Acts 16:11-24 - Crazy Ladies and Cranky Apostles

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Thank you for tuning in today to Tabernacle Talk. And today we are in Acts 16. And through our journey, we've been following Jesus and the Apostles.

We've seen what Peter's done. We've seen what some of the first deacons have done. We saw the first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas.

Now we are with Paul and Silas, and they picked up Timothy in yesterday's episode. And now we are in...

We are going to find ourselves in the city of Philippi, the same city and the same group of people that we've been learning about as a church on Sunday mornings in the beginning of 2024. And we're going to see what happens in Philippi.

We're going to see the starting of the church and what Paul went through.

And hopefully it will shed some light on how we look at the book of Philippians and the themes that Paul draws out there about suffering and about joy and unity and all of that. Let's start in verse number 11 of Acts 16.

We boarded the boat at Troas and sailed straight across to the island of Samothrace. And the next day we landed at Neapolis. From there we reached Philippi, a major city of that district of Macedonia and a Roman colony.

And we stayed there several days. So as we've mentioned at our church, the city of Philippi was the place where a large battle had been fought and won for the Roman Empire, where they finally defeated the last of Julius Caesar's assassins.

And as a result of their joy about winning that battle, they gave to Philippi the honor of becoming a Roman colony. And they were free from the imperial tax, just like all of the main cities of Rome and some of their things.

It wasn't viewed as an outside city. It was one of theirs. Many Roman soldiers, after they completed all of their work, they were given land in Philippi.

And so it was a very patriotic place. And some of that plays into the Book of Philippians itself, some of which we've seen already and some of which we'll see in the upcoming week. So here, Philippi.

Verse number 13. On the Sabbath, we went a little way outside the city to a riverbank, where we thought people would be meeting for prayer. And we sat down to speak with some women who had gathered there.

One of them was Lydia from Thyatira, a merchant of expensive purple cloth who worshiped God. As she listened to us, the Lord opened her heart, and she accepted what Paul was saying.

She and her household were baptized, and she asked us to be her guests. If you agree that I am a true believer in the Lord, she said, come and stay at my home. And she urged us until we agreed.

And how cool here. Purple, purple cloth during this time period was not something I, you know, I've got purple on my hat. I've got purple clothes somewhere.

I think Samantha's got a purple shirt or two in her possession. Purple is not really that big of a deal today. Back then, purple cloth was very expensive to make.

You can just mass produce purple things. It was the color of royalty. And very, very rich people wore purple.

And this lady, Thyatira, she worked with purple cloth. And here, once she saved, what opens up in her heart? Hospitality, inviting people over, giving people a place to stay.

And while it's less popular now than it used to be, now we have maybe hotels that we can put people up in. Now we can give people a gift card to a specific place. And certainly those would be hospitable actions of caring for people.

In the New Testament, what we see many times, and especially in the Old Testament, is that inviting people into your home and spending time with people is a wonderful thing when we are able to do that.

It's actually one of the things that pastors are called to be, is to be hospitable. And right now with my little ones, it's a little bit harder to do that than hopefully in the future.

But that's something that I'm always attempting to keep in mind, is caring for others and being able to, as time permits, as little ones permit, invite people over and spending time around a meal with people is a wonderful thing.

Also at this time, obviously, you don't have restaurants or something that you can go and spend time with people.

So there's a lot of cultural things going on that isn't mandatory for us to practice everything that they did back then in the exact same way they did it back then. But she is hospitable, she welcomes them, and says she urged us until we agreed.

She's passionate about being able to help these missionaries. Verse 16, One day, as we were going down to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit, a demon, that enabled her to tell the future.

She earned a lot of money for her masters by telling fortunes. 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. So here, though, the demon is speaking truth.

It is in a way that when it's coming from that particular person, it doesn't really seem like truth. It seems like something you would want to turn away from.

Verse 18, This went on day after day until Paul got so exasperated 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.

I think it's so funny here that Paul gets exasperated. Many times when we think of the apostles, when we think of Bible characters, we think, okay, they're very pious men. They're very even keeled.

And truth be told, as we look at most of Scripture, they were not that way. Their emotions got the best of them at times. And here it's Paul's exasperation.

It's not inherently a thing of love that would say, oh man, I really care for this person. It's exasperation. He's frustrated about what's going on.

And so then he turns to do something. I think some of that juxtaposition is very interesting, that when Jesus does some of these things of casting out demons, he's doing it out of immediate care and love for the people that are being possessed.

And I think Paul here has a reaction like many of us might have. If there was a crazy person who was telling the future and shouting random things in the street, our natural inclination isn't to love that person.

Our natural inclination isn't to care for them. Our response might be what Paul's is. I'm exasperated.

I can't believe this person just keeps saying this, keeps doing this. I can't believe they're still there today. I think one thing that we can take from these verses is having a heart for those that are in dire need.

Here, she's a slave. She's demon possessed. People are making money off of the demon possession.

Like all of that is incredibly sad. And I think here God put some of these things together so that the little girl could be rescued from that demon possession. And I think here he's having us notice the attitude of Paul.

Verse number 19. So the demon has left the girl. Verse 19.

Her master's 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.

They are teaching customs that are illegal for us Romans to practice. Not really true, but that's what they told them. Verse number 22.

A mob quickly formed against Paul and Silas, and the city officials ordered them stripped and beaten with wooden rods. They were severely beaten, and then they were thrown into prison. The jailer was ordered to make sure they didn't escape.

So the jailer put them in the inner dungeon and clamped their feet in the stocks. Here Paul again is beaten. This time he is not stoned, so it's a little bit better circumstances than back in Lystra, but here he is severely beaten.

And as we can read later in the chapter, because of Paul's citizenship as a Roman citizen, it was actually illegal for them to do this action against him. That will play into some things later.

But here he is beaten and then they're thrown into prison. This is, I believe if I'm remembering correctly, the first time that Paul is thrown into prison, it will absolutely not be the last time that he is.

And you can see there the hopelessness of the situation. Verse 24, very beaten, hurt, in pain, the jailer puts them into the inner dungeon and clamps their feet in the stocks. What hopelessness.

What might have been your reaction if you had been Paul in this circumstance? Would you despair? Would you go, God, man, I shouldn't have helped out that girl if I just kept my mouth shut.

We would have gone to the prayer meeting. I wouldn't have been beaten. Silas wouldn't have been beaten.

We would have been just fine. I wonder if any of those thoughts went through his mind at any point. But, and this is where we're going to close today, and I'll save the rest of it for tomorrow.

Verse number 25, around midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening. We don't know what all might have gone through Paul's mind, but we do know where they ended up.

At midnight, they're praying and they're singing hymns to God. Prayer, in this instance, I'm sure they were praying for the other believers, praying that none of them were undergoing the same persecution that they themselves had experienced.

I'm sure that they were praying for Timothy, who is now very far from home, now with complete strangers, having seen his spiritual mentors taken away and beaten and not knowing if perhaps if they were still alive. So they were praying for them.

I'm sure that they were praying for perhaps the slave girl, maybe the people that had beaten them, perhaps like Jesus or like Stephen. Father, forgive them because they don't know what they're doing.

Maybe they were praying for their own deliverance, that they were saying, God, if it's your will, we believe that you have more for us to be able to do, more of the gospel for us to preach, more people to disciple and to train.

Maybe they were praying those things. It says they were singing hymns to God, that even in our times of brokenness and sorrow and physical pain, we can sing to God. Maybe we don't have a very good voice.

That's all right. If you have breath in your lungs, you're called to praise the Lord. Maybe you physically can't sing, and maybe you would sing in your heart.

I think of Ephesians chapter 5, where we're called to sing and make melody in our heart to the Lord, praising Him with song.

Here, when it says singing hymns to God, I do want to clarify that it wasn't that they were singing, My Jesus, I love thee, or I've got a mansion. It's not that kind of hymn, if you will. This is the actual definition use of the word hymn.

This is that songs to God.

And every week at Tabernacle, in our Order of Service, where we have our songs, we have our scripture highlighted, we have all of those things, I intentionally put, besides each song that we sing, this is our hymn for the day.

This is the hymn of reflection, because these are songs that are not about us, these are songs that are not strictly for our enjoyment, these are songs that are lifting up God and praising Him for who He is and what He's done and what He has

accomplished and will accomplish. So it says they were singing hymns to God, even in their sorrow. I think of one song that is kind of popular right now, the song Praise.

And it says, I'll praise in the valley, I'll praise on the mountain, I'll praise when I'm sure, I'll praise when I'm doubting, I'll praise when outnumbered.

Just all of the different circumstances, it says as long as I'm breathing, I've still got a reason to praise the Lord. And I think Paul and Silas would have emphatically sung that.

Maybe they were thinking of some of the songs that sung about, God, you see me, you see that I am trapped, you see that I'm downtrodden. Maybe they were praying and singing something like Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from me? And then the end of that Psalm, God did hear him and God has not forsaken him. And because God hears us, he will rescue us, he will reunite us with his people.

Maybe they were singing some of those songs. Can I encourage you? Many of us can enjoy tons of songs about a variety of topics.

The most important thing that we can learn is songs from Scripture.

One thing I'm going to do when I upload this episode, I'm going to connect it with a playlist on, I think it's my YouTube channel, that has just a ton of songs written from the Psalms.

And those are wonderful, life-giving portions of Scripture, of inspired words of God that have been put to music. And those are great things to meditate on. It's not on all the topics that maybe we would naturally think about.

When we think about praising God, we don't think about lament or crying. When we think about praising God, we don't think about sorrow over our sin. But this is what the Psalmists were thinking about when they were writing.

And so listening to songs written from the Book of Psalms can be very helpful for our spiritual life. So here's what happened. God worked even through imperfect people, imperfect means.

He freed a slave girl. He saw people saved. A new church started.

Hospitality built in the heart of God's people. And he brought, even through brokenness and beatings and hurt and imprisonment, he brought out prayers and hymns of praise to him, of Psalms that people would sing to him.

And tomorrow we'll see even more miraculous things that our God can do. I'd like to encourage you today. May you be one that would be hospitable to others.

May you be one that would share the Gospel. May you be one that would care for others, that maybe other people might just get frustrated with, other people might see as a burden or insignificant.

And then lastly, may you pray and sing to the Lord, even in times of hurt. That's when He wants us to call out to Him the most.