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Acts Series / Acts 16:11–24
Main Idea
God desires to save His people from the Kingdom of Darkness and sin’s oppression.
It’s probably not a surprise that I lift weights. You may not know that I was a competitive Powerlifter with the AAU for over fourteen years. For a decade, I would enter the World Powerlifting Competition held in a different city each year. Once, I competed in Las Vegas. Another year, I competed in Laughlin, a much smaller town about 90 miles away from Vegas, but it had the same feel. It had the casinos, neon lights, the gambling, the ambiance, and atmosphere. Besides being on the Colorado River, it was a ‘mini-Vegas.’ Anyone who loved the vibe of Las Vegas but wanted to get away from the crowd could move to Laughlin and feel right at home. We’ll see a similar setting today as we look at the salvation sandwich in Acts 16.
There are also two patterns we should notice in this chapter.
- The pattern of three people in different socio-economical situations. A wealthy businesswoman, a slave girl, and an ex-pat jailor.
- The pattern of three in the narrative: prayer, person, and result.
With that in mind, let’s jump into the text.
Passage
Acts 16:11–24 ESV
So, setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace, and the 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 had 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. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. And after she was baptized, and her household as well, 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.
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. She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” And this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become 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.
But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, 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 practice.” 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 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.
Outline
I – Lydia’s conversion (vv.11-15)
II – A Slave’s Freedom from Oppression (vv. 16-18)
III – Rejecting God’s work (vv. 19-24)
I – Lydia’s conversion (vv. 11-15)
The trip to Philippi
Paul had a vision of a Macedonian man asking for their help, so the missionary quartet immediately departed Troas. From there, they sailed to Samothrace (an island off the coast of modern-day Greece), then went onward to Neapolis (a port city in Greece) the next day. From there, they traveled approximately eight miles inland to Philippi. Notice that Luke still includes himself in the narrative by using the words ‘we’ and ‘us.’
Philippi was an old city that predated Alexander the Great. His dad – Philip II – renamed it after himself (very humbly) in 356 B.C. in what was then called the Kingdom of Macedon. It came under Roman rule in 167 B.C., and Octavius (otherwise known as Caesar Augustus) made it a Roman colony. For all intents and purposes, this was very much like a ‘little Rome.’ Having this status meant that Ex-pats could settle there, be exempt from taxation, and even be given land as a pension. The culture of Rome was the culture of Philippi. There were also likely no synagogues in the city. According to Jewish custom, ten Jewish men were required to establish one, and we see no men in this first section. Only women are gathered by the riverside. This reinforces the ‘Roman-ness’ of the culture.
Lydia
Of all the gathered women at the Sabbath day prayer service by the riverside, only one woman is named, and that is Lydia. From the text, we are told a few facts about her:
1. She is from Thyatira, a city in the Roman province of Asia, where Paul was forbidden to go. Thyatira was a wealthy city known for its textile industry and its rare and expensive purple dye created from shellfish.
2. She is a seller of purple goods. This is likely clothing and textiles, which makes sense, given where she is from.
3. She is a worshiper of God. Because Luke doesn’t say she is Jewish, we can take this as a reference to being a God-fearer (or a Gentile who worships the God of Israel but is not fully converted).
We can also reasonably infer from the context of the passage that she is wealthy: (1) because Luke goes out of his way to inform us that she deals in expensive purple fabrics and (2) because she has a house big enough to host the missionaries.
Lydia’s salvation experience
As you can probably picture, the women have gone down to the river to pray (see what I did there?). This wasn’t a prayer service for Zeus or Hermes but for Yahweh, the God of Israel. So, because these were God-fearing women, Paul began to preach. As it turns out, the Macedonian man from Paul’s vision first represented a group of women. As Paul preached, the Lord opened her heart.
As Al Mohler put it: “Lydia’s conversion reminds us of God’s sovereignty in the process of salvation. The Lord opens the hearts of sinners to receive the gospel. No one can say they came to the Lord because of their intellect, spiritual sensitivity, or moral uprightness. Rather, as with Lydia, the Lord opens our hearts so we can repent and believe.”
And, as John Stott says, “Although the message was Paul’s, the saving initiative was God’s.”
The power to save is firmly in the Father’s hands.
This is the top layer of the salvation sandwich, showing that God will provide and produce fruit where He calls His people, even if there is no established place of worship. As a result, she is baptized along with her entire household. This concept is found repeatedly in Acts, beginning with Cornelius and again with the jailor next week. This doesn’t mean that Lydia’s faith saved her family, but rather, it points to the reality of God’s redemptive work in the hearts of everyone present, especially when the head of the household is the first to believe. We aren’t told if Lydia has a husband or children, so ‘her household’ could refer to children and even hired servants.
The application of this section hits hard with the final verse of this section. Though she was a Gentile, she urged them to come and stay with her at her house. This was a cultural no-no (as we discussed when Peter decided to enter Cornelius’ house). Still, as we have also seen, the distinction between Jews and Gentiles is removed in God’s Kingdom, so she successfully persuaded them. This is the same word in Greek for when the two men on the Emmaus road persuaded Jesus to come and stay with them.
So, what, then, is the application? The Lord opened her heart to believe, and in response, she opened her home for hospitality. Generosity. Gratefulness. Fellowship. These are all markers of Christian behavior (Romans 12:13; 1 Timothy 3:2; Hebrews 13:2; 1 Peter 4:9; and 3 John 5–8). Are you hospitable? Do you seek out fellowship and to refresh fellow believers? Does the joy of your salvation manifest in acts of gratitude to God and His people?
That’s the first of three layers to this sandwich. Let’s take a look at the middle layer.
II – A Slave’s Freedom from Oppression
The oppressed slave girl
We should notice a few things before we get into the action.
1. Notice the repeated pattern of going to the place of prayer. This is the same setting when Paul finds Lydia, and we find Paul and Silas praying later in prison.
2. She is possessed by a demon. In Greek, this is called the spirit of the Python (Puthōn). I debated whether or not to bring this up, but I thought it would be a good exercise in biblical interpretation. So, let’s pause briefly to do that.
• If you type ‘Python spirit of Acts 16’ into Google, you can easily get sucked into a deep, deep rabbit trail. There are way too many Christian websites that talk about the ‘spirit of Python’ and how to deal with this malevolent force. I’m telling ya, it gets wacky. These more extreme views make this a specific demon that attacks the prayer life of believers, squeezes the spiritual life out of them, steals your breath and vitality, brings depression, fatigue, and sickness, and one site even puts this demon under the rank of a greater spirit of Leviathan. Then, many give their top 6 or 7 ways to fight this demon and claim victory over it. Is that really what Luke is communicating here? Is that what his original audience would have gleaned?
• Of course not, because none of that is in the text. They’ve handled the text poorly. So, let’s learn how to handle it correctly. Here are a few tips for proper Bible study. First, consider the author’s intent. What he wrote can’t mean to us what it didn’t mean to the original audience. Secondly, they mixed up their eisegesis with their exegesis. Exegesis means you draw the truth out of the text by studying the context, setting, grammar, etc. Eisegesis means you read your own thoughts into the text. The mistake they made was taking the attributes of a python (or snakes in general) and started drawing conclusions from their additions. If you take this to a logical conclusion, you can begin to think that every case of asthma or RSV is an oppression of the Python spirit!
• Instead, let’s learn from what the text, context, and setting tell us. In reality, Luke uses language that the Roman people would have understood. Everyone present would have correlated the python spirit with the story of Apollo slaying the giant serpent and establishing the Oracle of Delphi – named Pythia – who was called the Pythoness in the temple of Apollo. The Pythia would be the one who delivered prophecies from the Greek god Apollo to the people, almost like a puppet master uses a ventriloquist doll. The ruins still exist today in Delphi, which is in southern Greece. This was simply Luke’s way of specifying the nature of the demonic oppression in a way they would have understood. Like the oracle of Delphi, this young girl was possessed by a spirit of fortune-telling – who was not from the God of Israel, which is a crucial distinction, as we will soon see.
3. Her ability to foresee the future as a fortune-teller makes her a revered and influential… and a cash-cow for her owners. They made their livelihood from her oppression.
Her actions
This prestigious fortune-teller followed the missionary quartet for days, exclaiming the same thing: “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.”
At first glance, this seems like a good thing. The demon is declaring God’s work of salvation. Why is this a bad thing? Wouldn’t you want to see God’s enemies admitting the truth of the gospel?
While this sounds good initially, there are four reasons why it’s actually the opposite.
Paul’s response
1. Our first clue is in the way Paul responds. She was being annoying, attracting the wrong type of attention. Perhaps she had a mocking tone, or maybe she was just being intentionally annoying to drive the men out of town. Whatever it was, Paul wasn’t going to take it anymore.
2. Paul didn’t want the gospel associated with demonic activity. Jesus often forbade demons to speak about who He was. There should never be a mixing of religions (syncretism), and he didn’t want the townspeople to think that his God and this girl’s god were one and the same.
3. She doesn’t need to be given any measure of authority in the community. She was already a highly sought-after medium. She didn’t need to be given any more clout.
4. Paul didn’t give Satan a foothold to twist the gospel, even though what the girl said was true initially. For example, when she says servants of the Most High God, we would assume that it is Yahweh, but the citizens in Philippi were Greek and would naturally have associated that with Zeus. It’s easy to identify a wolf when it’s a wolf but harder when the wolf is disguised as a sheep. There is a reason that illustration exists.
The result
Because of these things, Paul simply turns to the spirit and commands it to come out in the name of Jesus Christ.
And it did, that very hour. This young girl who was oppressed by demonic forces was freed. The same God who opened Lydia’s heart to believe broke the chains of oppression, holding this little girl in darkness.
This is the middle of the sandwich. We aren’t told if this young girl received Christ as her savior, but she was set free from oppression. And this event demonstrated the power and authority of Yahweh – the God of Israel – over the ‘gods’ of the people. Just like the plagues in Exodus demonstrated God’s power over the Egyptian Gods, this story shows God’s power over the Greek gods. Moses and Paul didn’t have the power – God did. Paul appealed to Jesus Christ – the true creator of all things – and the demon had no choice but to obey. That, my friends, is the God we serve and put our hope in!
And with that power comes great responsibility… I mean… opposition. Ground gained for the Kingdom of God is ground lost to the enemy, and he will fight to get it back.
III – Rejecting God’s work
The slave-owners response
As marvelous as it is for us to see this prisoner set free, it is equally infuriating to her owners. Releasing her from this demonic spirit’s grip means they just lost their meal ticket. There are three things that people will fight tooth and nail to keep: power, sex, and money. Their primary source of income was gone, so in a rage, they dragged Paul and Silas to the city center (in the marketplace) and the magistrates.
Here, they pretended to uphold Roman law by advocating for the defense of Roman customs and guarding against civil unrest. These men were allowing their Jewishness to rub off on their Roman-ness. Though Jewish practices were legal, proselytizing wasn’t. Judaism was basically atheism from the Roman point of view, and at this point, there was hardly a distinction between Jews and Christians. Christians also condemned Emperor worship, which they valued, so you can see a few strings for them to pull on.
And if they lost their livelihood, everyone could be in danger. Get rid of these guys! They put on a good face, but in reality, they were defending their bank account.
The crowd’s response
This incites a small riot. Other citizens in the vicinity heard the cries of the oracle’s owners and joined the attacks on the men, but interestingly enough, not on all four of them. Here is where the ‘we’ passage stops. Instead, Luke says ‘them,’ specifically only Paul and Silas. Luke and Timothy are spared, which likely shows that it wasn’t about civil unrest. It was about blaming those trouble-making Jews.
The magistrates’ response
Things only intensified when the Roman officials got involved. Instead of pulling these two men into protective custody until they could sort things out, they tore off their clothes. They beat them with rods (a bundle of wooden sticks, enforced by Lictors [Latin phrase], where the term ‘getting your licks’ comes from) and imprisoned them in the inner parts of the prison with their feet in stocks.
What an abrupt and terrible response to a young girl freed from oppression!
Next week, we will see how this story plays out and how God uses these dire circumstances to finish the third layer of the salvation sandwich.
Conclusion
- Ground gained for the Kingdom of God is ground lost for the other side, and the enemy will fight for his territory. Be on guard and continue the fight, even when you encounter opposition.
- God will achieve His purposes. He desires to save His people from the Kingdom of Darkness and sin’s oppression.
- The reality of our salvation should cultivate an active, grateful heart that demonstrates that gratitude for God and for His people. That can look different for different people, but in Lydia’s example, she was drawn to hospitality and fellowship. This week, if you haven’t already, take the time to discover what that looks like for you.