate by a demon and her owners. In fact what is very interesting is that the word used here “spirit of divination” implies the idea of a ventriloquist as in someone who utters sounds which appear to come from someone else. Just as a ventriloquist today will manipulate a dummy puppet or animal to appear as if it is speaking. SO this young slave girl was being manipulated in many ways.

The term divination speaks of a specific type of demonic possession. It is the word referring to Phython a Spirit that is a snake or dragon from the city of Delphi that was defeated by the greek god Apollos. Evidently those who are inhabited by such a spirit are usually women who are soothsayers that is they have the ability to foretell the future, and other things outside of their control, which would make sense of the strange and perhaps ironic statement about Paul and his companions.

It reminds me of Baalam in Numbers 22:38

Numbers 22:38 ESV

Balaam said to Balak, “Behold, I have come to you! Have I now any power of my own to speak anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, that must I speak.”

I do not wish to diminish the sinfulness and actions that led this woman to be possessed by such a Spirit.

verse 27 indicates that Paul was disrupting the city and advocating customs not allowed. More likely it had to do with the loss of money and the revenue that Paul had caused them, and they were ad looking perhaps for compensation or at least some form of punishment.

The gospel though it is not a culture in and of itself, certainly it does stand in opposition to every pagan culture and changes the world from the inside out one person demon possessed girl at a time. Being a highly pro-Roman city the issue likely was the clash between the worship of the one true God vs a pantheon of God’s.

None the less the mob fury tactic worked, Paul and Silas were imprisoned, but interestingly enough not Luke or Timothy, likely because Luke was a Gentile and Timothy a 1/2 gentile. The text indicates in verse 20 that there as some animosity to the fact that these “Jews” had come in such a way.

The Hospitality of a prison guard. (25-39)

God often does not work in ways that we would describe as efficient. Who among us can claim to understand the ways and wisdom of God. That he would choose persecution, floggings and shackles (wooded stocks tight uncomfortable, made to spread the legs apart in a often painful position) and jail time and inconvenience. Paul understood this for he did not curse his God but sang praises, He did not seek opportunity for release when he could have, he did not run so as to escape when the prison doors slung open.

Tertullian from the late 2nd Century “The legs feel nothing in the stocks when the heart is in heaven.”

Perhaps we don’t see the same results because when we go though just a fraction of the pain and persecution, what is our first reaction, to sing praise? When some one cuts us off on the highway or juts into the parking space we were waiting for. When we go through various trials what is out M.O.? And we wonder why they don’t say “What must I do to be saved?”

Verse 27 says that the prison doors were opened, and though Paul did not physically run through them so as to escape, he did however metaphorically run through them to preach the Gospel to this desperate jailer who could not explain nor could he deny the work of Most High God.

Colossians 4:3 ESV

At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison—

GOD TURNS THIS MANS HOSTILITY INTO HOSPITALITY.

This man took Paul and Silas and washed their wounds from the beatings and at the same time he was washed by the Blood of Christ.

This leads us to our last thought of the day. Why did Paul wait until now to bring up the fact that he was a Roman citizen?

We dont know, perhaps in the frenzy and chaos of the moment he had no opportunity, after all this is likely the reason they were scared when they heard they were Romans, and why they asked them to leave quietly. They were afraid of being found out. They knew that the the trial was not a fair one and would be in trouble if they were found out by the high courts of treating these Romans as such.

But the most likely reason Paul did not mention it is that he did not want to confuse his loyalties to the highly Romanized region. If the people who come after him must suffer for the name of Christ then why should I not be the first to declare my allegiance. Why should Paul use his influence when others might not be afforded that some privilege.