Hello friends, I'm Wayne Shepherd. Before he went to be with the Lord, Dr. John Whitcomb spent several years studying and teaching the book of Acts, and we enjoy the fruit of that labor now on Encounter God's Truth. Today's program takes us to Acts 16 and the ministry of Paul and Silas to Europe. Our message draws many lessons from ministry from the travels of the Apostle Paul and a special new disciple named Timothy and their experience with the churches of the first century. Luke, the beloved physician, also joins Paul's team in the section we're studying, providing much help and relief to Paul. Dr. Whitcomb originally delivered these messages at Middletown Bible Church's Independent Fundamental Bible Conference in Middletown, Connecticut. And we are indeed grateful for their permission and help in bringing them to you here on the radio. If you've been following with us, you know that we're in volume six of this ongoing series, Acts, Witness of the Early Church. You can listen to all the past broadcasts in the book of Acts at sermonaudio.com slash Whitcomb. Our focus here at Encounter God's Truth is on presenting timeless truths for changing times. Join us now, if you can, in Acts chapter 16 and follow as Dr. Whitcomb teaches about Paul and Silas to Europe. Paul and Silas launch forth. and start where? Notice they're not going the route they followed on the first trip, namely starting down here in Cyprus and going up this way. They start in Paul's home country, which is Cilicia, right here, and work their way from Syria and Cilicia back through the cities they had been in that Silas, of course, had never personally visited. But what a joy it was to the Christians in those cities to hear from Silas, an official representative of the Jerusalem church and a prophet of God as well. I mean, supernaturally endorsed messages from him. And so they went to these churches and as they went, chapter 16, verse one, they came to Derbe and Lystra and behold, a certain disciple was there named Timotheus, Timothy. the son of a certain woman who was a Jewess, and believed, a believing Jewish mother. And what was her name? Eunice. And Eunice's mother's name was Lois. We read that, of course, in the epistles that Paul wrote to Timothy about this wonderful connection he had with that godly woman. And so Timothy, in God's marvelous providence, was the fruit of a horrible persecution that Paul endured, namely being stoned to death in Lystra. And Philippians chapter two, he says, I have no man like-minded. I mean, he's the most faithful, diligent, dependable servant God has ever given me, disciple. Okay, helper in a ministry. Praise the Lord for that. Now, he was well reported of, in spite of the fact I should mention that his father was a Greek. Now that may mean his father was an unbeliever, which was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium. So we're not sure exactly whether he was from Lystra, or Derby or Iconium, but I suggest since Lystra is mentioned in both of those verses, one and two, that he's probably from Lystra, where Paul was stoned, okay? Him would Paul have to go forth with him, and took and circumcised him because of the Jews which were in those quarters, for they all knew his father was a Greek. Now friends, this is somewhat difficult to some people. If Paul is going around preaching as he did in Galatians, the book of Galatians, you remember, that if you depend upon this outward sign, you have to then go ahead and keep the whole law, and you're under a burden you can't bear, and you've abandoned the gospel. You've abandoned Jesus Christ. Well, then why did he do this to Timothy? See? You say, well, he's a compromiser. May I suggest an alternative? He is a biblical opportunist. In other words, I am doing this in order to accomplish what? A more effective outreach to Jewish people who would be offended if this man, Timothy, were not a part of us and yet pretends to be. But on the other hand, Titus, who was 100% Gentile, Paul said, I refuse to have him circumcised because that is not at all part of God's plan. For whom? For Gentiles. Now it gets kind of complicated, doesn't it, friends, at this point? And I say, well, One thing is obvious, isn't this interesting, that some people think that water baptism, believers' baptism today, is a replacement of Old Testament Jewish circumcision. No, because Timothy had already been baptized, so why have him circumcised? This is absolutely absurd. It has nothing to do with baptism at all, you see. It is not a parallel ordinance between Israel and the church. So with that matter settled, and now Timothy acceptable and very useful, therefore, in Paul's work among whom? Jews in their synagogues, you see, with Silas, who was also 100% Jew. As they went through the cities, verse four, and delivered them the decrees to keep, they were ordained by the apostles and elders which were Jerusalem, and so were the churches established in the faith and increased in numbers daily. Oh, praise the Lord for that positive report of God's work, yes. So Paul now, you see, friends, on his second missionary journey has a new leadership structure. I mean, he's the leader, okay? And then comes Silas and then Timothy, okay? And the new worker, praise God, namely Timothy, and as we'll see, a new vision that God gave him one night of where to go, and as a result, the finest church God ever helped him, enabled him to establish. At where? Philippi, okay? Now, strange, strange statement here. Look at this. when, in verse six, when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia. Now, here we are, friends, here they come. They're coming up this way, and they obviously wanted to head to Ephesus, a great, great city, with hundreds of thousands of people, a major center. Now, that was Paul's strategy, it wasn't in emissions. Don't spend time in small towns. Spend time in big cities where you can train people to go to the small towns. I mean, an excellent, brilliant mission strategy. Let's head, obviously, to Ephesus. You remember the seven cities of Asia. And what did the Holy Spirit say to them? No. Why? We'll never know. It wasn't time. Well, so when they came to Mysia, this region just north of Ephesus, they decided to go up in this direction, up into Bithynia and that area toward Pontus. And what did the Holy Spirit say? No. Now, isn't that strange? Doors slamming shut. Negative guidance. He didn't say where to go. He just said, don't go here. Well, somehow they are pressured into moving straight northwest, up to here. And when they got to Troas, right here, a major port city, an amazing thing happened one night. Verse nine, a vision appeared to Paul in the night. And there stood a man of Macedonia and prayed to him saying, come over into Macedonia and help us. Now, who did the man turn out to be? Lydia, the seller of purple from Thyatira, from Asia. Amazing, thank you, Lord. I mean, it's almost like the Lord has a sense of humor here in how this operates, okay? And now who else joins this team? Look at this, are you ready for this little hint? In verse 10, 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 to them. Who does we now include? Luke himself. Now Luke is very careful in his book. Whenever he's part of the team, he says, we did this and we did that. Whenever he's not part of the team, he doesn't allow that plural personal pronoun to be used, first person pronoun. So now Luke, the beloved physician, joins them. And many people believe that he came from Philippi himself up here in Macedonia. In fact, the city of Philippi was famous for, are you ready for this, a school of medicine. And he was a medical doctor. And I would love to find someday, wouldn't you, what textbooks he studied, what procedures he learned to apply to people in various types of problems. Wouldn't that be amazing? And he must have been a very skilled and dependable and balanced and wise physician because he followed Paul and God's providence everywhere he went. And Paul needed all the help he could get because of the awful things he experienced. And God just had this man with him many, many times on his trips. So Luke just somehow appears at Troas and God says, join this team. How that happened, we don't know. Perhaps God will show us some of these things someday. Come over into Macedonia and help us. So friends, here we go. Are you ready? The great long westward march of the gospel, starting in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and coming up to Antioch and going across this region here to here. And now we're going into Europe. And ultimately, after many twists and turns, the gospel is going to go from Europe all the way across, of course, to the new world in which we live. And from here, the gospel has gone back across to Asia. and back to Africa, okay, and down to Latin America, of course, the Western world, and back to Asia. And I've been told, I'd like to know more about this, that there are thousands of Christians in China who have an urgent desire to go where? Back to Jerusalem through Asia to complete the circle. Think of it. Now that doesn't mean that no Christians ever went to China in the early centuries, but Most of them had an inadequate message. They were Nestorians and had a very poor mission policy and refused to allow the scriptures to be translated into Chinese. And when persecution came, all the churches of the Nestorians were disappeared, wiped out. There's a museum in their honor in Hong Kong. We have physical relics of some of their churches, inscriptions in Greek. not Chinese, and the whole thing wiped out until missionaries came from Europe to Asia, as you know, John Morrison and many others, and from America. And so gradually now, it's just as if the circle now is almost completed, almost completed around the world, okay? So thank you, Lord, for giving us a little glimpse into how it started. Here we go. So, verse 11, therefore loosing from Troas, we came with a straight course to Samothrace, that's an island, and then the next day to Neapolis, that's a coastal city, which Neapolis means new city, new town on the coast, and from thence to Philippi, which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia and a colony. It had a special connection with Rome and considered themselves to be very privileged city under direct Roman jurisdiction at Philippi, named after whom? Philip of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great 300 years earlier. It's a very important city in those days. Now, we were there in the 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 spoke unto the women which resorted thither. Now Jewish tradition, rabbinic law, we can even say it that way, required how many men for a synagogue to be started? 10. 10 men who were family heads would be minimal for starting an official synagogue worship service. So apparently there were very few Jews in Philippi, very few. And even fewer, I mean, hardly any believing Jewish men at all in the whole city. Just a handful of women who believed in the Lord and gathered there for prayer. And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of Syretira, the city of Syretira. Now that's a city, you remember, in Asia here, where they took certain types of seashells and from them were able to get a dye which was purple and valuable and expensive and very popular and in much demand. I mean, she was apparently a very wealthy widow woman. I suspect she was a widow and she had a huge house up in Philippi as an extension of her commercial operation. I'm amazed at the amazing skill that God gives some business people. Anybody ever heard of Mary Kay? Well, I mean, just think, I mean, multi-million dollar operations, you see, like this. And well, anyway, there she was, perhaps having heard the gospel there back in her hometown in Asia, in Syatira. And you say, now wait a minute, how do you know she heard the gospel? Now see, this is one of the problems we have several times in the book of Acts. You remember back in chapter 10 where Cornelius was a worshiper of the Lord, gave alms, I mean, prayed to God daily? My opinion is, only God knows, of course, that he was a genuine born-again person, but not a Christian. You say, now wait a minute here. But you see, that's characteristic of the book of Acts, is you're in a transition period where there are born-again people who are hangovers of pre-Pentecost period, who hadn't heard the latest messages about Jesus. And we're going to meet a couple of these people, namely Apollos of Alexandria and a dozen men in Ephesus who were believers, but not officially members of the body and bride of Christ. Now, the greatest man who had ever lived other than Jesus was a person like that, John the Baptist. Would you kindly agree he was born again? Was he a Christian? No. So you see, as soon as the Christian message, the full explanation of who Jesus is and what Jesus did in his death, burial, and resurrection was made known to these people, these proselytes, these God-fearers, these Gentiles like this, they believed. They accepted the new light. See, there's no record of any of them that didn't. So my opinion is that she was a born-again person but had not yet, what, entered into the full reality of the body and bride of Christ Christian truth, okay? So watch what happens. A certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of Thyatira, which worshiped God, heard us, whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which are spoken of Paul. Now, there is that mysterious combination of what? Divine sovereignty and what? Human responsibility. You see, that's an antinomy, an apparent contradiction to our rational perspectives. It looks like a contradiction. I mean, did God save her or did she have to do something too? Yes, thank you. Okay. And when she was baptized, and her household, you see, she's a wealthy woman just like the famous Mary in Jerusalem, the mother of John Mark, who had a huge home and lots of servants, you remember, and a center for prayer. So this woman, likewise, her home became the center of a great, great church. Have you noticed throughout the Book of Acts, the function of women is frequently focused on and emphasized by Dr. Luke? And here's a case, of course, as well. So her house became sort of this worship center for not only born-again people, but of course, Christian believers among these Gentiles and Jews. And it came to pass as we went to prayer, now here comes another woman on the scene that is very influential in how the gospel is going to spread through the city of Philippi. Now this is one of the strangest things of all that we've read so far in the book of Acts. This is amazing. Please help me out on this one, friends. It came to pass as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us. literally in Greek, a python. Now that is a snake. And you see, the Greeks had a legend that over here in one of the mountains of southern Macedonia, northern Achaia, Apollo had a temple, a shrine, where people come and worship him. And he had a serpent that protected him, a python. And one tradition says that Apollo killed the snake. And so people who were demon-possessed, you see, were thought to have this python in them. This is a weird, weird tradition, mythology, that the Greeks had. And there were obviously demon-possessed people that really could do supernatural things, remember. We're gonna see that especially later on in the book of Acts. But when Jesus was here, more than once, a demon-possessed person would come up to Jesus and say what? We know who you are, you son of God, you come to torment us before the time. Presumably alluding to what happened to the demons at the time of the flood who were flung down into, what, Tartarus, in pits and chains of darkness, until the great day of judgment of God, and have no further access to the world. But that was a specially evil group of demons, apparently. Jude and 2 Peter talk about angels that kept not their first estate, but went after strange flesh, says like Sodom, and they were consigned, and no further access to human beings. But the ones that were not cast out, cast down. came to Jesus and said, do not cast us into the abyss before the time. We know who you are. Demonic theology is in many points very biblical. They know the triunity of the Godhead, the deity of Christ. I mean, think of what demons know about him. And so this woman was a demon-possessed person. And she met us, Luke says, And she brought her masters much gain by soothsaying, telling people about the special things that only a supernatural being could know and so on. This damsel followed Paul and us and cried saying, now how do you like this for an endorsement program, a promotion program for the ministry? These men are the servants of the most high God which show us the way of salvation. You say amen. a free promotion program for the gospel. And it must have attracted enormous attention all over the city. We'll point this out in a few moments as to the possible implication of this, okay? And this she did, how long? Many days. I mean, apparently the whole city was aware of the fact that Paul and Silas and Timothy and Luke were a special team that came from God. Now, which God is the question? They're supernatural in their origin, their message, okay? But Paul being grieved, I mean, he, Paul is so frustrated, friends, to be endorsed by whom? Demons, thank you. So was Jesus. You know what Jesus did to demons that said those things to him? He cast them out of people. He was the infinite exorcist and Paul in like manner cast the demon out of her. Okay. I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour. The demon got the message and said, I'm out of here. Thank you. So no longer could she say anything that had what? Supernatural aspects to it. You know, friends, it's so hard to find cases like this today, isn't it? I'm not saying there aren't any, I'm just saying it's hard to find them because most demons today, may I make this suggestion? Don't do things like this anymore. You know what they do? They do things more effectively than that. Paul said so to the Corinthians. He said, Satan is like an angel of light and therefore it's no great surprise if he should transform himself into a messenger of righteousness, you see. He wants to win people by more subtle, more impressive forms. God's Word is true from the beginning to the end. That was the conviction that drove Dr. John Whitcomb, and it was at the basis of all of his teaching, such as in this series on Acts, Witness of the Early Church. You can read a commentary on the book of Acts written by Dr. Whitcomb and Pastor George Zeller of Middletown Bible Church when you go to WhitcombMinistries.org. And for the latest from our ministry, go to facebook.com slash Whitcomb Ministries. I'm Wayne Shepherd for Whitcomb Ministries. I trust that today's program was an encouragement to you, and we look forward to meeting you for next week's broadcast and the conclusion of this message on Paul and Silas to Europe. May the Lord bless and keep you until then. We're so glad to have you with us on Encounter God's Truth.