Introduction
The year is 49 AD. Just to recap
what we talked about last time in Acts 15. This is a map of the first
missionary journey. Our main characters at this point are Paul and Barnabas.
They spent about a year and a half traveling to Cyprus and up around and through
what is modern day Turkey planting a series of churches and God’s word was
going out powerfully. They came back to their home base in Antioch to find some
problems. There were teachers coming in saying that it’s good that these
non-Jews have become Christians but now they have to become Jews. They have to
follow the Jewish laws including the dietary law, the Old Testament law, and
the law of circumcision (which was a big barrier for a lot of grown men). We
saw a huge fight broke out; Paul wrote this letter to the churches of Galatia
that he just planted arguing against these false teachers. Paul is arguing
against Peter and even Barnabas in Antioch. So, they make the journey from
Antioch down to Jerusalem (a distance of 250 miles) to settle this issue once
and for all with the leaders of the Jerusalem church. The original apostles and
guys like James etc. They came out of this meeting with a letter that said the
Gentiles didn’t need to be circumcised. The Jerusalem church sent Paul and his
buddies as well as two of their own leaders, Judas and Silas. They sent them
back up to Antioch, back 250 miles (Paul has walked at this point a round trip
of 500 miles to settle this issue.) They show up in Antioch with this letter
and, as we read last week,
And
there was great joy throughout the church that day as they read this
encouraging message.
The
message that all the Gentiles in Antioch didn’t need to get circumcised. That
is a cause for joy. We read on, he tells us,
Then
Judas and Silas, both being prophets, spoke at length to the believers,
encouraging and strengthening their faith.
These guys
were prophets and preachers (those are often used interchangeably) they would
speak a message from the Lord, it didn’t have to be telling the future. These
guys spend some time ministering there, preaching and encouraging, speaking at
their meetings in Antioch.
They
stayed for a while, and then the believers sent them back to the church in
Jerusalem with a blessing of peace.
These guys
leave and go back to the Jerusalem church.
Paul
and Barnabas Part Ways
Paul
and Barnabas stayed in Antioch. They and many others taught and preached the
word of the Lord there.
Some time
passes, probably not that long, maybe months, and in the year 49 AD Paul get an
idea,
After
some time Paul said to Barnabas, “Let’s go back and visit each city where we
previously preached the word of the Lord, to see how the new believers are
doing.”
He
probably also was interested in getting the contents of that letter firsthand
to these churches and making sure they were straight on the issue of grace.
This was really the questions; was trusting in Christ alone enough for
salvation or do some works needed to be added to that. He wanted to argue the
case even stronger, it is Christ alone, Christ plus nothing.
Barnabas
agreed and wanted to take along John Mark.
Do you
remember John Mark? They got not even halfway through the first missionary
journey and he decided he was done, he quit, and he sailed back and left Paul
and Barnabas to go the rest of the way on their own, right before the really
hard part started.
But
Paul disagreed strongly, since John Mark had deserted them in Pamphylia
and had not continued with them in their work.
They would
have argued this out, it’s not like Paul didn’t like Mark or had a theological
difference, he just didn’t think Mark was tough enough for what lay ahead of
them. They counted on him, spent money, two boat journeys, they get all the way
to Perga and Mark quits on them right before the difficult part. Paul wasn’t
ready to trust him again at that level.
Their
disagreement was so sharp that they separated. Barnabas took John Mark
with him and sailed for Cyprus.
Cyrus is
where Barnabas was from and maybe Mark was from. Barnabas was John Mark’s
cousin so he kind of hard a soft spot for him. Luke is telling us that the band
broke up, how sad is that? Barnabas, we have been through so much together and
now he is gone, takes off with John Mark. A lot of people are surprised and
saddened by this. We really shouldn’t be surprised, there are a lot of
judgement calls in ministry, there is a lot on the line. Any time people get
together they are going to have different opinions on things. I would say a
leadership team or even a marriage that never has any conflict might be a group
or a marriage that is not that engaged. You are going to have conflict there
are things you are going to want to do differently. There is just so much at
stake for Paul, for Barnabas, for the people they are trying to reach for
Christ. They just couldn’t come to an agreement. I do think it is cool how Luke
is very real about the people that he narrates in the book of Acts. The bible
is known for being very real. Conflict is going to happen any time you get
people together. That is why we need to learn how to resolve conflict in a
godly way. Sometimes person A and person B want to do thing one way or another
way and what they come up with is a compromise that is better than what either
of them had in the first place. Sometimes conflict can be pretty productive,
and we grow closer through it. We do need to make sure that we are careful when
we are in conflict and things are heated that we don’t say things that we are
going to regret later, that are going to make reconciliation more difficult
because there are some things that are pretty hard to take back. This is
actually the last time we see Barnabas or Mark in Acts.
Barnabas
apparently had a different calling than Paul. Barnabas, the son of
encouragement, takes Mark with him and heads out. He saw something in Mark and
believed in him, just like he saw something in Paul when no one else did and
believed in him. Some people are like, ‘which one was right,’ and I think they
are both fine in the decision that they made here. I don’t think one was right
and one was wrong. This is also not the end of the story for either of them.
Paul refers to Barnabas very warmly in 1 Corinthians 9:6 as an example of a sacrificial
minister a few years later. Apparently, the Corinthians knew Barnabas somehow,
maybe he ministered there. But his work with Mark was probably even more
successful than anything we hear about. He was able to deliver Mark as a
reliable Christian worker.
Mark went
on to write the gospel of Mark, this is Peter’s memoirs that Mark wrote up for
him. We have this in our bibles, I am pretty glad he delivered Mark as a worker,
we wouldn’t have the book of Mark otherwise. In Colossians 4:10 at the end of the
book of Acts when Paul is in prison he says, ‘Man, Mark is with me and he sends
his greetings,’ He is there faithfully serving Paul at the end of the book of
Act only about 10 years after this event here we are reading about, this split
up. IN 2 Timothy 4:11 at the end of Paul’s life he is writing to Timothy and he
says, ‘Everyone has deserted me but Luke, can you come soon and when you come,
please bring Mark with you, he is such a good worker.’ We see a real turn
around for Mark, he becomes reliable, there is hope for anyone, we don’t write
people off. We also see a cool reconciliation and a future partnership for
these guys. Just because God doesn’t have us working together now, doesn’t mean
he won’t have us working together at some point in the future.
Paul needs
a new partner now. He knew Jesus sent the disciples out two-by two. We don’t go
out to do ministry alone. That is an autonomous spirit and it is going to get
us into major trouble. He needed a team. He starts rebuilding his team and who
does he pick? It says,
Acts 15:40 – Paul chose Silas, and
as he left, the believers entrusted him to the Lord’s gracious care.
Silas then
has to walk the 250 miles back up (or maybe he took a boat). He picked Silas as
his partner and Silas was a great choice. He is sometimes called Silvanus in
the epistles. He is the coauthor of 1 and 2 Thessalonians. He was a delegate
from the Jerusalem church. What a perfect guy to show up with the letter from
the Jerusalem Council, the guy the church in Jerusalem to explain their side of
it, to serve as a witness, what a good dude for that, probably better than
Barnabas would have been. He was also a Roman citizen which carried a number of
privileges, privileges that are going to come in handy in the story that we are
going to read. God was at work here. He actually had a better role for
Barnabas, one he was more suited to, a better plan for Mark, and he had a
better coworker for Paul ready to go, a guy who wouldn’t have been available or
as good for the first journey but is great for this one.
The
Second Missionary Journey Begins: Paul and Silas Pick Up Timothy
Then he
traveled throughout Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches there.
We have a
new missionary journey, a second journey. They went from Antioch to where they
planted those churches on the first missionary journey. They went from church
to church strengthening the churches.
Paul
went first to Derbe
He went
right up that road, right around the corner, through the mountains to Derbe.
and
then to Lystra, where there was a young disciple named Timothy.
I
mentioned him when he planted this church, this little, backwoods village town
with not that much Jewish influence. Paul leads Timothy to Christ on the first
missionary journey. Timothy has had a couple of years to grow in his faith. He
is probably in his late teens; he is a young guy. It says,
His
mother was a Jewish believer, but his father was a Greek.
His dad
apparently wouldn’t let him get circumcised so he would have been considered a
Jew, but uncircumcised. His mother and his grandmother were godly, it says he
was raised in the scriptures.
Timothy
was well thought of by the believers in Lystra and Iconium,
He was
known as a godly dude there. He was becoming a good Christian worker and,
so Paul
wanted him to join them on their journey.
He picks
Timothy, maybe to fill the role that John Mark was playing on the first
journey, and he decides to take him along as well. Now Luke says something very
strange.
In
deference to the Jews of the area, he arranged for Timothy to be circumcised
before they left, for everyone knew that his father was a Greek.
What?
Paul? Circumcise Timothy? Luke, have you read Acts 15? Didn’t we just read the
big battle over the issue of circumcision? How Paul wrote a six-chapter
diatribe to the Galatian churches, arguing against circumcision? How he wished
the circumcisers would just cut the whole thing off themselves? How if you take
circumcision you have to take the whole law on? Do you remember the whole
battle he had with Peter over related issues? How Paul walked 500 miles, and
I’m sure he would have walked 500 more, just to take down this notion, to
settle once and for all the notion that you had to be circumcised. And then
they get this letter, and they are carrying this letter to the churches to tell
them that they don’t need to be circumcised, and then what does he do? He
circumcises Timothy. You think you’re surprised? Imagine how Timothy feels. ‘He
Paul, how come I’m the only one who has to get circumcised?’
What’s the
issue here? The short answer is that this is not about salvation, about adding
anything for salvation, it’s about strategy. It’s about ministry strategy. The
decree said that Gentiles didn’t need to get circumcised, but Timothy wasn’t a
Gentile, he was an uncircumcised Jew, and everybody knew it. Paul’s strategy,
the first thing he does is go to the synagogue, he speaks there, they needed
that access. The gospel goes to the Jew first and then to the Gentile, they
still wanted to reach Jews for Christ. With Timothy, they might not have had
that access, they might have been rejected by the more pious Jews. An
uncircumcised Jew? What are you bringing here, Paul?
It says,
Paul got Timothy circumcised, or literally, Paul circumcised Timothy, is what
Luke says, so he might have even done it himself. This is really weird, but he
would have had this skill as a high-ranking rabbi. The point is, sometimes we
wave our freedoms and suffer in order to serve God. If you want credibility,
you’re going to have to go through some suffering, identifying with the people
you are trying to reach in some cases. What we don’t ask is: what are my
rights? And demanding my rights. What we can ask: how can I lay down my life
for others? Including my rights. That what Jesus did and that’s what Paul model
and we will see more of that from Paul later.
Then
they went from town to town,
Paul,
Silas, and Timothy now.
instructing the believers to follow the
decisions made by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem.
This is an
explicit reference to that letter, the decree that they wrote up.
So the
churches were strengthened in their faith and grew larger every day.
This had a
really healthy effect on those groups. They are back centered even more fully
on grace, they are growing, strengthened and full of joy.
God
Guidance in Ministry
Next Paul and Silas traveled through the area of Phrygia and Galatia,
They head
northwest, but that isn’t where Paul intended to go at first.
because the Holy Spirit had prevented them
from preaching the word in the province of Asia at that time.
Not the
Asia that we think of, Asia is the province to the left, of which Ephesus was
the capital. Paul wanted to go to Ephesus, it was a major city. He thought God
was calling him there, and God will call him there, but not yet. He tries to go
there, and the spirit says, ‘No.’ It doesn’t tell us how the spirit said no,
but they knew the Holy Spirit blocked them. So, they kept following the road.
Then
coming to the borders of Mysia, they headed north for the province of Bithynia,
but again the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to go there.
It doesn’t
say how, it just says that he made it clear. They are moving along; God is
opening some doors but shutting others. This would have been a lengthy process
of confusion and waiting. They would take the next step in front of them, talk
about it, pray, they are just moving through Turkey.
So
instead, they went on through Mysia to the seaport of Troas.
They’ve
already been southeast, they can’t go southwest, they can’t go northeast, that
leaves one direction. They head to Troas in Mysia. This is a major port city.
That
night Paul had a vision: A man from Macedonia in northern Greece was
standing there, pleading with him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!”
Who was
this guy? We don’t know. But, it says,
So we
decided to leave for Macedonia at once, having concluded that God was calling us
to preach the Good News there.
Luke
Joins Paul
Did you
notice anything there? The change in pronouns, I hope so. This is the first of
what theologians call the “we passages” in Acts. These “we passages” this is
where Luke has joined the action. They must have picked him up in Troas. They
no longer say, ‘they’ but he says, ‘we.’ You’ll notice that detail also gets a
lot more specific when Luke joins the action. If they have a journey, he tells the
port of departure, the port of arrival, how the weather was, and how long it
took. Luke has joined the action at Troas.
Some
people ask, ‘If God wanted them in Greece, why didn’t he tell them sooner?’ Why
go through this whole lengthy process of wandering and closing doors? Why
couldn’t he give them that vision back in Thyatira? Back in Lystra? This is how
God often works. One reason is because God likes talking with us. He knows that
is our biggest need. We need to talk with him a lot more than we need the
answer to what we are supposed to do, and he’ll give us that. If he told us the
answer right away all the time, we would be a lot less motivated to talk to
him, we enter into that confusion He wants to grow our relationship with him,
he wants to grow our trust in him. We express trust even when we don’t know the
way. We take the step in front of us even if we don’t know the next 10 steps.
We talk with each other about it, you can see them consulting with one another,
you can see them concluding as a group what God wants for them. There is a
process there, God wants to teach you to trust him and to follow his will, and
that’s the best possible thing that can happen to you.
God has
all these plans, if he laid them all out for us in advance, we might get pretty
overwhelmed. He gives us the thing we need to know, and he wants us to sit back
and watch when he does his part. He has all this knowledge that you just don’t
have. For example, he had plans for them in Troas. If he had just sent them to
Macedonia, they might not have stopped in Troas. Who did they meet in Troas?
Luke! Luke came to Christ and joined their group all in that brief stopover in
the city of Troas. God knew Luke was there, he knew Timothy was a Lystra and
Luke was at Troas. He knew that Luke would become one of Paul’s best friends
for the rest of his life, he would become Paul’s travelling doctor, which would
be pretty handy. Luke, God knew, would become the guy to write more of the New
Testament than anyone, including Paul. Luke and Acts together are longer than
Paul’s epistles. Where would we be without that? Paul has picked up two of the
best friends that he will have for the rest of his life on this journey and we
haven’t even reached Greece yet, so we are off to a good start. This is why we
need the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We need God to empower and
bless out ministries. We desperately need that. We might have our own plans,
and that’s good, it’s not passivity God is calling for, but we need him to
bless our ministry, we need him to guide our plans. “in his heart the man plans
his course, but the Lord directs his footsteps.’ That is what we need from God
and that is what they got here.
Philippi
We
boarded a boat at Troas and sailed straight across to the island of Samothrace,
The
halfway point between these two. They must have had a good wind because it only
took them two days.
and the
next day we landed at Neapolis.
I wonder
how Luke knew that Samothrace was the halfway point and that Troas and Neapolis
were major port cities. Maybe because he was there, and he is an awesome
historian.
From
there we reached Philippi, a major city of that district of Macedonia
and a Roman colony.
Both are
correct. Exactly right.
And we
stayed there several days.
Philippi,
the Roman Colony. We have the archeological cite today. We know a decent amount
about this city. Philippi was founded way back in 358 BC by Philip of Macedon,
Alexander the Great’s dad. But this got upgraded to Roman Colony status about
300 years later when Augustus beat Mark Antony in this final decisive battle on
a plain just outside of Philippi. The colony status carried special privileges.
They were tax exempt, they were self-governing, they had ownership rights, it
was as if they were on Roman soil back in Italy, these were the sort of
privileges they had, and they were very proud of it and would do whatever they
could to retain that status. Roman soldiers would then get sent there to
retire. That was the retirement plan, they would give you a plot of land. You
had a lot of tough ex-soldiers who were loyal to Rome stationed there on this
town that was at a very key location on this major east-west road.
What
happens at Philippi?
On the
Sabbath we went a little way outside the city to a riverbank, where we
thought people would be meeting for prayer,
Why
outside the city? Remember that they would try and find a synagogue?
Apparently, there were so few Jews here, they didn’t’ have enough for a
synagogue, you needed ten men, they didn’t have that. So, they go out looking
for the place of prayer. A lot of times, they would have a place of prayer,
they would have it near water, they liked running water because you would use
it for different washing required by Judaism. They went looking for the river,
this is the river Gangetes, a little over a mile outside the city. I wonder how
Luke knew there was a river, not in the city, but just outside the city.
and we
sat down to speak with some women who had gathered there.
It doesn’t
even sound like there are any men in this prayer group. Jewish women, there are
even some who don’t look like they are Jews but have converted mostly to
Judaism.
One of
them was Lydia from Thyatira, a merchant of expensive purple cloth,
Lydia,
from Thyatira. We know from other ancient sources that Thyatira was well known
for its very expensive purple dying processes. Clinton Arnold says,
Homer
speaks of purple-dyeing taking place in the regions of Lydia and Caria…
The city
used to be called Lydia, named after some of their ancestors.
Pliny
notes that the practice was invented by the Lydians…Seven inscriptions have now
been discovered that attest to a guild of dyers in Thyatira.
Clinton
E. Arnold, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: John, Acts.,
vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 372.
This was
very expensive. There is good reason to think that the color purple could only
be sold to and worn by the emperor and his people. Lydia, from Thyatira, would
have been a very wealthy woman. This would be like, ‘we met a woman who was a
seller of Versace.’ She was a very rich woman. They come expecting to find a
man from Macedonia and they find a woman wearing purple.
who
worshiped God.
This would
mean that she was not Jewish, but she has converted to monotheism, she worships
the God of the bible, but she doesn’t follow all of the laws of the Old
Testament. But she is there, and Paul and Silas begin speaking the word of God
here.
As she
listened to us, the Lord opened her heart, and she accepted what Paul
was saying.
I think
this is cool because we see here God’s part and our part in ministry. This is
not passivity, where Paul just did nothing and waited for God to do something,
to just ‘let go and let God.’ He went there looking, there is a hunger here,
there is a seeking out on Paul and his buddies’ part. But there is only so much
they can do, they can speak the word, but other people have to listen, and God
is ultimately the one that opens people’s hearts. He sees the kernel of faith
there. Scripture says that no one can have faith unless God grants it. There is
some role God plays in our faith. There is still a willingness that has to be
there on our part as well. Scripture clearly teaches that, and yet God is
somehow involved in that process too. This takes the pressure off us, that I
have to do everything perfectly and get results. But I have to be faithful, and
that is what God wants from us.
She and
her household were baptized, and she asked us to be her guests.
She
apparently has a whole household she was running. I don’t know if she was
widowed or if she had employees or household servants, but she had a big enough
house to hold Paul, Timothy, Silas, Luke and a household full of people, and
she leads them all to Christ.
“If you
agree that I am a true believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my
home.”
You see a
reluctance here from Paul.
And she
urged us until we agreed.
I don’t
know the reluctance; I know that Paul would get accused of pedaling the word of
God for profit. Maybe he was reluctant to accept the hospitality for that
reason, I’m not sure. They eventually agreed to stay in her place. This is who
Jesus calls the man or woman of peace. He told his disciples to teach people about
the gospel, if no one accepts that you should move on, but he tells them to
look for someone whose heart God has already prepared. When they respond and
they invite you in, stay there, and receive whatever they give you, don’t be
too proud to accept help. Teach the word of God until it is time to move on.
This is what we see in some cases. Missionaries talk about this. They move into
an area and find people whose hearts have already been prepared by God. You may
find that there are people in your life that God has already prepared their
heart. Our job is to speak the word of God to the people we know and people we
don’t know until we find people that God has already marked out, whose hearts
God is already working in, who may have already been calling out to God for
answers. Once these people come to Christ, sometimes there is temptations to
pull the person into Christian community. We do need to help them build in with
other Christians, but we also need them to reach out to their household, their
network of friends and family and to tell them about Jesus. Lydia does that
here.
The church
is getting off the ground, Lydia’s house seems to be the centerpiece, but Paul
says,
One day
as we were going down to the place of prayer,
They would
go back out to this place.
we met
a slave girl who had a spirit that enabled her to tell the future. She
earned a lot of money for her masters by telling fortunes.
This is
strange, telling the future, it literally says that she had a “python spirit.”
If you have read ancient Greek mythology you have heard of the oracle Delphi.
There was a woman there who was called the Pythoni. She was kind of like the
head fortune teller, future teller. There were women all around the empire kind
of like this girl here, sometimes they were old ladies and sometimes they were
young girls, but they would tell the future. When it comes to telling the
future, only God can tell the future, he can tell the future hundreds of years
in advance. He is the only one who can do that, Satan can’t do that, however,
he can guess the future pretty well, or even influence the future through
people. He can control and possess people who open themselves up to him. He can
influence the future. So, he does have some limited ability to tell the future
in this sense of the word. Some fortune tellers you come across are just fake,
while others are powered by the occult. This is why God says, just stay away
from the occult all together. Best case scenario, you just have a trickster and
some sleight of hand who is tricking you into thinking they are telling the
future, worst case scenario you are actually reaching out to evil spirit beings
and putting yourself in great danger. Some of you, you’ve got some experience
with the occult, you know it’s real, you’re terrified of it perhaps. God says
that he is the only one that can protect you from it. He is so much more
powerful that Satan. You need God’s spirit to come and dwell inside of you
because ‘greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.’
She
followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most
High God, and they have come to tell you how to be saved.” [lit. “a way of
salvation”]
That seems
kind of weird, that a demon would say this,
This
went on day after day until Paul got so exasperated [“deeply troubled”]
that he turned and said to the demon within her, “I command you in the name of
Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And instantly it left her.
At first
glance, it just seems like Paul is having a bad day and he can’t take this girl
anymore and he just loses it. No, he is deeply troubled actually by what is
going on here. Why was he troubled? First of all, the exploitation of this
little girl. She was being used by multiple masters to make money as she was
tormented by this demon, how heartless is that? He couldn’t stand to see this
girl being used in this way. He was also bothered by the content of the
message. She was speaking in terms like, ‘servants of the Most High God’ which
a pagan would interpret very differently than any Jew would. It is confusing
the message. It just says, ‘a way to be saved,’ which could be translated ‘the
way’ but I think ‘a way’ is a much better and accurate translation. That’s not
at all that they were saying. They are servants of Yahweh telling the way of
salvation, plus, why would he want his message linked to this demon? Why would
you want demons following you around shouting every time you were telling
someone about Jesus? That would be pretty annoying. He just couldn’t take it
anymore and he decided that this had to stop, he sends casts the demon out. You
can imagine how her owners felt about this.
Her
masters’ hopes of wealth were now shattered, so they grabbed Paul and Silas and
dragged them before the authorities at the marketplace. “The whole city is in
an uproar because of these Jews!” they shouted to the city officials
[stratēgoi].
The term
Luke uses here, this refers to the two officials that would have been in charge
of any Roman colony, Luke gets the terms exactly right, just as he had Sergius
Paulus to proconsul down at Cyprus.
“They
are teaching customs that are illegal for us Romans to practice.”
These
Jews, he is playing on the anti-Semitism that would have been present. He is
appealing to the Roman heritage, citizenship, and status of Philippi.
A mob
quickly formed against Paul and Silas,
They knew how to whip the crowd into a frenzy.
and the
city officials ordered them stripped and beaten with wooden rods. They were
severely beaten, and then they were thrown into prison.
Dragged
naked across town to the prison.
The
jailer was ordered to make sure they didn’t escape. So the jailer put them into
the inner dungeon and clamped their feet in the stocks.
Paul talks
about this in his letter to the Thessalonians. He says, ‘you remember, we told
you how badly we were treated in Philippi, it was horrible.’ In 2 Corinthians
11:25 he says, ‘three times I was beaten with rods,’ this was one of them. You
don’t forget that. John Pollack describes this scene particularly well, it is
hard for us to imagine what a public beating would have looked like, he says,
As
the blood ran from the cuts, the crowd roared.
They would
have had a whipping post, might have tied them up or just help them in place.
When
a savage blow caught a vertebra and even a tough apostle could not suppress a
cry, the people loved it. Paul and Silas fought the pain with prayer. Urged on
by the crowd, the lictors
These were
the guys with the big, thick rods, this would have been like a caning but with
something heavier, like a guy going to town on your back with a baseball bat.
swung
their rods with a will, until both backs were bloody. “The blows burnt like
fire,” wrote Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, who suffered rods frequently in
Communist prisons. “It was as if your back were being grilled by a furnace, and
the shock to the nervous system was great.” …The jailer… had them manhandled,
still naked, across the main prison chamber … and through a low opening into a
windowless cave.
The
innermost room of the prison.
Here
was a contraption used both for security and torture.
Remember
the stocks he mentioned?
Rough
bars of wood were so placed that a criminal’s legs could be stretched wide,
held tight,
There were
multiple holes that you could put the legs in to inflict maximum discomfort,
imagine going through all that and then having your leads spread wide open like
you were doing the splits.
and
his wrists and even his neck gripped in various positions depending on how much
pain the jailer wished to inflict. Because this was merely a security matter,
he had Paul and Silas thrown to the ground and only their feet clamped in the
bars, leaving the rest of their bodies free…
That still
would have been painful.
In
the cave Paul and Silas lay side by side silent in a state of physical shock,
the blood congealing, their muscles stiffening, unable to rest on their torn
backs yet in acute discomfort when they sat upright. Their feet were numbed and
the wooden bar pressed on their ankles. The clothes they had put round each
other’s backs could not stop the shivering, and they were forced to lie in
their own excrement. Sleep never came.
Pollock,
John. The Apostle: The Life of Paul (pp. 129-30). David C. Cook. Kindle
Edition.
Savage
beating. You can imagine how these guys were feeling.
Around
midnight Paul and Silas
Paul and
Silas what? Paul and Silas were feeling about as low as they felt in their
whole lives. Paul and Silas were wondering, ‘God, where were you? I thought we
had something going here in Philippi?’ Paul and Silas, ‘Were staring to argue
with one another.’ No, none of the above. Paul and Silas,
were
praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening.
They weren’t going to sleep anyways, right? Prayer is actually a pretty good thing
to do if you can’t sleep. But these prayers, these hymns, they are singing the
truth of God. Pray like this, you start off by talking yourself back onto the
truth, but eventually we start to see a joy enter the picture. We see Paul and
Silas able to have joy even in the midst of the darkest suffering here. The
other prisoners couldn’t believe this, they had never seen anything like this
before. How could you have joy in this kind of a dismal circumstance? Remember,
this is the context of everything that happens next. God had decided that he
had enough.
Suddenly,
there was a massive earthquake, and the prison was shaken to its foundations.
All the doors immediately flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off!
Not a
normal earthquake.
The
jailer woke up to see the prison doors wide open. He assumed the prisoners had
escaped, so he drew his sword to kill himself.
If you
lost your prisoners, you could be killed. They considered suicide an easier
alternative to that.
But
Paul shouted to him, “Stop! Don’t kill yourself! We are all here!”
Not one of
the prisoners had left, even though the doors were open. I wonder why, I wonder
if they wanted to see what Paul and Silas had to say, what could give someone
joy in the midst of such terrible suffering. Think how their witness was
actually enhanced by their suffering and their joy.
The
jailer called for lights and ran to the dungeon and fell down trembling before
Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do
to be saved?”
He was
probably a superstitious man, wondering what the earthquake meant, he might
have heard the slave girl talking about these guys, and he asks why he has to
do. This is what religion asks, what must I do? What are the rituals? What are
the good deeds? I’ll do anything. And what do they say?
They
replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, along with
everyone in your household.”
It’s not
what you do. Christianity is not about what we do, that is what religion is.
Christianity focuses on what Christ has done. It is do vs. done. And he says,
‘just put your trust in Christ and his finished work on the cross.’ If you are
here tonight and wonder how to become a Christian, look no further than Paul
and Silas short sermon here. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.
By the way he says, that offer extends to everyone you know, to everyone in
your household. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you believing is not enough,
and easy-believism is not the way of God, that you need to do rituals or take
communion every week, or clean up your life, none of that. This right here,
this is what he wants from us.
And
they shared the word of the Lord with him and with all who lived in his
household. Even at that hour of the night, the jailer cared for them and washed
their wounds. Then he and everyone in his household were immediately
baptized.
They all
believed. They’re pulling an all nighter here. You’ve got mutual washings going
on here.
He
brought them into his house and set a meal before them, and he and his entire
household rejoiced because they all believed in God.
This is
the joy you see come to people when they meet Christ.
The
next morning the city officials sent the police to tell the jailer, “Let those
men go!” So the jailer told Paul, “The city officials have said you and Silas
are free to leave. Go in peace.”
Now Paul
is ready to lay his hand on the table.
But
Paul replied, “They have publicly beaten us without a trial and put us in
prison—and we are Roman citizens.
That’s
bad…you could lose your colony status for a move like that. You could be fired
for something like that. This was the worst thing they could have done. They
find out they had just beat the son of the king. That’s the guy who we beat and
put in prison. Paul says,
So now
they want us to leave secretly? Certainly not! Let them come themselves to
release us!”
He just
crosses his arms and sits right there next to the stocks. The first ever sit in
on record. Think about the evidence there. You have two Roman citizens, clearly
beaten, in the inner room of the jail.
When
the police reported this, the city officials were alarmed to learn that Paul
and Silas were Roman citizens.
All of a
sudden, they are tripping over themselves.
So they
came to the jail and apologized to them.
“Please
don’t tell anybody!”
Then
they brought them out and begged them to leave the city. When Paul and Silas
left the prison, they returned to the home of Lydia.
The
believers were probably gathered praying, they would have been shocked to hear
about what had actually happened that night.
There
they met with the believers and encouraged them once more. Then they
left town.
Which
brings us to the end of our first “we passage.” They left lIke there along with
some others to lead this church.
One question, why did Paul wait to mention his Roman citizenship? It’s possible
that he was shouting it and in all the confusion they didn’t hear him. But, you
think that they never would have heard him even through all the beatings, the
trip to jail, the night in prison. Why didn’t he mention this the whole time? I
think it was an intentional move by Paul. Think about what would have happened
to the rest of the Christians in Philippi if Paul had gotten them to stop.
Could the non-citizens had been beaten? What about Timothy and Luke? What about
Lydia? They didn’t have that exemption like Paul and Silas did. What would have
happened to them? What would the believers think of Paul if they skipped a
beating they had to take? What if he come to town with this message and then
gets them all beaten? Would the officials, at least, put restrictions on this
church and stamped them out of existence? Perhaps. Now Paul has a bargaining
chip. He had something on those guys. He had voluntarily taken on himself and
now he had some sway. This is why when we read the letter to the Philippians,
there is less of the suffering you see in other churches. This church seemed to
have a freedom that allowed them to give powerfully and allowed them to be a
powerful witness for Christ. And he had credibility as a leader because he
suffered so they wouldn’t have to. Kind of like Timothy who underwent that
painful circumcision. Paul underwent a beating so the rest of the Philippians
wouldn’t have to. When you read the letter to the Philippians in light of this
historical background, it makes so much sense.
For to
me, to live is Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21)
He lived
that out before their very eyes.
You
must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did
not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up
his divine privileges… (Philippians 2:5-7)
That’s
what Christ did for us, that is what Paul did, and Silas did at Philippi.
Join in
following my example…For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we
eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:17, 20)
That was
his primary citizenship. That’s what gave him the courage to suffer. He knew
that this life is short, suffering is short.
I have
learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am…I can do all things
through Christ who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:11,13)
They say
every one of those lived out in blood and broken bones on the bodies of Paul
and Silas.
What have
we seen tonight? We have seen suffering for the sake of the gospel from
Timothy, from Paul, from Silas. We have seen the importance of teamwork, that
even though they’ll be some conflict sometimes, it is worth it. We need to
learn how to form good teams and we move into ministry, including suffering,
together. It wasn’t Paul alone there, but it was Paul and Silas in that prison.
And, when we do our small part in ministry, we open the door for God. God knows
who he has marked out, he will lead us through, he is doing a work in people’s
lives, and he will empower us. Whether it is directing us to the right people,
opening up their hearts, casting out the demons, sending divine guidance, or
what he did through the Philippian church. God saw, he had big plans for this
group.
In fact,
what he did through the church at Philippi, we still feel the impact today.
Have you considered just the financial giving ministry of Philippi? How that
has affected us? Wealthy women like Lydia seemed to be able to lead this church
into an incredible generosity. 1&2 Thessalonians Paul tells that that he
didn’t take any money from them, not a single dime. He says that other churches
paid for his stay there, and that is what Paul write in the letter to the
Philippians, he says that when he was at Thessalonica, that multiple times they
sent a gift to meet his needs. That enabled him to be free of the suspicions
that were plaguing him as a false teacher. That’s why we have the letters to
the Thessalonians. What about 1&2 Corinthians? He goes to Corinth, he is
working as a tentmaker, he is able to get to the synagogue once a week to
preach, but then the guys from Philippi show up with money. After that, Paul
quits his job and everyday he begins preaching the gospel in the marketplace
and a huge revival breaks out. That’s why we have the letters to the
Corinthians, because a church was planted. The Philippians funded that, and the
Thessalonians. What about when Paul is in prison in Rome? Paul says, ‘thanks
for the gift guys.’ At the end of Acts, Paul is in prison in Rome. Instead of
being in the prison for poor people, he is able to rent a house, he is able to
have guests, he is able to write, he is able to have helpers in his writing.
What does he write while he is in Rome? Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and
Philemon, four books of our New Testament. And by the way, he helps Luke finish
up Luke and Acts. The Philippian church funded ten letters in the New
Testament. There are only 27 in there. They didn’t know that was what they were
doing, they were just trying to be faithful and serve in the way God had gifted
them. And yet today, Lydia’s dollars are still at work as we sit here reading
the book of Acts and all these other letters as well. That is the cool thing
about God, we have no idea what he is doing and how he wants to use this in the
future. We just need to show up, be faithful, do our part, and let him do his.