This is from a daily e-mail that I get from https://www.mpumc.org/sermons-and-wr...E00CA8F29#faq1.

This is so well put...



eYearThroughTheBible105 – Conversions in Philippi – Acts 16

They went down to Troas. A vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was beseeching him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” Immediately we sought to go there, concluding God had called us to preach to them. We made a direct voyage to Neapolis, and then went to Philippi, a Roman colony. On the Sabbath we went to the riverside, and we spoke to women who had gathered. One who heard was named Lydia, from Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to give heed to Paul’s words. She was baptized, with her household.

Then they were met by a slave girl, who brought her owners much gain by soothsaying. She followed Paul crying out for many days, but Paul was annoyed, and cast a spirit out of her. When her owners saw their hope for profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and brought them before the magistrates, saying, “These men are disturbing our city!” The crowd joined in, and after having many blows inflicted, they were thrown into prison.

But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying, singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, the foundations were shaken, and the doors opened. The jailer woke, and drew his sword to kill himself, but Paul cried, “Do not harm yourself, for we are here.” The jailer, trembling, asked, “What must I do to be saved?” They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.” He took them the same hour of the night, washed their wounds, and was baptized with all his family.

Paul traveled over 10,000 miles! and in Acts 16 we read of his first foray into Europe, to the “little Italy” colony of Philippi, where with great drama he founds a church with whom he continued to correspond and share warm friendship until the end of his life.

In this stirring drama, three very different people are converted, and all become one in the newborn Church of Philippi. Lydia, who was wealthy and also very religious, heard the story of Jesus, and stopped just being “religious” and became a Christian, even opening her home (which must have been a large one) to become the church building!

Then a slave girl: we know that young women under the influence of hallucinogenics claimed to utter riddles from the god Apollo – all for hire, of course. This particular slave girl is healed by Paul – and Acts 16 demonstrates how not everybody gets excited when somebody is healed… and at the same time how Christianity, when it arrived in town, upset even the economic foundations of people’s lives! Civil disobedience has stellar precedent in the Bible.

And then the jailer: who is free? and who isn’t? Paul and Silas, behind bars, were truly free, exhibiting their freedom by singing joyfully at midnight in a dark, dank, cold stone hole in the ground. The jailer outside with the keys? Not free – or not yet. He believed, and probably lost his job because of it (once he took the prisoners to his home to help them!). With sheer delight we can imagine the first worship gatherings in Philippi: wealthy Lydia sitting next to a slave girl (with whom she would never have deigned to speak the week before), sitting next to the unemployed jailer, crossing all social boundaries, defying custom and authority, living out the radical Christian life – and posing countless questions to us about our comfortable existence, and whom we go to church with…