Welcome to this podcast from Harvest Community Church of Huntersville, North Carolina, where our vision is to make disciples who make disciples. I'm your host, Liz Stefanini. And today we're going to continue teaching through the New Testament book of Acts. Come to Acts chapter 16, verse 11 to 40. And let me ask you a question as we begin. What is your favorite book of the Bible? What is your favorite book of the Bible? Think about that for a minute. And maybe with somebody just near you there, somebody you came with or whatever, uh, if you have a favorite book of the Bible and why share that with them, let's take a minute to do that as we start this morning. So I'm just curious. Uh, obviously our live stream audience won't be able to hear it cause it's not mic'd, but just, uh, who has a favorite book of the Bible that you would, you would share with us? Psalms. Okay. Who else is Psalm? Any other Psalms? Raise your hand. A few of those. Okay. Uh, what's another one? Walt Romans. Okay. Any other Romans? Can we, it's not competition. Another favorite book of the Bible. Okay, Barb. You'll know why I'm smiling in a minute. Philippians, any other Philippians? Okay. What else? What others is your favorite book of the Bible? Exodus Exodus. Yeah. Okay. Any other exoduses? All right here then over here, okay Isaiah, okay. Any other Isaiah's? All right, you can raise your hand more than once. That's okay. They're all good. Okay, Jennifer Middle name is Ruth. So it is. Okay I smiled because it's a really tough question for me and If you were to ask me what my favorite book, there's so many, but I think if I had to narrow it down, I would have picked three and I would have picked Psalms from the Old Testament. I love to read the Psalms over and over and over. And then in the New Testament, it would be such a toss up between Romans and Philippians. And those were the first, I promise I did not plant those three people out there, but I love Romans. Romans just has so much about the gospel in it and life for the church. I've spent a lot of years in Romans. My PhD dissertation was in Romans 6 and 7. So I spent many, many years studying Romans 5 through 8 intensely. I love Romans. I also love Philippians. It may be, I don't know. If you pressed me and I had to give one answer, I'm not sure, but I might say Philippians. When I went to seminary, One of the first courses I took in Greek exegesis, and I had taken the basic Greek. You would learn the alphabet and the basic grammar and structure and so forth. But then an exegesis class is when you actually take a New Testament. If it's Greek, it'd be New Testament. If it's Hebrew, it'd be Old Testament. You take that book and then you go through like word by word in the original language and you really identify everything there is about those words. And one of my first, I think my very first one might've been the book of Philippians. My professor was named Ron Sauer. I was at Liberty Seminary in Virginia. And he, he was such a great teacher and he had such a love for the language, had such a love for the Bible. And, and it just created a great love for me in the book of Philippians. And not only that side of it, but just all of the thing that there's so many wonderful things said in Philippians. But when we think about these books of the Bible, like Philippians, especially the new Testament letters, like Colossians, Philippians, first and second Thessalonians, you ever think Who was in that church? How did that church get formed? How did it come together? Well, some of it we don't know a lot about, but in this case, in the book of Philippians, we know exactly how it got formed. And in fact, as we continue our series through the book of Acts, we come today to act 16 and we are going to find out how the Philippian church was started. Because when you read this letter, when you open your Bible to Philippians, it was written to the church that gathered at Philippi. And when we come to Acts 16, this is when Paul the apostle and his missionary team on what was known as the second missionary journey, when they went first to Philippi. So let me set that stage for you. In Acts 16, after various doors closed for the missionary team, They were called in a vision to go to Macedonia. That was the area. That was the region. But the city that they ended up in first was called Philippi. And this passage begins describing their ministry there. So let me put this map up and give you just a brief summary of where we are. You see the red circle is the city Antioch. That's where this missionary journey started. See the Mediterranean Sea there. And the green shaded area was where they did the first missionary journey. And at the beginning of the second missionary journey, which we covered last week at Harvest, Paul said, let's go back. Let's go back to those, some of those same, let's go back to all of those cities where new believers have been saved and let's see how they're doing. And that was their plan. They started to go back there and they wanted to go into Asia. Now this is not the continent of Asia that we know of today. Sometimes the names in the Bible are the same place. Sometimes they're a different place, but they wanted to go through an open door. What they hoped was an open door, but that door got shut. And then they said, okay, well, let's go north up into Bithynia. And that door got shut. And so they just traveled straight west. They ended up in a city called Troas and at night they had a vision God gave them a vision and across the Mediterranean Sea You can hopefully see up in the left corner The upper left corner of this map is the region of Macedonia there in this vision was a man from Macedonia saying come help us and and they concluded that God had led them to go to Macedonia. Now, all of that was the then and the current continent of Europe. This was how the good news of Jesus Christ got from the Middle East to Europe. This man from Macedonia calls them and they go there. And the very first place they go is this city, Philippi. And that is what is pictured. That leads us right to verse 11 of Acts 16. After seeing this vision from Troas, we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace. And the next day we went on to Neapolis. From there we traveled to Philippi a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia and we stayed there Several days now that is pictured on this slide here. They said a little sailboat They took the boat from Troas over to Macedonia over to Europe And now they're in Macedonia and the city they start is Philippi. Philippi was a Roman colony. And that meant that there were a lot of retired Roman soldiers that lived there. So for instance, when you read in the book of Philippians in chapter four, there's this great passage about not worrying about anything, but praying about everything. And if you do that, Philippians four, six, and seven, it says the peace of God will, you know the next word? guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. That guard was the military term, like what a Roman garrison would do. And these people who lived in Philippi saw, they knew they were soldiers themselves, former soldiers, and there were soldiers there, and they knew what that meant. That's where the missionary team, Paul, is going. When they get to Philippi, I want to tell you God shows his power I mean God shows his power in amazing ways and I that's the way I want to structure this This walk through act 16 today by asking and answering the question. What happens when God shows his power? I What happens when God shows his power? There are four things that happens when God shows his power. And what we're going to do is we're going to see how God showed his power then and there. But I want to tell you that the same God who showed his power in the first century in Macedonia is still showing it today and can still show it today and wants to show it today in you and me and in our church and through our church. What happens when God shows his power? The first thing he does is he saves and changes people from all kinds of backgrounds. God saves and changes people from all kinds of backgrounds. Again, this is on your outline that's on that back table there. If you don't have one, you want to grab one of those or you want to follow along. God saves and changes people. Now, what we're doing as we walk through here, there are three people described about how God's power worked in them. There were obviously more people than that in the Philippian church. More people than that had lives that were turned around, but Luke, the author of Acts, chooses to tell us about three of them. And as we walk through them, I want you to think about how different they are. They don't look alike. They don't come from the same socioeconomic stratus. They don't come from the same region. Their skin color probably doesn't look alike. They are very different from each other. And yet God saves them and God changes them. And Luke chooses to tell us about three of them. The first one was Lydia, a lady named Lydia, who was a wealthy businesswoman. Verse 13, on the Sabbath, we went outside the city gate to the river where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. Now, at that time, the rabbis taught that here was what was necessary to have a synagogue. And if you know how Paul's method was, they would go to the Jewish synagogue first, and then they would turn to the Gentiles. Well, so they wanted to go to the synagogue. The problem is there's no synagogue. Why? The rabbis taught that there needed to be 10 Jewish males present in a city. And when there were 10 Jewish males that were followers of God, they would form a synagogue. But they come to Philippi and obviously there's no synagogue. So what's plan B? When there's not a synagogue, they go down by a body of water, a river, a lake, a pond. And they meet and they call it a place of prayer. And they do that because they use the water with the ceremonial rites. That's what they did in the first century. And this is what's happening in Philippi. Oh, here's a body of water. Here's a place of prayer. And that's where some women had gathered. Now, all right, this is not my view right now. This is first century Jewish male view. I want you to think about something for a minute. If you're Paul, and you've grown up Jewish, you've been taught to pray every day, God, I thank you that I'm not a woman, that I'm not a dog, and that I'm not a Gentile. I mean, that was the cultural air that they breathed. Now you're Paul. You've been saved by God. You've become a follower of Jesus Christ. He's turned you around. You've gone on mission. You're trying to go to these various places. He says, come over here to Europe. Come over here to Macedonia and help us this man. And you're thinking, who is this man in Macedonia? And who do you get? A few ladies gathered at the river. from a human perspective, again, not my view, but in the first century, that could have been a little letdown. Is this why we came all the way over here? You know what? We can never judge the fruitfulness, the effectiveness of what God's doing by what happens at first or by what's happening right now. Cause you don't know what God's going to do. You don't know what amazing things God is going to do when you follow him. And they followed him and they found these ladies and they are described for us. So verse 14, one of those listening. was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. Now Lydia was probably wealthy. That's why we call her a wealthy businesswoman. She deals in purple. She's from Thyatira. That was the center of these elaborate and ornate purple goods. And it was connected with royalty. So the fact that she sold this makes us think she was wealthy. Also, she owned her own home, and it was large enough to host people, we'll find out, and maybe even the church. So here's Lydia, a wealthy businesswoman who becomes the very first Christian in Europe. This is the first European Christian. Her name was Lydia. By the way, that may have been her real, actual name. It may have been her trade name, because Lydia was associated with Thyatira, and it might have been like the Lydia lady, the purple lady. We don't know. All we know is God opened her heart, not because Paul preached a great message. It wasn't like Paul delivered one of his best sermons and she got saved. Well, he preached the word of God and he preached the gospel, but why did she get saved? What's that last line say? The Lord opened her heart. That's why anybody gets saved because God opens their heart and that's what's happening here. You know, later, as Paul is writing the different letters to the different places, he's gonna open up Philippians, the letter to the church at Philippi. Well, actually, let me read this because this sets up what I'm gonna tell you about Philippians. Verse 15, when she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. If you consider me to be a believer in the Lord, she said, come and stay at my house and she persuaded us So they did that. In Philippians, when he writes, look how he starts, I thank my God, every time I remember you and all my prayers for you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. What happened on the first day in Philippi? Well, one thing that happened was Lydia became a Christian. And Lydia opened her home to the missionaries and she partnered with the missionaries. And Paul says to the Philippians, I thank God for your partnership in the gospel. You know, there are a lot of ways we partner with missionaries in the gospel. We pray for them. We give them financial assistance. We show hospitality to them. And that's what's happening here. Lydia is seeing these are servants of God. These are missionaries. I want them to be, they need a place to stay. They can stay in my home. When Paul wrote that from the very first day till now, he had to be thinking about Lydia. He had to be thinking about what she did. Well, so you got the wealthy businesswoman, Lydia. Now, beginning in verse 16, we have another lady, but we don't even know her name. She's a slave girl, verse 16. Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune telling. She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, these men are the servants of the most high God who are telling you the way to be saved. She kept this up for many days. And finally, Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit in the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her. And at that moment, the spirit left her. Now, what she was saying was technically true. These men will tell you how to be saved. Why didn't Paul want the spirit, the fortune teller endorsing him? I think it's fairly obvious, right? The people in that city would have known in that community, that town, that Roman colony, they would have known that her power was coming from somewhere else. And it was all, we don't know if it was like loud and like Paul was trying to give the message and she was saying it over them, or she was saying it sarcastically, or maybe it was intended to be a distraction. And it was also, intended to discredit the true message, right? And this annoys Paul, this disturbed him in his spirit, and so God gave him the power to turn and look at her and cast that demon spirit out of her. Okay, great, right? Well, not for everybody, verse 19. When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, They seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, these men are Jews and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice. That was not true, by the way. The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks." So there you have the second person that experiences the power of God in Philippi, a slave girl. uses Paul to cast this demon out. So we've got Lydia, the wealthy business woman. We've got down on the other end of the socioeconomic stratus, a slave girl. And now we've got the next person we meet is kind of in the middle. It's a Roman citizen. He's kind of a blue collar guy. And that's the jailer. Verse 25. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, all the prison doors flew open and everyone's chains came loose. Now, it would not be unusual in that region of the world then, or even now, to experience earthquakes. Earthquakes were a fairly common occurrence, right? But think about it. The timing, the purpose of this earthquake came at just the right time. It came at midnight. It came when Paul and his associates had been jailed for preaching the gospel. They're in jail and all of a sudden at midnight here comes the earthquake and boom all the doors fly open Well, of course if you're a jailer and your prisoners escape guess who they're coming to get they're not gonna just write you up They're gonna you up Verse 27 The jailer woke up And when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, don't harm yourself. We are all here. The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, sirs, what must I do to be saved? He had heard them singing, right? He had heard about this message. And now he, God has confirmed, hey, there's something to it here. And they replied, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. That is a great summary of the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You believe. not just intellectually accept, but you really, really believe. When you really, really believe something, it means you trust it so much that you're willing to put all of your weight, all of your hope, all of your dependence on that one thing, and you don't doubt it. So let me illustrate it in a very silly way maybe, but if I walk down here, And I want to sit down. What if I say, oh, I'd like to sit in that chair, but I just don't know if the legs are strong enough. I don't know if you ever have any of those chairs at your house, maybe outside the lawn chair or something, or maybe even your kitchen chairs start to get old and you wonder, are they going to hold? Have you ever had that happen? We, we had one, we had somebody sit in a kitchen chair one time and unfortunately the leg broke. And four lawsuits later, we all were happy again. No, not really. Nobody was hurt. If I wanna sit in that, I can sit here all day and say, yeah, I believe in that. Jerry, do you believe in that chair? Yeah, I believe in that chair. Well, are you willing to sit in it? Well, I don't know. But what if I say, I believe in the chair and you know what? I'm gonna sit in it. I'm taking all of my weight off of me And I'm totally depending on that. And that's what Paul said. Don't just believe in Jesus like, oh yeah, he was a good man. We know he was there. We know he was a religious leader, but believe in the Lord Jesus. Be willing to say, you know what? That's where I'm sitting. I'm sitting with Jesus. Does that make sense? What happens? Believe and what will happen? You and you'll be saved. because we're lost without Jesus. We're separated from God because of our sin. And so we need to believe in him and what he did by dying on the cross. And by the way, jailer, it's good not only for you, but it's good for the other people in your house. Not that your faith alone is strong enough for them, but you and your household. In other words, the implication is you'll get saved and you'll tell your household and they will be saved. So in fact, in verse 32, look what they did. They spoke the word of the Lord to him and all the others in his house. At that hour of the night, the jailer took them and washed their wounds. Then immediately he and all his household were baptized. This is after midnight. This is a late baptism. Because you've got to have the jailer, you've got to have this conversation, you've got to go, you've got to wash their wounds, and yet they've got to respond to the Word. Yes, the Word comes first, faith comes afterwards, and then comes baptism as the public expression of your faith in Jesus. And so after that comes some fellowship, verse 34. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them. He was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God. He and his whole household, when it was daylight, the magistrate sent their officers to the jail with the order, release those men. That's kind of funny, isn't it? After God has broken them out of jail because of the earthquake. Yeah. Let's give the official order, release them. The jailer told Paul, the magistrates have ordered that you and Silas be released. Now you can leave, go in peace. Watch what Paul does in the next verse. This is very, very interesting to me. But Paul said to the officers, they beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens, which was definitely illegal. Threw us into prison and now do they want to get rid of us quietly? No, let them come themselves and escort us out Now why now think about it there's a little bit of humor in this situation here they're in jail they get you know, they can go because God freedom but They're like, no, no, we're not gonna leave. Okay, so the magistrates, the officials go, yeah, all right, release them. And Paul's like, no, they did it publicly without a trial. Let them come down here. Now, I don't know if I can do this exactly right, but I don't want you to think that Paul is doing this. Will you just let them come on down here? Did you like that? That was not rehearsed in advance, I can promise you that. It wasn't like a sarcastic thing by Paul. It wasn't like, oh, well, I'm gonna show them. Here's why I think Paul did that. Paul was a missionary. Paul went from city to city and place to place, sharing the gospel. And Paul knew he was going somewhere else next. He knew he was going to be leaving Philippi. And when he left Philippi, there was going to be a fledgling young church preaching the gospel of Jesus. And he, I believe, was trying to protect that church. So that everybody would know the magistrates would say, you know what we did wrong. It's okay for them. It's okay for them to do this. And I think that's what's happening here. Well, indeed, he's paving the way for ongoing ministry after he leaves. And in verse 38, the officers reported this to the magistrates. And when they heard that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, they were alarmed. They came to appease them and escorted them from the prison. requesting them to leave the city. And after Paul and Silas came out of the prison, they went to Lydia's house where they met with the brothers and sisters and encouraged them. And then they left. Now, not long ago, Lydia was all about the purple. She was all about the cloth and making money. And now God has saved her. And now it seems like her home becomes the place the church meets. We know in the first century, the church met in homes. And it seems like Lydia is home to the church in Philippi. Her house is the church's home. She was driven by prophets from purple, but the red blood of Jesus saved her, and now she's driven to serve others. So what happens when God shows his power? He saves and he changes people from all kind of backgrounds. Let's summarize. Lydia went from commerce to serving others. The slave girl was rescued from demon possession. The jailer was just moved from a regular guy to be a family worship leader. And I think Paul was changed too. If you go prior, a few chapters back, he went from avoiding Gentiles and women. to ministering to them. The gospel is powerful. In fact, Paul will write later to another New Testament area of Galatia, in Galatians 3, in Christ Jesus, you're all children of God through faith, for all of you were baptized into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you're all one in Christ Jesus. Praise his name. That's the first thing that happens when God shows His power. Now, there are three more and these will be very brief. I wanted to walk us through the chapter so you get a good understanding. The second thing is He liberates people from destructive things. And this, I think, back to the slave girl. Notice I put the verse back up, verse 18, where Paul said, in the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her. At that moment, the spirit left her. There was demon possession. God liberated her from demons. Let me ask you, can God liberate people today? Absolutely. When his power comes today, he can liberate you from whatever you need to be liberated from. If it's demons, if it's addiction, if it's depression, if it's pornography, if it's alcohol, if it's prejudice, if it's selfishness, God can liberate you today. That's what happens when God shows his power. Number three, he sustains believers in terrible situations. Verse 25, this may be the most unique verse in the whole passage. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God. They weren't in a comfy, cozy cell. They had been severely flogged. They had been beaten. Their bodies were bruised. They might have still been bleeding or Who knows they were in bad, bad shape and they were in jail, but they didn't focus on their mistreatment. They didn't focus on why the authorities were so wrong. Their focus at midnight was on God and they were praising God and they were praying to God and they were singing hymns. They had peace and joy in the midst of being mistreated. John Stott says, not groans, but songs came from their mouths. Instead of cursing men, they blessed God. Maybe that was the greatest miracle in the chapter right there. God sustained them. And then number four, God unifies diverse people in the church. After they get out of jail, what do they do? They go to Lydia's house where they met with the brothers and sisters and encouraged them. We've already met some of these brothers and sisters now. And there were others. And these people were different from each other. It's reasonable to conclude that all of these people could have been there. Lydia was there. She wasn't originally from that region. She was from Asia Minor. Interesting, Paul wanted to go to Asia. And the spirit wouldn't let him do it earlier. She was wealthy. She was a Godfear. The slave girl was a native Greek and she was poor. The jailer was a blue collar man and he was a Roman. They were different from each other, but God put them together in the church. They had one thing in common though. They were all lost without Jesus and then they were found by Jesus. So let me ask you, what should we do today? What should we do today based on this passage? We see God's power in amazing ways. And I think what we should do is build off of each one of these principles for application. First of all, seek God in prayer for his power on our church. We need God's power on this church. We can't, we can't get people saved. We can't see people's lives get changed like this because of we plan well or we study well or we organize well. We need God's power. We need God's power. Pray for that. Number two, embrace and evangelize all kinds of people. Let's don't look at anybody and think, oh, well, we don't want, we don't want to work with them. We want to work with everybody. We want to reach everybody. No matter what they look like, no matter where they come from, no matter what their background is, let's embrace and evangelize all kinds of people. Third, let's focus on God and His mission above your mistreatment. That's what Paul and Silas were doing in jail. They could have focused on their own mistreatment. They could have said, you know what? We were trying to do right and look where it got us. No, they were focusing on God. So often we focus on the little small inconveniences, things that are inconvenient for us or ways we've been mistreated or we've been misunderstood or something like that. Paul and Silas were like Jesus and his gospel focus on God rather than your mistreatment. And then number four, praise God for the gospel in the church. Praise God, the church is made up of people that God was bringing together in Philippi. And you know what? The title of this sermon is when change leads to change. God changed Paul's plans and sent him to Europe and it resulted in change. And of course the gospel now through Europe has come to North America and Africa and most of the world. Most of the history of missions until recently, Europe was a sending nation of missionaries. Not only in Philippi, but I praise God for the diversity and the unity we have here. People from Tanzania and Charlotte. Jennifer and Naomi there working with our kids, teaching our children Even picture the class with those kids, just seeing the different kids from different backgrounds. We have people from South Africa here and several families and South Carolina, and they all have their accents. The South Carolina accent and the South African accent. We have people from Haiti and New York. We have people from Jamaica and Jersey. We have people who've been missionaries overseas for years, like one family that we're gonna introduce next week as new members of Harvest and those who've just become serious about their faith in Christ recently. We have infants and toddlers and preschool and middle schoolers and elementary and high schoolers and young adults and middle-aged people and senior adults. What a beautiful mosaic the church is. We're not a perfect church, we're a broken church, we're in process, we're learning, we're growing, we're developing, but this is God's church. Praise God for the church. So here's God's word for us this morning. When God builds his church, he demonstrates his power to save, Change and sustain people. That's what he did, then he saved, he changed and he sustained and he can do it today. Thanks again for joining us today from Harvest Community Church. This podcast is also available on our website HarvestCharlotte.com. 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