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, if you were publicly beaten and thrown in jail, what would you do? I'd be so mad, I'd be spitting nails.
I'd be fuming and I'd be screaming out for my lawyer. Absolutely. But that is not what Paul and Silas did.
No, what did they do? They were singing and praising God. And let's read about that today on More Than Ink. Well, good morning.
This is More Than Ink and I'm Dorothy. And I'm Jim. And we are in the middle of a very exciting part of Acts. We've arrived in Philippi with Paul and his companions Silas and Luke and Timothy. And we've met a woman named Lydia and she became a believer and has invited them into her house. And that's kind of where we left off. But there's going to be a lot of action coming up today in Acts 16 in Philippi. And so we just want to jump right into it and pick up the story.
Let's do it. So we're staying overnight at Lydia's house, but instead of leaving town, more transpires. Stuff's going to happen. Do you want to read?
Yeah, I'll read. Yeah, if you're following, we're in chapter 16 of Acts and I'll start in verse 16. So 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. So 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 this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, 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. Oh, well, that's exciting. So they're going to the place of prayer, which is where they had met Lydia in the first place, right? And there presumably is a group of believers who are meeting there. We know it's been going on for a little while, but this girl has been following them for many days, right?
She's made a habit of it. And on multiple days is crying out like a herald in town. She's saying these men are servants of the most high God and they're going to talk about salvation. So why is Paul unhappy with that? That's a question we should be asking about this text.
That's a great question. And in fact, Jesus silenced demons that were talking about him as well. That's right. And you can speculate, but one I come up with really quickly is the fact that bad association, if people knew that she was demonic in a sense and came from pagan foundations, would they start to associate what Paul and Silas are talking about with pagan foundations perhaps?
Right. It's very clear that her information was coming from an evil spirit who was feeding her information so that she could be a fortune teller. Even though it's truthful. It can be the truth, yes.
And what she says is true. But it also occurs to me that perhaps being who she was and under demonic influence, she may have been saying it in a mocking tone of voice. Could have been. Could have been. And so it would just be irritating to Paul to have this, what's the word I'm looking for, counterfeit proclamation following them along.
Right, which would kind of sully the veracity of what Paul's talking about. But he had put up with it for a little while. For many days. And until he stopped and turns. And turns. It's like she's following him. He hasn't been paying attention, right. He finally turns annoyed and doesn't address her.
No. He doesn't address her. He addresses the spirit that's inside of her and says, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. Now he doesn't say, I command you because I'm the apostle Paul. He says, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ. And that's a very important distinction right here. He's actually invoking the power and the authority of Christ and not his own power and authority. So what's fascinating to me is that this girl is freed, right, freed from demonic oppression.
But we don't have any account. She's clearly a slave who is owned by people who are using her. And so we're going to see what happens in the next little part of the passage. And somehow they're making money.
They're making money. Off of this demonic possession. From her fortune telling probably.
But it says in the verse at the end of 18, it says it came out of her. That very minute. Yeah, boom, just like that. Just like that.
Well, I mean, let's move on. This is fascinating. Verse 19. But when her owners, when her owners, her owners, is she a slave? She's a slave. Yeah. When her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone.
It's always about the money. They seized Paul and Silas and dragged 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 to practice. And then the crowd joined in attacking them and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods. And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into the prison ordering the jailer to keep them safely. Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. He put them in the high security cells.
Maximum security, maximum security. So isn't that interesting that these guys are not upset about anything except that suddenly this little girl that they've been using to earn money is no longer able to do that. And so they come up with some other charges.
You know, I think we're going to see this actually a lot in Acts, we've seen it already, that the motive of money and power becomes an obstacle to the gospel. Yeah. Yeah. That's still true today.
It's very still true today. In fact, at the expense of this gal, I mean, they're not thrilled about the fact that this gal is now freed from this. She's free from demonic oppression, but she's still their slave.
Yeah. But they can't force her. No, no, but they've lost their means of income, right?
You know, kind of in a way, not sounding too crass, it makes them kind of like pimps in a real sense. They're making a living off of her and off of the horrible situation that she's in. So they decide to go to the magistrates and complain. Now their complaints, I think it's interesting, their complaints are not really very specific.
They're very vague, in fact. Well, it occurs to me that their complaints are firmly founded in kind of Roman opinion. Yes. At this time in Rome, there was a strong kind of anti-Jewish sentiment and the accusations were kind of the same. They're just disturbers of the peace.
Right. And we know that there are not many Jews that are in Philippi. So they're a minority in Philippi and probably despise, kind of anti-Semitic in many respects.
That's why he says these men are Jews, like they're not one of us. And they're disturbing. They're disturbing.
Actually, they're cutting off our income, but they're not really disturbing anything. And then they claim that they're advocating something that's not lawful to Romans. Right. Well, in one sense it is because the Caesars thought they were gods, right? And Romans had gods on every corner, but here's Paul proclaiming the one true God.
So there's a teeny little fragment of truth in that. Yeah. But they successfully trigger the crowds to join in with the persecution. Boy, that's a historically proven pattern, isn't it?
Yeah, that works. And then once you get to that point when you have crowds that are up in arms and the magistrates have to do something, whether they're prone to or not. Okay. So these magistrates are Roman officers, right? They're Roman employees who have the authority to publicly beat people who are making trouble. Yep. Yep.
Yep. Very Roman. And so they're going to, for the sake of keeping the peace, like we've talked about before, that's all Rome cares about in the places they occupy is keeping the peace. But they don't even investigate. No, they don't. They just take the accusations.
Well, because they know it'll please the crowd and that'll calm the crowd down for whatever it takes to calm down the crowds. That's what's important. So anyway, so they say throw them in jail and then they tell the jailer very specifically to go way over that, make sure this doesn't go bad, right?
Make sure that you hold these guys very securely. So he not only puts them in the inner prison, which presumably he have to get through several gates to get out with locks, but then puts their feet in stocks. So even if the door was open, they couldn't get out.
They couldn't get out. Yeah. So that's about as secure as you can get.
Maximum security, they're in there for the duration. And then something happens. It's pretty interesting. Shall we read on? Yeah. Verse 25. Verse 25. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God.
Okay, wait a minute. They've just been publicly beaten. They're probably sore from head to toe and they're locked in stocks, sitting on the ground in a damp, cold jail. And in midnight, they're singing and praying to God. It's an odd one. And the prisoners were listening to them.
It's fascinating to me. Ministry for them did not stop. Well I was going to say, in those circumstances, we have one of two choices. You can either choose to curse men, which would be, it was founded, it was unjust. You can either curse men or you can praise God. So they decide. And you can't do both simultaneously. That's why I say it's a choice. It's a choice. And when bad things happen to you or things turn the ways you don't like them, we're so easily swayed into cursing the circumstance or cursing who made it happen or cursing the injustice of it all rather than saying, well, God brought me here for a purpose.
Let's just praise God because we can. And in that circumstance, it's just totally foreign to everyone else's experience, including not only the jailer but all the other people in jail. Other prisoners are listening. Now it occurred to me, and I hadn't thought about this before, that this is Paul and Silas who are locked up. So Luke and Timothy are outside.
Probably outside. So that's probably why they locked them so securely. Well and it's probably why they put Paul inside this because they looked like Jews. Oh, that's true. Timothy and Luke probably didn't. That's probably true. So they're in jail.
Okay. So they're in the jail praying and singing hymns to God in the middle of the night, still in ministry, verse 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. Whoa, that's crazy. That's some earthquake. Yeah. When the jailer woke and saw the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried out with a loud voice, �Do not harm yourself, for we're 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?� Let's pause there for a second. Yeah. Wow. Big doings. The doors open.
All the fetters fall off. Yeah. Now I've heard it said that this inner sanctum prison was actually in the lower part of the jailer's house himself. So it's possible that he could have also been within earshot, but what he's responding to is the earthquake, right?
What must I do to be saved? Because this is some kind of supernatural judgment here. Yeah. It's clearly crazy stuff going down. Yeah. And he clearly understands that God's the one who's doing this.
Right, because they've been singing and speaking about God. Right. And he knows Roman law.
And like I said, this is a hyper-Roman colony. Right. And he knows that instantly when there's like even one of the prisoners that gets out and runs away, his life is forfeit.
Right. The one who was responsible for him has to pay. So he decides he'll do the honorable thing instead of waiting for them to kill him, he'll just kill himself. And then what will happen to the prisoners? They all get away anyway. They get away anyway.
But at least you've been honorable and you don't dishonor your family. But it's interesting that Paul did not seize the opportunity to get up and run away. Right. He just stays where he was like, okay, Lord, what are you doing? Right. He could have rightly said, look, God has delivered us through a miracle. Right. Up Silas, let's go and let's leave this place. But again, also as part of that miracle, God has instructed them to say, no, stay put. Something much more important at stake here. Just stay put. Yeah.
So. And then he says, Paul says, don't harm yourself because we're all here. We're all here. Paul and Silas and all the other prisoners, who presumably were lawbreakers. I always wondered if Paul restrained the other guys from walking out too.
We don't know. But they're all there. Everyone's accounted for.
So the jailer's just amazed by this. And that's where you get to verse 29. Did we read 29? We did. Well, and then he brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved?
What must I do to be saved? Okay. That's one of the most famous questions in the entire New Testament.
All have to ask. Yeah. Yeah. And so in verse 31, and they said, believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 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. Oh, let's stop there for a minute, because isn't it a beautiful, putting together of the jailer washing their wounds and in the process of washing them, he himself undergoes this baptism. Yeah. And it's very likely that this jailer also participated in the beatings.
So the wounds that he is cleaning, he could possibly have been one of the ones who inflicted it. Yeah. Yeah. So then verse 34, he brought them up into his house and set food before them.
And he rejoiced with his entire household that he had believed in God. Oh my goodness. Radical change. Radical change. I mean, that's a happy ending to this story, right?
Right, right. Remarkable change. And it starts with this earthquake. And then it continues to this unusual Jew, this Paul guy, who basically says, look, we haven't left. We could have, but we haven't left.
And we're here. And then this guy puts two and two together and says, why would my prisoners be kind to me? Why would God free these men by the power of an earthquake?
What is going on? What do I need to do to be saved? And that, you know, I say that's one of the most famous questions in the New Testament because many people ask that. In the entire New Testament, what do I have to do to be saved? And if you want to go to a concise answer, boom, here it is.
Here it is. Well, indeed, Peter had spoken to that very thing at the very beginning of Pentecost. Yeah.
Right? Repent and turn to the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Yeah. Some people criticize this response in 31 because repentance isn't mentioned. It just says believe in the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved. But I, you know, I look at this and I say, look, I look at the jailer. Is he repentant? Well, look what he does.
Yeah. He truly is repentant. He's gone past the repentant stage.
So that's already happened in his life, it turns out. So at that point, once he's repented, then Paul says you need to believe in who Jesus is. And we just believe in the historical Jesus and we find that error made by a lot of people. Oh yeah, I believe Jesus was a real guy who walked in the first century.
No, no, no. When we say believe in the Lord Jesus, the Lord brings the authority thing in, you know, that he's the Messiah. And actually Luke amplifies that in 32 and he says, and they spoke the word of the Lord to him. So they made clear what believing in the Lord Jesus means. Believing in the Lord Jesus. And that clarification isn't written here in detail, but clearly in 32 he explained what he meant by that. You have to believe in the Lord. And then he says, and that means, and that's what you're talking about in 32.
Well, and we kind of see the same pattern as we saw with Lydia. He hears the truth, he believes it, he is baptized, he's washed, and then he identifies with the people who preach the gospel to him. He bathes them, he feeds them, he brings them into his house. They become part of his circle. Or he becomes part of theirs. Fascinating in both cases, hospitality happens after that.
Get hospitality. Yeah. Yeah. But the story's not over yet. Well, and you know, and don't forget, this is all happening at mid, after midnight, middle of the night, in the middle of the night. And so before we get to verse 35, presumably Paul and Silas, after they've been at the jailer's house, come back into the prison. What? Oh, you know, I hadn't thought about that. Verse 35. Let me read for us.
Oh yeah, go on. So 35, but when it was day, right? All this was happening at 12, one or two. When it was day, the magistrate sent the police saying, let those men go, they're thinking they're still in the jail. 36, and the jailer reported these words to Paul saying, well, the magistrates have sent to let you go, therefore come out now and go in peace. You're right, they were back in the jail.
They were back in the jail. Which by the way, before we go on, it was a nice move on Paul's part, because he says, you know, we could, we're here at your house enjoying your hospitality. Oh right, you're going to be in trouble. We could leave, but if we leave, you'll die.
Right. So let's just all go back to the jail. Okay, and then go back to the jail. Well and Paul has an ace up his sleeve here, right? And it's going to come clear in a minute, because he's a Roman citizen and he knows he's been treated unlawfully. Yeah, yeah, but out of deference for the life of the jailer, they go back to the jail. I mean, talk about self-sacrifice for the benefit of others.
Paul's not being selfish here. So verse 37. So Paul says to them, these are the magistrates who came, they've 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. So instead of letting them out based on the message, they say, no, they need to come and confront us here in prison. Yeah, so what would be his motivation for that? You know, I've never thought about that. I thought about that a little bit, because, you know, you would think Paul would just say, well, thank you, Lord, let's go. Right, right. But, you know, he has been clearly mistreated as a Roman citizen, not even according to Roman law.
And these guys want to secretly let him out. And here we have this jailer, and we have this young, young church, just believers just beginning in Lydia's house. And so for their sake, going forward, Paul, I wonder if he's laying down a precedent that with the Roman authorities that you cannot mistreat these people just because they're different. Yeah, yeah. Right, that they are entitled to act your own accurate, there we go, accurate Roman law. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, and, you know, their presumption was that Paul and Silas are not citizens. Right.
If they're dressed like Jews, how can they be citizens? Right. Yeah. So I don't know, it's a confrontation that they just need, it's a just thing to do. Right.
So he tells me, you need to come tell us yourself. So in verse 38, so the police, the jailer, those guys, they report these words back to the magistrates. And they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens. Yeah, because now they're in trouble. They're in trouble. And like I said, this is a very uber Roman colony. Right.
I mean, what Rome goes for is what's here. So they're going to get in big trouble as well. Not only would the jailer have been killed, but these guys would have been in deep doo doo too.
So, so they're afraid. So, so they came, verse 39. They come to the jail and they apologized to them.
Wow. And they took them out and asked them to leave the city. So they apologized to them and said, let's leave and go, just go, leave town. So where do they go? And you know, and I would think at this point, finally Paul and Silas would say, okay, we're done here, let's go.
But no. Look where they go. Verse 40. So they went out of the prison and they, they visited Lydia. They visited Lydia. This is the best thing. If she had heard that there was, she probably knew that they had been arrested and locked up.
Yeah. And here the next morning they come to show her, look, we're okay, God has delivered us. Look what's happening here. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and then they left town. And I, you know, I wanted to, you asked about why the magistrates, this confrontation magistrates, maybe that confrontation helped to shield Lydia from, from further persecution in town or something. That's possible.
I don't know. But because it could very well be that they said, you got to, okay, you're out of jail, leave town. They might've actually been escorting him out of town. And he says, no, let's go to Lydia's house.
And they would have put two and two together. The magistrate said, you mean Lydia's on your side, Paul? You know, the guy. So you know, I don't know.
I really don't know. Well, Lydia being a wealthy business woman that she was, would have been well known and had real connections. Right. And also at this point, the jailer presumably would start meeting with Lydia and the group of people who are worshiping Jesus. And so he would be identified as, you know, a follower of the same God that Paul is. So maybe this whole episode with the magistrates laid some foundation in order to lessen the persecution from the magistrates for this new up and coming group of believers. For the new church. That's what I'm thinking, because there are other places where Paul forgoes his rights, but here he takes full advantage of his rights as a Roman citizen. And so it's worth kind of thinking about for whose benefit. It's certainly not for his. It's for the benefit of these new believers. Yeah.
And he could have claimed it was his right to act a certain way, but like you're saying, he's using his privileges for the benefit of others and not for himself. That's just a really big deal here. So also, you know, I want to point out the little words again in verse 40. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed. Luke stops using the we word and starts using the they word right here. So interestingly, we looked last time that he started using the we word when he, when they left Troas, presuming that that's where they picked up Luke. Here they are in Philippi and now they depart, but they depart now we depart.
So it looks like, and this is a guess. So you think Luke stayed in Philippi? Sounds like Luke stayed in Philippi. And so maybe to help the growing church right there.
We really don't know, but those words tell us that. And later on in the whole narrative in Acts, we'll see him return back to the we word again. So you can kind of track him a little bit, but it looks like he got picked up in Troas. He joined them from Troas by boat over to Neapolis and up to Philippi, which is about 10 miles in. And then they depart from there, but he stays there.
Interesting. You know, it's interesting when Luke does rejoin the party later in the book, it's as Paul is getting older and encounters repeated beatings and abuse, Luke is a physician. It makes a whole lot of sense that Paul would have a physician traveling with him later on as he encounters more and more opposition. And so, you know, we're speculating at the beginning as Paul moves himself into Europe as he goes to Macedonia, whether or not the treatment is going to be welcoming or persecuting. And the answer to that is yes.
There's going to be some of both. There's persecution and there's welcoming, you know, and God has been working in the hearts of people like Lydia. He works in the heart of, believe it or not, of all people, the jailer who may have actually been part of the beatings for Paul.
He could very well be working in the hearts of the magistrates after this face to face confrontation with this citizen. And then as they come back before they leave town, they see the believers at Lydia's house and there's encouragement, it says, they are encouraged and then they leave. And what a remarkable story, just dropping into Philippi. Paul loved the believers in Philippi and we mentioned this earlier, but I would encourage you readers or listeners as you are processing this to just take a few minutes and sit and read the letter to the Philippians. It'll take you 20 minutes to read it, it's only four chapters, but it's full of affection for them and he speaks so eloquently about humility and serving one another like Christ serves us and loving one another, living in unity with one another.
What does that look like? And to rejoice even in the face of persecution. That's where Paul says in the beginning of Philippians, you know, I don't know whether it's better for me to die here in prison or to come back to you.
I'm going to let the Lord choose because both are good. So go and read Philippians and it will just kind of color up this story. And because he set foot in Philippi, we have that marvelous letter.
But the context here, this is the historical context that gives real color to the words and comments that he makes right there and you understand what a marvelous thing it is. Philippi is just, you know, to this very day, there is some very fascinating archaeological, what do you call them? Digs. Digs. Yeah, investigation. But it's ruins that are out in the open, right there at the base of this little mountain that they used to do kind of pagan stuff on it.
I think you can see it on Google Air effects. Yeah. And so there it is.
It's just right there. You can see the gates of the town, you can see the main buildings. I mean, those ruins are all there to this day. So Philippi isn't just a mythical story in Acts. It's a real place that still exists to this very day and we know where it was.
You can actually even see the little stream that runs right next to it that Paul went out that first day to find if people were praying on the Sabbath. Well next time, we're going to move again because he leaves Philippi. He's up in Macedonia. He's going to head further west and he's going to head over to another famous city that we have a letter to, the city of Thessalonica. And there amazing things are going to happen again. So I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we'll see how the adventure continues in Thessalonica 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. You can take out that gap, right? I can take that out. I can take that out. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
