Paul in Philippi (Acts 16:9-40)

Paul and his team had been prevented by the Holy Spirit from going to the provinces of Asia and Bithynia, so they went to Troas (Acts 16:6-8), which was a harbour city, waiting for them to be told what to do next. There Paul received special divine direction to go to Macedonia through a vision he received of a man of Macedonia asking him to come and help them. Macedonia covered quite a wide area, and the guidance was not more specific than that. So Paul and his friends decided to go to the point of entry into Macedonia, which was Philippi. 

Philippi was a special city as far as the Roman Empire was concerned because its citizens were given the same rights as people living in Rome, which was an indication that it was a privileged city indeed. It was an important location; a Roman colony, as Luke says. We should note that Luke has joined Paul, Silas and Timothy in Troas (as we can see from the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ found from Acts 16:10-15). Was this to be a longterm connection or a brief one?

 

Deliverance at the riverside

There was not a synagogue in Philippi. It is not known why that was the case, but the absence of one meant that Paul and his team could not follow their usual strategy of first trying to get converts from the synagogue.

 

As a Jew, Paul would have been aware of what Jews did if there was not a synagogue in a place. They would often gather at the riverside on the Sabbath for a service. The minimum for a synagogue was ten men, so Paul might have assumed that while there were not ten male Jews in the city there may have been nine or six or three. But when they reached the group at the riverside, they found that only some women had gathered there. Among them was Lydia. No doubt, the women would have been pleased to see the men arriving because they could anticipate that one of the men would speak at the service.

 

Lydia was from Thyatira, a city near to the area that Paul had been in a few weeks before. She was a businesswoman, working in the selling of dyes. Although a Gentile, she had been seeking for a meaningful religion and had at some stage become a proselyte or a Godfearer, that is a Gentile convert to Judaism. So we can describe her as a person on a spiritual journey from darkness to light. We don’t know how much she had absorbed of the Jewish faith. Perhaps she knew a lot or maybe she was at the beginning of her involvement. We can say, however, that she would know that the promised Messiah was coming at some stage.

 

Paul would have spoken to the women about the kingdom of Jesus, the Messiah. He would have told them about the arrival of Jesus at his birth, how he lived a perfect life, how he went to the cross and paid the penalty for sin, how he was raised from the dead three days later, and then ascended to heaven where he now reigns at the Father’s right hand. As Lydia listened to the gospel, she found herself being drawn towards it. Her affections were stirred, her heart was gently opened, and she embraced what she heard from Paul. But as in the Book of Acts in general, here we have another example of the Lord Jesus working from heaven to bring in one of his lost sheep. 

 

Luke does not indicate how much time passed before Lydia was baptised, but since they were not there for long, it must have been soon after her conversion. Her baptism involved her household. She could have had children – it is possible that she was a widow; her household might have included servants. Whichever the case, they were baptised at the same as her. She also offered her house as a place where Paul and his friends could stay, indicating a great change in her life, and so giving very public confirmation of her commitment to Jesus.

 

Deliverance from darkness

The next person mentioned is a young girl who was demon possessed. She engaged in fortune telling, and maybe the demon suggested to her things to say about the people who consulted her about the future, so giving the impression that she knew details about her clients.

 

It is difficult to know whether the demon was using her to disturb the activities of Paul and his friends or whether she was following them because she knew that they had a far better message for people than the nonsense she was conveying. In any case, what she said about the Christians was true, and maybe although it had started out as an attempt to disrupt the advance of the kingdom it had become a deep longing in her heart that she would be delivered from the grip of darkness.

 

Her testimony reveals to us what Paul and his friends had been doing in Philippi. In addition to meeting for prayer, they had been proclaiming the way of salvation. They were preaching to the citizens about their need of forgiveness, and how God had provided for that need through sending his Son as the Saviour. We are not told how often they did it, apart from proclaiming it.

 

Luke does not say that the young girl was converted, but it is likely that she was because she was given immediate deliverance when Paul commanded the demon to leave her. Her deliverance was immediate and full, and she stopped engaging in her deception. She was now a new person, changed in a moment.

 

So we have seen two reasons why Paul and his team were called by Jesus to go to Philippi. The Saviour was seeking his sheep, and two at least had been found. They were very different from one another, which is what the gospel does when it is blest by the Lord. The prominent and the less prominent embrace the Saviour, the outwardly upright and the openly wicked are changed. It was not any harder for Jesus to deliver the girl than it was for him to open the heart of Lydia. Having read those brief accounts, readers would wonder if Luke would describe other conversions, and he did.

 

Deliverance from prison

As would be expected, the owners of the slave girl were furious at what had happened, because it meant a loss of income for them. Therefore, they took hold of Paul and Silas and brought them to the magistrates because they were disturbing things. The crowd joined in the accusations, as crowds often do, and the magistrates were also concerned because Rome did not like disturbances within the empire, especially in a favoured city. They assumed that Paul and Silas deserved a good beating; and having given it they threw Paul and Silas into prison where the jailer made them as secure as he could.

 

It is interesting that Luke mentions prayer in connection to the three incidents. Lydia’s conversion occurred in the place of prayer, the slave girl was delivered as Paul and his friends made their way to the place of prayer, and Paul and Silas were praying in the prison. Luke is highlighting the necessity of prayer in order for the kingdom to keep on growing.

 

One aspect of prayer is that one never knows what God will do. If we had asked Lydia what she expected at the place of prayer, she would confess that she received more than she had thought beforehand. Imagine meeting those whom Paul was praying with and asking them if they had expected anything unusual to happen that day, they would have said no until Paul arrived and said that a slave girl had been delivered through prayer. Would anyone expect God to send an earthquake to a prison, especially an earthquake that would open doors and loosen prisoners from chains? And to set the jailor free from his own imprisonment to sin.

 

The jailer had been having a comfortable sleep, secure in the knowledge that nothing could unloose his prisoners. Suddenly he awoke, saw the situation, and imagined that he was finished. Suicide was the only option he could think of, but somehow Paul was aware of what was happening and told him not harm himself. This awareness informs us that something very unusual was taking place. But further unusual aspects were to occur.

 

First, how would you have read the divine providence that unloosed you from a chain that you had been unjustly given? Surely, you would say to yourself, God had given you an incredible way of escape, and what a wonderful story you would have to tell when you next gave your testimony! But it would not have been right to let the jailer kill himself? Nor would it be right for guilty prisoners to be allowed to wander the streets. And maybe the man in the vision was the Philippian jailer, and he had not yet been saved.

 

Second, sometimes it is good for a person in charge to realise that he is not in charge. This is where the jailer found himself on this evening. He could see that he was not in charge of anything. Instead of standing in authority above Paul and Silas he was on his knees before them, trembling with fear. In a moment, he seems to have grasped the situation. He wants to know how to be saved. Where did that question come from? From God, who was at work in the jailer’s heart. He did not initially seem like someone about to come into the kingdom before he dozed off. But here he is now, a few minutes after he has woken up, asking the way of salvation. It does not take God long to work in a hardened sinner’s heart!

 

It is all rather simple and straightforward. In answer to his question, he is told to believe in Jesus. Paul, we can see, did not mention that Jesus was the Christ, probably because the jailer was a Gentile. But he did say that Jesus was Lord, the person in charge, and the jailer knew all about authority. But he had never heard of a Lord who could arrange such earthquakes and still offer him salvation. The outcome was that, after believing in Jesus, he heard a sermon, washed the wounds of Paul and Silas, was baptised with his family, arranged for a meal, and rejoiced with his household that he now believed in God. Then the preachers returned to their chains and waited to see what the next day would bring. 

 

Escorted to freedom

How long had all this taken? We know that Paul and Silas were singing and praying at midnight and dawn would have come about seven o’clock – the various details that Luke mentions had occurred before the coming of the daylight. So within seven hours God had done something extraordinary in the prison. But no-one outside in Philippi knew about it, including the police making their way to the jail to pass on a message of freedom agreed by the city authorities who also did not know what had taken place in the prison. 

 

Here is another action in providence about which we need to ask ourselves what we would do. I wonder what the police thought when Paul refused the terms offered to him. Or what the magistrates thought when they heard that they had mistreated Roman citizens (it is intriguing that Silas must also have had this privilege). It must have been an interesting sight to see the magistrates apologising to released prisoners, but Jesus has ways of reversing situations. What an interesting story Paul and Silas had to tell Lydia and the others! He could tell them that the magistrates were not likely to harm them, especially as Luke remained on with them (see pronouns in verse 40).

 

Applications

There are four applications that we can take from Paul’s visit to Philippi. The first is to recognise that Jesus is Lord over impossible situations. He is engaged in building his church. There may have been several building projects taking place at that time in Philippi, but only details of one have survived, and that is the commencement and the strengthening of the church that Jesus planted there. As we have noted, Paul could not use his normal method in first contacting the synagogue. Neither could Paul open the heart of Lydia. Nor could he by himself deliver the demon possessed woman. And he could not get himself into the prison or out of it. All these situations were beyond his power. Do we face circumstances that we can do nothing about, but we know that Jesus can do something about them? Remember that he is Lord over impossible situations.

 

A second application is to consider that Jesus sent out his servants with a gospel of such grace that it provided immediate forgiveness for those who embraced him by faith. It is extraordinary that a religious person, a demon-possessed person, and a jailer each were pardoned. This is a reminder that the wonder of salvation is not in the degree of depravity found in a sinner; rather the wonder is the immediacy of pardon that is bestowed on all sinners who comes to Jesus for it. After all, we don’t know how bad a sinner is in God’s sight.

 

The third application is to rejoice in the grace that overcomes all kinds of backgrounds. Put it this way: the demon-possessed woman and the jailer would never have considered going down to the riverside to pray until divine grace touched their hearts. Nor would Lydia and the slave girl have considered a visit to the prison to share their faith. But now that they are together in the church their background differences don’t matter.

 

Fourth, Paul left the new congregation under the guidance of his colleague Luke. In a sense, this story is Luke’s introduction of himself into the Christian movement in which he would play a very prominent part as Paul’s companion and as the author of two of the books of the New Testament. We have no idea regarding how he became a Christian. He was obviously capable of being left in Philippi to oversee life in the church. 

 

How did the congregation develop under his ministry until he rejoined Paul several years later (Acts 20:5-6, where the pronouns ‘us’ and ‘we’ are resumed)? Paul, in his letter to the Philippians that was written a few years later when he was imprisoned in Rome, mentions that on several occasions the church in Philippi had sent aid to him (Phil. 1:5; 4:15-16). His letter to them is full of warm affection between him and them. The congregation thrived in a spiritual sense. 

 

When Paul, Silas and Timothy left, the church at least was composed of Lydia and her household, of the jailer and his household, and probably the slave girl. Paul in Philippians 4:2-3 mentions that Euodia and Syntyche had helped him in those early days, as had Clement and others. And the apostle reveals that their names were in a better register than ever existed in Philippi, the privileged city – their names were in the book of life.