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Reading Acts 16:16-24 where Paul and Silas encounter a woman who had a spirit of divination, and after casting it out they are seized and thrown into prison. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
There was this servant girl following after Paul and Silas and warning the people, these men are slaves of the Most High God who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation. Well, amen to that, when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ. For He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com.
Once again, it's Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Acts, we come back to chapter 16. We've been reading about Paul and Silas sharing the gospel in Philippi, and in the portion of the narrative that we read today, this gets them in trouble and thrown in prison.
Let me begin reading in verse 16. We'll go through verse 24. Hear the word of the Lord. Now it happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a servant girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her master's much profit by fortune-telling.
Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, These men are slaves of the Most High God who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation. And she continued doing this for many days. But being greatly annoyed, Paul turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to leave her.
And it left at that very moment. But when her master saw that their hope of profit had left, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. And when they had brought them to the chief magistrates, they said, These men are throwing our city into confusion being Jews and are proclaiming customs that are not lawful for us to accept or to observe being Romans.
And the crowd joined together to attack them, and the chief magistrates, tearing their garments off of them, proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods. And when they had inflicted them with many wounds, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely, who, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.
And if you're familiar with this narrative, you know what comes next. Paul and Silas are singing hymns in the inner prison. They're converting the prisoners. An earthquake comes and breaks all the jail doors open.
But Paul and Silas do not leave. That's a part of the narrative we will get to tomorrow. But let's come back up and read about this servant girl who has this spirit of divination warning the people about what Paul and Silas are preaching.
Verse 16 again. Now, it happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, remember, this has become the focal point of Paul and Silas' ministry in Philippi. As we read about Paul's custom, he typically would go into a synagogue and would preach the Gospel there because he could preach from the Scriptures and show the Jews, first of all, that Jesus is the Messiah.
But then when they would reject Paul's message, he would go out to the Gentiles. Why doesn't he go to the synagogue in Philippi? Well, the likely answer is that there was no synagogue in Philippi. This would have been around the time or shortly after the time that Emperor Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome.
That would have happened around 49 or 50 A .D., and Paul and Silas being in Philippi was probably 50 or 51 A .D. So this is close to about that same time Claudius expelled the Jews. I've talked about this before, but when the Jews came back to Rome, when those Jews who had heard the Gospel in Jerusalem at Pentecost came back to Rome and shared the Gospel, and there were people coming to faith in Jesus Christ, Claudius heard about this, and he believed that this was breaking the unofficial rule that the Romans had with the Jews.
You guys can worship your God, but you can't convert people to your God. And when there were Romans who were becoming Christians hearing the Gospel from these converted Jews, Claudius was like, oh, well, they've broken the rules.
So he expels the Jews from Rome thinking that this would stop that proselytizing. Well, he expelled the wrong group of people. He heard they were worshiping this Jewish Messiah. If I get rid of the Jews, then all of this proselytizing will end.
Well, now there's all these Gentiles who believe in the Gospel that these converted Jews were proclaiming. So the church continued to grow even after the Jews had been expelled. Once Nero became emperor, then he allowed the Jews to come back in.
Now, of course, this happened in Rome. This wasn't necessarily empire-wide, but being that Macedonia was a Roman province, it's very likely that there were some places that saw this happen in Rome, and they thought, well, we want to kick all the Jews out as well.
So that could be the explanation of what's going on here in Philippi. There aren't as many Jews there. There's no synagogue to worship in. And so when Paul and Silas are sharing the Gospel, they go to this place that is referred to as a place of prayer.
They're going to find some Jewish converts there. And as with the case of Lydia, Lydia is likely a Gentile believer, but she believes in God. She does not believe in Jesus Christ, because the Gospel hasn't been spoken to them yet.
But she is a Gentile believer in the true God. So Paul and Silas share the Gospel. The Lord opens her heart to pay attention to what was spoken by Paul. And now she has come to faith in Jesus Christ, not just the true God, but the Son whom he has sent.
And she has become their first convert. And the other converts that come to faith end up in a church that is hosted in Lydia's home. We'll read about that again when we get to the end of the chapter. But anyway, as Paul and Silas are coming back to that place of prayer, again ministering to the women who were there and anybody else who is curious of this message, there is a servant girl with a spirit of divination.
That's the next line. A servant girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her master's much profit by fortune-telling. Now you've probably heard somebody say that the Greek in this passage is actually translated Python.
A servant girl having a spirit of Python met us. So how do we get divination out of that? Why doesn't the translation just simply read that she had a spirit of Python? What is this reference to Python?
The charismatics like to refer to this sometimes. So you may hear a charismatic preacher talk about a spirit of Python. Well, the Python was a mythological serpent, just like we have a snake today that is called the Python.
It is named after this mythological serpent that the Greeks believed in within their mythology. Python was guarding the center of the world, which the Greeks believed was at Delphi. That's a place where Paul will get to eventually, a little bit later on.
But Delphi was thought of as the center of the geographic world, or literally translated, it was the belly button of the world. And it was believed that the gods would commune with people from this geographic center.
So the spirit of Python, or rather this mythological serpent of Python, guarded that belly button of the world so that it was keeping the people away from hearing from the gods. Well, then Apollos came and struck down the spirit of Python, or this serpent of Python, so that he could claim that spot of the world for his own and erect a temple there and people would worship Apollos from Delphi.
There is a stone that is kept there that kind of commemorates that as being the geographic center of the world. It's not there anymore, but it was at this time. It was a hollowed out stone where soothsayers would put things inside the stone and burn them.
And then whatever it was they were mixing together inside the stone and burning would cause, it would be like a hallucinogenic fog. They would breathe in this smoke and this mist that was produced and cause them to have hallucinations where they were believing to commune with gods and they would hear messages from the gods.
And a lot of these messages would be talking about how to gain wealth and fortune. And that's why this is referred to as fortune telling. We'll gain fortune. We will get rich. So, oh gods, tell us what we need to invest in.
Where are you going to bless us? Where are the rains going to fall? What crops are going to be bountiful this year? What can I bet on that will return to me profit? Something like that. So this was a place where the gods were spoken with and where there was a lot of hallucination and a lot of worshipping these false gods in this way.
So this became a place of a lot of this witchcraft sort of activity. And there were a lot of witches or fortune tellers that were known to have come from Pytho or Delphi. It would also be referred to as Gaia.
So Gaia is a name that you know of, right? It is another name for earth. So they considered this to be the center of the earth. And therefore, a lot of witches were there believing that they could communicate with the earth or the gods that would bless the earth for them and bring great wealth and prosperity.
Therefore, a lot of other women who considered themselves to be fortune tellers or soothsayers or had a spirit of divination, they were referred to as women of Python or mistresses or enchantresses of Python.
These men who own this slave girl that's talked about here, she was bringing her masters much profit by fortune telling. So the men that owned her, it could be that they went to Delphi themselves and they found this girl and they bring her back to Philippi.
And they think this girl is going to do all of this fortune telling and she's going to make much profit for us. Now, some of the things that the girl did was manipulated by an evil spirit. It's very obvious that she has an evil spirit because Paul and Silas cast it out of her.
And then when her masters see that they can't profit off of her anymore, that's when they get angry with Paul and Silas and have all of this unjust retribution done to them. So it is clear that she does have some kind of an evil spirit, but they go and they get her from Delphi and bring her back here to make them profit by fortune telling.
So she probably does say some things that become prophetic in nature and probably do even come true. There are other things that don't because Satan can't really see into the future, nor can his demons.
But there are some things that are prophesied that do come to pass. Remember that one of the warnings that's given to the people of God in Deuteronomy chapters 13 and 18, it says that if somebody comes in among you and prophesies something and what he prophesies comes to pass, but then he tells you, let's go after other gods.
You shall not listen to that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. Rather, you shall put him to death. So it could be that very thing with this servant girl. She is prophesying things that do come to pass, but she's teaching people to follow after other gods.
Of course, if she's got this spirit of Python, then she's going to be directing people to the worship of Apollos or any of these other gods. And that's what's going to bring you fortune. So though she is able to prophesy things, it is not from the spirit of God.
It is from a it is from a wicked spirit that is leading people after another god. Hence why she warns about the God that Paul and Silas are proclaiming. So verse 17, following after Paul and us, this is Luke speaking again.
He's he's part of this group. So following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, these men are slaves of the most high God who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation. Now she's saying this not as, hey, come listen to them because then you'll get saved.
She's warning the people. They're trying to tell you that you need to be saved from something, but you don't really need salvation. So even herself, she is warning about Paul and Silas so that none of the attention will be taken away from her.
She wants all the attention. How can you gain fortune? How can you be saved? Well, you need to talk to me because I commune with the gods and I can tell you what it is that you need to do. So she continued doing this for many days, verse 18 says.
But then finally, being greatly annoyed, Paul turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to leave her. And it left at that very moment. Now, it could be that around Delphi or Python or wherever this girl had come from, that there is some sort of spiritual activity that's going on there where where it would be like the concentration of evil spiritual activity means that this girl could have been possessed by that spirit.
It doesn't mean that she's not at fault for any of the things that she did. But whatever gets cast out of her here at this point puts her back in her right mind. And the men who owned her recognize that they cannot profit off of whatever it was she was predicting, whatever spirit of prediction that she had.
So then verse 19, when her master saw that the hope of profit had left, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. And when they had brought them to the chief magistrates, they said, these men are throwing our city into confusion being Jews.
Now, if you know more about this narrative and what's coming next, Paul is going to appeal later on to his to his Roman citizenship. He was not permitted to have a fair trial, though he was a Roman citizen.
So they're not even asking about who Paul and Silas are. They don't even check their credentials or to see if if Paul was a Roman citizen. They just know that they're Jews. They're speaking about a Jewish messiah.
So these men are throwing our city into confusion. They are proclaiming customs that are not lawful for us to accept or to observe being Romans. And once again, I think there's more to this charge than just what we see on the surface because of Claudius having expelled the Jews from Rome around this period of time.
So this would have stirred the people into more of an uproar. I thought we were getting rid of these Jews. Oh, they really are a menace. I understand now what Claudius was doing, getting rid of the Jews, because look at what these Jews are doing among us.
So we're Romans. We have different customs. These Jews are trying to lead people into other customs. Now, this whole agreement that the Romans had with the Jews was so that they could respect each other's way of life.
You have your God. You worship your God. We have our gods. So let us worship our gods. And you don't try to convert us to your God. And we're not going to force you to have to pay homage to our gods. Now, that, of course, is going to be done away with once Nero becomes emperor.
Nero started out of his right mind, but later on became more insane, more crazy, and started demanding worship of himself. And then when crazy things would happen around Rome, he would start blaming the Christians so that the Christians would be persecuted.
The deepest persecution of the Christians in the Roman Empire would happen when Nero was emperor. But when he first became emperor, he even undid the rule that Claudius had implemented, trying to expel all of the Jews, and just expelled the wrong group of people.
But the Romans just wanted their own way of life to be preserved. We don't want to be converted to anybody else. And it was generally understood that a different group of people are going to worship different gods.
Okay, that's fine. You can worship your own gods, because we're probably worshiping all the same gods, just under different names. That was definitely the case among the Greeks and the Romans. But there's only one true god.
Only one god who demands absolute worship. And that is the Lord Christ. And so when Paul and Silas are proclaiming Christ, when they're proclaiming the true god, Yahweh, well, now these Romans are in an uproar over this, because the agreement has been broken.
We're not supposed to be following your Jewish customs. Now, their understanding of this is wrong, obviously, because it isn't that Paul and Silas are trying to convert people to Jewish customs. They're trying to bring people to a saving knowledge of faith in Jesus Christ.
So the crowd joins together to attack them. The chief magistrates, tearing their garments off of them, proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods. This is very obviously not a civil trial. There's no civility about this whatsoever.
There's no justice that's being done here. So when they had inflicted them with many wounds, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely. And after receiving such a command, he threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.
And that's where we will leave Paul and Silas for now. And we will come back to this narrative again tomorrow. You know, the Apostle Paul told Timothy in 2nd Timothy 3 .12, Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
Just because you want to live a godly life, you will be persecuted for that. Peter talks about in 1st Peter, chapter 4, how they'll be mad at you just because you won't join them in their flood of debauchery and they will malign you.
Just because you don't want to be in their wickedness with them. You don't even have to get out there and proclaim Jesus Christ. Turn from your sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and live. They'll hate you just because you want to live a godly life.
And so we need to recognize that that is going to be the kind of animosity that will be against us. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, he said, Blessed are you when others persecute you and revile you and hate you on account of righteousness.
You just want to do the righteous thing and people will hate you just because of that. But be blessed, Jesus said, rejoice for you are blessed for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. People aren't even really going to care to understand exactly what it is we believe and what we are proclaiming.
They'll hate us just because we won't go along with them in their flood of sin. But we must continue to hold fast to the truth of Christ and his word, following after his ways, knowing that our reward in heaven will be great.
And never being ashamed of the gospel, but continuing to preach it, knowing that this gospel that has saved us is also the only thing that can save you. So though they may reject it, we're still faithful to Christ and out of love for them, sharing the gospel so that they will come to faith in Jesus.
And if the spirit works in their hearts to convict them of sin, that they may turn from it and in Christ be saved. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read. And I pray that we continue to trust in those things that have been spoken about in your word.
We're not surprised when persecution comes against us. But Lord, we continue to hold fast to your promises. This is the true prophecy, what we have here in scripture. We're not looking for fortune or our futures to be told for us, because our future is given right here in Christ.
We will join him forever in glory. And we desire others to come along with us as well. So give us boldness in the preaching of the gospel of Christ to others. And we thank you for the goodness and grace that we receive from you daily.
It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
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Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study, When We Understand the Text.