It is good to see you here this morning. I trust that this Lord's Day you have come with a desire to hear from God. Please understand. If you come to hear a man, you've come for the wrong reason. And we do have special meetings this week, every night. And at that time when we gather, half past six, please understand, don't come to hear from me, because I will let you down. But we are coming to hear the Word of God, and I'm trusting and I'm praying that you would hear it as it is in truth, not the Word of man, but the Word of God. And we want to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ, and that's my desire, that's my prayer. And I'm glad to see you here. Looking forward to getting to know you a little bit more. Got to fellowship a little bit during that Sunday school hour, so I won't take too much time to chat with you right now. We'll look at the Word and I'll preach, then we can talk afterwards if you'd like to do that. And that'll be, I know, an encouragement to us. It's a joy to be here with your church for a few days all the way over here in Edinburgh. or Lone Head, near Edinburgh. But anyway, as I mentioned in the Sunday School Hour, we're from America. We're from the state of Indiana, which I know you may not know geography over there, and that's fine. If you know where the Great Lakes are, the southernmost of the Great Lakes travel about three hours down. That's where we are, all right? But anyway, we're glad to be here with you. And I want to point you to the Lord Jesus Christ. This morning, we read from Acts chapter 16. I would invite you to go back to Acts 16. And again, with the Bible that the church provides, that's page 1150. But Acts chapter 16. Now, I'm going to ask that you keep your Bible open. because we're going to be looking back at several portions. We're going to read throughout the entire, or most of the entire chapter of Acts 16, but you're going to want to keep your Bible open because we're going to come back to it as we read throughout. Alright, very good. I want to begin by reading verses 9 through 12. Alright? Verse 9 of Acts 16. This is what the Scripture says. A vision appeared to Paul in the night. There stood a man of Macedonia and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us. And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them. Therefore, loosing from Troas, we came with a straight course to Samothrace, and the next day to Neapolis, and from Fence to Philippi, which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony. And we were in that city abiding certain days. The great apostle, a man named Paul, he had some ministry partners with him. Timothy, Silas, and Luke. These four men with Paul, these four would travel and as they went they would try to spread and preach and announce the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this is, here in Acts 16, what we know of as the beginning of the second missionary journey of the Apostle Paul. And they didn't know exactly where they were supposed to go when a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man from Macedonia, which of course is northern Greece, a European man, appeared to Paul that night and said, would you please come and help us? And they knew this is where the Spirit of God was having them go. And so they immediately left the next morning and they went to Macedonia, the province there of Macedonia, and they ended up in the great city of Philippi. That is Acts 16. If you want to know what Acts 16 is all about, it's about the ministry in Philippi, this city in Greece. And there in Philippi, in the first century, Philippi was a military town. It had actually been conquered by the great Roman Empire, and it had been granted the status of a Roman colony. That meant, among other things, that the people of Philippi, they were free citizens. They were free from paying certain taxes. Hey, that sounds like a pretty cool place to live, to be honest with you. Free from paying certain taxes. This was a great place. A lot of Roman soldiers, after they fought for Rome, they would retire to Philippi. So what it was, though it was in Greece, it was a Roman colony, a Roman citizenry, most of them, free from a lot of Roman taxes. Philippi was known as a little Rome. It sounds like an amazing place to live in. But actually, when you read Acts 16, as we're going to read throughout today, you're going to find that Philippi was in turmoil. The free citizens of Philippi, they were not free, not really. They were not free from injustice. They weren't free from greed. They weren't free from exploitation. They weren't free from violence and free from fear. They weren't free from abuse. They weren't free from addictions. They weren't free from demonic oppression. They were not free from evil. Oh yeah, they were self-governing, but they couldn't control themselves. Their Greek culture, which the rest of the world thought was wonderful, had not freed their own souls. Their political freedom had not freed their heart, their mind, their lives from sin. In fact, I think of Philippi as I think of my hometown. I think of Philippi as I am learning more and more here about this portion and this area of Scotland. Oh, there is a degree of political freedom! But you are not free. I am not free from that which really binds us. And so what did the people of Philippi do? They did what sinners to this day do. They cried out for someone to come help them. Won't you come help us? Help us to be free. Help us to have joy. Help us to have peace. Help us to have freedom. Help us to have the joy that comes from a true freedom of soul. Paul heard the Macedonian cry, that call. And he came and answered it, and he came to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, for the gospel message is a message of deliverance. I like Hebrews chapter 2 verses 14 and 15, and those two verses gives a great summary of why Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, left heaven to come to this earth. It says that though we are partakers of flesh and blood, He also, Himself likewise, took part of the same flesh and blood, that through death. He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who through all their lifetime was subject to bondage. You know why the Lord Jesus came to this earth? He came, according to Hebrews 2, for two big reasons. To destroy the power of death and Satan, and also to deliver those of us who are bound. I like that. The message of the Gospel is a message of deliverance. Give me a Gospel message that delivers freedom. Give me a Gospel that delivers joy. Give me a Gospel that promises something better to come, and delivers something better now. Give me a gospel that says I can be an entirely new person. Give me a gospel of hope. Give me a gospel that delivers freedom. And this is the gospel message, this is the whole message of the cross. Jesus came to seek and to save those who were in bondage, those who were lost, that He might set us free. And I have been sent with a message to you, the message from heaven, and that is this, there is hope because there is Jesus. That is the message that I'd like to look at. And today, as we go through this chapter in Acts 16, I wanna point out four areas of hope that you and I can find, the Philippians found in Jesus, that you needed to discover as well, all right? Let's look at this. Paul met several individuals in Philippi who needed hope, who needed to be delivered. And I want us to look at these four today. Number one, I want you to notice that Jesus delivers hope. for your emptiness, your emptiness. Let me show that to you. Would you look at verse 13? And on the Sabbath, we went out of the city by a riverside where prayer was wont to be made, and we sat down and spake unto the women which resorted thither. And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us, whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. And when she was baptized in her household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there. And she constrained us." Alright, here's the story. One Sabbath, that's a Saturday. Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke went by the riverside in Philippi, where a group of Jewish women had gathered to worship God. And oh, their delight, when a Jewish rabbi who had been trained in Jerusalem, Paul, shows up. And Paul, as his manner was, would preach unto them Jesus Christ, his death, and the resurrection from the grave, for sinners like us to be saved. And it was there by the riverside that the first person on European soil was converted to Christ. And it was a lady. They called her Lydia. Lydia was not from Philippi. It says she was from Thyatira, another city in another province. The other province was also named Lydia. So maybe she was the lady from Lydia. Alright? But anyway, she was a fashion designer. You say, how do you know that? Because it says she was a seller of purple. The land of Lydia, the Roman province of Lydia, the city of Thyatira, where Lydia was from specifically, was known for its purple dye. I understand that something like 8,000 tiny shellfish had to be crushed to get one gram of purple dye. So in other words, if you wanted a purple garment, a lot of tiny shellfish had to die. And a lot of work, a lot of money went into making one purple garment. These were outrageously expensive garments, therefore only the extremely wealthy, the royalty, and so forth, these were the ones who could afford purple garments. So Lydia was not just a fashion designer, she was a designer to the stars, the rich and famous. And you know what? She made good money. She had a large house, we see here. She employed several servants, we also find out, to take care of her house. Here is a wealthy, successful Gentile. You know what a Gentile is. A Gentile is not a Jew, that's the difference. A Gentile, a businesswoman with high status in a male-dominated world. So here's my question. What in the world is this woman praying with a bunch of Jewish women at a riverside one Saturday? Think about that. That's a good question to ask. The reason, I think, becomes quite obvious when you think about it. For all of her success, for all of her wealth, for all of her independence, for all of her real status in her world, something was still missing. There was still an emptiness within her. So what does she do? She turns to religion. like some of you, like some of us. We turn to religion, hoping maybe that that will fill that emptiness within us. In fact, the scripture here says that she was a worshiper of God. Now, literally, this means she was a God-fearer. What does that mean? Well, it simply means this, that she had turned her back on all the many gods of her Greek world. She turned her back on that, and she had become interested in the one God faith of the Jewish religion. But we're going to find out she's even going to turn her back on the Jewish religion. Because even the Jewish religion does not satisfy. No religion satisfies the emptiness. Oh, we think that's what happened. And so Paul preached Jesus and the Holy Spirit opened up Lydia's heart and she found in the Lord Jesus what money had never given her. She found in Christ what success, status had never given her. She found in Jesus what religion had not given her. She found in Jesus the forgiveness of her sin. She found stability. She found peace. Jesus would make her right with God. Jesus brought her into God's favor, not her stuff. Not even her religious bent in her heart. She found the truth of what Jesus taught in Mark 8, verse 36. What shall it profit a man? Or in this case, a woman. What shall it profit a woman if she gain the whole world and lose her own soul? How about you? Have you been to that point in your life where you have run after the money, you've run after the career, you've run after the status, you've run after the success of whatever it may be, the approval, and you are and your heart says, if I could just get enough approval, if my boss would just say that I've done a good job, if my wife, or if my husband, if my teacher, if those people that I really want their approval, if they really would just say, yes, you have done it, you have done what I have been looking for, if I could just have that acceptance, then my heart could be at peace. Oh, if I could just have enough money so I wouldn't have to worry about bills. If I didn't have to worry about holidays. If I didn't have to worry about sickness coming upon me and how we're going to pay for this and how we're going to pay for that. If I just had enough money then. I could be at peace. Then I could rest. Oh, you can follow that all the rest of your life and you'll never be at peace. You'll never be at rest. As the scripture says, money takes like wings and flies away. You live for money, it's as though you put it in a bag with holes. It never satisfies. The list never stops. If I just had more money, more fame, more success, more friends, more respect, more freedom, then I would have peace. And when you find that that doesn't satisfy, you turn to religion. Maybe you have tried that. Something is missing inside and so you search for peace and religion. Maybe you've tried spiritism. When that didn't work, then you tried Eastern religions, you've tried Islam, you've tried Judaism, and now you're looking a little bit at Christianity. But here's the thinking, if you keep trusting, if you keep doing all the religious stuff, if you read the religious books, if you say the religious words, if you sing the religious songs, if you think the religious thoughts, then hopefully, maybe, God will like me, God will accept me, God will favor me. But the problem is, you have to keep doing it every week, because you never know when it will be enough. See, even religion does not satisfy. No matter what you own, what you accumulate, what you win, or how well you're known, or how religious you are, it'll never be enough, but there is hope for your emptiness, and that is the Lord Jesus. For the Apostle Paul will eventually write a letter to these very people, Lydia and others. It's called the Book of Philippians. A letter to them. And in this letter, he says in Philippians 3, 7, and 8, those things that were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless, I count all of those things, and he's talking about his religious pedigree there, all those things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but dung." Rubbish! that I may win Christ." Oh, put an end to your search for satisfaction in stuff, and find it in Jesus. Jesus delivers hope for your emptiness. Look at Lydia. She had it all, and it wasn't enough. What are you going after? Have you found peace? in Christ. All right? That's the first thing I want to point out here. Jesus delivers hope for your emptiness. Number two, Jesus delivers hope for your slavery. Slavery. Let's move on. There's another individual, another lady I want you to meet here in Acts 16, verse 16. And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying. The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the Spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out. the same hour. Alright, they are on their way to another prayer service. And another damsel, another lady is met by the Apostle Paul. Now this lady is a little different from Lydia. This one is deeply messed up in sin. We don't even have her name. She had opened up a door in her life to the demonic world. In fact, it says here that she had a spirit of divination, she had a divining spirit. In other words, she had so given herself over to demonic influence that demons had rewarded her by giving her some ability to predict future events. Now, that's what it means, spirit of divination, this divining spirit. Now, was she accurate? I don't know. I don't know if she could really tell the future, but it was thought, at least, in that day, that she could tell the future, predict the future. Now, I've got a note here in the margin of my Bible that says this spirit of divination is literally the spirit of a python. You say, what in the world does that mean? You know what a python is. frightening snake, alright, the spirit of a python. Well, let me tell you what it means, because I had learned, I didn't know. In Greek mythology, and that's myth-ology, alright, not real. In Greek mythology, one of the gods, Apollo, would speak to mortals, like you and me, through a python. Now, literally, it was Apollo would speak through a python through a woman. to mortals. This is the idea. Now, you say, that's confusing. I know this, but Apollo isn't real. But Satan is. And Satan dispatched his demons to own this young woman. Not only was she the slave of demons, she was also the slave to her masters, these men who owned her. Don't know how many, at least two, it's a plural word. owned by her masters, and these men would turn around and they would sell her or rent her out to paying men for her predictions, and you know this, many other things as well. That was the whole point of her. She was used and abused by demons, masters, and those who rented her. Here is a tragic girl shackled by sin. Every time I read this and think about this, this breaks my heart. And here is a young woman, she could not break out of the shackles of her slavery. Now let's be honest, she had brought some of it on herself, and then others had also come upon her. She was helpless. This is a tragic figure. May I ask you this question? Do you long to be free from your slavery? You find yourself today held by the cords of your sin, some addiction, lifestyle, some choices that you've been making, have been choking your life and dragging you off to a dark place, and you've tried to stop. You've tried to stop. You've made resolutions. You've joined the programs. You've taken the pills. You've gotten religion. You've gotten counsel. You've made promises. You've cried your eyes dry. You've cut yourself. You've even considered suicide. But try as you might, you cannot break free from this slavery. You can't break free from the drinking. You can't break free from the drugs. You can't break free from the porn. You can't break free from this abusive relationship. You can't break free from other addiction or dark arts. And if you could just have your life back, if you could just be in charge of your life, oh, then your heart would be free again. You smile, you've come here this morning, you know how to put on a good show. But deeply in your heart, your heart is crying out this morning as the people of Philippi, won't someone please help me? Please help me to be free. I long to break free, and I can't! Is that you this morning? There is great, good, glorious news. Jesus breaks the shackles of sin. He sets the prisoner free. In fact, that's what he said of himself in Luke 4.18, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, to set at liberty those who are bruised. Do you long to be free? The power to smash the shackles of sin is found in submitting to a new master whose burden is light, Jesus Christ. It's exactly what this young lady found. I love it. Paul was not so busy with church stuff that he did not hear the hurt in this young woman. He's on his way to a prayer service! And she says, these servants of the Most High God, they've come to declare unto us the way of salvation. Now what she said was accurate and right, but because she was a known Pythoness in the community, her words would discredit the gospel. And what do we find? Paul turns around and he proclaims the name of Jesus. And the demon that was in her came out, And we believe this, God doesn't just take the bad out, He gives Himself. She lost the unholy spirit and she got the Holy Spirit within her. She didn't just turn over a new leaf, she got a new life. She didn't get temporary peace, she got eternal peace. Do you? It is found in the Lord Jesus. Jesus delivers hope for your slavery. Jesus delivers hope for your misery. Now, what I want to look at now, verses 19 and following, is this. Jesus isn't just good for those who haven't been saved. Jesus is good for those who have been saved. This is what happened to Paul and Silas in particular. Would you look at verse 19? This is what we read leading up to this. And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas and drew them into the marketplace under the rulers, and brought them to the magistrates, saying, These men being Jews." Did you notice the racism in Philippi? See, there's nothing new under the sun. These were anti-Semitic remarks. These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, and teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, being Romans. And the multitude rose up together against them, and the magistrates rent off their clothes, that's Paul and Silas, and commanded to beat them. And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into the prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely, who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God, And the prisoners heard them. Oh, you can imagine. This young woman who had been owned by these masters, she's worthless to them now. Because she's been freed. They lost their money maker. And they're not happy. And so they went and they grabbed Paul and Silas. Now weren't there four of them? Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke? What about Timothy and Luke? Here's the racism. Paul and Silas are full-blooded Jewish men. Timothy is a half-Jew, half-Greek. And Luke is entirely Gentile, entirely Greek. All the hypocrisy in this town. They are not free. And so they grab these and they bring them to the rulers in the marketplace and they say, these are Jewish men. And they have, they trump up false charges on racial and religious grounds. The man is so, the magistrates there, the two rulers in there in the city of Philippi are very much upset. They strip the clothes off of Paul and Silas and they command their policemen to cane them. They laid many stripes, that means they drew blood on their back. And then they thrust them in the most secure part of the prison. They gave up to the jailer. The jailer put their feet in stocks. You know what that is? It's a piece of wood. You stick your feet in, and the holes were placed so far apart that it would spread your feet as far apart as they possibly could go to encourage the maximum amount of pain. And they left them there. So there is Paul and Silas, lovers of God, followers of Jesus Christ, beaten, bloodied, mistreated, in misery. They are there. And what do we find them doing after a few hours? At midnight. They're praying to God, and they're saying, God, You are worthy of our praise. How could they say this? How could they in the midst of such pain and misery have this perspective of life? Oh, because Jesus delivers hope even in the midst of your misery. Oh, Christian, you find yourself today in a place that you didn't want to be. You are suffering at the hands of other people. Somebody else has sinned against you. You've been blindsided. You've been accused. You've been beaten up, maybe vocally. You've been mistreated and betrayed and lied about. You've experienced loneliness. You feel that no one else cares this loss, this grief, this harassment for aligning with Jesus Christ. And haunting questions come to you. Why? Why me? Why us? Why now? Why again? Oh, do you believe that Jesus is enough even when all of that has been happening to you? This is what Jesus told His disciples to do when they were fearful. Do you remember when Jesus died and He rose again? You would think that all the disciples would be happy, but they were not happy. At first, they were very scared, they were very frightened. And we read in Luke 24, these verses, verses 37 and following, when Jesus showed up, after his resurrection. It says they were terrified and affrighted. But what does Jesus do? He says this, why are you troubled? Why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Let's be honest, that's where you are today. You are troubled in your heart. Thoughts, worried thoughts, anxious thoughts are arising in your hearts. You don't know how to handle what has been happening. Life has been happening to you and you don't know how to handle it. You're a follower of Jesus Christ. You are a believer in Him. You are a Christian. And yet you are full of fear and questions. What do you do? What did Jesus do? Why are you troubled? Why do thoughts arise in your hearts? His answer was this, Behold my hands and my feet. It is I Myself, handle Me, and see, a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see Me have. And when He had thus spoken, He showed them His hands and His feet. Now that's in Luke. Then the Gospel of John tells us what happens immediately after that. John 20 and verse 20. And when He had so said, He showed unto them His hands and His side, then were the disciples glad. when they saw the Lord. So get the picture. Jesus is dead. We are afraid. Jesus is supposedly alive. We're still afraid. And then Jesus said, touch me and see, I have come back from the dead. I am alive. I have resurrected. And when they saw the resurrection of Jesus Christ, when they saw the resurrected Lord, everything changed. Their hearts were glad. The key to your misery is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because He is alive, why are you despairing? Because He has beaten death, why are you so fearful? Why do anxious thoughts arise in your heart? I find this fascinating. The verse I read was John 20 and verse 20. When they saw the Lord, they were glad. I find that fascinating. 2020, that night they got 2020 vision. of the resurrection. You need some 20-20 faith vision of the resurrection of Jesus. Filter your trouble through His triumph over the grave. When it is midnight in your soul, rejoice in the resurrection. You see the gospel of the resurrection is good enough! even after you're saved. All right, there's hope for you, Christian, because Jesus is alive. Let them harass, let them agitate, let them kill. They cannot win, for Jesus has already won. All right, Jesus delivers hope for your misery. And number four, we are done. All right, number four, Jesus delivers hope for your hopelessness. hopelessness. Can I read what we've already read today? Verse 26, And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's bands were loosed. And the keeper of the prison, here's another man, the keeper of the prison, awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm, for we are all here. Then he called for a light and sprang in and came trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. and thy house." Oh, in the middle of this praised service, in the midst of great pain, there was a spectacular shaking. The whole prison began to shake. The pins holding the doors fell off. The doors fell down. The shackles fell off. This is awesome. And in the midst of that, with the chaos and the panic and the craze of that moment, the jailer who was asleep, Woke up. And he comes into the midst of all that chaos and all the stirred up dust, and he thinks, the prisoners are gone. I'm a dead man. I was in charge of making sure they stayed secure, all of these prisoners, not just Paul and Silas. I did not fulfill my responsibility. They've escaped. As soon as my superiors find out, I'm dead. I live in the midst of a bunch of retired Roman soldiers. If anybody knows how to kill, they know how to put people to death. And here's the point I want to get across. This man in this moment lost all hope of surviving the aftermath of his secret getting out. He had not fulfilled his role, and soon the whole city would know, and he could not bear surviving that. So he decides in that moment to commit suicide. He's going to kill himself. Takes out his sword, going to fall on it. And in that moment, Paul says, do yourself no harm. Everyone's here. And we read he falls down and he says, how can I be saved? And they point out he needs to believe. Turn from his sin and trust in Christ alone for salvation. At this point, when I say Jesus delivers hope for your hopelessness, I want to just for a moment here talk about this, because it's good for us to talk about it. I'm going to talk just for a moment about suicide. The power of suicide is in its secrecy. It's a lot like pornography. The power of porn is its secrecy. Same thing with suicide, so it's good for us to talk about it. This man lost all hope. He couldn't face life and the reality. What about you? It could be, and I don't know. Nobody else knows. Your husband, your wife, your parents, your friends, fellow students. Nobody knows. but of late you have been so full of despair, you've lost all hope, you're scared of things in your life because of sin, things of responsibilities or some secret that you have, you're fearful of getting out, and you see no way of dealing with the pain and the loneliness and the fear and the guilt and the shame, and the only thing you can think of to deal with it is to take your own life. You've looked at the various instruments that you have as a possibility of ending it. Because maybe you're thinking this, surely the act of dying will not hurt nearly as much as, if I can use this term, the hell I am living every day. May I borrow the words of the Apostle Paul? Do yourself no harm. We are all here. And I'm sorry that we haven't heard your heart cry, but we want to. How can we help? How can we show the love of Jesus to you? Why suffer in silence? This is a safe place. Would you go to someone who knows you and loves you and say, I need to talk. I'm really, really hurting right now. And you can discover as Thousands have discovered. Millions have discovered through the centuries that Jesus provides hope in the midst of your hopelessness. Can I close with this? I got to preach in a camp, teen camp, youth camp, teenagers. At the end of the week, it was a Friday night, a 14 or 15 year old girl came up to me And she had a piece of paper, and it was all folded up, and she handed it to me. And she said, thank you for this week, Pastor Andy. I had preached that week. And I said, okay, I didn't know her name, I didn't really remember her from the camp, but I said, okay, thank you. She walked off. I opened up the sheet of paper a few, probably about an hour later, when I was by myself, and I opened it up, and in it, it was a thank you note. It was fairly lengthy. But in that thank you note, she said, thank you for coming to this camp and preaching about Jesus this week. She said, because my desire was, I wanted to come to camp and have a good week at camp, because when I go home, I was going to kill myself. She said, but because I kept hearing about the Lord Jesus, I found out that I have value in the eyes of God. and that Jesus died for me. And she said, I found what I needed in Jesus this week. Thank you. Can I ask you this? Why would you die when somebody has already died for you? Jesus went to the cross to take your guilt, to take your shame, To take your pain of that sin. He died in your place. So don't turn Him away. As Paul said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Oh, don't turn from Him. He has hope even in the darkness of your hopelessness. Praise God for Jesus Christ. So, there's more in the city of Philippi, but we'll stop. You're welcome. But when Paul eventually left Philippi, so many Philippians were never the same. You know why? Because they found hope. For their emptiness, for their slavery, yes, for their misery, and their hopelessness. Have you found hope in Jesus? If not today, come to Jesus. God be merciful to me, I need you. Father, in Jesus name I thank you for the gospel message that destroys the power of Satan and delivers us who are under the power of death. There is no gospel message like the message of Jesus Christ. This is the message that delivers hope, and delivers from slavery, and delivers from death, and delivers from despair. And I pray that we would all find hope in Jesus. Those who need to be saved, please, please, Holy Spirit, open their heart as you did for Lydia. And for those who need, already are saved, but need hope in the midst of their misery, I pray that you find that hope in the resurrected Lord today. I pray this for your glory. Amen.