Next Stop Europe!
This is Mother’s Day…that one day a year when we are suppose to honor our Mom’s with all of the stuff that we should be honoring them with everyday. There is a bonus this Mother’s Day…our son Tyler and his wife Betsy are here for a couple of days from Vancouver.
Paul and Silas, Tried and Tested.
Philippi was given its name by Philip of Macedon in the 4th century BC. After about two centuries as a Greek colony, it became part of the Roman Empire, and towards the end of the first century BC it was made a Roman colony and settled with numerous veterans. Luke also knows that the province of Macedonia had been divided into four districts, and calls Philippi the leading city of that district of Macedonia. Other scholars translate ‘a leading city of the district of Macedonia’, while yet others suggest a conjectural emendation of the text, which then reads ‘a city of the first district of Macedonia’. Whichever is correct, Luke is expressing pride in what was probably his own city. In this city the missionary team stayed for several days (12), indeed almost certainly several weeks. During this period of mission there must have been many converts. But Luke selects only three for mention, not (it seems) because they were particularly notable in themselves, but because they demonstrate how God breaks down dividing barriers and can unite in Christ people of very different kinds.
On another sabbath, when Paul and his friends were going to the place of prayer, they were met by a slave girl, who evidently stood in their way. Luke tells us two things about her. First, she had a spirit by which she predicted the future, or, literally, she had ‘a spirit of a python’ or ‘a python spirit’. The reference is to the snake of classical mythology which guarded the temple of Apollo and the Delphic oracle at Mount Parnassus. Apollo was thought to be embodied in the snake and to inspire ‘pythonesses’, his female devotees, with clairvoyance, although other people thought of them as ventriloquists. Luke does not commit himself to these superstitions, but he does regard the slave girl as possessed by an evil spirit. The second thing he tells us is that as a slave she was exploited by her owners, for whom she made a lot of money by fortune-telling (16). As Paul and his friends continued their walk, the girl followed them screaming: ‘These men are servants of the Most High God’ (a term for the Supreme Being which was applied by Jews to Yahweh and by Greeks to Zeus), ‘who are telling you the way to be saved’ (17). Since salvation was a popular topic of conversation in those days, even if it meant different things to different people, it is not in the least strange that the girl should have hailed the missionaries as teachers of ‘the way of salvation’. Nor is it strange that the evil spirit should have cried out in recognition of God’s messengers, for Luke has documented the same thing during the public ministry of Jesus. But why should a demon engage in evangelism? Perhaps the ulterior motive was to discredit the gospel by associating it in people’s minds with the occult.
The girl’s shrieks continued for many days until finally Paul was provoked to take action. He was troubled, Luke says, which certainly means that he was deeply ‘disturbed’ (BAGD). The verb diaponeomai could be translated ‘annoyed’ (RSV), but it is gratuitous to say that Paul had ‘a burst of irritation’ (JBP) or ‘lost his temper’ (JB). It is better to understand that he was ‘grieved’ (AV), indeed indignant, because of the poor girl’s condition, and also dismayed by this inappropriate and unwelcome kind of publicity. His distress led him to turn round and command the evil spirit in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her, which it immediately did (18). Although Luke does not explicitly refer to either her conversion or her baptism, the fact that her deliverance took place between the conversions of Lydia and the gaoler leads readers to infer that she too became a member of the Philippian church.
The next convert is a fortune-telling slave girl who, like the demon-possessed in the Gospels, shows real spiritual insight. ‘These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved’, she proclaims (v. 17). That’s true, as were the demon’s words in Luke 8:28: ‘Jesus, Son of the Most High God’. But neither Jesus nor Paul sought that testimony from such a source, so Paul, like Jesus, casts out the demons. Earlier in Philippi, the Lord had opened Lydia’s heart. Now Jesus Christ’s name brings freedom to the Philippian slave-girl.
The third person Luke tells us about is the jailer. Paul and Silas, as a result of opposition, are stripped, beaten, severely flogged, tied up and placed in the inner cell of the prison. Surely now the gospel has come to a dead-end. But no, there is an earthquake, the manacles are loosened and all the prisoners stay in their cells (we don’t know how Paul and Silas persuaded them to stay). The jailer is about to commit suicide but Paul shouts: ‘We are all here’ (v. 28).
The demonised girl had told the people: ‘These men … are telling you the way to be saved’ (v. 17). What is that way? We already know that it is by the grace of the Lord Jesus (Acts 15:11). The jailer asks: ‘… what must I do to be saved?’ (v. 30). We don’t know precisely what he meant by that, but Paul takes him at his word and gives him the complete answer: ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved’ (v. 31). Faith alone in Christ alone. This calloused man, who had beaten and flogged them, now bathes the wounds which he had inflicted (v. 33), is baptized along with his believing family and ‘set a meal before them’ (v. 34). What a remarkable day for that household.
The church mentioned in verse 40 was very diverse: a woman of wealth with a household, a slave girl, a cruel jailer and his household, and some others. Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female—all one in Christ Jesus (see Galatians 3:28).