You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink.
Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages. Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, have you ever made big plans for something and then it just kind of falls apart? Yeah, you hit an obstacle and then you have to pivot and go another direction. Yeah, I hate that. Well, Paul makes big plans today and it just falls apart.
But God gives him a new, better direction. And we'll see that today on More Than Ink. Indeed, this is More Than Ink and I'm looking at Dorothy. I'm looking at Jim. We're looking at each other. I'm also looking out the window. Don't be distracted by springtime.
We are recording here in the springtime of the year and it's really just gorgeous outside. So we won't let that distract us. Today we are reading in the book of Acts. And if you're just joining us for the first time, what we do is we read through the Bible from one end to the other in a book.
And we're in the middle of Acts right now, like smack dab in the middle of it. And we don't consult each other's notes before we sit down here on each side of the dining room table. Sometimes we don't even have notes. Sometimes we don't have notes. And we just read the passage, which we recommend that you do as well.
You can do this. You can pick up the Bible and read it. I can't think of a more welcoming place to do that than Acts because Acts is a story. It's a long story about the early church and the apostles as they spread the gospel around the world.
It's very easy to read. But the events that you find there are not just fascinating, but they're cataclysmic in some accounts. It's so full of action.
You hardly can come up for air. So this has got to be one of the funnest places in the New Testament to actually read the Bible. But it's not devoid of deep and profound meaning. So that's why we're here today. And we hope you join us and you can find some of that meaning with us as we took a look at this incredible story. Yeah, and actually these stories today raise a lot of questions, right?
I've jotted a lot of questions down in my poems because there's just a lot of interesting things happening. But we are picking up, we're about to move into chapter 16, but we're picking up, we need to remember that at the end of chapter 15, Paul and Barnabas had just brought back the letter from the elders down in Jerusalem about how Jews and Gentiles were going to be able to inhabit the church together. That was a conflict, yeah. So they were back in Antioch.
They'd been there for a little while. And then Paul says, let's go back and visit everybody where we went on our first journey. And then they disagreed about taking Mark with them. Because if you remember, young Mark had abandoned them very near the beginning of the journey and of the first journey.
So there was such a sharp disagreement between them that Paul just refused to take him. So Barnabas said, well, I'm committed to Mark. So he took Mark and went another direction.
And Paul chose Silas for his new traveling companion. So that had just happened. That had just happened. In fact, William Barclay, who's a commentator, he sort of figures that it's been about five years since they came back from the first missionary journey, came back to Antioch. And now here five years later, they say, let's go back and check on everybody. So it's been that long perhaps.
It's kind of speculative on Barclay's part, but that's not a bad guess. So it's been a while. They've been in Antioch. And so they're saying, let's go back and check on the people that we saw in the first tour that we took up through the Asia Minor, which is actually central Turkey today. So they're aiming to go right back to central Turkey. And according to this, that was all they're aiming to go to.
Right. Just go back and visit the places where they had established churches. But won't they be surprised where they go? Oh, the places you'll go. So Paul just wants to go back and see the churches he saw on the first tour.
But it'll be more than that. So that's where we are today. We're in chapter 16, verse one. So if you want to follow with us, let's pick up the story as we get into this second missionary journey.
Okay. So 16 one, Paul came also to Derby and to Lystra. And I remember they had already embarked on the journey.
So they're going back to Derby and Lystra that they hadn't been before. A disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium.
Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him. And he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. Okay, we need to stop there. That's interesting. That's very interesting. So Derby and Lystra, they were there in chapter 14. Right.
If you want to go back and check on it. And Lystra, as you recall, was the place where they thought they would actually, they actually worshiped, they worshiped Paul like a god. And he said, No, no, no, stop that, stop that. So, so that's what's happened. And then they also threatened to stone him.
So it wasn't a wasn't a great reception. And you know, if Paul's anticipating how it's going to go, it will probably be like last time is probably going to be resistance. But apparently, there were a bunch of Jews who must have believed in Lystra and Derby because this Jewish woman who was a believer had this son named Timothy, Timothy, who is identified as a disciple, followers. So you know, probably his mother and Paul refers to his mother and his grandmother in the beginning of Second Timothy, that it's possible that they came to faith. They were Jews, Jewish women on that first faith on that first journey.
Yeah, yeah. And and had been raising Timothy in the faith, although he was uncircumcised, because his mother was a Jew, he was considered Jewish, but he was not circumcised. Yeah, which makes him technically an apostate.
Right. It makes him difficult to take along and Paul's going to spend all his time going first to the synagogues and enough. So yeah, the synagogue entry might have been barred to him. So right, because everybody in that region knew Timothy's family situation that his father was a Greek. Yeah. So now there's no mention of his father beyond that. So perhaps his father either was a believer or was out of the picture. At this point, we all we know about him was that he was a Greek. Yeah.
But Timothy comes with high recommendations as in verse two well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. So and and admittedly, probably a young believer, but a young believer with great promise. So he's referred to as a young man. Yeah. So he's not a child.
No, no, no, no, I'm not saying that. And he's been in the faith long enough that Paul sees in him a potential helper, probably because he doesn't have Mark. Well, that could very well be so in God's planning, Paul loses Mark, but he gains a Timothy.
And he's going to get Mark back in the future years. That's right. That's right.
But this is this is not a bad swap. So sometimes when you lose someone or lose something or a place, God fills that hole with a with another option, which is a good one. So okay, so the question comes up in my mind, then he took Timothy and circumcised him because of the Jews that were in those places. And we touched on this a little bit. But you know, here is Paul carrying the letter from the leaders in Jerusalem to say, Gentiles are free, right from they don't have to become Jews in order to become believers.
Right. And he's revisiting all these places where there are Jewish populations. So you know, why would he take young Timothy and circumcise him? Well, I think we made enough good argument right there. We talked about but let's be clear. It's not because Paul's changing his mind about salvation, right or requirements as a Christian.
That's not it at all. It really is an accommodation so that his outreach into the Jewish community where it happens will be eased. And an interesting place where Paul comments on kind of his own thinking on this, although he doesn't mention Timothy is in First Corinthians nine. And so when he says, you know, I to the I'm free from the law, but to the Jews, I become as a Jew to those without the law I become as one without the law so that the gospel will not be hindered.
So he was looking ahead and seeing that traveling with an uncircumcised man who was a Jew would cast a shadow on his witness to Jews. However, it does it does occur to me that he made an opposite argument for Titus. Titus was similar to Timothy. He was an up and coming pastor in that sense. And in Galatians two, I think it is that type of Paul says, you know, I did not circumcise Titus, although he's a Greek, he's a Greek. And I think the issues I recall was the fact that there were there was secret unbelievers had been working their way into association where Paul was and they wanted to see if Paul was actually secretly doing Jewish stuff. And so he deliberately did not circumcise Titus.
So his argument opposite argument, in neither case, Titus nor Timothy doesn't have anything to do with salvation or anything about becoming Christian. It's about it's about accommodations so as to make your associations with people coming up easier. That's to not make any opposite or any obstacle. Yeah, to carrying if you can remove an obstacle. So Paul says later, all things to all men for the purposes of the gospel movement.
Okay, well, let's see what happens. Verse four. As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them the observed for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem.
So the churches were strengthened in the faith and they increased in numbers daily. So that was the thing they wrote in the last chapter. Right? Yeah, the four, essentially guidelines for for Gentile believers. So go back to chapter 15 and read that because it's so important that chapter 15 includes that twice.
It includes it in the discussion when they decided it and then reiterates the letter. Right, right. So things are working good in Derby and Lystra. And so Paul moves on from there. And let's continue to move. And an incredible going instead of going back home, right?
He continues further outward. Well, he's still pressing kind of to the west, but he's still in Asia. Yeah. So they went through verse six, though, the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.
And when they'd come to Mycenae, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. Yeah, let's stop right there. Yeah. So Paul's not sure which direction to go. I think his first impression is that when it says the word in Asia, most people agree this thinking kind of southwest like toward Ephesus. Right.
So and that would be a good move, because Ephesus is a very important city. It gets thwarted by the Holy Spirit. So he says, Well, let's go the other way.
So then he had the opposite direction, which is kind of north. And this is fascinating to me, because within these two sentences, we have first, he's forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak in Asia. And when they want to kind of pivot and go a slightly different direction, the Spirit of Jesus doesn't allow them.
So we have within a breath, the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit of Jesus referring to the same voice, right, right, right to say persons operating the directions operating coming from one source. And in both cases, they're they're not said, go that direction. It said, don't go that way. They're not. They're not open doors.
They're closed doors. Yeah, yeah, I think that's really important. This was a huge pivot for them, right? Because Paul's like, Well, hey, we're just going this direction. We're gonna keep going this direction. And you'd think you would just preach the gospel in all the cities you came to. Yeah.
But they must have had a strong impression. Not. But you know, this, this reinforces kind of an approach that we both take in life, which is, you know, if you ask yourself, Where am I supposed to go next? You say, Well, the direction I'm facing is this direction.
Right. So I'll just go this way and say, God, if you don't want me to go this way, close the door. And that's what Paul does. He's not waiting for an affirmative direction. He just says, I'll go this way. And then God closes the door twice. That's a really important principle of guidance. I think Am I willing to not bang on a door that God has closed, right? Right. And to have a loose enough hold on my plan to in order to pivot into whatever new direction the Lord may guide, right. So they have come to the end of the land, right? Well, and I might mention in this closed door kind of philosophy is is the fact that many people feel like I'm not going to move until I know where I'm going.
And yeah, that's not true. Many times, it's better just to start moving and say, God, steer me as I'm going, but here we go. Because it's easier to steer a moving boat, right? You can't steer both the side of the dock. So God can very clearly and very easily change your direction.
In this case, he shuts the door twice. And so Paul has to pivot again. Yeah. And so they come pretty much to land's end, right? They come down to this major port at Troas, which, from something I read is about 400 miles from where they had been.
Yeah. That's a long foot journey. Troas is right on the western coast. It's, yeah, like you say, it's a small port town on the GNC. So they come down to a port town, think seagulls and boats. And there we are. So they get to Troas, right.
And presumably they spend the night because they're tired after that walk. And this is great in verse nine, and a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia was standing there urging him and saying, come over to Macedonia and help us. And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. Well, that's interesting. Did you hear the us and the we?
Yeah, yeah. Back in verse eight, it says they went to Troas, but in verse ten it says we sought to go to Macedonia. Well, Luke is the author. They picked up Luke right here, quoting that little term we in verse ten. So Luke was, was he a resident of Troas? Very possibly, but he did join the tour. We don't even know if they knew him previously, but somehow they became acquainted with him and he just came right along. Yeah, that's right.
Because he says, we concluded that God had called us to preach the gospel. So he considers himself a viable part of the team. Yeah, well, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
And it is an interesting thing. We talked about closed door direction in a second ago. I mean, it's interesting if God had not closed those two doors and they made it to Troas, you wouldn't have Luke on the team. And you wouldn't have Luke, the guy who ended up writing maybe the most major number of pages of the New Testament. Right, because the entire gospel of Luke, which he says he investigated everything carefully. The gospel of Luke and this account in Acts. So many times you think when God's closing doors that you're losing stuff, but you don't really understand what God's gaining in doing those things. This is super important.
I just think that's very ironic. So this call to come over to Macedonia, which was delivered to Paul in a dream, that is a whole new part of the world, right? They're about to sail out of Asia into Europe. Into Europe. That's exactly right.
So that's what I mean. This is probably a surprise to Paul who's thinking I'll just stay in Asia. That's where he went on the first tour and now he's way past that. He's getting ready to set foot.
So he's heading farther from home. Yeah. So Macedonia is up where the big peninsula of Greece hits the major continent to the north.
It's the mountainous area up above the top of big Greece. So if you haven't opened your Bible to the maps in the back yet, it's a good thing to do when you're reading it. Yeah, I got to do that. Well, let's find out what happens when they make landfall.
Oh, this is fun. So verse 11. So setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace and 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'd come together.
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. Want to stop there? Sure.
Just for a second? Because it's interesting that of this group of women, which tells us, well, where are the men, right? There weren't enough Jewish men for a synagogue.
Yeah, it takes a, I think it's a quorum of 10. Yeah, what I remember. So there probably wasn't even 10 men there.
Yeah, probably. So they go down to what would be a traditional place of prayer and they encounter a group of women. Now whether they were Jewish or Gentile women, we don't really know.
Well, but it says on the Sabbath day, so I think he's presuming that if they don't have a synagogue, they're going to pray someplace. But why is it only women? Yeah, that's a really good question. That's an interesting question to me. Yeah, yeah. We don't know, but we do know that this woman Lydia, we get a lot of information about her. She's not from there, but she has a home there.
Right, right. So where is she from? Thyatira. Thyatira. Well, that's back across where they left, right from the coast of Asia or inland from the coast.
In fact, when Paul wanted to aim into Asia, where I said he was aiming to Ephesus, he would have gone almost right through Thyatira. Right. Yeah. So she's actually a representative of the huge textile industry in Thyatira. Yeah, we're told she's a seller of purple goods and Thyatira was famous for its purple dyes.
Yes. So she's a businesswoman. She deals in luxury items. There's no mention of a husband, so presumably she has some wealth or some means. Maybe she's single. We don't have any idea how old she is.
We don't know. But it's fascinating that we're told here in verse 14 that the Lord opened her heart because she was already a worshiper of God. So there she was among presumably these Jewish women there to pray with them because she was interested in the God of Israel. Right, right.
And the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul said in verse 14. Yeah. So it's interesting, you know, she's a retailer of the goods that are made in Thyatira. Right, she's a businesswoman.
Yeah. And she's in probably one of the best trade places in that part of the world because Philippi was really quite a major Roman city. In fact, there was a really famous Roman battle in the Roman Civil War around 40 some B.C.
and stuff. Mark Antony was one of the generals and stuff. And it happened right smack dab there in Philippi.
Right there. I mean that decided the Civil War in Philippi. And so a lot of people surmise that a lot of the Roman soldiers who had fought there, I mean there's a lot of Romans that were there fighting the Civil War, they just stayed there. So it turns out that Philippi became like a little Rome in a real sense. I mean it was, when you travel there as a Roman citizen, you had the rights and customs as though you were in Rome itself rather than being in a foreign country, you were in Rome itself. Well that's going to be important to know when we read the rest of this story next week. Yeah, that's a really big deal. So Lydia, when she comes to Philippi, she's there because there's money, because it's like little Rome.
It's a really great place. Isn't it a wonderful thing that here when Paul is preaching the Gospel in a whole new territory that the first believer we know of is a Gentile woman. So you could almost say that the man in the dream, the Macedonian man, was a woman. Well I wouldn't go that far.
I just thought that was wonderfully ironic. Paul might not have paid attention if it was a woman in the dream. That's what I mean.
If he woke up the next morning and he told his friends, hey I had this woman in my dream, and he'd go well let's not go that way. Let's not waste time there. Let's not waste time. But Lydia is really quite a singular person. She's an interesting person. Very accomplished and someone whose heart was soft for the Lord. Yeah, and it was God who did it.
It wasn't because Paul was so amazing. That's right. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. And verse 15, after she was baptized, and her household as well, her household, 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. Wow, hospitality. This is a woman who won't take no for an answer. Right, right. She prevailed upon them, so she entreated them urgently, like there's no place else for you to go and I won't take no for an answer, come to my house. Well maybe they were intent to keep moving.
You know, I came to Philippi and she says no, don't keep moving, you need to come stay at my house for a bit. This is a party of at least four men. At least. You've got Paul and Silas and Luke and Timothy. And we don't know if there were others with them, but you know, it's quite a thing for a single woman to say come to my household to four traveling men.
Yeah, yeah. And what a contrast from the reception that he'd gotten in Lister once before. I mean, it's just, when he ventures out into Europe in this direction, based on the, a lot of the very negative experiences in the center part of Asia, he's not sure what's going to happen. And here he is smack dab, smack dab in very proper Roman culture.
And he's not sure how he's going to be received. So what a great thing it is that Lydia says, nope, I insist you must stay with me. And here Paul and his entire team experience this remarkably great hospitality from someone who you would never expect it from. Well we find out a little bit later that there actually was a gathering of believers in Lydia's household going on from there. Then that Paul and his companions stayed there for some days.
We don't have a specific number, but they were there for a little while. So she really is demonstrating an extraordinary amount of leadership both on a spiritual level with the believers as well as in her business that she's doing from a distance from Thyatira. I mean, she's really quite a remarkable person in so many ways, in so many ways. What strikes me too, and we're going to talk about this a little bit in the rest of the passage next week, is that there's a pattern here that when she believed, she was immediately baptized, right? She took on an identification with this new belief, and then she acts, right? She brings them right into her home and becomes a part of them essentially, a part of the ministry. Yeah, and her old household, they believed as well. So she had great influence on the household, they were baptized as well.
Well that's the pattern we're going to see next week with the jailer actually in the rest of the chapter. Well and these things happened with Cornelius a long time ago here, the centurion up in Caesarea, so the whole household listened. So yeah, it's really, it's a remarkable kind of, it's almost like dominoes falling, where the dominoes have been starting to be tipped by the Holy Spirit, they've been working in her heart and the hearts of people who finally hear Paul. It's almost as though Paul is sent by God and God says, you need to speak, but by the way, the timing is perfect. I've prepared hearts who ahead of time are going to listen to you and they'll hear the words and when they put together how I've been preparing their heart with the information you give them with your words, they'll gel together and they'll come to me.
They're going to act, they're going to respond. So the entire evangelistic effort in his experience with Paul and ours as well is an issue of finding people who God has already been opening their hearts. And I use this a lot when I talk to other people, I'm listening to see if there's curiosities or interests in spiritual things and stuff like that. And I don't go straight for the cross in Christ. I find out, is God already preparing their hearts?
And there's lots of ways to figure that out and you hear that. But when you start to find that and you start to move into that curiosity, you'll find that the people whose hearts have been prepared by God, they almost cannot pull out of you fast enough the information that God has prepared them to be hungry for. And so that's evangelism. That's real evangelism, is not forcing the gospel on people, but finding the people on whom God has already softened. Well, and along with that, I'm thinking of a couple of people in my life who are fairly confirmed unbelievers, but who have not rejected me. And every time just constantly praying and listening for when the opportunity comes to drop a little gospel seed into that conversation and see where it goes. And sometimes it opens up to a spiritual conversation and sometimes it doesn't.
And so I'm just praying constantly and listening for, Lord, is this the time that that conversation is going to go up? I'm not going to not speak about Jesus. But I'm also not going to go in waving the sword of Jesus.
And you're not going to pound them on the head either. And in fact, you use the word listen. That's such a good thing to emphasize when we're talking about sharing the gospel. You need to be simultaneously listening in two directions. You need to be listening to the Holy Spirit's leading and you need to be listening to what other people are saying, rather than strategizing what you're going to say.
And that's just a gigantic issue. If you don't know where they're coming from, because you're not listening to them and you're not listening to the Holy Spirit move you, then you just have a pre-programmed kind of recipe and the results will be discouraging. Yeah, that's what it's all about. So we pray that you'll find Lydia's in your experience. And as a result, then amazing things start to take place in this area. By the way, too, Thyatira is mentioned in Revelation. Yeah, it's one of the seven churches that are mentioned in the front end.
And I would just direct you to just go look at that because this is the town, Thyatira is where she came from. So that's in Revelation 2. And also, I would encourage you to take a look at the letter to Philippi. Yes, Paul's letter to the Philippians. It's called Philippians, yeah.
Yeah, he makes some great comments there. Exactly. It's one in the same place. And this is the first time he sets foot in that place and all that, of course.
Well, it is possible that that letter was read aloud to the people who were believers meeting in Lydia's house. Yeah. Well, we are out of time for today. Next time, we're going to stay in Philippi, right?
Oh, yeah. And we'll be there for some days yet. Amazing things happen. So I'm Jim.
And I'm Dorothy. And come back and find out what transpires further in the wonderful city of Philippi here on More Than Ink. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you're there, take a moment to drop us a note. Remember, the Bible is God's love letter to you. Pick it up and read it for yourself.
And you will discover that the words printed there are indeed more than ink. Better. I left out the better. I was waiting for better to come in. Yeah, sorry. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
