Acts 16

What is it like to be a part of a mission team proclaiming the story of the cross? For Timothy, it meant that he needed to be circumcised. This is something of a surprise, since the previous chapter in this book settled the fact that no one needed to be circumcised in order to be saved. Almost immediately after that account Paul finds a new ministry partner and we find Paul himself circumcising the young man. This sign of the Jews was not administered to Timothy for any good that it could have done to him, but to remove any possible offense as Paul and his team occasionally went into places where only Jews were allowed. This willingness to accommodate the weak while refusing to surrender any of the truth of salvation by grace is a fitting example of the life of sacrifice that men are called to who would represent the Lord to others.

Young Timothy will soon be further away from home than he might have expected. This was not due to Paul suddenly changing his mind on where they should be going. It was Paul’s intention to travel north to the Roman province of Bithynia. In the mystery of God’s providence, the Lord would move them west to Macedonia, and to the city of Philippi. We are not told exactly how that all happened. We are told that it came from the “Holy Spirit” and from the “Spirit of Jesus.” We do know that God granted Paul a vision which he obeyed, where a “man of Macedonia” called him to “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” The help that Paul would bring would be the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Savior.

The first true person of Macedonia that would be the fruit of Paul’s gospel labors there was the businesswoman Lydia, a worshipper of the Jewish God, though not herself a Jew. We are told that the same Lord who led Paul in a different direction than he himself had planned was the One who opened this woman’s heart to pay attention to what Paul said. Lydia was not a native of this region, but she had established a residence there, and was probably a person of some means. We are told that she was soon baptized, and then hosted Paul and the others in her house. This is how the ministry to Macedonia began.

These messengers of God faced some unusual demonic opposition from a young girl who they came to see was oppressed by some spirit. The girl kept on crying out for many days that these visitors were “servants of the Most High God,” proclaiming “the way of salvation.” Paul did not need a crazed and possessed fortune-telling girl as part of his advance team, and he eventually cast this spirit out of her with a word of authority in the Name of Jesus Christ. The girl was delivered, but her captors were livid, since they made money through this pitiful slavery. They brought their violent hands against Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace.

God’s servants were soon carried off to prison on the order of the magistrates under the charge of being disturbers of the peace. The word of bullies and their mob was enough to have the Lord’s ambassadors stripped, beaten with rods, jailed, and placed in the stocks. But it was from this place of humiliation that Paul and Silas prayed and sang hymns to God, with the other prisoners listening to them. Suddenly there was a strange shaking of the earth that led to the opening of the prison doors and the falling off of all prison chains!

This had to be quite an impressive thing to see and to consider. When the jailor woke and thought that everyone had escaped, he was about to take his own life, when Paul called out to the men, telling him that none of the prisoners had run away. In another impressive scene the jailor was completely humbled before the apostle and sought from him the way of salvation. We see from Paul’s simple words that the way that whole households were brought the blessing of eternal salvation was through trusting in the Lord Jesus. These people were baptized that very night, and they rejoiced as those who now believed in God.

But when the next day came, and Paul and Silas were permitted to make a quiet exit, they refused to do so. Revealing that he was a Roman citizen, Paul insisted on having the magistrates come to the prison and lead them out of the city. They had suffered unjustly at the hands of men, but they had also experienced the joy of seeing people respond to the Word of Christ. They were a part of something most unusual, the dramatic opening up of an entire imprisoned region to the King who died for sinners. They were able to experience the power of God leading them to this untouched mission field, where captives from the prison house of sin were delivered from death through faith in Christ before their very eyes.

This is what Jesus does. He is able to meet the oppressed and to free them. He can give strength to his own servants in the most wretched situations, so that they lift their voices in prayer and song as those who know that they are truly free even when they are in chains. And He can make a man who considers himself very free see the true chains of sin that entangle him, so that he will eagerly long for a new freedom, crying out for all to hear, “What must I do to be saved?”