We were going to the place of prayer

Good morning. As Randy read here, we'll be looking at Acts of the Apostles, chapter 16, verses 16 through 24, and stepping our way through that passage. Just to kind of provide some continuity, however, we'll look at what has been going on in Acts, chapter 16, in brief.

Paul had begun with Timothy in Galatia. Timothy was one who had become a believer either during the time Paul first came into Galatia or since that time. He was half Greek and half Jew. That was with a Greek father and a Jewish mother. And so Paul circumcised him in order that he be acceptable to the Jews as he went about with them. A Jew who was legally qualified as a Jew, and with a Jewish mother he would be, but was not circumcised, was considered apostate by the Jews. And so it was actually looked upon as, you know, this is revulsion, this is disgusting. And so it was something that Paul said, well, we need to take care of this in order that Timothy have a good ministry among the Jews.

Paul and Silas and Timothy were then directed to go to Macedonia. This, as we say, is the first missionary venture on the European continent by them. By the way, if we go to Acts chapter 2, we find it's not the exact first planting of the gospel. We find that the gospel went from the day of Pentecost into Macedonia, but it's the first time Paul and Silas went there, and certainly Paul and Silas and Timothy were going there to help. So by the time they reach Troas, which we see on your map that you have on pages 1 and 2, Dr. Luke appears to have joined them and possibly others along with them, unnamed at this point.

From there they cross over to Macedonia by ship. and then began ministry in Philippi. A few steps along the way, Samothrace, and then Neapolis, and then finally to Philippi. So as Paul and his companions went to the riverside, which was the place that the Jews would gather, so typically the Jews would be beginning a synagogue if they had 10 Jewish men, They apparently did not, and so the typical thing was to start with the gathering of Jews and God-fearing Gentiles at some geographical place that was identified by the riverside, by some rock or mountain, by a tree, something identifiable where everybody could say, this is where the Jews gather, and they would typically not falling under the specific traditions of the synagogue. They would typically call it a place of prayer and gather together for that.

This Lydia that we read about here and have seen earlier in the chapter was a seller of purple goods, which were goods, as we mentioned, very, very expensive. The dye cost several times per ounce or per gram the amount of gold. So it would be very expensive dye and so then the cloth that came from that would be very expensive.

Lydia was responsive to the gospel message and believed and so was saved. She insisted, she was rather insistent, that Paul and his companions stay at her home Just as Paul and his companions, however, were headed to the place of prayer, likely staying at her home and continuing that pattern, there was a rather dramatic change, and that's what we see in the passage here today.

This, by the way, would be a typical upper-class Roman villa to give you an idea what Lydia's home might have looked like. We don't know exactly because we don't have a place in Philippi. This was Lydia's home, but quite a spread is possible. This would be another typical upper class Roman villa. This would be on the smaller end of the scale. So a Roman villa might be even sort of a small village, even of its own. So pretty fancy place. So Lydia, nonetheless, was well off selling purple goods. She would be quite wealthy.

So here would be a map, and from time to time we make this available in the larger scale color printout, but this is on page one as it is, showing all of Paul's second missionary journey. And he's made his way through Galatia and then through Troas and now into Macedonia, as you see there on the map. And we're going to zero in on the upper left part of that, and that's what you see marked out on the handout as well. So zeroing in on that, we see Philippi is noted at the top of the Aegean Sea, and we're going to make a note about Delphi pretty soon here, or Delphi as it would be pronounced.

So, Acts 16.16, 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-telling. So this is a very noticeable personality, as we'll soon see. What is unknown, just by reading the English, that this girl had a python spirit. He said, whoa, yes, a Python spirit.

That's exactly what Dr. Luke wrote in there. And that has a particular history and tradition. And that here is a Pythonus and a relief near Athens. And there's a reason why it's in Athens. We'll explain here shortly. Here's the Oracle at Delphi, that was the Pythonist temple. So here is at Philippi a gal who had been a part of the practice here and was apparently purchased. and bought and brought to Philippi. But she had been a part of this Pythonus temple, the Oracle at Philippi.

And so this was an extraordinary thing. But that was the identification. So she actually had a Python spirit, as Dr. Luke makes note of. And here's the location. Delphi, as you'll see on your map, I believe it's on page two there, is just above Corinth, which later on we're going to see, and Athens, which later on we're going to see on Paul's second missionary journey. That's the location that's sort of the capital of this Python spirit.

And so she had been probably bought there and then brought over to Philippi to exhibit this python spirit where they made lots of money off of her. She was the Latin version of the fortune cookie. So people would go and they would pay money to get their fortunes told by this woman with a python spirit, a girl, a slave girl as they're called. So they made lots of money off of her. So how did this happen?

It says their intent was to head to the place of prayer. This would have been Paul and his companions and very likely Lydia and others of her household going to this place of prayer. We assume that that continues to be by the riverside. That would make some sense.

As they were going, the slave girl with the spirit of divination that is fortune-telling was present there on the way and so this would be one location. We're going to find out they hauled them to another location. We'll see that in a minute. The slave girl had multiple owners and in fact what we find out is because it's simply a plural, the slave girl having multiple owners could be as simple as you had a couple where you had more than one owner or it may have been actually multiple investors. having ownership of her.

So something in that range was the case there. She was very valuable to them. She made lots of money. There may have been a matter of, you know, okay, if you want her to give your fortune, then you got to pay X amount of money and that kind of thing. But even with multiple owners, whether it was a couple or some group of investors, there was plenty of profit to divide among them all. She was very profitable.

And as a matter of fact, having this famed Oracle of Delphi as the origin of where she had come from, To have someone from that famous place right there in Philippi, that would give you a special in. It's like, okay, I've got right here locally this thing that many people will travel for days to go see, and I've got it right here. So they would see that as, boy, we can make a lot of money and folks don't even have to leave town.

Acts 16, 17, following after Paul and us, so us includes Dr. Luke, right? So Dr. Luke is with them. So this would have included Paul. It would have included Silas, as we'll see. It would have included Dr. Luke and Timothy, most likely. And it may well have included this us statement, may well have included others of Lydia's house, as well as Lydia herself. So that's what the us statement is likely reflecting. She kept crying out saying, these men are bondservants of the Most High God, and probably her manner of speaking was rather mocking. And so it might have been something like, these men are bondservants of the Most High God, and proclaiming to you the way of salvation.

Right? Something like that. Something mocking. Something irritating and distracting. that this slave girl would follow Paul and his companions by itself wasn't particularly a problem. That's not the problem. And every single word that she says, you read through that, can you find something wrong with what she says? Not at all. So it must have been another characteristic about it, perhaps the tone in which it was brought across, mocking likely, that was the problem. What the people needed to hear was the straight truth from these God-appointed men, and not her mocking declaration that came from the demon inside of her. It didn't matter that what she said was truthful even to the word.

Here's Acts 16.18, For she continued doing this for many days, and 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 they came out that very moment. So she continued. She was the energizer bunny of fortune tellers. So the slave girl is possessed by a spirit and continued with her mocking public proclamation for many days. Now, how many days is many days? You know what the answer is?

We don't know. But we have a good estimate. The term many days is a term used only by Dr. Luke, once in Luke, you see it listed at the top there, and the rest are all in Acts, starting with Acts chapter 1 and going to chapter 27, the second to the last chapter. So this is Dr. Luke's specific term, many days, and at one place, many days, is 40. So it gives you an idea. This probably means weeks that this went on, to give you a broad estimate there. Imagine every time they go to the place of prayer, for weeks, most likely, she's coming out with this mocking tone, even though every word she says is Technically, true.

So, just as Jesus had commanded the evil spirit to come out of a man, that was Mark 9.25, Paul commanded the evil spirit to come out of this girl who told the fortunes.

Come out of her right now, I command you. The evil spirit came out of her that very moment, as Dr. Luke records for us. There wasn't any objection, wait a minute, I've got something I've got to do here, none of that, none of this, I don't wanna, just boom, out. He commanded it, and without any resistance or apparent delay, the Spirit came out of her. Acts 16, 19-21, 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.

Here is the rectangular area, and I think some of your pictures in the handout reflect this. What you see here, this is Philippi looking down from the mountainside right above. The mountainside right above is a place of mines, typically gold mines, and also places of burial. They had a lot of burial markers up there. Off in the distance, you see the bathhouse, and you can see the river. that is the river where they would gather when the Jews would gather their prey.

But in the middle there, covering the middle swath, there is the marketplace. This is the agora where they would drag them. So apparently this slave girl would mock Paul and what the rest of his companions were laying out. She would mock them and then they took them to this agora, or as you would say in the Latin, a forum.

This is the likely location of the bima, that's a term you may have heard, the judgment seat where the magistrates would be. So this is the most likely area. In other places, such as in Corinth, we know precisely that it was the Bema seat location. In this one, this is the likely location, but not certain yet.

Acts 16.19-21 continues on, and when they had brought them to the chief magistrates, they said, these men are throwing our city into confusion, being Jews, racial slur, being Jews and are proclaiming customs which is not lawful for us to accept or to observe, being Romans. They're Jews, we're Romans. We're better than they are.

Okay, so one is the message, the hope had gone out of her. That's the way Dr. Luke actually wrote it. When the demon left, their hope left with it. When the demon left, the hope left with it. So, these guys were not coming to say, hey, what are these guys to restore the spirit? They had already recognized, hey, the spirit is gone, this gal can't do this anymore, right? So, they had seen that the hope of her continuing to tell fortunes was gone. They were not seeking to have the evil spirit restored. There wasn't some order to Paul and Silas, or any of the rest of them, to put the demon back. Not happening. They were only seeking revenge.

And guess what? It was a revenge culture. You see, you have to understand that in the Roman mindset, revenge was most certainly what you wanted. That's part one. Also, being humble in the Roman culture was considered very bad, a character defect. So to be proud, to seek revenge, that's the right way to do things in the Roman mindset. And that's exactly what they did. So, you have the owners of the slave girl having seen their big profit opportunity vaporized, they hauled Paul and Silas before the Roman magistrates who ruled from the Agora, or as the Latin has it, the Forum.

Now, in all the pictures, dramatizations, artwork, everything else, they show one magistrate. I couldn't find any exceptions to that. However, we know from Roman records that the pattern was two. Two magistrates, but they only show one. So just get that in mind, two. Then, ah, we got the lictors to talk about.

But though the owner's real motivation was revenge, there was something to their charge. In a Roman colony, only approved gods were allowed. And so to introduce this Jesus Christ, whoever he was, right? To introduce Jesus Christ to this Roman colony was simply illegal. Which is exactly what Paul did. I order you by the name of Jesus Christ, whoever he was, by the name of Jesus Christ come out of her. You've just introduced a foreign god.

Next, Acts 16.22-24, And the crowd rose up together against them, and the chief magistrate tore their robes off them, and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods.

So, give them a Roman massage. Oh boy. Now, not this kind of Roman massage. Not this kind of Roman massage. But this kind. And the crowd rose up together against them, and the chief magistrates tore their robes off them and proceeded that order them to be beaten with rods."

Now, here are the rod beaters. And that's actually what the word means. These guys are called rod beaters. Rod beaters. Now, I have to describe this. Magistrates, there are two. In this Roman colony, there are two magistrates. The magistrates have guys that are called, in the Greek, rod baiters. In the Latin, it's lictors. And you know what they are?

Professional sadists. These guys, their job is to protect the magistrates and to carry out anything that the magistrates order. It would be roughly the equivalent in our courtroom situation of a bailiff who also had the ability to carry out punishment. So that's their role. And when the magistrates order, these guys are just supposed to be sadistic as can be. And that was their training, be sadistic.

There was nothing in the law, there was nothing in their inclinations that stopped them from being cruel. We have one instance where The lictor was ordered to beat a man, and he beat a man, and beat a man, and beat a man, and started beating him around the head and the eyes until he died. And they were just happy as could be. They were happy. That was their job. They did their job. So, here's your Roman lictors, the rod beaters, as Dr. Luke calls them.

Acts 16.22-24, and when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely. And he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks." So we have here a picture of a stone stock.

What actually may have been the case inside, we're not quite sure and there's a reason for that, we'll talk about here. This is the place that is reputed to be Paul's prison in Philippi. Archaeologists who study it, not so sure. Even though it has a sign on it that says it's Paul's prison, archaeologists are not so sure. But, here is an entrance to an inner Roman prison, so you can get an idea. The lights are a modern retrofit, and so, by the way, is the ventilation.

How many sewers to keep things clean did they have in the prisons? Zip. Nothing. Nada. I won't get too descriptive because we're going to eat lunch after this. But you get the idea, and so this would be more the idea of what you'd see inside the prison, because having lighting, as well as ventilation, were optional. And they were rarely offered. Typically, the prison guard would call for lights, but the prisons were pretty much dark and unventilated. and unsewered.

So, what you have here is a mob action without any time to consider the matter or the legal standing of Paul and Silas, who were in fact, as we'll see later in the chapter, Roman citizens. Both of them were, not just Paul, but Silas as well, both Roman citizens. The crowd joined the Roman magistrates in rushing to severe judgment, a beating by these lictors, these rod beaters, as Dr. Luke records them. The prescribed punishment was beating with rods by these rod beaters.

You notice they have a complete set there. Do you like this one? Don't like that one? Oh, I got another one. Here, try this. So these rod beaters would have a collection of rods and of course at the end they also had this sort of thing that looks like an axe, but that would be included as well. So they'd inflict many blows and oftentimes have no limitations at all in terms of how severe do they get. They were known, as we have on record in some cases, for just even bringing death. Just beat someone until they're dead. So the magistrates handed Paul and Silas over to the jailer.

And what's curious is you say, well, wait a minute, weren't there other guys? How about Dr. Luke? How about Timothy? How about others? How about Lydia and her household? They apparently were not included. People saw Paul as the one who had cast out the the evil spirit or the demon, and Silas who was with them, as these are definitely Jews and they're part of the problem and we can easily get people to be disinclined towards these people.

The jailer responded by placing them both in the inner prison to make sure that they were kept very securely. So their feet were placed in stocks, and we don't know the exact configuration, but here is the likely configuration. I'll describe it for you because I could never find a picture that really carried it out.

What would often be the case in an inner prison, not always but often, is they would have, here's a rock face, and in the rock face, you would have a hole that goes back into the rock face. The opening in that rock face was about the size of a dishwasher. They'd take the guy who was the prisoner and shove him back tail side into this dishwasher size opening, which hadn't been cleaned from the prior guy.

If you decide you need to go to the bathroom, And you say, jailor, jailor, I need to go to the bathroom. And he says, that's nice. And you're stuck there. So they hadn't necessarily cleaned up from the last guy. And then once stuck in there, they put bars across to which your feet, and then another one, or it might be the same one, hands are also fastened. That would be a common way of doing it. Really nice, huh? Comfortable accommodations. Well, not.

We've been talking about the big picture on God's will. God's will is fixed and irreversible, and includes your position and possessions in Him. This is something that is really cool and really great. We have three electives that are going to be talking about, or have been talking about, or begun talking about, our position and possessions in Christ. God's moral will is also spelled out in Scripture and intended to be lived by the life of Christ. The individual will consists mostly of learning to make wise decisions with godly wisdom rather than worldly wisdom. Now, so that's the big picture here. Let's talk about God's will and the outcomes.

Paul and his companions were clearly directed not to go to Bithynia. By the way, Peter later writes to Bithynia, right? to the believers there, but instead were directed at this time to go to Macedonia. And Paul even had a vision that drew him to Macedonia.

So here is this upper class Roman villa, really nice circumstances that Lydia was in. So as they follow the Lord's clear direction of Philippi, at first they found good circumstances at the home of Lydia, who was wealthy, but the circumstances then turned, as we see here, really bad when Paul and Silas were first beaten and then jailed.

They didn't even send them to ER first. They get patched up and sewn up and things like that. Neither good nor bad circumstances tell us directly whether something is God's will or not. Would Paul and Silas have said, these are really bad circumstances? Yes, they would. Previously, they were in very good circumstances at Lydia's house. Had they changed from being in God's will to being out of God's will? No. The circumstances themselves do not automatically send us a message, am I in or outside of God's will?

Something else to notice out of this passage, Paul was greatly annoyed. Let's take a look here, 2 Corinthians 2, 12 and 13, which would have been written on Paul's third missionary journey. Paul wrote, and now when I came to Troas for the gospel of Christ, and when a door was opened for me in the Lord, I had no rest for my spirit. Not finding Titus my brother, but taking my leave of them, I went on to Macedonia. Notice that having no rest for his spirit did not mean that he was automatically out of God's will, but rather having no rest that provided him guidance. Similar to what we see here in this passage, was Paul pleased by the behavior of this slave girl?

Was he pleased? No, he was not. He was annoyed by that, and this had gone on for some time, possibly weeks, before he acted. But in either case, we see that there was some kind of disturbance We can also look at our Lord in John 17 in parallel passages. Here's our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane. Was He experiencing peace? No, He was not. Was He in God's will? Yes, He was. The Lord may grant us peace that passes understanding.

I've been in that circumstance where I look at it and, you know, I've been granted a piece that doesn't make any sense. The instance that comes to mind, I was on a business trip. I'd been through some kind of training. It was in Palm Springs, California. I was headed back to San Francisco. It was an exceedingly stormy night in a smaller prop-driven airliner. I was on my way from Palm Springs to San Francisco. The plane went through all kinds of turbulence and most of the people on the plane were screaming. It was that bad. I sat next to a lady who had been at the same conference that I had just come from and was talking to her and she turned to me and said, why aren't you screaming?

So there are times when the Lord will grant us just unbelievable, so to speak, peace and calm in the middle of a situation that might otherwise say, we've got an issue here. What we find here in this instance is the Lord may in fact allow distress and unrest and even annoyance at times and direct us from that as well. So what does that mean? It means that we can't look to our feelings or our circumstances, we always have to look to the Lord. See that? We can't look to our feelings or circumstances, we always have to look to the Lord.

Am I having peace and calm because it's the Lord's work and intervention in my life, or is He using the circumstances that I've got to have me understand what His will is? Even though it's annoying, even though I find some unrest, or even as we see with Christ there in the Garden of Gethsemane, there's some deep disturbance. We always have to look to the Lord to know what His will is.

So, this is the cliffhanger that Randy was referring to. So what will come from these horrible circumstances? You imagine, here is Paul, here is Silas, they've just gotten beaten with rods, which by the way, with the rods, they would use both the side end with a hard hit and a slap which would break open the skin, oftentimes requiring what we would say is a butterfly stitch or that would be a, you know, you go in there for stitches, and it would break that open, at very least some bleeding welts, right? And then they would also use, and we have record of this, that they would sometimes use the butt end of the rod and hit that really hard. And by the way, they didn't have to just hit the back. They could hit other things if they wanted to.

So this was really, really nasty. They were then, instead of being taken to the ER, because there was none, right? Instead of being taken to the ER, they're placed in the inner prison stock in very unsanitary, very unpleasant circumstances. It is not a good place to recover from the injuries that they've just had.

And yes, they've had them. So will they faint? Will they complain? Will they go into shock? Will the stench overwhelm them? Will their moaning and screaming or their exhaustion dominate the sounds of the inner prison there in Philippi that dreadful night? We'll have to find out next time. You can rest about that. Let's pray. Thank you, Lord. What an amazing account we've had here.

Paul and Silas and the others with them have been through some very pleasant circumstances, staying with Lydia apparently for some time, perhaps even weeks, and eating good food and having plenty to eat and having good circumstances all around. and likely getting good night's sleep. And yet, we see all of a sudden, very quickly, Paul and Silas are cast into some very horrible, awful circumstances. Uncomfortable is hardly sufficient to describe where they're at. And yet, you're going to be doing something phenomenal, something miraculous through them. And we look forward to seeing that and learning from it. Thank you for what you've revealed here regarding your will. And we pray this, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.