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Acts 16:11-40
11 So, setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace, and the following day to Neapolis, 12 and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the1 district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city some days. 13 And on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. 14 One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. 15 And after she was baptized, and her household as well, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.” And she prevailed upon us.
16 As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling. 17 She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” 18 And this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.
19 But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. 20 And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, “These men are Jews, and they are disturbing our city. 21 They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.” 22 The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods. 23 And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. 24 Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, 26 and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. 27 When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” 29 And the jailer2 called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32 And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 33 And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. 34 Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.
35 But when it was day, the magistrates sent the police, saying, “Let those men go.” 36 And the jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, “The magistrates have sent to let you go. Therefore come out now and go in peace.” 37 But Paul said to them, “They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out.” 38 The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens. 39 So they came and apologized to them. And they took them out and asked them to leave the city. 40 So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Hear the word of the Lord from Acts chapter 16 beginning in verse 11. So setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothris, and the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city some days. And on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to the riverside where we supposed there was a place of prayer. And we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together.
Speaker 1:One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. And after she was baptized, and her household as well, she urged us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay. And she prevailed upon us.
Speaker 2:As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune telling. She followed Paul and us crying out, these men are servants of the most high God who proclaimed to you the way of salvation. And she kept doing this for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And it came out that very hour.
Speaker 2:But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Cyrus and dragged him them into the marketplace before the rulers. And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, these men are Jews and they are disturbing our city. They advocate customs that are not lawful for us, as Romans, to accept or practice. The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore their garments off and gave orders to beat them with rods. And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely.
Speaker 2:Having received this order, he put them in the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.
Speaker 3:About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God. And the prisoners were listening to them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's bonds were unfastened. When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped.
Speaker 3:But Paul cried with a loud voice, do not harm yourself, for we are all here. And the jailer called for lights and rushed in. And trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.
Speaker 3:And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them and he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them, and he rejoiced along with with his entire household that he had believed in God.
Joel Brooks:This is the word of the lord. If you would, pray with me. Lord, we ask that you would bless the reading of your word that even now through your spirit, it would begin doing its work. You would begin doing your work. You begin changing lives, transforming them to look more like Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Lord, we worship you. We were praying earlier just how we, we use the words lord, and we use there as Christ, and they just flow off our lips and often missing our heart. And I pray, God in this moment, you would make those real terms. And when we declare that you're Lord Jesus and that you are Jesus Christ, the king that would resonate with us a resounding yes. God, we need to hear from you.
Joel Brooks:Right now in this moment, I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but lord, may your words remain and may they change us. And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. We just read 3 different conversion stories. And this is somewhat unusual if you've been following along through acts, if you just read through acts in one setting, you realize that Luke doesn't normally give you individual conversion stories.
Joel Brooks:They're scattered here and about, but usually you go into a town and you find the phrase something like and many believed or, the Lord added many to their number. But not here. Here, Luke gives us 3 very detailed conversion stories. I think he does this for a number of reasons. One, he wants to remind us of the joy that the gospel brings to those individual individuals.
Joel Brooks:And he wants to show us the changed lives that happen when we proclaim the gospel and God converts people. We get to see rebirth here. People are reborn. And when you're reading through this, a question that I kept asking is why these 3 though? Because many people in the city of Philippi, which is where we're at, many people were converted, but but Luke pulls out these 3 people and and he wants to make sure that we hear from them, hear their stories.
Joel Brooks:He brings out a woman, a slave, and a gentile. Three very different people with 3 different conversion stories. And what I think he's doing here is he wants to show us that the gospel is for everyone. No one is excluded from the gospel. If if you remember last week, we looked at, Acts 15, we looked at the Jerusalem Council, and there they discerned that Jesus was forming a people for himself that would be Jews and Gentiles, and that that you do not have to be a Jew in order to become a Christian, but that the gospel and the kingship of Jesus was for all people.
Joel Brooks:And what I think is happening here in Luke chapter 16 is is Luke is hammering this point in. And so he highlights these 3 conversion stories. I was able to find there's actually an ancient Jewish prayer. It's still used today in the Jewish prayer book, the Sadur. It's a prayer that is said by Jewish men every morning.
Joel Brooks:And as a Jewish male, the pre converted Paul would have said this every morning as well. And it goes like this. Praised are you, oh Lord our God, King of the Universe, for not making me a gentile, a slave, or a woman. There's also a lot of little chat rooms out there wanting wanting that removed from the prayer book, finding it offensive to our modern culture. But Jewish males would wake up and they would they would pray and they say, God, thank you for not making me a gentile, a slave, or a woman.
Joel Brooks:And here, the very people that Luke brings out to to highlight their conversion are the 3 people that every Jewish man prayed and thank God that they were not. I think this is what Luke is highlighting for us. And more than just that, the gospel's for everybody. He wants to say that the gospel is for every culture. The gospel is for the religious and for the irreligious.
Joel Brooks:It's for the moral. It's for the immoral. It's for the educated. It's for the uneducated. It is for the rich.
Joel Brooks:It is for the poor. It is for every person. And you can see this when we look at actually the, I guess we would call the epicenter of Christianity over the last 2000 years. And it's hard to put Christianity in a box. You have Christianity starting in Jerusalem, and that's its epicenter.
Joel Brooks:And that becomes the center of Christianity. And then it goes to Latin America, and now it's going into Africa. And most people think that the next wave, the epicenter Christianity will be in China and in Asia. And so you see that Christianity is not tied to any culture, affluent, very powerful, and some have been, very poor in 3rd world and have no world affluence whatsoever. But Christianity works in both.
Joel Brooks:I hope for those of you who not a Christian and you think Christianity simply isn't for you, I hope you find hope in that. There is no such thing as what There is no such thing as what you will call a predisposed, Christian type. You have to look this way in order to become a Christian. Not at all. And I think Luke is dismantling that idea before our eyes.
Joel Brooks:Let's look at the 3 conversion stories here. See what they teach us about the nature of conversion and how the gospel reaches everyone individually. The first conversion is a woman named Lydia. Upon arriving in Philippi, the first thing Paul does is he goes to the place of prayer, which was by river. You needed that so you could do your ritualistic washings.
Joel Brooks:And and so he goes there, and he meets a woman named Lydia. And we know several things about her. She is from the city of Thyatira, which means she was likely Asian. Thyatira actually belonged to the ancient kingdom of Lydia, and most scholars think that really her name isn't Lydia. She's just known as the Lydian lady.
Joel Brooks:She's known as that foreigner. That that that's the lady from Lydia. And so people would call her that. She's wealthy. She's extremely successful.
Joel Brooks:We know this because she owns her own home. She owns her own business. She's a seller of purple goods, which was a very expensive fabric. You can also tell that she's a take charge kind of woman. I mean, she tells Paul and Silas, no, come to my house.
Joel Brooks:And they really wanna get on the road and they're like, no one will leave. And she goes, no, you will come and stay at my house. It says she prevailed. She's a very strong willed woman used to getting her own way. If you wanna put a contemporary face on Lydia, picture a successful independent fashion designer.
Joel Brooks:Someone who, who is from Paris and for some reason has moved here to Birmingham, to to set up a shop. And and so she has a really nice home in Mountain Brook. She likely has, you know, a lake house or maybe a house back in Paris as well. She's, she's obviously different because she speaks with an accent and so people just call her, you know, that, French woman. That French have you been to that French woman's boutique?
Joel Brooks:You know, that's what she was known as. That's Lydia. We also know that Lydia was spiritually seeking because she was a worshiper of God. This is a technical term, worshiper of God. It actually describes someone who's kind of a quasi Jew.
Joel Brooks:They they they are reading the Hebrew scriptures. They're going, observing the Sabbath, but they haven't fully converted. That's that's what a worshiper of God is. And that's what she is. And so Paul comes to this place of prayer points to Jesus, that the law points to Jesus, that the prophets point to Jesus, and this registers with her.
Joel Brooks:It makes sense. It just clicks. The Lord opens her heart and she responds. Notice Paul takes the initiative and he shares, but it's the Lord who saves her. The Lord who who gives her that understanding and opens the heart.
Joel Brooks:And she's converted. I've seen this just share the gospel, share the gospel, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then one time, and I guarantee it was not the presentation, God just opened the heart. Just opened the heart and responded, and I was so shocked by it. I didn't even know how to really?
Joel Brooks:Really? Said I I'd like to pray now. God can do that. Paul essentially leads this person to the lord by having a bible study. That's it.
Joel Brooks:Has a Bible study. She comes to know the Lord. Immediately, she puts her new spiritual gift of hospitality to work. Next, we find somebody, who could not be any more different than Lydia. She's a slave girl.
Joel Brooks:She's also demon possessed. We don't know her nationality since she was a slave. She could have been from anywhere. We don't know. She actually has 2 masters, you know, because she's a slave, but she's also demon possessed.
Joel Brooks:So there is a spirit that is master over her. When you look at verse 16 and it says that she has the spirit of divination, that word divination is pythona, which literally means she has the spirit of the Python. That just freaks me out and scares me when I hear that. She's got the spirit of the Python or a Pythonian spirit in her, And that's her master. And so she has 2 masters.
Joel Brooks:She has zero freedom. If you wanna picture her today, perhaps picture a prostitute out on First Avenue North, who is enslaved in a sense to her her pimp and to the will of others. Maybe picture a a homeless person who is an addict and is enslaved to their next hit. Polar opposites from Lydia. So how does this person come to know Jesus?
Joel Brooks:Well, she immediately recognizes Paul as being a servant of the Most High God and proclaiming the way of salvation. And so, she begins yelling this, screaming this. I'm sure she's just like a mad woman here as she's as she's screaming this out. This is what Jesus would encounter time and time again when he would come across demon possessed people. They would scream out, I know who you are.
Joel Brooks:You're the son of the most high god. And they would just scream. Now this is true what she is saying, but but you have to understand there's no delight in this for her. It's not like she's praising God here. There's there's no delight.
Joel Brooks:There's just gall and there's just bitterness here. She might understand that they're proclaiming the way to salvation, but she doesn't at all think it is for her. Not at all. And so if you were to compare this girl with Lydia, I actually think she understands the gospel. She understands the lord more than Lydia did, but she's further away.
Joel Brooks:She's not free to delight in these truths. And so, how does Paul deal with her? Does he have a bible study with her? You know, with a woman like this, you know, worked with Lydia. So let's have a little bible study here.
Joel Brooks:Here's here's miss Mere Christianity or reason for God. Let's let's read this and go to get some coffee and discuss this. He can't do this with a woman like this. For her, the gospel has to come into her life in a display of power that is gonna free her from the things that are enslaving her. So the gospel has to come forward and power to free her first.
Joel Brooks:She is oppressed. She cannot hear or delight in the gospel unless she is freed. And this is how the gospel has to come to people like her today. If you take the gospel to those who are oppressed, you have to first take on those powers that are oppressing them. I can almost guarantee that a prostitute on First Avenue North this past week, Lauren and Caroline and Natalie, First Avenue North and they're right next to a prostitute that's there.
Joel Brooks:Car pulls up. She gets in, leaves, had to have some conversations, about, you know, what's going on here. But I guarantee you that that woman knows about Jesus. I can almost guarantee you that. I can almost guarantee that she could tell you what the gospel is.
Joel Brooks:I can also guarantee that she probably has bitterness and hurt every time she sees some well put together Christian wearing their best going into church. Because she thinks, alright. Yes. That that's a truth for you. Yes.
Joel Brooks:That works for you, but my life sucks. And there's this gall even though she actually understands a lot of the truth. And so in order to reach someone like this, you have to take on the powers that control her. To take we've got to take on the social injustices. We have to take on the, powers of poverty, take on the poor educational systems in order for those who are oppressed to actually be able to see Jesus.
Joel Brooks:The power of God in our lives needs to go forth and demolish the powers that are at work in their lives. Handing out a track, can you can you here's here's that's not gonna cut it. It's not gonna cut it for someone like this. Well, the results of this girl's conversion is that Paul and Silas are thrown in prison. I mean, you attack the pocketbook, which is what happened there, the God of almost everybody.
Joel Brooks:So they're gonna come up with some kind of charge and then throw Paul and Silas in prison. And it's here we meet the final convert, the jailer. The jailer would have likely been a retired Roman soldier because all jailers were at this time. He was a gentile, obviously he's Roman. Being a jailer is a decent He's probably well, he is.
Joel Brooks:He's cruel. He's hardened. He's likely racist or at least somewhat racist because, he was merely asked to put Paul and Silas in prison, but notice what he does. He puts them in the innermost cell. That means he's gonna put them in a room where there's no light, and then he puts their feet in stocks.
Joel Brooks:He tortures them. Torture is is going way beyond what should be allowed for such a trivial offense here. So so he's cruel to them. At least in my mind, I picture a middle class blue collar worker rough around the edges. He works hard, somewhat racist, dislikes people who doesn't share his views.
Joel Brooks:And I think of all three of the people here, he is the one who is most resistant to the because he's not at all like Lydia. He's not spiritually seeking. He's not he's not oppressed. He's just kind of almost somewhat content in life and just kind of one foot in front of the other going along. He honestly is just indifferent and could care less.
Joel Brooks:You bring up a religious conversation with him and that's it. That's probably the reaction you will get as he, as he moves on. He, he just wants to clock in his hour, so we could go home, sit in front of the TV, open a beer, and not think about anything. That's that's the kind of guy he is. So how does the gospel reach somebody like this?
Joel Brooks:2 ways. First, the gospel reaches the jailer through songs in the night. Songs in the night. Paul and Silas have just been beaten to an inch of their life. They are, they're bleeding.
Joel Brooks:They're put in stocks, which means their legs are spread way apart and are likely cramping up. They're in total darkness. Yet, instead of the jailer hearing the sounds of weeping or moaning, he actually hears singing, singing hymns. So we're singing about these great truths about God. And I bet that this was fascinating and infuriating to this guard.
Joel Brooks:I bet it was both. He's fascinated because he's never seen anything like this. Because Paul and Silas have no reason to sing. There's no reason to be joyful. I mean, joy comes from being able to do what you want when you want to do it, Comes from being free.
Joel Brooks:It comes from having good health. It comes from having power. It comes from being in control. It comes from all the things that he has, and he has denied all those things to these people, and yet they are still singing. And so he had to be fascinated by that.
Joel Brooks:But at the same time, I bet he was infuriated because he didn't have any power over them. And he's doing his worst to these people and yet is having zero effect. He can't do anything to take away their joy. And so this begins to have an incredible impact on him as we will see. I think as he's hearing this, he's trying to find a place where he could categorize this in his brain.
Joel Brooks:He's like, no. None of this makes sense to me. We have 2 people who were tortured, and they're joyful. The second way that the gospel comes to him is through the earthquake. God sends an earthquake, unlocks the prison doors.
Joel Brooks:If just one prisoner escaped, just one, the guard would have been executed. We've already seen this as we've gone through Acts in Acts chapter 12. When Peter escaped while rejoicing, Yay, Peter escaped. And then there's a little note of the bomb. They took off all the the guards all away and executed all of them.
Joel Brooks:That was the law of the land. If you allowed a prisoner to escape, you were to be killed. And so the guard, I mean, he sees the prison doors are unlocked. And so, of course, you're gonna assume, okay, the 2 people I just tortured are likely out of here. And so he pulls out a sword and he's about to fall on it.
Joel Brooks:And right when he's about to fall on his sword, he he hears just Paul crying out, hey. Hey. We're in here. Don't do it. We're still here.
Joel Brooks:Total disbelief. This this is incredible. Paul and Silas were tortured by this man, and now they can actually repay him for his cruelty. I mean, he had them in his power, now the tables are turned. They have him and their power.
Joel Brooks:Yet they repay evil with good, hate with love. It showed compassion to somebody who only showed them cruelty. And look at the jailer's reaction. I mean, the moment that happens, he falls to his knees and says, what must I do to be saved? What do I have to do?
Joel Brooks:Paul doesn't give him, like, this long laundry list. Well, for starters, you know, goes he just says believe. There you go. You wanna be saved? Believe.
Joel Brooks:Now a Bible study would not reach this guy. Try asking him to church. Try try asking him to go through whatever new studies out there. He's not gonna do it. He doesn't need to be freed from anything that's oppressing him.
Joel Brooks:The gospel has to come to him in a unique way, and it just has to be demonstrated through love in the midst of hate, joy in the midst of suffering. And so they model the gospel for this guy and his hard heart just melted. Paul and Silas were able to do this. I think stay in jail because really they've been freed from a far greater thing. They've been freed from sin.
Joel Brooks:They have been freed from death. And so really, they they are the ones who are free even though they were in prison. And they realize that, so they stay there. Now when the jailer is converted, look at the change in him. Maybe you know some I know some people like this who were just rough and just tough and just could care less, and the gospel changes them, and they become a little teddy bear.
Joel Brooks:I mean, the guy becomes a little teddy bear. He just immediately starts washing their wounds personally. He doesn't get a servant to he's personally washing their wounds. He invites them to his house, picks some dinner, introduces them to the family. You just see this radical transformation happen in his life immediately.
Joel Brooks:And can I just point out a little a little principle here that I think, as Christians, we should take away about reaching the jailer? If ever you can receive more pain than you give, you communicate the gospel in some way. Let me just briefly unpack that. This this especially makes sense if if you're a boss or if you have people working underneath you. If you have people working underneath you, there are gonna be times that you have to dish out a little pain.
Joel Brooks:It's inevitable. Do your job. You were you didn't do this. You know, you're you might have to dot pay at times or something. You're gonna cause some pain.
Joel Brooks:But, there's also times if you're a boss or you're over somebody that you can easily, easily pass blame to them. When somebody accuses you of something or somebody says something harsh to you about it, you could be like, it wasn't me. It was it was this person. And they have to take it because they're inferior. But let me tell you, if you consistently absorb that pain, even at times something that really was their fault, something that really should go to them and you absorb it, I guarantee you they're going to be like, why?
Joel Brooks:Why do you do that? That suffering was for me and you willingly took it on. Why? And you get the chance to just unpack the gospel for them and say, you know what? It's because Jesus took the hit for me, and so I could take it for you.
Joel Brooks:Alright? He's changed my life. And just as a general rule, if you begin taking on more pain than than you have to give it times, it points to Jesus. Now, these three people here, Lydia, the slave girl, the jailer could not have been any more different. They were different socially, racially, economically, religiously, philosophically.
Joel Brooks:I mean, there's pretty much a case study on conversion right here, and yet the gospel changes them all. Luke tells us that, you know, we we at least know Lydia and the jailer were both immediately baptized, and there's there's a lot you could say about baptism. That the heart of baptism is identification. So when you're saying, I wash off my old life and I want to be identified with my new life in Christ. So that, so they're washing the, I'm no longer this person.
Joel Brooks:I've been reborn and I'm in Christ. New people. And I want you to hear how Paul describes this in Galatians 3 28. And I hope, I hope you hear this in a new light this time. Paul says this, For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.
Joel Brooks:For as many of you were baptized in Christ have put on Christ. And there is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male or female. For all of you are 1 in Christ Jesus.
Joel Brooks:All he is doing there is just unpacking acts 16 for you and saying that Christ changes everyone. There's no predisposed Christian type. The gospel reaches everyone wherever they are and transforms their lives. Pray with me. Lord, for those here who don't know you, I think the gospel's not for them.
Joel Brooks:I ask that you would, in this moment, speak into their heart, like Lydia opened their heart. Like the slave girl, tear down whatever power is over them. And like the jailer, may they may they look around and they may actually see your gospel being displayed how you've taken what was once dead and you've made
Speaker 1:it alive.
Joel Brooks:And how you've taken what was once dead, and you've made it alive through the life and the death and the resurrection of our lord and savior Jesus Christ. We pray this in his name. Amen.