Sermons
A Message by the Rev. Harvey G. Throop
Palisades Presbyterian Church
San Diego, California
(9) THE APOSTLE: Converts in Philippi
( Acts 16:16-40 )
"We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony.."
(Acts 16:11,12)
As God continued to guide Paul and his companions to minister in various cities, they eventually reached Philippi, a Roman colony that was the leading city of that district of Macedonia. Today this area is modern-day Greece.
Philippi was named after Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great. Since it was a Roman colony, it was independent of provincial administration and had a governmental organization modeled after that of Rome itself. In fact, many retired legionnaires from the Roman army settled there. But very few Jews lived in the city.
Now, if you were Paul, Silas, Timothy or Luke, how would you start a church in what amounted to a pagan city that was an outpost of the Roman Empire? Paul's strategy usually was to go to the local synagogue and seek out fellow Jews and other believers.
However, there was no synagogue in Philippi. The law required a minimum of 10 Jewish males to have a synagogue. Yet, the law also provided that Jews could gather on the Sabbath by a river and have a prayer meeting if no synagogue was available. So down to the river they went.
There at the river, Paul meets a woman by the name of Lydia.
Luke writes that she was a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira. Thyatira was situated on the other side of the Aegean Sea within provincial Asia and it was famous for centuries for it dyes. Purple cloth was very expensive and only the wealthy could afford to buy it. It would probably be like Cashmere wool or a very expensive silk today.
Luke also says that Lydia was a worshipper of God. This meant that while she was not born a Jew and had not fully converted to Judaism, she had warm sympathies toward the faith and believed and lived very much as a Jewish person.
Now, Lydia was probably not the person that Paul was hoping to meet. However, God had chosen her for very good reasons. She was a well-established businesswoman who owned a home and evidently had servants. She responds to the preaching of Paul. Lydia is baptized and all her household as well.
So far, so good for Paul and his fellow missionaries. They now had a new convert with a big house, which was perfect for the church.
As the missionaries went back and forth to their place of prayer, they meet a slave girl. Luke tells us two things about her. First, she had a spirit of divination by which she predicted the future; and second, she made a lot of money for her owners.
She would follow Paul and the others crying out, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation" (Acts 16:17). This was actually quite true. However, as this girl continued saying this day after day, she began to annoy Paul. Finally, Paul had had his fill of her, so he turned to her and ordered the demon to come out of her in the name of Jesus Christ.
Notice that Paul was not filled with compassion for this girl. Essentially, he cast out the demon because she irritated him. Who among us cannot identify with Paul? Enough is enough!
I think that it is also significant that Paul didn't gather the community together to pray about this or set up a task force to study the demon problem. He simply calls on the name of Jesus to heal this tormented soul.
Now, this slave girl used to make her owners a lot of money telling fortunes. So when Paul cast out the demon, he also cast out their means of exploiting the girl. This infuriated the owners who dragged Paul and Silas before the authorities and said, "These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe " (Acts 16:20, 21). Of course, they said nothing about the girl being healed. It is also significant that they didn't bring Luke or Timothy who were Gentiles.
There was no truth to the charge, but that didn't matter. The magistrates had Paul and Silas flogged and then thrown into prison. The jailer put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. This was all completely unjust. Paul and Silas had done nothing wrong. But now, they were locked up.
Now, if I had been Silas, sitting in a dark jail next to Paul with my feet in stocks, dabbing the blood that was running off my shoulders, I might have been tempted to ask Paul, "Are you really sure about what we're doing? I mean, if God really wanted us here, why would he let this happen to us?"
It's of interest to note that we have no record in Scripture of Silas asking that question or doubting their call from God. Instead, we are told that they spent their night in jail praying and singing hymns. We are even told that the other prisoners were listening to them. So a little revival broke out in the dark corners of the jail in Philippi.
Historians would love to know exactly what those hymns were that Paul and Silas sang. When I asked our Wednesday morning Bible class what songs they might have sung, one person answered, “Don't Fence Me In” (of the Bing Crosby era!). Another suggested, “Let The Walls Fall Down!” On a more serious note, they suggested such comforting hymns as: “Amazing Grace,” “O God, Our Help In Ages Past, Our Hope For Years To Come,” and “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” – among many others.
Well, we don't know what songs they sang. The chances are good, however, that since they were Jewish, that they sang Psalms.
When you are in a dark place on the journey, hurt, because of your race, gender, political party, or your religious convictions, you face a great choice that will determine the rest of the journey. If you choose only to lick your wounds, you are essentially choosing to be a victim. Yet, these men are refusing to be victims! They choose, instead, to let their songs of praise rise as protest against evil.
In his autobiography, The Long Walk to Freedom , Nelson Mandela claimed that in his twenty-seven long years in a South African prison, the singing of the prisoners was essential to his ability to survive. That is because as they sang, it was their protest that their souls were still free. And it takes more than stone and iron to imprison a human soul.
When we gather in this sanctuary after a week of living in a society filled with conflict, and pull out our hymnbooks to sing hymns like we will today , "Rejoice Ye Pure in Heart," we are not pretending the world isn't filled with evil. We are making a holy protest against it all by singing praise to our God who reigns. And we are claiming that our souls are still free.
After surviving a concentration camp, Victor Frankel wrote that, "The last of all human freedoms after surviving a concentration camp, is to determine your response to any circumstance."
Here in this holy sanctuary, we use our last freedom to sing praise to God. It is our greatest protest against the evil. So we can join Paul in claiming we are "Afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed" (2 Corinthians 4:8-9). Why? Because we sing.
Maybe Paul and Silas sang from Psalm 130: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits and in his word I hope” (Psalm 130:6). Psalm 130 is a psalm of hope. And hope is always found in the hard places of life -- the places of suffering.
From the Bible's perspective, suffering is not a judgment. According to the Bible, suffering goes with our territory as followers of Jesus. Our great hymns of the faith teach us that no matter how difficult it gets, God is with us still. So suffering, heartache and conflict are never the bottom line. Beneath it all is still our God.
Why do Paul and Silas sing? Because they know they are citizens of the coming Kingdom of God. And the gates of hell cannot prevail against that kingdom.
At midnight, while they are singing, a violent earthquake occurs that shakes the foundations of the prison. The doors to their jail break open. Their shackles and chains unfasten, and they are made free!
When the jailor sees this, assuming that his prisoners have escaped, he prepares to kill himself, knowing his life will be required. But Paul stops him and assures him, "We are all still here."
Staring at these men who had clearly been saved by God, the jailor asks, "What must I do to be saved?” They answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:31).
That night the jailor took the missionaries home to wash their wounds. And the missionaries washed away his despair in Holy Baptism.
There are many things we could highlight from this intriguing story, but the one thing we need to notice more than any other is the unifying power of the gospel.
It would be difficult to imagine a more dissimilar group of people than this wealthy businesswoman, this exploited slave girl and this Roman civil servant. Yet, all three were changed by the same gospel and welcomed into the same church. Lydia was from Turkey, the slave girl was probably Greek and the jailer was Roman. Lydia was wealthy, the slave girl owned nothing, not even herself, and the jailer was somewhere in between. Yet here they were embracing the same message of salvation and finding themselves embraced by the Lord and by his family of faith. Why is it that we have such a difficult time replicating this kind of diversity in the body of Christ today?
One wonders what would happen if these three people wandered into our worship service here some Sunday morning? What do you think? I imagine Lydia would feel at home in our midst; she would probably fit in. However, would the slave girl and the jailer? Are we a welcoming congregation to people who are different from us, who come from different walks of life or different socio-economic and racial backgrounds? What is the true “welcome factor” of Palisades? Do we cultivate a culture of invitation in our church? Have we developed an eye that keeps a lookout for the newcomer in our midst? Or do we simply think that's the job of the Greeters?
The first converts in the new church development in Philippi were a wealthy businesswoman, an exploited slave girl and a Roman civil servant. Together, they bonded. Working together, the church in Philippi grew until it became the dearest of all the churches in Paul's heart. If he had a favorite, it was the church in Philippi. They were the ones who supported him financially as he did ministry all around the world, and they were the ones who were faithful in prayer for the apostle, especially during his imprisonment later in his life.
The church in Philippi may have started out like an odd collection of souls, but it grew into a congregation that was mighty in its faith and sacrificial in its support.
May you and I be reminded through this story of the spiritual connection we share with each other. With God's blessing, we, too, can be like the church in Philippi became – strong in its unity and powerful in its witness.
"...I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. "
(Ephesians 4:1-3)