Pastor Jeremy M. Thomas
Fredericksburg Bible Church
107 East Austin
Fredericksburg, Texas 78624
830-997-8834      jthomas@fbgbible.org
A0913 – March 29, 2009 – Acts 16:11-24 – The Economic Impact Of The Gospel

Last week we saw God the Holy Spirit build a staff for Paul to invade Europe with the gospel. This was the great fulfillment of a text given in the days of Noah. Noah had three sons; Shem, Ham and Japheth, and in Gen 9:27 it is said that Japheth will dwell in the tents of Shem, which means he will find relief in the spiritual contribution Shem brings to the human race. And therefore, when Paul saw in a vision a Japhetic man of Macedonia crying out, “Come over here and help us!” it is a cry for Shem’s staff under Paul to go and spread their spiritual tent over Japheth. And the west has never been the same since. The irony of it all is that the gospel invades Japheth at the very place Japheth rose to world power under Alexander the Great, the city of Philippi on the shores of Macedonia. And so today we see the gospel’s first inroads into Europe at the city of Philippi. 

With that said, regardless of what secular history books say, Christianity is not a western religion, just a religion of the western white man. It is an oriental religion that came into the west; it came into the west by divine guidance as we saw last week. And regardless of what people might think one of the most important events in European history was the introduction of Christianity across the Aegean Sea. The repercussions we’ll be tracing as we move into Europe.

Today, when Paul enters Europe he’s going to meet initial success, but then he’s going to be met by opposition. And therefore, since Satan is obviously threatened by this move onto what he perceives to be his ground, he responds with persecution. So let’s read of the success that tripped the persecution starting in vv 11-15, reading from the NASB. 

11So putting out to sea from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace, and on the day following to Neapolis; 12and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia, a Roman colony; and we were staying in this city for some days. 13And on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to a riverside, where we were supposing that there would be a place of prayer; and we sat down and began speaking to the women who had assembled. 14A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. 15And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay.” And she prevailed upon us.

Now, in verse 11 we enter Paul’s journey across the Aegean, So putting out to sea from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace, a little island out in the Aegean was a stepping stone, that’s day one, and on the day following to Neapolis, the port city of Philippi. It was a two day journey by ship and apparently they enjoyed smooth sailing because the reverse journey in chapter 20 took five days (Acts 20:6). They enjoyed favorable conditions. Verse 12, and from there to Philippi, they traveled along the famous Via Egnatia. The Via Egnatia, some of you have walked, was a Roman military road along which major Roman colonies and garrisons were established. It was the major trade route that extended 535 miles from the Adriatic Sea over in the west to the Bosphorus Straits in the east.  Those of you who went to Turkey last summer sailed the Bosphorus and that was the eastern termini of the Via Egnatia. Paul and staff followed this road for ten miles from Neapolis to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia, a Roman colony. So once again Paul is attending to the main population centers, he’s not interested in the little villages, he’s strategic and so he skipped right by Neapolis, didn’t even stay the night, just went right on to Philippi, and they were staying in this city for some days. So we come to Philippi. Philippi was named after the father of Alexander the Great, Philip II. It was also the famous battleground where Mark Antony defeated Caesar’s assassins Cassius and Brutus in 42BC. And of course, the biblical interest is that Paul establishes the church of Philippi here and later writes the letter of Philippians to them. So Acts is doing us a big favor in terms of giving us the background for the NT epistles. 

When they arrived, Paul was looking for a synagogue in accordance with the principle, to the Jew first, the Jews being scattered throughout the Roman world were his contacts with the locals.  He shared basic categories of thought with them, so he always started at the synagogue. But he didn’t find one in Philippi.  Europe is a different kind of place, so they’re milling around and in v 13 on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to a riverside, where we were supposing that there would be a place of prayer. Now why would they be supposing there would be a place of prayer at a riverside? Well, Jewish law and custom said you had to have 10 Jewish men in a city to have a synagogue. You could have 500 women but if you didn’t have 10 men, no synagogue. And if you didn’t have a synagogue then you were to meet at a nearby riverside. And so, they wait around till Sabbath and go out to this river, called Gangites, where they find some women who had assembled. No men whatsoever; very strange things happening in Europe already, no synagogue, no Jewish men.  

And the prominent woman of the group in v 14 is Lydia.  She was from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, and she was listening to Paul; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. Now, Lydia, notice first of all she’s not from Philippi, she’s from Thyatira, which is over in Asia, where Paul was blocked from going last week. Paul said “I want to take HWY 5 into Asia, the Spirit said, “No Paul, I want you to go north.” But Paul now has a contact in Asia. And the contact is a business-woman named Lydia. And her business is purple fabrics, which means she’s got a wealthy clientele for purple fabric.  Don’t take that note lightly because the royal color of Philippi was purple and the city she was from, Thyatira, was famous for its purple dyes, so the fact she’s over at Philippi selling purple fabric is like selling Mercedes Benz.  This was high dollar stuff; she was a member of high society.  A third thing we notice is she was a worshiper of God, which means at the very least she was a monotheist, she may have been a Jewess or a Gentile God-fearer, we don’t know, but what we do know is there a Jewish colony over in Thyatira and she may have been a part of that before she moved to Philippi. But she was a monotheist and as such, her thinking was molded by the basic categories of Genesis.  She believed in the Creator-creature distinction, she believed in the Fall of man, that man was responsible for evil and suffering, she knew of the global flood of Noah and the doctrines of judgment/salvation and so forth. And when Paul spoke the word of God about Jesus Christ being the Messiah the Lord opened her heart to respond, the sovereign working of God on the heart, this woman responded by believing. And therefore, the first convert in Europe is not a man but a woman named Lydia and a single woman at that for all we can tell. Verse 15, And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay.” And so they walk down to the river and get baptized.   They didn’t have any hang-ups as to what this was all about like the modern church.  So they go down, get baptized, come out of the water and then another strange thing happens:  Paul and his staff get an invitation, “Hey Paul, you guys want to come over for hors d’oeuvres?” Nice lady this Lydia. And she prevailed upon us. Which shows Paul was not comfortable with this. It took a little doing to get Paul and his staff to come over. Why? Because Paul was not accustomed to dealing with women. Paul was accustomed to dealing with men. So over in Europe they’re facing a whole series of strange things yet nevertheless they’ve seen some success. 

And now comes the opposition in v 16, so let’s read, 16It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave-girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling. 17Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, “These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.” 18She continued doing this for many days. But Paul was greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And it came out at that very moment. 19But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market place before the authorities.   Here we have the economic effects of the gospel penetrating Europe. We want to pick up with v 16 to see the penetration. It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, so each day they’d march through town and out the gate down to the riverside, still in Philippi, a slave-girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling. Now the girl is said to have a spirit of divination, which means she’s demon indwelt. In the Greek that phrase literally says she had a “pythian spirit” or we would say, “a spirit of python.” Python, we know is a snake. The snake or serpent is the first animal named in the Bible, and it’s referred to in a negative light. When you come to paganism the snake is always referred to in a positive light. For example, in Egypt the snake is always on Pharaoh’s headdress, it’s still around today in the medical field and for the same reason, the ancient pagan idea is that the snake is the source of wisdom. In the ancient world men watched how the snake moved, having no arms and no legs, yet they still move.  This was an enigma and so they associated the snake with hidden wisdom. Yet there’s another link between the snake and wisdom that comes from Scripture. Can anyone remember what it is? What did the snake tell the woman in Gen 3? If you eat you will become wise like God, knowing both good and evil?” And so the snake in a distortion of Genesis came to be associated with wisdom. And so, the spirit of Python this girl had was associated with wisdom. And in Greece it was associated with the wisdom of the god Apollo. Apollo was the patron god of the Greek city of Delphi and the python was a spirit sent out by Apollo and when the spirit of Python would enter a person as it did this girl they became a Delphic oracle. This is the pagan Greek thought at least.  Of course, we know it’s a demon, but this is how the pagans categorized the kind of activity this girl was involved in, the spirit of Python. Plutarch calls these people “ventriloquists,” people who could not only imitate other people but could throw their voice and make it sound as if it were coming from a different location. Apparently this is the ability this woman had and from further studies the kind of ventriloquism she was involved in was the art of necromancy, calling up people from the dead. She could imitate people’s voices, voices she’d never heard and cast her voice down at the ground so as to convince people she was calling them up from the grave. Of course this is not a natural ability, this is a demonic ability. No one can call up the dead, not even demons. And people get convinced by this kind of thing today. They call it channeling and they have whole TV shows about it where you watch this kind of thing go on. And people see things happen, strange things, the voice of my dead cousin Willy will come through this person and they told me things only me and my dead cousin Willy knew, I thought.  That is said to be evidence that the dead can be called up. 

The biblical interpretation of this is that a very real thing has happened, but it’s not Willy. We’re surrounded by demonic spirits, and spirits don’t die so they observe all of human history.  They listen in on your conversations, they know voices and they can mimic these things through people to fake you out; it’s a pseudo-operation. The reason we know this is a pseudo-operation is that we have a very interesting case in the OT where the real operation took place in history. This is when Saul went to the witch of Endor.  Apparently she had one of these ventriloquist demons and engaged in necromancy, and Saul said call up Samuel and she went into her pseudo-stuff but Samuel really did come up and she freaked out, which shows you the difference between the real contact with the dead and this pseudo-operation that goes on. In the pseudo-operation there’s a real demonic involvement where the demon in the person throws his voice so it appears to come from the ground. And you have quote, “empirical evidence,” that contact with the dead has been established. Which is absolute rebellion against the word of God and the Bible condemns it. Saul was condemned for it. This is not a thing to be playing with. The sovereign God plans the future, not soothsayers, practitioners of divination, tarot card readers, psychics and so forth. We’ve got them right here in town.  In fact I can walk 75 yards from my house and sit right down on the couch of a deeply demonic person right here in Fredericksburg, TX who broadcast they read tarot cards and palms.  Oh yes, right here in this nice conservative town people are demon-possessed.

And that’s what we have with this girl, a demon-possessed girl, but there’s more-she’s a slave. What’s involved here would be equivalent to a girl today in the white slave market. Girls who are put out on the streets and get into hard drugs and eventually end up going into prostitution rings controlled by the crime syndicate. That’s the strata of society that’s involved in this story, shady criminal types. And her crime syndicate was making much profit. What that means in these crime rings is the same thing it means today in the drug market. Whoever is investing the money to get hard drugs on the street is probably making 1000% or even more on their investment.  It’s a phenomenal markup by the time the drugs actually hit the street. This is why you can’t shut down the Mexican Cartel. These people have so much money they have a standing army almost as large as that of the national government of Mexico. It’s very lucrative business, especially for the guys at the top, far better than any legitimate business, far better than the stock market. Organized crime is very lucrative. The same thing is true for prostitution, obviously it’s not the girl who makes all the money, she gets a cut, a small cut, but basically it’s her pimp that gets all the money.  She charges $500-$600 maybe a $1000 and the pimp gets 90%. And so maybe that gives you an idea of the much profit these men were making from this one girl. Her goods and services were a going commodity. 

Now, the primary point of this story isn’t necromancy, that’s secondary. The primary point of this story is the economics involved. Here’s where the gospel is going to reach into the pockets of certain businessmen, and we all know you can do just about anything you want until you reach into a man’s pocket. When you do that you’re going to get a collision. And here we’re talking about the collision of the economics of unbelief and the gospel.  

So in verse 17, this girl is following after Paul and…she’s doing her thing, she kept crying out, saying, “These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.” 18She continued doing this for many days. But Paul was greatly annoyed, Now, at first glance you may say, “Well what’s wrong with this? She’s proclaiming the good news. Paul has another member added to his staff. Why does Paul get so upset?” Precisely because this is not the gospel at all. What this is is syncretism. Syncretism is when you blend two or more systems of thought. This was common in Rome; they would take Greek gods and goddesses, adopt them into Roman religion and merge them with other gods and goddesses. And these two phrases she’s screaming out here, (by the way, she’s putting on a show, she’s drawing all kinds of attention) is the wrong kind of attention. For one, this girl is in a trance.  It’d be like someone today stoned on drugs running up and down Main Street, some kind of a moron, what’s wrong with them. So it’s publicity but it’s bad publicity. The second thing is this phrase the Most High God, now isn’t that a wonderful proclamation? No, it’s not a wonderful thing. That phrase was a general religious term used by all the cults, particularly the mystery cults.  There were hundreds of these cults, so it could mean all sorts of things depending on who heard it; it’s a confusing term. The third thing she does is speak of the way of salvation. So now we’re talking, at least she’s got that right. No again, because the translators totally botched this one, there’s no definite article there, it’s not the way of salvation, it’s “a way of salvation,” one among many. And by that simple change she’s changed the exclusivistic tone of Paul’s message, she’s toned it down to the point that what Paul and Silas proclaim is nothing more than another mystery cult, and what this does, every time Paul goes to work he’s trying to separate himself from the mystery cults.  The only way to do that is to present a separate message, an exclusivistic message, but she keeps taking the cutting edge off the gospel. Paul can’t get through. Therefore Paul is made impotent by this gal, everybody interprets him as another panderer of the mystery cults. And in v 18, this goes on, imperfect tense; it goes on for many days, which shows you Paul had quite a long fuse. But Paul was greatly annoyed, and turned, that’s a sharp action, aorist tense, he’d had it, and so he does an about face and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And it came out at that very moment. And so, what we have here is the power of God clearly superior to the power of Satan. Never think Satan is God’s equal and opposite. Good and evil are not co-equal. Good is always greater than evil and will win out. This passage is a foretaste of the final victory of God over Satan. We have a girl come out of the low strata of Philippian society, and before the story is over a third person will be involved: the Philippian jailor and he’s a member of the legal structure of Rome. 

So now observe, the first three converts in Europe to the Christian faith were a woman from high society, possibly a Gentile but most likely a Jew, a low class girl freed from the white slave ring, and then a middle class Joe, the Philippian jailer, who Chrysostom says was named Stephanus. These three represent the reach of the gospel as it will one day have throughout the west, it will reach all people of all strata of society. The gospel is for all men and all women.

And now the rub comes in verse 19, But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market place before the authorities. And this is the key point, the key is not that she’s into necromancy, divination and ventriloquism via a demon, though that’s interesting, the key point Paul wants to get across is the economic impact of the word of God. The only two places where Gentiles turn on Paul are when the gospel threatens their pocketbook. The other place is chapter 19 with the silversmiths of Ephesus. The way Paul directs people away from wasting their money on these useless items, however, is not the way Christians usually do it. The usual thing is the Christians go on some crusade, don’t buy from Wal-Mart because they support homosexuality. The way Paul did it was much more effective. Here’s what Paul did and this is the key: he shifted people’s desires and by that he shifted the demand for the product and it had major economic impact. 

And with this we want to introduce three economic terms: product, value and price. Most people can tell the difference between the product and the price, its value and price they have difficulty distinguishing. So we want to start with the product. The product is the thing produced, the actual item. Somewhere or other someone has to produce the item. How you acquire it is different. Maybe you make it yourself, maybe someone gives it to you, maybe you steal it, but somewhere along the line someone has to make the product. 

The second word is value. One of the questions that has been asked over and over through history is how does a product get it’s value. Karl Marx said the value was determined by the amount of labor that went into making the product. So, let’s say you have product A over here and product A took 100 hours to make.  For each hour the powers that be assign a certain dollar value. Therefore, do the math.  Product A took 100 hours to produce at x dollars per hour, therefore the price is y. This is the communistic way of determining value. And so in communism it’s the labor which determines value. And that’s wrong, and I don’t care who says that, it’s wrong. But you say, “I put a lot of labor into that, its worth a lot.” Yes, to you. But the question is, “What is its value to someone else?” And the value it has to someone else is not a result of your labor. The value of a product is how much a person will pay for it. It’s their idea of the value. 

Let’s use another example. Let’s say you make a piece of gold jewelry, and you spent 25 hours making the gold jewelry and I’m out on a desert island and I am starving to death and you’re flying over and all you have is your gold jewelry.  So being the kind soul that you are you want to help me but all you have is this necklace so you drop the necklace. Now, what am I going to do with your necklace? I can’t eat your necklace so it has no value to me whatsoever. And that illustrates precisely why value is not determined by how much labor went into something. Value is assigned by the individual person. 

The third thing is price and that’s the amount of currency it takes to buy the product. The problem in this area is inflating the currency. So, if I bought my home in 1950 for $15,000 and I sell it in 2000 for $100,000 did I gain anything? Maybe, maybe not.  But in our system the main thing that happened was the currency inflated. And this is always the problem once you get off the gold standard, once you do that inflation can get out of control very fast. So the Federal Reserve, which has nothing to do with the Federal Government by the way, it’s no more federal than the Federal Post Office, what the Federal Reserve is is a private bank owned by private bankers with deep pockets.  They print our currency and they print more currency and all that does is drive the purchasing power of the currency down so it looks like you’ve made money but actually you haven’t. 

Now, in Acts 16, the girl had a product in the form of services. She sells services to people, the service of necromancy and telling the future. When Paul comes in he zaps this thing with the word of God that destroys the product and the product goes to zero. Paul has destroyed wealth in this situation, wealth as measured by the value system of the criminal syndicate. And this is a direct impact into the financial world, a destruction of value because the product was destroyed. Paul is guilty here of destroying wealth, but the wealth in God’s sight is illegitimate. So here is an economic impact that the gospel has made.

You have this again in Ephesus in chapter 19. There it was the silver trinkets of Artemis, the fertility goddess, and everyone that walked down Harbor Street just had to have one of these silver trinkets.  It’s good for fertility and we want our crops to grow, so they’d buy these trinkets and go out in the field and copulate, that’s’ how we get a good crop. Then Paul came in and what did Paul do? He said that’s a load of bull and here’s why. So on Monday 1,000 people said “oh yes, the trinkets are worth $25, very valuable.” On Tuesday after Paul explained to them they said, “$25, are you crazy,” so what you have is a decrease in demand because in people’s minds the trinket had changed value, and that’s what people were getting upset with Paul for. 

Now, do you see how the gospel makes an economic impact? It does so by changing and shifting the market value. Said another way, if the American public suddenly tomorrow had Biblical values downloaded in their brain it would cause a terrific, catastrophic alteration in our economy. Suddenly there would be all kinds of things people would have no use for. If you’re industry was one of those it would be wiped out. And for a while people would be thrown out of work and that’s what you’ve got a problem with here. You’ve got men thrown out of work; in this case they’re not only thrown out of work and their industry has been destroyed but you’ve got the syndicate involved.

So what do they do in verse 19? they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market place before the authorities.  See, now you’ve got the criminal element upset so they drag then before the government. It’s very interesting how the criminal element works; they avoid the government at all costs, until the government can work in their favor and then they turn to the government as their savior. Verse 20, and when they had brought them to the chief magistrates, the duumvirs.  They preferred the noble Latin title praetors, so these are the praetors. Now watch the charges because this is standard fare for an attack against Christianity. What did we say early on in the Book of Acts? One of the tactics of Satan is to confuse the issues, never clarify the issue, never get it all out on the table and sort it out so you can clearly see the difference between two things and make a rational decision, rather jumble the whole thing up so no one knows what’s going on. they said, “These men are throwing our city into confusion, being Jews, 21and are proclaiming customs which it is not lawful for us to accept or to observe, being Romans.” So the first thing they charge them with is throwing our city into confusion, now, had they done that? Is there any indication they had made a big ruckus in Philippi? Not at all, what they did was get rid of an illegitimate product on the street, they’d cleaned up the town. But then he adds something else which is the real kicker. being Jews and notice how that contrasts with the end of v 21, being Romans. What’s he doing? “they being Jews…us being Romans.” Now who’s causing confusion? Is the issue racial? No, the issue is money. But what they have very cleverly done is play the race card. The timing for this was perfect because Emperor Claudius had just expelled all Jews from Rome (Acts 18:2) and so there was a wave of anti-Semitism going through the Empire, and they play off that and get everyone polarized on two sides, the Jews vs. the Romans. What they don’t know is that these men are both Jews and Romans, but it’s going to come back and bite them later. Now once you’ve played the race card it doesn’t matter what else is said. You can say anything you want but there will be no rational discussion after that because everyone goes into an emotional frenzy. So, the first thing they do is exactly what they charged Paul and Silas with doing. They throw the city into confusion by playing the race card. The second card they play is the religion card; these Jews are proclaiming illegal customs. What they mean is that the Roman government had authorized certain religions and you could practice these religions freely. The problem there of course is, “Do you really have religious freedom if the government decides what religions you can practice?” Obviously not, because tomorrow the government can come along and outlaw your religion. So it’s all just a farce but these men play on the farce. And in verse 22 another element comes into play as a result. If you bring up race and religion then you will get the mob mentality. And so, verse 22, The crowd rose up together against them, and the chief magistrates tore their robes off them. So there is no rational discussion, its pure mob rule, the praetors strip Paul and Silas down, a very embarrassing procedure (which Paul recounts in 1 Thess 2:2) and they proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods. Now the men who carried out the beating were called the lictors, they’re mentioned down in verse 35 as the “policemen,” they worked for the praetor’s and they would do the beating. The tool they would use to beat with here is called rods. They were called fascis. As you can see here, fascis was a bundle of rods and axes, used as an emblem on much coinage. For example, we have it on the mercury dime. 

The symbol has two parts, the bundle of rods and an axe head. The lictors carried this symbol which in the Latin fasces et secures stood for two rights of the lictors. They had the right to inflict corporal punishment with the rods and capital punishment with the axe. Obviously in this case they didn’t use the axe; they used the bundle of rods, and they took out some of the rods, stripped Paul and Silas down and beat them on their back till it was ground meat. The Jews did this 40-1, the Romans weren’t so nice about it, and it was a bloody, terrible beating. By the way, this symbol fasces, was adopted by Benito Mussolini, the founder of fascism and with that you might be surprised to know that it’s also on the Seal of the United States Senate. 

Verse 23, When they had struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely; 24 and he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. The securest location in the Roman prison was the inner prison.  On the outside you had a vestibule, then you had the outer prison and inside that you had the inner prison. This wasn’t some kind of a nice cell where you have a bird’s eye view of the Aegean Sea or something, this was a dungeon deep underground that is completely dark and the only light and air you ever get is when the door cracks. So they’re thrown down in this dungeon and they fastened their feet in the stocks, the stocks.  You’ve seen stocks; this was a two-holed stock for the legs and they took one leg and put it over here and the other leg over here, they stretched you out and fastened you in. What this meant was you’re sprawled out there so eventually you have to sit in your excrement. And so, this is the kind of welcoming they get in Europe, great start, everybody loved Paul and Silas.

So we’ve seen success and we’ve seen opposition, the gospel is making inroads. The situation Paul and Silas end up in is not a nice situation yet we’ll see next week how they dealt with a suffering situation. Over the next 200 years of Roman history the stocks became a common place for Christians. Tertullian said of Christians in the stocks: Nihil crus sentit in vervo, quum animus in caelo est, “Nothing the limb feels in the stocks when the mind is in heaven.” So it became the battle cry of the Christians in the stocks, that when they put your feet in the stocks, become occupied with the person of Christ and you won’t feel the pain.