Paul writing to Christians, mind you, says to them, listen, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is gracious, whatever is of good reputation, ponder these things. The next verse says, practice these things. Make up your mind. Will you be led by the alluring sound of the serpent and live for the colony of earth?
Or will you follow the voice of the Spirit of God and live for the kingdom of heaven? Women is an act of God, and He offers it to us as a gift. It's a universal need of all people in all generations. In the book of Acts, we read about two women with very little in common. One is a wealthy businesswoman. The other is a dirt poor demon possessed girl. But the one thing they have in common is that they both need the Savior. Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart. We're continuing through our Vintage Wisdom series from the book of Acts, and we come to a lesson today entitled A Tale of Two Women.
Here's Stephen Davey to teach you from God's Word. In Acts chapter 16, a cry for help comes across the Aegean Sea. It came from Europe, a continent mired in idolatry, barbarians roaming the German forests, inundated with self-serving mankind. And the call for help came in the night to someone who happened to be listening. And we looked at that call, but let's go back to verse 9 where this man is standing and appealing to Paul and saying, come over to Macedonia and help us.
Come over and help us. This is a spiritual SOS, like a flare fired in the darkest night. This call comes to the apostle and immediately he knows that it is God's design for him to form a rescue party and head for Europe. In fact, the next verse, verse 10, said when he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.
History would be made because of that. Verse 11, therefore putting out to sea from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace and on the day following Neapolis and from there to Philippi, this would be the first city on European soil that he ministers to, he said it was a leading city in the district of Macedonia. It was also a Roman colony and we were staying in this city for some days. And on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to a riverside where we were supposing that there would be a place of prayer.
And we sat down and began speaking to the women who had assembled. These verses, by the way, tell us a lot about the spiritual condition of Philippi. Jewish law required that if any village or city was inhabited by at least 10 Jewish men, that these men were under obligation to form a synagogue. The fact that this place of prayer was by the river out in the open reveals that there then are less than 10 men of Jewish origin or perhaps worse yet, 10 men of Jewish origin, faithless to the God of Israel to form a synagogue. Furthermore, once you arrive at the place of prayer, I was struck and perhaps you were as well that only women have assembled, no men. This sends us a rather strong message about Paul. He was a former Pharisee and his attitude toward women had remarkably changed because of the people. It's significant that the first people Paul ever preached to in Europe were women.
J. Vernon McGee once quipped, evidently the man from Macedonia was a woman. I might dare say that in most cities, it is the women who belong to God that make any impact at all. You could make the same cry today that you could make back at Philippi. Where are the godly men?
Well, they weren't here. And so he delivers it to the women who were ready and open. Notice verse 14. And a certain woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God was listening.
Now for the expositor, you don't appreciate a sentence like that because there's too much in it to really go very far without slicing it up. Let's stop just long enough to deal with the volume of information that we're given about this woman. She was a dealer or a seller of purple fabrics.
This job, you need to understand, was as lucrative as any business in America that's lucrative. Purple dye applied to fine linen would be like owning the microchip patent for fine computers. That's because the purple dye was extracted from a shellfish and it would take 8,000 shellfish to come up with 1 gram of purple dye. So this was incredibly expensive clothing.
You could call this the Lexus of wardrobes. Purple garments would be worn by the emperor. In fact, every Roman senator had his customary white toga and it was trimmed in purple. Private citizens wore their purple to reveal their immense wealth to the adoring, coveting populace. Danielle was evidently the middleman here. She's the broker in the operation that stretches all the way back to Asia Minor and into Europe and she was immensely wealthy. Discovered as well by the implication that she is capable of inviting four men to live on her estate. She has enough servants and food and accommodations to handle that just like that.
She had profited tremendously by this industry. But the text also tells us that she wasn't happy with all that she had because she was a worshipper of God. You could render that a God-fearer. That's a special term that appears in the New Testament for the Gentile that had abandoned the idolatry of their countrymen and followed after the one and only God of Israel. They really weren't Gentile and they really weren't Jew.
They were sort of caught in the middle but they knew that this wasn't satisfying. They knew that the Jews followed the true God. And so in the light they were given, they became God-fearers. And so here you have this wealthy woman meeting in a very primitive setting, perhaps sitting on the ground with other women praying to the God of Israel. Now the last part of verse 14 tells us as Paul was speaking and teaching that she was listening and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. Great, great verse of scripture. The verb tense here tells us that Paul spoke several times to her, that it wasn't at the first meeting that God opened her heart.
It was after several meetings. And then God opened her heart to the point where she finally responded in faith. This is a wonderful verse about the sovereignty of God in the process of salvation. This verse tells us that even before Lydia believed God was behind it all opening her heart in order that she might believe.
And I want to say this. If your heart doesn't respond to the word, if there isn't any impulse within you that finds interest in the words spoken by Paul and all of these epistles, if you can take his church or leave it, if you can take God or leave it, if there is no inward motivation to serve Christ and his church, no desire to honor him, you may be spiritually dead. That is, there are no signs of life. And you ought to be terrified enough to get on your knees and beg God to open your heart. Because as you look at your life, there are no vital signs of spirituality. And you can't open your heart. You can't wake up one morning and say, I think I'll believe. God has to do that.
Maybe you need to beg him to. Notice the first phrase of verse 15. It tells us then that she not only believed, but she and her household had been baptized. That is, she inwardly believed, and now she publicly professes of her belief in identifying with this mark of a disciple called baptism. You would have to then say, should this be consistent with that, that what happened was her household also in the process of hearing. God opened their heart as well, and they believed. I noticed the latter part of verse 15. She urged us, saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay. And she prevailed upon us. Now that tells us that Paul first declined. No, we really shouldn't do that. We don't want to impose.
No, you stay. And so she prevailed upon them, and her house became the base of ministry for the work of God as it began to multiply from Philippi on into European territory. I find it interesting here that this woman was willing to connect her business success with the propagation of the gospel. Her home, which was the thriving corporate center of her business, now becomes part and parcel with the work and ministry of this evangelistic team.
Her resources are now at the disposal of Paul and his team. Lydia saw the connection, and her business became the base of operations in reaching into Europe. Now, the text goes on to introduce us to another woman involved in a lucrative business. Her business was involved with the underworld, however, literally the world of demons and divination.
Look at verse 16. And it happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a certain slave girl, having a spirit of divination, met us who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune tellers. Now, there are a number of good expositors and commentators who believe that her masters were actually priests from the local temple, the temple of Apollo. And I'll throw my hat in the ring with them because of the word in the Greek text divination translated their divination.
It comes from the Greek word puthana, which transliterated gives us the word python. The spirit of divination can be rendered the spirit of python. And this, of course, then opens the door to what we've come to learn, this practice of religion that was part of Greek mythology.
Apollo supposedly spoke through the python that guarded the the special sanctuary or the oracle of Delphi. And in this day, Romans didn't do anything without predictions of the future. And so anybody who was able to predict the future in Paul's day was called someone who was led by the serpent. Can you imagine that? I couldn't help as I uncovered this truth to go back and think of the first creature that was involved with predicting the future.
Which one was it? The serpent who was the mouthpiece of Lucifer. The python in Paul's day was the mouthpiece of Apollo, the god of prophecy. This serpent, the mouthpiece of Lucifer, prophesied and predicted Eve, if you eat that, you won't die. In fact, you'll be as wise as God. It's interesting how the heart hungers for the knowledge of the future, isn't it? No Roman general would ever march in a campaign in Paul's day without having first received predictions of the future from local priests. The priestess of Apollo was someone supposedly capable of predicting the future. That practice is alive and well today.
In fact, New York's telephone system alone handles a million calls a month to psychic lines and networks. I believe, as in this day, those who supposedly could tell the future were indeed being led by and are being led by the serpent. Now notice what she's doing. Verse 17, she's following after Paul and us, and she kept crying and saying, these men are bondservants of the most high God who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation. Now what's wrong with that? You know, my first glance was that sounds like great free advertising. Here's someone who's known throughout the community for predicting the future, and now she's basically saying, you have arrived on our soil and shores, servants of the most high God. Well, you have to sort of insert the possibility or the potential of a sneer and the jeer and a cynical mockery. It may have sounded more like, hey, everybody look at them. They are servants of the most high God, whoever that is. In fact, you just take the cynicism out and just take the last phrase alone. They are proclaiming to you these should be translated a way of salvation.
Nothing could be further from the truth here. She's saying, listen to them. They're proclaiming to you a way of salvation.
That isn't the truth. They are proclaiming the way of salvation. And to those Europeans, she's suggesting they just take this way and stuff it in the bag with all the other ways, and maybe they'll be saved one day.
So this isn't free advertising, far from it. Finally, Paul had enough verse 18. She continued doing this for many days.
Can't get rid of this gal. Paul was greatly annoyed and turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And it came out at that very moment. But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.
I like Luke's sense of humor here. Verse 18, he says, the demon came out, excelled and literally the demon exited. And he uses the same word in verse 19. Our masters saw that their hope of profit had exited. Demon exited, their hope of profit exited.
Same word. Now they really get agitated. See, it's okay for her to run around day after day after day after day, say these are servants of the Most High God and listen to them. They're proclaiming a way of salvation. Oh, but now they're bothered. And they will haul these men into court, as we'll see in a moment, and they will be beaten and placed in the jail. See, they get agitated when their profit exited.
Up until then, it was okay. And we're going to have to leave our story at this point. But for now, let's take a close look at this narrative and make an application by way of studying the contrast between those led by the serpent and those led by the spirit. First of all, what we can pull from this passage is that those led by the serpent had a blindness to spiritual significance. Here's Paul exercising power over Apollo.
This is front page news. And he mentions his power in relation to this name, Jesus Christ. If you had been the master of this girl and you knew the demon was gone and the ability to predict the future, thus saying that the God that these men were following is more powerful than your God, wouldn't you stop and ask, what's going on here?
Who is this Jesus Christ? You never hear that. They never ask a question.
Why? Because those who follow the serpent cannot receive the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to them. Neither can they understand them for they are spiritually discerned. First Corinthians chapter two. Now they can even mouth spiritual truth without understanding its import. Servants of the most high God.
But I don't know who he is. A way of salvation. I won't believe in it. Those however, by contrast, who are led by the spirit, there is an acceptance of truth as observed in what happens next. Lydia, Lady Lydia endured, I'm sure the stairs of her countrymen as she walked into that river with her purple gowns on. What an odd sight, but she openly accepted the truth that led her to salvation. And now she's identifying with those who are saved in this outward way.
Next, those who are led by the serpent. There is a greedy clutching, no matter what it does to others. We don't care about the servant girl. We don't care that we're wasting and ruining her life. We don't care about these strangers, haul them off to court and beat them and throw them into prison, do away with them.
We don't care. Yet Lydia, by way of contrast, a very wealthy woman exemplifies sharing for the sake of others. Here's my home, my food, my servants. I can only guess and I know this is guessing, but I just kind of guessed that Paul, for the first time in his life, lived in splendor. Can you imagine that estate? Probably had a pool in the backyard, you know, surround sound.
Probably dried off getting out of the shower for the first time with a purple towel because of this lady's gracious hospitality. Those who follow the Spirit have a gracious way of giving what they have. I can remember traveling with my parents. We'd be in the north where most of my parents' support was, individuals and churches, and they called that deputation. And I remember we'd go to these homes in this one particular family, and I've probably said this to you before, but they so marked me because every time we arrived, she had in her refrigerator or her freezer homemade cinnamon rolls. My three brothers and I, we'd devastate the place.
Not a crumb would be left. What a gracious, how can I help the servants of God? For those led by the serpent, they deceitfully cloak their true motives.
Look at verse 20. When they had brought them to the chief magistrates, they said, these men are throwing our city into confusion. Being Jews, they just sort of insert that, and are proclaiming customs, which are not lawful for us to accept or to observe we being Romans. Just like the serpent, these followers of the serpent disguised their true motive under the garb of national pride.
We're concerned for the customs of the Roman emperor. The truth here is nothing more than crass greed. Their heart was in their wallet and Paul had picked their wallets clean. Christianity is tolerated until it adversely impacts profitability, and then it is no longer acceptable.
In contrast, however, those led by the spirit have an honest confession and honest character before others. I had the opportunity to visit in the home of a delightful Australian family. They told me some of the stories about Australia and their involvement with the Baptist Church. The Baptist Church in Australia, they said, is about 1% of the entire population. Only about 6% even claim to know anything about Christ. 1% of them are Baptists, and baptism is a very significant moment in the life of an Australian.
I found it very interesting, much like it would be in the Book of Acts. But then they told me something that was really surprising. They said the Baptists in Australia have such a reputation for honesty and clean living that they have a saying that if something is hard to do or nigh into impossible to do, their saying is, well, that would be as hard to do as it would be for a Baptist to tell a lie.
And I said, well, here in America, it's different. Baptists are known for their dinner on the grounds. Somebody sent me over the email with the joke that a Baptist thinks that in order to get into heaven, he's going to have to bring a covered dish.
So we're known for. Dishonesty is so rampant in any denomination. Did you know that the church is one of the highest risks in the banking industry today?
I was seated in the office of the manager of the bank where I have my accounts, somebody that I am going to be related to for decades, and financial support. And I said to her, I said, you know, there's a rumor, and I just want to ask you about this. There's a rumor that preachers, ministers are high on the risk scale as a profession for defaulting on loans. Can you verify that? And she kind of turned pink and laughed and said, unfortunately, it's true. Ministers, she said, are the second highest risk just behind car salesmen. That's not intended, by the way, saying anything about car salesmen.
They're just behind them. The truth is, Christians at large are not setting any standards for honesty today. I read the results of a poll that was taken some time ago. They polled church people anonymously, confidentially. The people responded and 40 plus percent of the people polled admitted to some form of dishonesty.
Whether it's cheating on an exam, budging on the expense reports, not disclosing everything on the IRS returns or whatever. The children of God should be known for integrity, for honesty, for clean living. Those led by the Spirit should follow the character of the one who is the truth to the point where he said, let your yes be yes and your no mean no.
It ought to be that clear with us who named Christ. You promised that you would return that tool or that book. You told your boss that you'd write that report, that you'd pull your load, that you'd handle that responsibility. You promised to return that phone call. You said that you would pray. You promised to return the money you borrowed or that you owed. You said you'd show up at seven o'clock.
Honesty isn't necessarily exciting stuff, but it does reveal who you're following. Finally, those led by the serpent have their citizenship in and loyalty to earth. You remember I mentioned earlier that Philippi was a Roman colony. Let me just tell you that that meant they promoted the Roman way of life. They gave Rome a loyal base abroad.
This was the European base, at least near the coast for Rome. The colonists were proud ambassadors of the Roman way of life. They honored the Roman emperor. They followed Roman law. They were proud as these men say here to be Romans. Their allegiance was to Rome. The highest hope was to advance in the kingdom of Rome. They are among the colonists of Rome. Those who are led by the spirit have their citizenship in and their loyalty to heaven.
You know what that means? Paul would write to the Philippian church in chapter three, verse 20. He would say your citizenship is in heaven.
Moffat translates it. Our colony is heaven. What that means is that those led by the spirit give honor to the emperor of heaven. We advance the cause of heaven. We are proud to be ambassadors of heaven. Our greatest honor will be to be given responsibility in the kingdom of heaven.
But it has everything to do with the one that you are following. And so in the final chapter of this epistle to the Philippian church, Paul writing to Christians, mind you, says to them, listen, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is gracious, whatever is of good reputation, if there is excellence in any of those things, ponder these things. The next verse says, practice these things. He's telling believers, make up your mind. Will you be led by the alluring siren sound of the serpent and live for the colony of earth or will you follow the voice of the spirit of God and live for the kingdom of heaven?
May that be us. Thanks for joining us today for this powerful lesson from the book of Acts. This is Wisdom for the Heart, and we've gone back to our archives to bring you this vintage wisdom series. Stephen first taught these lessons to the church he pastors many years ago, but the truth is still relevant today. I hope you were encouraged by today's message and that you'll be with us in the days ahead. I want you to know that we have a companion study guide that goes along with this series. That study guide is a great resource for personal or group study. During this series, we're offering this resource at 50% off. You can call us today at 866-48-Bible or 866-482-4253. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time as Stephen brings you more wisdom for the heart. Thank you.
