Continuing to look at the life of the Apostle Paul, we turn to Acts chapter 16. Acts chapter 16. And we'll commence to read at verse 9. And 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 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 thence to Philippi, which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony. And we were in that city abiding certain days. 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, and 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. And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her master's 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 she did 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. And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers, and brought them to the magistrate, saying, 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 ramped off their clothes and commanded to beat them. And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into 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. 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, 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, What must I do to be saved? They said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the Lord unto all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes, and was baptized he and all his straight way. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. And when it was day, the magistrates sent the sergeant, saying, Let those men go. And the keeper of the prison told this, saying to Paul, The magistrates have sent to let you go. Now therefore, depart and go in peace. But Paul said unto them, They have beaten us openly, uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison. And now do they thrust us out privily? Nay, verily, but let them come themselves and fetch us out. And the sergeants told these words unto the magistrates, and they feared when they heard that they were Romans. And they came and besought them and brought them out, and desired them to depart out of the city. And they went out of the prison and entered into the house of Lydia. And when they had seen the brethren, they comforted them and departed." Amen. The Lord will add His own blessing to this familiar reading from His own precious Word for His name's sake. Troas will forever be associated with the vision that Paul received from the man of Macedonia. It's an interesting sidelight of history that about a hundred years before Paul, another very famous man stood probably on the very same seashore at Troas. the famous Roman general, the great champion of the Roman Republic against the imperial pretensions of Caesar. Brutus was just about to set forth to fight alongside Cassius against Octavius at Philippi. The story is that he was working very late in his tent when he looked up because he felt something had entered the tent. It was a sort of a vision. As the strange figure confronted him, Brutus said, What are you? Of man or of gods? And on what business have you come? The answer was chilling indeed for a man on such a mission, just about to set forth to do battle for the soul of Rome and many thought for the future of the world. The answer was, I am your evil genius and I will see you again at Philippi. And so it was. Brutus and Cassius lost the fateful battle, and the great republican general died in Philippi, a suicide. The vision of the apostle Paul was of an altogether different nature. When Paul beheld a man in his vision. It was not his evil genius leading him on to a fateful destruction. But it was indeed for him the call of God to set foot for the first time and preach the gospel for the first time on the continent of Europe. And so As we read in verse 10, after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us 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 thence to Philippi. The Apostle Paul could hardly have foreseen the full results of his obedience to that call of God. Looking across the Aegean Sea from the western shores of Asia, the Apostle could see the easternmost peaks of the continent of Europe. Samothrace is mentioned. He could also Although travelers tell us this would only have been true at an evening time, in the setting sun he could have seen Mount Athos appearing like a great golden pyramid. Paul knew that beyond that lay the city of Philippi. Beyond Philippi, the free city of Thessalonica. Beyond that, Corinth and Athens and the even more remote cities of Italy and of Spain. What he couldn't see, but what the Lord most certainly did see as He sent them forth into the European continent, that there were great cities and great nations still more remote, not only in distance, but also in time, in which His European ministry would bear its fullest fruit. Cities and nations that would come to know the name of Paul, the gospel of Paul, the theology of Paul, the teaching of Paul, so that next to the name of his beloved Master, his name would be known and heralded throughout the world. Cities like Geneva, and London, and Edinburgh, and from them to the cities and the lands of the new world. So it was a great mission upon which the Lord sent His Apostle when He commissioned him to go into Macedonia. The first place of His European service, we are told, was Philippi. He went beyond Neapolis, which was really the port of Philippi, in order to get to the colony city itself. We have read the story of Paul and Philippi tonight. His ministry there commenced in a prayer meeting and it climaxed in a prison. And he set the tone for many other preachers who were to follow in his tracks, praying and then becoming prisoners. In between the praying and the imprisonment, he witnessed to the gospel. He preached the truth. He saw a great church. at least commenced, and he entered into yet another of his public confrontations with the powers of the occult. The three highlights of Paul's Philippian visit have become symbols of the irresistible power of the gospel. First of all, at a Riverside prayer meeting, we read, the Lord opened Lydia's heart. What a glorious expression of the saving power of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord opened Lydia's heart so that she gave heed to the things which were preached by Paul. Then, in a public thoroughfare, Paul cast out the devil from this Pythoness, this so-called oracle, this person who could They would say prophecy, but the Scripture quite rightly says she was soothsaying. By a demonic power, she was seeking to lead people astray. And of course, Paul could not be confronted with the devil in all his naked power without seeking to destroy that power, without doing battle against him. So Paul cast out the demon of divination. And for his pains, he was taken, he was beaten, he was made to suffer in a great way as they laid many stripes upon him. It's very, very easy to read that. But remember in the history of torture, no one has ever been more skilled than the Romans. The Roman lictors knew exactly how to whip a man to within an inch of his life. When they would stretch his body out and tie it to, great usually, concrete uprights, and then lash his body until it was a gory mass and mess of flesh and blood. They certainly knew how to make the most of torture. Then, bleeding, bruised and bodily broken, he was thrown into jail. And in the prison, we read Paul and Silas He prayed. And then we read, they sang. I've often thought that Paul was a free Presbyterian. I think he certainly would have been if he had been here today. And this is one of the texts that makes me think that. Because as soon as he sang, there was an earthquake. And I don't know of any less melodious singers with one or two exceptions than free Presbyterian ministers. So he would have been right at home amongst us. He prayed and he sang. and appointed the jailer to Christ. In a nutshell, Paul's obedience to the call of God to go to Macedonia was rewarded by savagery from man, but by great success from God. So tonight, I want us just to take a few minutes and look at this passage, Paul at Philippi. I want us to take three Simple but intimate views of the apostle at work in Philippi. First of all, let me remark that Paul went there as a servant. The first vision you have of Paul here is of Paul the servant. We read that there was a vision appearing to him in which a man of Macedonia stood and he cried to Paul, come over into Macedonia and Help us. Help us. Paul immediately set forth. He went to help. Now, when you consider that, again, I ask you to lift it off the page of ancient Scripture and translate it into modern life and into your experience and my experience. And I think you realize that the Apostle, under these very, very simple words, the Apostle did something that set him apart from the great majority of professing Christians. There was a cry for help. We are in darkness. We are in need. Send us a man to help us. Send us a man who knows how to help us. Send us a man who himself has felt the help and the power and the grace of God. Come over and help us." And Paul went to help. He didn't go to be president. He didn't go to be the chief politician or the best paid businessman. He didn't go to make his fortune. He simply went to help. I say that sets Paul apart from the vast majority of professing Christians. All around us there are men like the man from Macedonia. All around us there are cries for help. People down deep in the pit of sin. People lost in the darkness of their own depravity. Oh, for us, it is very easy to be like the people in the parable the Savior told, the parable we call the Good Samaritan. It's very easy to wrap our cloak of self-righteousness around us, step to the other side of the road, and leave them dying in the gutters of sin. The apostle couldn't do that. He couldn't do it. And so he went to help. That servant spirit is absolutely essential to the work and witness and to the very credibility of the church of Jesus Christ. The great modern missionary movement starting with men like David Brainerd and Jonathan Edwards on this side of the Atlantic, and William Carey and his helpers on the other side. That great modern missionary movement got underway because God raised up in the church a race of men who were willing to be servants, who heard the call of Macedonians saying, come over and help us. For many years, the church of Christ had had great preachers, great theologians, and great revivals. But for some reason or other, it was theologically orthodox to let the heathen world stew in its heathenism and go to hell untouched. And when people like the ones I have mentioned first showed that they were willing to go. They were looked on, not as great saints, but as great dangers, foolish men, half-lunatic men, because they had the spirit of a servant come over and help us. Tonight, the world is perishing. It has more people today on the edge of hell than at any time in all its history. The cry comes ringing o'er the restless wave, Send the light. Come over and help us. And yet, we have Christians. They can go to their bed at night without ever praying for a soul without ever thinking of the needs of sinners in Greenville, sinners in America, and sinners to the ends of the earth. They can make their plans for career, for business, for making their fortune, for marking their place in life. And they have put the earplugs of worldliness in their ears to deafen them to the cry of the lost world. Come over. Come over and help us. Do you know anything in your own soul tonight of the saving power of Jesus Christ? Have you ever felt yourself deeming grace of God in the Gospel? Are you that soul set free? Then man or woman or young person, You must pay attention to the cry that comes from the millions of this world lost. Come over. Come over and help us. I must confess that that is one leading reason why I have arranged for Mr. Hanner to come from Spain take these meetings for us. I've asked Him to come and speak at our time, which is usually a prayer meeting and Wednesday evening. I've asked Him to come and show us slides and let us see what missionary work in Europe is really like on a Friday evening. Then on the Lord's Day to come and preach His heart out as God gives Him the message. Because we We need our people, including this preacher, to keep the attitude of the servant who'd go to help. The opportunities are there. Joan and I sat up far too late last night. We intended to be in bed fairly early. For once, I thought I was ready to go to bed when other people might be at least within an hour or two of them going to bed, but we got to talking. We didn't solve anything, but at least we talked. Talking about churches, about movements, about missions, about outreach. You know, there are movements that are far from what I take to be solid and separated and biblical in many of their aspects. And yet, I stand amazed at their willingness to go. I, with many others, got a letter this week from Bill Bright, the leader of Campus Crusade for Christ. I think it's one of the great deviations of a modern American fundamentalism and evangelicalism that Campus Crusade has adopted some of the methodologies it has. And I have no apology for those things. But when I read of teams of young men and young women going out with them from the universities of America to some of the remotest parts of this earth, when I read of them going in to where the Kurds are and where their very life is threatened by fellow devotees of Islam, when I read of them going in there to tell them of Jesus Christ, let me tell you, I may not be able to support all their methodology, but I have to hang my head in shame. It's very easy to stand at Troas and find fault with the way others go to Philippi and never budge an inch. Oh, for the spirit of the Apostle Paul who went as a servant, he went to help. He went to help. Now, I believe he had an even greater motive. That was to glorify his Savior. It was to uplift the Christ of God. Undoubtedly, that was his supreme motive. But do you see the heart of the Apostle toward people? The Apostle Paul, was not the remote academic. He was not the doctrinaire theologian. He was not this severe man that so many people have tried to paint him. When he saw this man from Macedonia, he didn't care about what his color or his culture or his religion was. He didn't care what his background was. He saw that man tottering on the edge of hell and he said, I want to go and help him. Oh, that God would stir our hearts in the same way. When He went to help, He immediately went to pray. Those two things always go together. It's not a matter that you're either a man of prayer or a man of action. If you try to be one without the other, you end up being only a caricature of a servant of Christ. The man of action must be a man of prayer, otherwise his action will be mere human presumption. But the man of prayer must be a man of action, otherwise his praying will not be faith, it will be fatalism. We must join, as Paul did, praying with doing, and doing with praying. And if we pray for missionaries, then we have got to be prepared to be missionaries, whether it's here or to the ends of the earth, whether you're twenty or whether you're forty, whether you think you're just starting out in life or whether you think you're coming to the end of life. I've often said, one of the greatest challenges I heard Back in 1976, in the city of Edinburgh at the World Congress of Fundamentalists, when I first came across a lady that many of you and B.J. will know, Mrs. Faust, who went to the mission field for the first time in her late sixties. That's when God opened the door That's when God burdened her heart. That's when God gave her the opportunity. She simply went to help. She went to pray. And of course, He went to preach the Gospel. The way to help the world is to preach the Gospel. That is the way. The great help that the world needs is not political. It is not economic. Now, do not misunderstand me. There is a room for humanitarian help. And the church of Jesus Christ throughout the centuries has always been the greatest vehicle for help. Every great forward movement in true social progress has started in the church of Jesus Christ. But ultimately, those are only means to an end. And the great end is preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Luke says, we endeavored to go because we gathered assuredly that God had called us to preach the Gospel unto them. What a message with which to go. To go into the darkness of people surrounded by heathenism and bring them the light of the Gospel. That's the great thrill of preaching, whether it's here or in the darkest, heathen corners of the world. It's the great challenge. Sometimes missionaries have gone into dark, pagan places. When they have learned the language, they have had a grave difficulty preaching the gospel. I remember reading of one missionary getting down the local language and he says, how do I preach the gospel? Such is the darkness and the paganism of this place. There is no word in this language for love. There is nothing in their experience that even would relate to the concept of love. How do I express to them the love of God? What a challenge! And yet, once that light would get through, what a tremendous victory it brings. I think of another missionary who went out and he felt, I'm going among pagans. I can't be too quick in bringing them to the gospel. I think this is a mistake that missionaries make too often. I think they try too often to do the discipling before they do the converting. And so he said, I'd better teach them about God the Creator. I'd better teach them about the law of God. I'd better teach them about all these things and when I have taught them, then I will tell them of Jesus Christ and I'll tell them the way of salvation. It was a well thought out scheme. But with a broken heart, he came after quite a long time to the end of himself and said, these people aren't even interested. Not a word gets through. Then, with a stroke of genius or guidance, at the end of himself, he stood up and he preached to them from John 3 and 16. And he saw the great tears roll down those cheeks. He saw strong, heathen men with their chest heaving with emotion, that God could love me, that the Son of God could die for me to put away my sin and bring me near to Himself and give me a place with Him for all eternity. That's the message! Oh, Paul went out to help. He went out to pray and He went out to preach. He went to Philippi as a servant. Has God begun to give you a vision? Has He let you hear anything of the Macedonian call? Has He stirred your soul, believer, to look on the myriads of this world, the seething masses in all their need? Has there not been a stirring within your soul that whether it be here in Greenville or whether it be to the ends of the earth, I must, I must, I must go and help? The first view is of Paul the servant. I'm sure that's the way Paul would like everything to have continued, but obviously, The devil couldn't let things continue that way. And so we find that he warred as a soldier. The man who was the servant now had to be the good soldier of Jesus Christ. Immediately he started helping. Then obviously, he was butting heads with the devil. As soon as he started praying, he was threatening the kingdom of darkness. And as he started to preach the word of gospel grace and light and liberty, all hell which was holding those people in bondage rose up against him. We have read the story of the Pythoness, to give her her proper name. This one with supposed supernatural powers. She was a slave girl. yet possessed of the devil, a soothsayer, she began to say, these men are the servants of the Most High God, and they show unto us the way of salvation. Now, there's a great division among commentators. Did she do this honestly or did she do it mockingly? I don't think there's any way we can be absolutely sure. But it doesn't matter what way she did it, She was distracting attention from the gospel. She was the mouthpiece of Satan. And the Apostle Paul could not stand in the presence of Satan without challenging him. Let me tell you, there is a view of Paul that you and I would do well to emulate. Paul could not go along with the devil, even if the devil seemed to be supporting what Paul was doing. What this girl was saying was absolutely true. But it wasn't what she was saying that Paul paid attention to. It was who was saying it. What a difference it would make to the alliances Christians get into if they would adopt this strict line of separation that the apostle here adopted. He wouldn't receive any support from the devil. For Paul recognized something you and I would do well to recognize. And I'd better make this statement in very general terms, because if I were to get off on this, we would go all over the world. The text would be going everywhere preaching the Word. And we would cover a lot of ground. That is, Paul recognized that the devil is always opposed to the Gospel, and that support from the devil for the Gospel is always poisonous to the cause of Christ. When I see Christians getting on the bandwagon of some fiscal conservative politician, When I see Christians becoming more devoted to some radio talk show hosts than they are to the gospel of Jesus Christ, just because of their conservative stance on certain political issues, I see Christians who are forgetting that the devil is always opposing the cause of the gospel, even when he seems to be supporting it. Always. And oh, that we would recognize this and not sell out the gospel for the sake of holding hands with enemies of Jesus Christ, because they happen to agree with us that we'd all be better off with a lower tax rate or some other such thing. We're in a battle. And let me tell you, if you really go to help people, neither the state, nor the judiciary, nor anyone else is really, ultimately going to be on your side. That's not to say there's no one in the state, no one in the judiciary who will be of help. That would be far from true, and I thank God for that. Many of you will remember the inspiration that the late Lester Roloff was to the entire fundamental community in North America. One of the most inspiring men in our entire lifetime. Mr. Roloff was probably the greatest helper of young people in the whole continent of America. Was there ever a preacher with a bigger heart for young people? Was there anybody who ever poured in more time, more effort, more money more praying, more teaching, to take the people that the courts could do nothing with and the social structures of the country gave up for dead, and lift them up and see God transform drunken, drug-addicted young people into saints of God. In pulpits around America today, there are men who came out of roll-off homes. But what did the state do? People, some of whom were the white knights of many a Christian. They threatened them with jail, tried to shut them down. Why? At the very same time that the federal government of the United States through its judiciary, was saying that this great nation, to be true to its constitution, has to recognize the church of Satan as equivalent in law to the church of Jesus Christ. At that very time, they were seeking to shut down a man The devil is against us. We've got to recognize that. Don't think that when we start to do a great work and start seeing people saved and young people helped and lives transformed, that suddenly the House of Representatives is going to call you up to Washington and have a special ceremony to say you're some wonderful character. No, they're more likely to try to do with you what they did with Lester Rowe. Paul stood. God give us grace to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ. That's the stuff that true servants of God are made of. They stand. In this day of spineless evangelicalism, when people are afraid to stand for anything, when Christians want to go along with the tide of humanity and not be picked out as standing for anything definite. We need people with the backbone to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ, whatever the cost. And the cost is there. He suffered. In his case, it was beating and it was imprisonment. If ever I admired Paul, I admire him here. Because he didn't need to suffer that. He was a Roman citizen and by Roman law. And that's why the magistrates were so scared when they heard he was a Roman citizen. No magistrate could flog a Roman. No Roman could be flogged or could be punished at all until he was tried and proven guilty. They had treated this Roman citizen, in fact, it would look like Silas was also a citizen, But they had treated this Roman citizen as if he were just an alien. The question is, why did Paul not tell them when they started to get at the job of stripping him to flog him, why did he not say, hold on, I'm a citizen. You can't do this to me. I'll tell you, they would have backed off him far more quickly than if they had found he had had the plague. They dared not have touched him. But he didn't invoke his citizenship. I wonder why. I can't be definite about this, but to me it seems very likely that there were people in Paul's party who were not Roman citizens. I think that's undoubtedly true of Timothy. It may have been true of Luke. Some speculate that Luke was a freed slave. He may have been. But I think it very likely that there were members of the party who were not Roman citizens. And if Paul had got himself free, the awful punishment would have transferred only to them. And Paul would not have a whole skin by letting his brethren suffer in this place. If ever I admired the courage of this great, great man of God, I admire it here, to let his friends go as free as possible. Like his master before him, he took all that the enemy could give. And he did it joyfully. We read that he prayed and he sang. Prayer and praise in prison. Now, I can tell you there's nothing drives jailers madder than that. And it must have driven them mad when they had a prayer meeting down there. Many of you will know that our moderator, Dr. Paisley, and two of our other ministers in 1966 were thrown into jail. I'll not go into the whole story of the wise and the wherefores. But when I tell you that even many ecumenical ministers signed a petition to get them out saying they were unjustly imprisoned, you can see that they ought never to have been there. They were there for standing for Christ. And I think they largely enjoyed it. It was a three-month holiday. Dr. Paisley wrote his commentary on the epistle to the Romans while he was in jail. He was very conscious of the history he was making. Mr. Wiley, many of you have read my biography of Mr. Wiley. I'm not pushing my own books, but if you haven't read it, you should because he was a unique component of the early days of the Free Presbyterian Church. Mr. Wiley didn't really like it because he really missed his home and loved ones. Not that the others didn't, but he did uniquely. Ivan Foster had the time of his life. Those of you who know Ivan Foster will know why. He had the time of his life. The only thing he was sorry was that he hadn't learned in time that since he was a civil prisoner he should have grown a beard before he went in. And that would take him about 15 hours. He has that kind of a beard that grows very quickly. But anyway, he found it had been better with a beard because once he got in there he had to stay clean shaven and he only had cold water and a very blunt blade. And so it wasn't a nice experience. But to be with IRA men, and Protestants who were in for all sorts of crimes, and to be in a work detail with them, and to give them the Gospel and preach Jesus Christ to them, he was having the time of his life. What drove the guards mad was that they would get together and they would pray, and the three cells were together, and so they would have to pray loud so that they could be heard. And as one was praying, and man, I'll not tell you all that they were praying, but as one was praying, the other was saying, Amen. And then they started to sing. What though clouds are hovering over me, and I seem to walk alone? And then would come the voice from the guard, Shut up! Of course, they couldn't hear a word. They were just singing all the harder. I think it was a wee bit like that in Philippi. Paul and Silas sang. And they prayed. Do you see something there? Do you see the power and the reality of a genuine experience of Jesus Christ? Here are people who are really saved. Now listen, their backs are bleeding, their bodies are aching. They have just been scourged and whipped to within an inch of their life. They're meant to be lying there in degradation and in utter defeat. But instead of that, they're praying and they're praising, they're rejoicing and they're singing. I wonder what they did sing. Dr. Barrett told me one of his colleagues thought he worked out which psalms they sang. Well, I think I can't do that. I'll be honest, that would just be sheer speculation. That's why we sang Psalms tonight, by the way. I thought, well, if they didn't sing any of these Psalms, they're ones they would have enjoyed singing. They were singing! Let me tell you, my friend, that's the glorious reality of being saved. That's the difference between salvation and religion. That's the difference between having Christ in you, the hope of glory, and having just enough religion to make you miserable. The difference is, when Christ is within you, that there's something greater than your circumstances. And yet, do we not again have to hang our heads in shame? Here we are. Christians, in what the rest of the world, even if Americans don't think it, the rest of the world would say is the richest country on earth. America's poor would be the aristocracy of two-thirds of the world. And if the slightest little thing goes wrong, we gripe, we groan, we complain, We blame God. We question God. What's happened to us? I think we have forgotten what it is to be servants. And we have forgotten what it is to be soldiers. Oh, for a recapturing of that spirit. It's not long since that was the spirit. In the early days of the Methodist movement, Methodist preachers used to be hounded. John Wesley was pulled from one end of the town, literally, by the hair of his head, and prayed and praised God the whole time. In the city of Worcester, three primitive Methodist preachers stood up to preach. The magistrate brought The policemen along, he said, haul him down and take him to jail. And as they hauled the first one down, the other two stood and they sang together. He said, get the next one and put him in jail. Well, that put two of them in jail and one there. So the one stood singing and the two in jail. They started to sing. They got the third one in jail. The magistrate said, look, separate them. So they took one and they put him in the next cell. And soon there was a prayer meeting going on there. Everybody there was singing. The magistrate says to the policeman, will you do what I tell you and separate these men? I said, but every time I separate them, they go in and they convert another one and they start another prayer meeting and they start singing all over again. It's the spirit of the servant and the soldier. That's the spirit of Paul here. And that's why, as a soldier, he was such a great success. I say success because, finally and very briefly, let me point out the third element in his work. He worked as a soul winner. You see, he was a servant to help. He was a soldier to battle. But in it all, in it all, He was there to win souls. And you have three great cases of soul-winning power. You have Lydia whose heart the Lord opened. You have the demon-possessed girl who was set free in a second by the mighty power of God through the Apostle. And then you have that case of the jailer. What must I do to be saved? And Paul said, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Thy house." Do you see the glorious sovereignty of God here? Lydia was from Thyatira, but God had her in Philippi. Paul was from Tarsus. He had not wanted to be in Philippi. He was trying to go to Bithynia. God stopped him and brought him into Philippi. And He brought them there at the right time in order to save that woman. In the case of the jailer, he sent an earthquake. At the very moment it was needed. We read that He opened Lydia's heart. This is all the evidence of the sovereignty of God. And yet, in His sovereignty, He used the preaching of Paul. So often we use the sovereignty of God as an excuse for doing nothing. Let's be honest. God has His elect. Sure He has. How do I know? The Bible says He has. He has His elect from before the foundation of the world. Will God save His people? Yes, He will, because He Himself said it, Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. The carnal mind then says, well, if God has His elect and God is going to save His elect, I needn't do anything. And that's just sin. Because the fact that God has a people to save is all the more reason for us to preach the gospel to every creature. When Mr. Spurgeon was criticized by some hyper-Calvinists for preaching the gospel and the invitation to sinners generally, to come to Christ, they said, only to the elect. He said, well, if you can go and put a big X in the back of all the elect, I'll just preach to the elect. But until you can do that, I'll just preach to everybody, and I'll leave it to God to save His people from their sins. God used Paul's preaching. See His mercy in this. There were three sinners. Now, we would look at Lydia. She's altogether different. But she no more deserves salvation than did the jailer or the devil-possessed girl. We all believe that with our head, but we actually live as if we didn't believe it. We see the sinner going well dressed to hell, and we somehow or other think that he's more a candidate for salvation are more ready to be saved than the poor down-and-out sinner going through the gutters to hell. But they all need mercy. God saved them all. Lydia, the lady of breeding, the woman of business, a worshipper of God, religious, but yet without Christ. And we read that the Lord opened her heart. Oh, He spoke to her. There was no thunder here. There was no earthquake. It was that still, small voice. But He opened her heart. How do I know her heart was opened? Because the Holy Ghost said she attended to the things that were spoken by Paul. How do you know when God has opened your heart? You give attention to the Gospel. You receive the message. You embrace the truth. And you bow to Christ as your Savior. And my friend, if you are not taking the Gospel seriously, and if you are not obeying the call of the Gospel, if the obedience of faith in Jesus Christ is not there, then your heart is still shut. You may be in church. You may be upright, you may be many things, but your heart is still shut. Your heart is opened only to receive Christ. God opened her heart. When you look at the Pythoness, this is one of those, if this were just English literature, you would say this is one of the very deft strokes of a master author. In total contrast to Lydia, you have this slave girl, possessed of the devil, a miserable, wretched tool of Satan. And yet, by one word of power, God set her free. We have all these kinds of people. We have our Lydias. And we have those who are more like the pythoness. They need Christ. And He's able to save them. Do we have the power of God that can see them saved? Then He saved the jailer. Here's a coarse, rough, brutal man. A man without much natural affection. I mean, you've got to be quite a brute when you can take the bleeding, battered form of a man like Paul or Silas and just thrust them into the inner dungeon and let them rot there all night. A brute of a man. Strong in his sin. God can break the brute. There was an earthquake. God put fear in that man. He's done that many a time. You remember he did it in the life of Martin Luther? When through lightning and thunder he put such fear in the heart of Luther that he turned him away from a life of frivolity and a course of pursuing a great future in law, that's when Luther decided to become a monk. The wrong decision, but all part of the plan to get him to the feet of Christ. The power of God here is great. All these three people are exhibitions of divine power. He changed their hearts. He changed their habits. He changed their homes. It's the power of God. That's real salvation. It starts with a change of heart. It leads to a change of life. And it's evident even in the home. Tonight, my friend, there's a dual purpose to our looking at this passage of Scripture. Obviously, I want to address those of you who are still without Christ, whether you're a Lydia, whether you're like the soothsaying girl, or whether you're like the jailer. Whatever stage of development your depravity has reached, I'm here to tell you Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I trust you'll come. But I also have the purpose that those who are saved would get a vision. I pray for this church constantly that it will become like the church in Antioch. I have preached to you about that church twice during the 15 years I've been here. I've said I think I should make that message an annual event. That's my constant prayer that God will make this like the church in Antioch. That God will make our people like Paul the servant. Paul who hears the cry, come over and help us. That God will make our people like Paul the soldier and like Paul the soul winner. We must not miss the point. I want you to go from this place tonight if you are saved, utterly convinced that you must serve Jesus Christ. You must live a life that helps your fellow man by giving him the Gospel. You must be faithful to Christ as a soldier in the battle for truth against the lie. And that you must not be less than a soul winner. I've often quoted to you the words of C.T. Studd. that the tramp of Christless feet on the road to hell drives me mad. Everybody thought that Studd was mad. I suppose in a way he was. If it's madness to give up a millionaire's fortune and the life of an English aristocrat, If it's madness to give up position and power and ease, if it's madness even to leave home and family behind for a dozen years at a time, to bury yourself first in China, and then in India, and then in Africa, to reach the lost for Christ, if that's madness, then Stud was mad. But what made him mad? He heard the millions of this world trump, trump, trump, trump, trump on the road to hell. Oh, that God would give us ears to hear, eyes to see, and a heart to respond. That God would raise up men and women in this church. who would like Wesley say, the world is my parish. I must be that servant, that soldier, that soul winner for Jesus Christ. May God get us to our Philippi where we will begin a great new venture. Not knowing where it's going to end, but a great new venture. And who knows? Who knows what the end will be? When Brainerd lay in prayer, giving his life away in a burden for the American Indians, When nobody cared two straws about an Indian, some Christians doubted even if an Indian had a soul. When Brainerd, one of the most blessed and brilliant young men in the whole Christian world, poured out his life to win those Indians for Christ, it seemed a little thing. But Brainerd's testimony has reverberated through history. It is echoed around the world. It is not too much to say that there are literally millions, nay, hundreds of millions who have heard the gospel because a young man who could see no further than the nearest tribe of American savages gave himself to be a servant and a soldier and a soul winner. God knows the end. Let us give ourselves, irrespective of the cost or the end, let us give ourselves to be like Paul and hear the Macedonian call.