and from there to Philippi, which is a city of Macedonia, the foremost of the district, a Roman colony. We were staying some days in this city.
On the Sabbath day we went outside of the city by a riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. A certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, one who worshiped God, heard us. The Lord opened her heart to listen to the things which were spoken by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay.” So she persuaded us.
As we were going to prayer, a certain girl having a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much gain by fortune telling. Following Paul and us, she cried out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us a way of salvation!” She was doing this for many days. But Paul, becoming greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” It came out that very hour.
But when her masters saw that the hope of their gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas, and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. When they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, “These men, being Jews, are agitating our city and advocate customs which it is not lawful for us to accept or to observe, being Romans.”
The multitude rose up together against them and the magistrates tore their clothes from them, then commanded them to be beaten with rods. When they had laid many stripes on them, they threw them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely, who, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison, and secured their feet in the stocks.
But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were loosened. The jailer, being roused out of sleep and seeing the prison doors open, drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, “Don’t harm yourself, for we are all here!”
He called for lights, sprang in, fell down trembling before Paul and Silas, brought them out, and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him, and to all who were in his house.
He took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes, and was immediately baptized, he and all his household. He brought them up into his house, and set food before them, and rejoiced greatly, with all his household, having believed in God.
But when it was day, the magistrates sent the sergeants, saying, “Let those men go.”
The jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, “The magistrates have sent to let you go; now therefore come out and go in peace.”
But Paul said to them, “They have beaten us publicly without a trial, men who are Romans, and have cast us into prison! Do they now release us secretly? No, most certainly, but let them come themselves and bring us out!”
The sergeants reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Romans, and they came and begged them. When they had brought them out, they asked them to depart from the city. They went out of the prison, and entered into Lydia’s house. When they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them, then departed.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37, 40 13. In the day of the Sabbaths. No doubt…
13. In the day of the Sabbaths. No doubt the Jews sought some place which was solitary and by the way, when they were disposed to pray, because their religion was then everywhere most odious. And God, by their example, meant to teach us what great account we ought to make of the profession of faith; that we do not forsake it either for fear of envy or of dangers. They had, indeed, in many places synagogues, but it was not lawful for them to assemble themselves publicly at Philippi, which was a free city of Rome. Therefore, they withdraw themselves into a secret corner, that they may pray to God where they could not be espied; and yet there were those who did grudge even at this, so that they might think that it might both cause trouble and danger, but they prefer the worship of God before their own quietness and commodity. Furthermore, we may gather by this word Sabbath, that Luke speaketh of the Jews. Secondly, forasmuch as he commendeth the godliness of Lydia, it must needs be that she was a Jewess, which matter needeth no long disputation, forasmuch as we know that it was an heinous offense for the Grecians and Romans to celebrate the Sabbath, or to take up Jewish rites. Now, we understand that the Jews made choice of the river’s bank, but because they shunned the company of men, and the sight of the people. If any man object, why did not every man pray in his house privately? The answer is ready, that this was a solemn rite of praying, to testify godliness; and that being far from the superstitions of the Gentiles, they might one exhort another to worship God alone, and that they might nourish the religion received of the fathers among themselves. As touching Paul and his fellows who were lately come, it is to be thought that they came thither not only to pray, but also because they hope to do some good. For it was a fit place for them to teach in, being far from noise; and it was meet that they should be more attentive to hear the word who came thither to pray. Luke putteth the day of the Sabbaths instead of the Sabbath; where, following Erasmus, I have translated it, There was wont to be prayer; the old interpreter hath, did seem. And the word [νομιζεσθαι] hath both significations among the Grecians. Yet this sense is more fit for this present place, that they did commonly use to have prayer there.
We spake to the women. Either that place was appointed for the assemblies of women, or else religion was cold among men, so that they came more slowly. Howsoever it be, we see that the holy men omit no occasion or opportunity, because they vouchsafed to offer the gospel even to women alone. Furthermore, forasmuch as it seemeth likely to me that men and women made their prayers there together, I suppose that Luke omitted the men either because they would not hear, or else because they profited nothing by hearing.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 33, 35, 37, 38, 40 Where they were wont to assemble themselves.
Where they were wont to assemble themselves.
God beginneth his kingdom in Macedonia by the conversion of a woman, and so showeth that there is no [exception] of persons in the Gospel.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv13–40 12 And from thence to Philippi, which is the…
12 And from thence to Philippi, which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony: and we were in that city abiding certain days.
13 And on the sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted thither.
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Ver. 13. And on the sabbath] A day that God had sanctified to be a means to convey sanctity into the hearts of his hidden ones, as here of Lydia the purpurisse, {a} Eze 20:12. It is his exchequer day, his market day.
Where prayer was wont to be made] Or where was a public oratory. So the synagogues are called by Philo in his embassy to Gaius the emperor, minus invidioso nomine.
Unto the women which resorted] St Paul (it may seem) at first had no other hearers but a few women at Philippi. But afterwards they became a flourishing Church. Nec minor ab exordio, nec maior incrementis ulla, saith Eutropius concerning Rome; so may we say concerning the Church of Christ.
{a} A kind of red or purple colouring matter, used by the ancients. ŒD
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv12–40 Philippi; a city so called from Philip, the father…
Philippi; a city so called from Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, who repaired a ruined town, and caused it to be called by his name. The chief city of that part of Macedonia; or the first city in the passage from Samothracia unto Macedonia.
A colony; where many Roman citizens went to inhabit, and whose inhabitants had the freedom of the city of Rome. To the church in this city Paul wrote an Epistle.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv16, 25, 29, 33, 34, 35, 38 As we went to prayer, a damsel possessed met…
As we went to prayer, a damsel possessed met us. That is, As the apostles went towards the forementioned place of prayer, a damsel possessed with the devil, by whose inspiration she foretold future things, and revealed many secrets to them that consulted her, followed them, crying out, These are the servants of the most high God, who declare unto us the way of salvation.
Where observe, 1. That the father of lies sometimes speaks the truth, though, never for truth’s sake, but for his own advantage: here what the devil said was truth, but it was for devilish ends; he transforms himself now into an angel of light, to draw men on to believe him the prince of darkness.
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Observe, 2. How St. Paul refuses the devil’s testimony concerning himself, even when he spake the truth. The testimony of truth from the father of lies, is enough to render truth itself suspected.
Observe, 3.the authority which St. Paul takes upon him in the name of Christ to dispossess the devil, and cast him out of the damsel: Paul said, I command thee in the name of Jesus to come out of her: and he came out the same hour.
These words St. Paul uttered by the motion of the Holy Spirit, and relying by faith on the promise of Christ made by himself to his apostles, That in his name they should cast out devils; Mar 16:17 accordingly he received power from on high to cast out this daring devil.
Observe, 4. How Satan seeks to be revenged on Paul for dispossessing of him: he raises up an hot persecution, and soon casts him into prison, who had cast the devil out of the damsel. If we disturb and trouble Satan, he will be sure to trouble and disturb us. Such ministers as make the greatest opposition against Satan, must expect to meet with the greatest opposition from him.
Observe, 5. Who were the instruments which Satan stirs up to raise this persecution against the apostles: they were the rulers and the rabble: The multitude rose up, and the magistrates rent their clothes, cast them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. Thus were the holy apostles, and innocent servants of Jesus Christ, imprisoned, and treated as the vilest malefactors, only for opposing Satan, and seeking the welfare of mankind.
Observe, lastly, That love of money was the root of all this persecution. The damsel’s masters perceiving that their gain was gone, and that she could help them to no more money by telling people their fortunes, the devil of discontent possessed them. They stir up persecution against the apostles, they cast them into prison, into the inward prison, and to make all sure, set them in the stocks.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv16, 25, 35 Paul and his companions, though they were for some…
Paul and his companions, though they were for some time buried in obscurity at Philippi, yet now begin to be taken notice of.
I. A damsel that had a spirit of divination caused them to be taken notice of, by proclaiming them to be the servants of God. Observe,
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1. The account that is given of this damsel: She was puthonissa, possessed with such a spirit of divination as that damsel was by whom the oracles of Apollo at Delphos were delivered; she was actuated by an evil spirit, that dictated ambiguous answers to those who consulted her, which served to gratify their vain desire of knowing things to come, but often deceived them. In those times of ignorance, infidelity, and idolatry, the devil, by the divine permission, thus led men captive at his will; and he could not have gained such adoration from them as he had, if he had not pretended to give oracles to them, for by both his usurpation is maintained as the god of this world. This damsel brought her masters much gain by soothsaying; many came to consult this witch for the discovery of robberies, the finding of things lost, and especially to be told their fortune, and none came but with the rewards of divination in their hands, according to the quality of the person and the importance of the case. Probably there were many that were thus kept for fortune-tellers, but, it should seem, this was more in repute than any of them; for, while others brought some gain, this brought much gain to her masters, being consulted more than any other.
2. The testimony which this damsel gave to Paul and his companions: She met them in the street, as they were going to prayer, to the house of prayer, or rather to the work of prayer there, Act 16:16. They went thither publicly, every body knew whither they were going, and what they were going to do. If what she did was likely to be any distraction to them, or a hindrance in their work, it is observable how subtle Satan is, that great tempter, in taking the opportunity to give us diversion when we are going about any religious exercises, to ruffle us and to put us out of temper when we need to be most composed. When she met with them she followed them, crying, "These men, how contemptible soever they look and are looked upon, are great men, for they are the servants of the most high God, and men that should be very welcome to us, for they show unto us the way of salvation, both the salvation that will be our happiness, and the way to it that will be our holiness."
Now, (1.) This witness is true; it is a comprehensive encomium on the faithful preachers of the gospel, and makes their feet beautiful, Rom 10:15. Though they are men subject to like passions as we are, and earthen vessels, yet, [1.] "They are the servants of the most high God; they attend on him, are employed by him, and are devoted to his honour, as servants; they come to us on his errands, the message they bring is from him, and they serve the purposes and interest of his kingdom. The gods we Gentiles worship are inferior beings, therefore not gods, but these men belong to the supreme Numen, to the most high God, who is over all men, over all gods, who made us all, and to whom we are all accountable. They are his servants, and therefore it is our duty to respect them, and harken to them for their Master's sake, and it is at our peril if we affront them." [2.] "They show unto us the way of salvation." Even the heathen had some notion of the miserable deplorable state of mankind, and their need of salvation, and it was what they made some enquiries after. "Now," saith she, "these men are the men that show us what we have in vain sought for in our superstitious profitless application to our priests and oracles." Note, God has, in the gospel of his Son, plainly shown us the way of salvation, has told us what we must do that we may be delivered from the misery to which by sin we have exposed ourselves.
But, (2.) How came this testimony from the mouth of one that had a spirit of divination? Is Satan divided against himself? Will he cry up those whose business it is to pull him down? We may take it either, [1.] As extorted from this spirit of divination for the honour of the gospel by the power of God; as the devil was forced to say of Christ (Mar 1:24): I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. The truth is sometimes magnified by the confession of its adversaries, in which they are witnesses against themselves. Christ would have this testimony of the damsel to rise up in judgment against those at Philippi who slighted and persecuted the apostles; though the gospel needed no such testimony, yet it shall serve to add to their commendation that the damsel whom they looked upon as an oracle in other things proclaimed the apostles God's servants. Or, [2.] As designed by the evil spirit, that subtle serpent, to the dishonour of the gospel; some think she designed hereby to gain credit to herself and her prophecies, and so to increase her master's profit by pretending to be in the interest of the apostles, who, she thought, had a growing reputation, or to curry favour with Paul, that he might not separate her and her familiar. Others think that Satan, who can transform himself into an angel of light, and can say anything to serve a turn, designed hereby to disgrace the apostles; as if these divines were of the same fraternity with their diviners, because they were witnessed to by them, and then the people might as well adhere to those they had been used to. Those that were most likely to receive the apostles' doctrine were such as were prejudiced against these spirits of divination, and therefore would, by this testimony, be prejudiced against the gospel; and, as for those who regarded these diviners, the devil thought himself sure of them.
II. Christ caused them to be taken notice of, by giving them power to cast the devil out of this damsel. She continued many days clamouring thus (Act 16:18); and, it should seem, Paul took no notice of her, not knowing but it might be ordered of God for the service of his cause, that she should thus witness concerning his ministers; but finding perhaps that it did them a prejudice, rather than any service, he soon silenced her, by casting the devil out of her. 1. He was grieved. It troubled him to see the damsel made an instrument of Satan to deceive people, and to see the people imposed upon by her divinations. It was a disturbance to him to hear a sacred truth so profaned, and good words come out of such a wicked mouth with such and evil design. Perhaps they were spoken in an ironical bantering way, as ridiculing the apostles' pretensions, and mocking them, as when Christ's persecutors complimented him with Hail, king of the Jews; and then justly might Paul be grieved, as any good man's heart would be, to hear any good truth of God bawled out in the streets in a canting jeering way. 2. He commanded the evil spirit to come out of her. He turned with a holy indignation, angry both at the flatteries and at the reproaches of the unclean spirit, and said, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her; and by this he will show that these men are the servants of the living God, and are able to prove themselves so, without her testimony: her silence shall demonstrate it more than her speaking could do. Thus Paul shows the way of salvation indeed, that it is by breaking the power of Satan, and chaining him up, that he may not deceive the world (Rev 20:3), and that this salvation is to be obtained in the name of Jesus Christ only, as in his name the devil was now cast out and by no other. It was a great blessing to the country when Christ by a word cast the devil out of those in whom he frightened people and molested them so that no man might pass by that way (Mat 8:28); but it was a much greater kindness to the country when Paul now, in Christ's name, cast the devil out of one who deceived people and imposed upon their credulity. Power went along with the word of Christ, before which Satan could not stand, but was forced to quit his hold, and in this case it was a strong hold: He came out the same hour.
III. The masters of the damsel that was dispossessed caused them to be taken notice of, by bringing them before the magistrates for doing it, and laying it to their charge as their crime. The preachers of the gospel would never have had an opportunity of speaking to the magistrates if they had not been brought before them as evil doers. Observe here,
1. That which provoked them was, that, the damsel being restored to herself, her masters saw that the hope of their gain was gone, Act 16:19. See here what evil the love of money is the root of! If the preaching of the gospel ruin the craft of the silversmiths (Act 19:24), much more the craft of the soothsayers; and therefore here is a great outcry raised, when Satan's power to deceive is broken: the priests hated the gospel because it turned men from the blind service of dumb idols, and so the hope of their gains was gone. The power of Christ, which appeared in dispossessing the woman, and the great kindness done to her in delivering her out of Satan's hand, made no impression upon them when they apprehended that they should hereby lose money.
2. The course they took with them was to incense the higher powers against them, as men fit to be punished: They caught them as they went along, and, with the utmost fury and violence, dragged them into the marketplace, where public justice was administered. (1.) They brought them to the rulers, their justices of peace, to do by them as men taken into the hands of the law, the duumviri. (2.) From them they hurried them to the magistrates, the praetors or governors of the city, tois stratēgois - the officers of the army, so the word signifies; but it is taken in general for the judges or chief rulers: to them they brought their complaint.
3. The charge they exhibited against them was that they were the troublers of the land, Act 16:20. They take it for granted that these men are Jews, a nation at this time as much an abomination to the Romans as they had long ago been to the Egyptians. Piteous was the case of the apostles, when it was turned to their reproach that they were Jews, and yet the Jews were their most violent persecutors! (1.) The general charge against them is that they troubled the city, sowed discord, and disturbed the public peace, and occasioned riots and tumults, than which nothing could be more false and unjust, as was Ahab's character of Elijah (Kg1 18:17): Art thou he that troubleth Israel? If they troubled the city, it was but like the angel's troubling the water of Bethesda's pool, in order to healing - shaking, in order to a happy settlement. Thus those that rouse the sluggards are exclaimed against for troubling them. (2.) The proof of this charge is their teaching customs not proper to be admitted by a Roman colony, Act 16:21. The Romans were always very jealous of innovations in religion. Right or wrong, they would adhere to that, how vain soever, which they had received by tradition from their fathers. No foreign nor upstart deity must be allowed, without the approbation of the senate; the gods of their country must be their gods, true or false. This was one of the laws of the twelve tables. Hath a nation changed their gods? It incensed them against the apostles that they taught a religion destructive of polytheism and idolatry, and preached to them to turn from those vanities. This the Romans could not bear: "If this grow upon us, in a little while we shall lose our religion."
IV. The magistrates, by their proceedings against them, caused them to be taken notice of.
1. By countenancing the persecution they raised the mob upon them (Act 16:22): The multitude rose up together against them, and were ready to pull them to pieces. It has been the artifice of Satan to make God's ministers and people odious to the commonalty, by representing them as dangerous men, who aimed at the destruction of the constitution and the changing of the customs, when really there has been no ground for such an imputation.
2. By going on to an execution they further represented them as the vilest malefactors: They rent off their clothes, with rage and fury, not having patience till they were taken off, in order to their being scourged. This the apostle refers to when he speaks of their being treated at Philippi, Th1 2:2. The magistrates commanded that they should be whipped as vagabonds, by the lictors or beadles who attended the praetors, and carried rods with them for that purpose; this was one of those three times that Paul was beaten with rods, according to the Roman usage, which was not under the compassionate limitation of the number of stripes not to exceed forty, which was provided by the Jewish law. It is here said that they laid many stripes upon them (Act 16:23), without counting how many, because they seemed vile unto them, Deu 25:3. Now, one would think, this might have satiated their cruelty; if they must be whipped, surely they must be discharged. No, they are imprisoned, and it is probable the present purpose was to try them for their lives, and put them to death; else why should there be such care taken to prevent their escape? (1.) The judges made their commitment very strict: They charged the jailer to keep them safely, and have a very watchful eye upon them, as if they were dangerous men, that either would venture to break prison themselves or were in confederacy with those that would attempt to rescue them. Thus they endeavoured to render them odious, that they might justify themselves in the base usage they had given them. (2.) The jailer made their confinement very severe (Act 16:24): Having received such a charge, though he might have kept them safely enough in the outer prison, yet he thrust them into the inner prison. He was sensible that the magistrates had a great indignation against these men, and were inclined to be severe with them, and therefore he thought to ingratiate himself with them, by exerting his power likewise against them to the uttermost. When magistrates are cruel, it is no wonder that the officers under them are so too. He put them into the inner prison, the dungeon, into which none were usually put but condemned malefactors, dark at noon-day, damp and cold, dirty, it is likely, and every way offensive, like that into which Jeremiah was let down (Jer 38:6); and, as if this were not enough, he made their feet fast in the stocks. Perhaps, having heard a report of the escape of the preachers of the gospel out of prison, when the doors were fast barred (Act 5:19; Act 12:9), he thought he would be wiser than other jailers had been, and therefore would effectually secure them by fastening them in the stocks; and they were not the first of God's messengers that had their feet in the stocks; Jeremiah was so treated, and publicly too, in the high-gate of Benjamin (Jer 20:2); Joseph had his feet hurt with fetters, Psa 105:18. Oh what hard usage have God's servants met with, as in the former days, so in the latter times! Witness the Book of Martyrs, martyrs in queen Mary's time.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv12–40 And from thence to Philippi,.... This place is by…
And from thence to Philippi,.... This place is by Appianus called Datos, which was its original name; and by Diodorus Siculus, Crenidae (c), from the fountains of water, which were many and wholesome, that were about it; and it had its name Philippi, from Philip king of Macedon, father of Alexander the great, who rebuilt it (d): it is now vulgarly called Chrixopolis, that is, Chrysopolis, from the veins and mines of gold found about it; it was famous for a battle here fought between Augustus Caesar and Anthony on the one side, and Brutus and Cassius on the other, in which the latter were vanquished:
which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia; which is called Edonis, in which Ptolomy places it;
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and a colony: that is, of the Romans; see Act 16:37 and which Pliny (e) also calls a colony:
and we were in that city abiding many days; without doing anything, having no opportunity, or door opened to them to preach the Gospel; which must be a great trial of their faith, after Paul had seen such a vision, by which they were so strongly assured it was the will of God they should come and preach the Gospel here, and after they had travelled so far by sea and land; though some observe, that the word used signifies not only to abide, but to exercise themselves, by teaching and preaching the word, which it is supposed they did with success; and that the women they after met with by the river side, were such, at least some of them, who had been converted under their ministry; but the former seems to be the truest sense.
(c) Ptolom. Geograph. l. 3. c. 13. (d) Pausaniae Eliac. 2. l. 6. p. 352. Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 4. c. 11. (e) Ib.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 28, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37, 40 The first city - Neapolis was the first city…
The first city - Neapolis was the first city they came to in that part of Macedonia which was nearest to Asia: in that part which was farthest from it, Philippi. The river Strymon ran between them. Philippi was a Roman colony.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40 Verse 12. And from thence to Philippi] This was…
Verse 12. And from thence to Philippi] This was a town of Macedonia, in the territory of the Edones, on the confines of Thrace, situated on the side of a steep eminence. It took its name from Philip II., king of Macedon. It is famous for two battles, fought between the imperial army, commanded by Octavianus, afterwards Augustus, and Mark Antony, and the republican army, commanded by Brutus and Cassius, in which these were successful; and a second, between Octavianus and Antony on the one part, and Brutus on the other. In this battle the republican troops were cut to pieces, after which Brutus killed himself. It was to the Church in this city that St. Paul wrote the epistle that still goes under their name. This place is still in being, though much decayed, and is the see of an archbishop.
The chief city of that part of Macedonia] This passage has greatly puzzled both critics and commentators. It is well known that, when Paulus AEmilius had conquered Macedonia, he divided it into four parts, μερη, and that he called the country that lay between the rivers Strymon and Nessus, the first part, and made Amphipolis its chief city, or metropolis; Philippi, therefore, was not its chief city. But Bishop Pearce has, with great show of reason, argued that, though Amphipolis was made the chief city of it by Paulus AEmilius, yet Philippi might have been the chief city in the days of St. Paul, which was two hundred and twenty years after the division by P. AEmilius. Besides, as it was at this place that Augustus gained that victory which put him in possession of the whole Roman empire, might not he have given to it that dignity which was before enjoyed by Amphipolis? This is the most rational way of solving this difficulty; and therefore I shall not trouble the reader with the different modes that have been proposed to alter and amend the Greek text.
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And a colony] That is, a colony of Rome; for it appears that a colony was planted here by Julius Caesar, and afterwards enlarged by Augustus; the people, therefore, were considered as freemen of Rome, and, from this, call themselves Romans, Ac 16:21. The Jewish definition of קלניא kolonia (for they have the Latin word in Hebrew letters, as St. Luke has it. here, κολωνια, in Greek letters) is, a free city, which does not pay tribute.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv13, 16, 17, 19, 22, 25, 29, 31, 35, 40 Act 16:13-15. On the sabbath we went out of…
Act 16:13-15. On the sabbath we went out of the city — The Jews usually held their religious assemblies (either by choice or constraint) at a distance from the heathen; by a river side — The river Strymon, which ran between Philippi and Neapolis; where prayer was wont to be made — That is, where the Jews and their proselytes were wont to assemble for prayer. The original expression, which is peculiar and much controverted, ου ενομιζετο προσευχη ειναι, may be rendered, Where a proseucha (or place for prayer) was by law allowed. And we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted thither — At first in a familiar manner; for Paul did not immediately begin to preach. It appears that most or all of the congregation were women; among whom there was one Lydia, a seller of purple, who worshipped the true God — After the Jewish manner; a native of Thyatira — Who had fixed her residence in Philippi, for the sake of commerce; whose heart the Lord opened — The word διηνοιξε, here used, properly refers to the opening of the eyes; and the heart, or mind, has its eyes, Eph 1:18. These are closed by nature; and to open them is the peculiar work of God. Lydia, it seems, was so strongly affected with what Paul said, that she embraced the gospel with the full assurance of faith, and with all her heart. And she was baptized — It seems, immediately upon her believing, and making a profession of her faith; and her household — Those of them that were infants (if any were such) in her right, as her children, the children of believing parents having a right to be admitted to that ordinance; and those that were grown up, through her influence and authority. She and her household were baptized, by the same rule whereby Abraham and his household were circumcised, because the zeal of the covenant belongs to the covenanters and their seed. As it is not probable, that in so many households and families as are said in the New Testament to have been baptized, there was no infant; so, neither is it likely that the Jews, who had so long been accustomed to circumcise their children, would not, when they embraced the gospel, devote them to God by baptism. She besought us — Earnestly entreated us. See how the souls of the faithful cleave to those by whom they are gained to God! saying, If ye have judged me faithful to the Lord — If you have considered me as being sincere in the profession I have made of believing in the Lord Jesus, and really regard me as a true Christian; come into my house and abide there — As long as you stay in this city. This she desired, 1st, To testify her gratitude to them, who had been God’s messengers, and the instruments of his grace to her; imparting the knowledge of salvation, and producing a blessed change in her heart and life. 2d, She desired an opportunity of receiving further instruction. If she could but have them a while in her family, she might hear their heavenly discourse daily, and not only at the place of prayer on sabbath days; in her own house, also, she might not only hear them, but might make inquiries, and receive satisfaction, on many important subjects; and might have them to pray with and for her and her family daily, and thereby bring down the divine blessing upon herself and them. And she constrained us — By her importunity. The expression implies that they were reluctant to accept her invitation, being unwilling to be, in any respect, burdensome to the families of their friends, and studying to make the gospel without charge, in order that the unbelievers might have no occasion given them of reproaching the preachers of it as designing, self-seeking men; and that the Christians might have no reason to complain of the expenses of their religion. Lydia’s pressing invitations, however, overcame their reluctancy, and they at last consented to her request, and abode at her house as long as they continued at Philippi, which was many days: see Act 16:12; Act 16:18. During this time they laid the foundation of a numerous church, gathered both from among the Jews and the Gentiles; a church which, after the apostle’s departure, increased so exceedingly, that, when he wrote his epistle to the Philippians, they had several bishops, or presbyters, and deacons, Php 1:1.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40 And from thence to Philippi - The former name…
And from thence to Philippi - The former name of this city was Dathos. It was repaired and adorned by Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, and after him was called Philippi. It was famous for having been the place where several battles were fought during the civil wars of the Romans, and, among others, for the decisive battle between Brutus and Antony. At this place Brutus killed himself. To the church in this place Paul afterward wrote the Epistle which bears its name.
Which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia - This whole region had been conquered by the Romans under Paulus Aemilius. By him it was divided into four parts or provinces (Livy). The Syriac version renders it “a city of the first part of Macedonia,” and there is a medal extant which also describes this region by this name. It has been proposed, therefore, to alter the Greek text in accordance with this, since it is known that Amphipolis was made the chief city by Paulus Aemilius. But it may be remarked that, although Amphipolis was the chief city in the time of Paulus Aemilius, it may have happened that in the lapse of 220 years from that time Philippi might have become the most extensive and splendid city. The Greek here may also mean simply that this was the first city to which they arrived in their travels.
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And a colony - This is a Latin word, and means that this was a Roman colony. The word denotes “a city or province” which was planted or occupied by Roman citizens. It is a strong confirmation of the fact here stated by Luke, that Philippi had the rank and dignity of a Roman colony, as coins are still extant, in which Philippi is distinctly referred to as a colony. Such coins exist from the reign of Augustus to the reign of Caracalla.
Certain days - Some days.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv13, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 26, 33, 35, 37 There was prayer.[1] The Greek word signifies either prayer…
There was prayer.[1] The Greek word signifies either prayer itself, or an oratory, or place to pray in. (Witham) --- Not every prayer is here understood, but that which was joined in the celebration of the sacred mysteries. (Estius, in different location.) See 1 Corinthians vii. and Acts vi.
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Oratio, Greek: proseuche, preces, oratio & Oratorium.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv12–40 Philippi . . . the chief--rather, perhaps, "the first"
Philippi . . . the chief--rather, perhaps, "the first"
city of that part of Macedonia--The meaning appears to be--the first city one comes to, proceeding from Neapolis. The sense given in our version hardly consists with fact.
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a colony--that is, possessing all the privileges of Roman citizenship, and, as such, both exempted from scourging and (in ordinary cases) from arrest, and entitled to appeal from the local magistrate to the emperor. Though the Pisidian Antioch and Troas were also "colonies," the fact is mentioned in this history of Philippi only on account of the frequent references to Roman privileges and duties in the sequel of the chapter.
AT PHILIPPI, LYDIA IS GAINED AND WITH HER HOUSEHOLD BAPTIZED--AN EVIL SPIRIT IS EXPELLED, PAUL AND SILAS ARE SCOURGED, IMPRISONED, AND MANACLED, BUT MIRACULOUSLY SET FREE, AND THE JAILER WITH ALL HIS HOUSEHOLD CONVERTED AND BAPTIZED. (Act 16:12-34)
we were in that city abiding certain days--waiting till the sabbath came round: their whole stay must have extended to some weeks. As their rule was to begin with the Jews and proselytes, they did nothing till the time when they knew that they would convene for worship.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv12–40 12. The chief city—Literally, first city. Inasmuch as there…
12. The chief city—Literally, first city. Inasmuch as there is no Greek article before the phrase, it would most properly be translated, as Dr. Alexander suggests, a first city, or, “a first-class city” of that section.
A colony—A body of Roman citizens thither transferred, as a part of Rome itself, with all the rights of Roman citizenship. It proudly flaunted all the insignia of Rome. Its magistrates ambitiously bore the Roman titles, as we shall learn from Luke before his narrative is finished. The city itself aimed to be a miniature Rome. The Romans planted here were the soldiers of Antony, sent by Augustus. Of course, it would be a very serious thing here to violate the sacred person of a Roman.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv12–40 12. and from thence to Philippi] As the same…
12. and from thence to Philippi] As the same verb is used for the whole description of the journey, it seems that the whole was made by ship.
which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony] Better and more in accord with the oldest MSS. “which is a city of Macedonia, the first of the district, a colony.” (So R. V.) Philippi and the country round had long been famous by reason of the neighbouring gold mines. At the time of St Paul’s visit it was held by the Romans, and a colony had been founded there by Augustus. The civil magistrates and the military authorities were Roman. Hence the fear when they heard that prisoners whom they had scourged were Roman citizens. For a history of Philippi, see Dict. of the Bible.
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It should be borne in mind that a Roman colony was not like what we now call a colony. The inhabitants did not settle as they pleased, but were sent out by authority from Rome, marching to their destination like an army with banners, and they reproduced, where they settled, a close resemblance of Roman rule and life. They were planted on the frontiers of the empire for protection, and as a check upon the provincial magistrates. The names of those who went were still enrolled in the lists of the tribes of Rome. Latin was their language, and they used the Roman coinage, and had their chief magistrates sent out or appointed from the mother city. Thus were they very closely united with Rome, and entirely free from any intrusion on the part of the governors of the provinces.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40 (12) The chief city of that part of Macedonia.—More…
(12) The chief city of that part of Macedonia.—More accurately, a chief (or first) city of the border-country of Macedonia. The description is not without difficulty, and has been noted by adverse critics as an instance of St. Luke’s inaccuracy. The city of Philippi, rebuilt by the father of Alexander the Great, and bearing his name in lieu of Krenides ( = the fountains), was situated on the Gangites, a tributary of the Strymon; but it was not the chief city of any one of the four sub-divisions of the Roman province of Macedonia, that rank being assigned to Amphipolis, Thessalonica, Pella, and Pelagonia. As there is no definite article in the Greek, it is possible that St. Luke simply meant to say it was a chief town of the district, the epithet Prôte ( = first) being often found on the coins of cities which were not capitals. The more probable explanation, however, is that he uses the Greek word translated “part,” in the sense of “border-land,” as in the LXX. of Eze_35:7, Rth_3:7, and that it was the first city of that frontier district, either as the most important or as being the first to which they came in the route by which they travelled. This was precisely the position of Philippi, which, together with Pella and other towns, had been garrisoned by the Romans as outposts against the neighbouring tribes of Thrace. It had been established as a colony by Augustus after the defeat of Brutus and Cassius, and its full title, as seen on the coins of the city, was Colonia Augusta Julia Philippensis.
A colony.—The English reader needs to be reminded that a Roman colonia differed from the modern in being essentially a military position. Portions of the conquered territory were commonly assigned to veteran soldiers, and the settlement thus formed was considered politically as an integral part of Rome, all decrees of the emperor or senate being as binding there as in the capital itself. The colonies thus formed were as the “propugnacula imperii” (Cic. de leg. Agrar. c. 27), “populi Romani quasi effigies parvæ simulacraque” (Aul. Gell. xvi. 13). Here, then, in the first European city to which St. Paul came, there was something like an earnest of his future victories. Himself a Roman citizen, he was brought into direct contact with Romans. (See Note on Act_16:21.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40 A city of Macedonia, the first of the district,…
A city of Macedonia, the first of the district, a Roman colony for the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony, A.V.: this for that, A.V.; tarrying for abiding, A.V. A city of Macedonia, etc. This is a difficult sentence. The natural way of construing the words undoubtedly is, as in the A.V., "which is the chief city of the or, "that" district of Macedonia, and a colony." The only difficulty in the way of so taking it is that when Aemilius Paulus, as related by Livy (xlv. 29), divided the conquered kingdom of Macedonia into four districts (regiones or partes), Amphi-pelts was made the capital of the district.in which Philippi was situated. But the epithet prwth does not necessarily mean the capital; it is found on coins applied to cities which were not capitals. Besides, in the interval of above two hundred years between Aemilius Paulus and St. Paul (from s.c. 167 to A.D. 50), it is very probable that the city of Philippi, with its gold-mines and its privileges as a colony, may have really become the capital. And so Lewin, following Wetstein, understands it (vol. it. p. 209). We know that in the reign of Theodosius the Younger, when Macedonia was divided into two provinces, Philippi became the ecclesiastical head of Macedonia Prima. It had been made a colony by Augustus Caesar, with the name "Col. Jul. Aug. Philip.," i.e. Colonia Augusta Julia Philippensis ("Dict. of Greek and Roman Geog."). It must, therefore, anyhow have been a place of first-rate importance at this time. Those, however, who do not accept this explanation, couple kolwnia with poliv, "which is the first colony-city," etc, Others take prwth in a local sense, "the first city you come to in Macedonia" (Conybeare and Howson, Alford, Bengel, etc.). The R.V seems to take htiv ejsti Makedoniav poliv together, and prwth thv meridov as a further description of it a most awkward construction. Alford renders it, "which is the first Macedonian city of the district." But the natural way of construing a passage is almost always the best, and nothing prevents us from believing that St. Luke, who knew Philippi intimately, was strictly accurate in calling it "the chief city of the district of Macedonia," i.e. the district in which it was situated. That meriv is the technical name of the division of a province appears from the title meridarchv, applied by Josephus to a certain Apollonius, governor, under Antiochus Epiphanes, of the district in which Samaria was included. ("Ant. Jud:," 12:5:5) The ancient name of Philippi was Dates first, then Krenides the springs, or wells; and the word used by Livy of the districts of Macedonia, pars prima, secunda, etc., is an exact translation of meriv It received the name of Philippi, from Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, who extracted a great revenue from its gold-mines. Its great historical celebrity arises from the battle in the plain of Philippi, in which the republican party, under Brutus and Cassius, received its death-blow from Octavius and Antony. (For a full description of Philippi, and of the privileges of a colony, see Conybeare and Howson, vol. 1:311, etc., and Lewin, vol. 1: Ac 11) This. Alford, following certain manuscripts, reads aujth, "in the city itself," as distinguished from the place outside the city, where the proseuch was. But, perhaps, St. Luke uses the word "this" from Philippi being the place of his own residence, and where he may have drawn up the narrative on the spot.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32 And from thence to Philippi.
Act_16:12
And from thence to Philippi.
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Philippi
The apostle had not paused at Samothrace--an island celebrated for its sanctity and its amulets, its gods and orgies, its Cybele and Cobira--a scene where the mysteries of Eastern and Western superstition seem to have met and blended. Nor did he stop at Neapolis, the harbour of the Thymonic gulf, but he pressed on to Philippi; and the ground of his preference was that it was the chief city, etc. This cannot mean the chief or capital city, for that was Thessalonica; and if there existed at that period a minuter subdivision, the principal town was Amphipolis. It probably means that it was the first city of the province that lay upon his journey. It was the chief city of that part, and there was every inducement to fix upon it as a centre of operations. As it was a city and a colony, its importance in itself, and in relation to other towns and districts, made it a fitting place for present work and subsequent enterprise. You may either say that Paul went to Philippi as the first city in his path, for he had been summoned into Macedonia, and he could never think of passing the first city which he came to; or that he formally selected Philippi because of its rank and its privileges as a Roman colony. Philippi was anciently called Krenides, or the Springs, on account of its numerous fountains, in which the Gangites has its sources. Philip, about 358 B.C., enlarged the old town and fortified it, in order to protect the frontiers against Thracian invaders, and named it after himself, to commemorate the addition of a new province to his empire. After the famous battle fought and won in its neighbourhood by the Triumvirs, Augustus conferred special honours on the city, and made it a Roman colony. A military settlement had been made in it, chiefly of the soldiers who had been ranged under the standard of Antony, so that it was a protecting garrison on the confines of Macedonia. A colonia was a reproduction in miniature of the mother city Rome. The Roman law ruled; and the Roman insignia were everywhere seen. The municipal affairs were managed by duumvirs, or praetors. Philippi had also the Jus Italicum, or quaritarian ownership of the soil, its lands enjoying the same freedom from taxation as did the soil of Italy. Highly favoured as Philippi had been, it was in need of help. Political franchise and Roman rights, Grecian tastes and studies, wide and varied commerce, could not give it the requisite aid. It was sunk in a spiritual gloom, which needed a higher light than Italian jurisprudence or Hellenic culture could bring it, It was helpless within itself, and the man who represented it had appealed to the sympathies of a Jewish stranger, whose story of the Cross could lift the darkness off its position and destiny. The spear and phalanx of Macedonia had been famous, and had carried conquest and civilisation through a large portion of the Eastern world; the sun of Greece had not wholly set, and Epicureans and Stoics yet mingled in speculation, and sought after wisdom; the sovereignty of Rome had secured peace in all her provinces, and her great roads not only served for the march of the soldier, but for the cortege of the trader; art and law, beauty and power, song and wealth, the statue and the drama, survived and were adored; but there was in many a heart a sense of want and powerlessness, an indefinite longing after some higher good and portion, a painless and restless agitation, which only he of Tarsus could soothe and satisfy with his preaching of the God-man--the life, hope, and centre of humanity. (Prof. Eadie.)
The first three Philippian converts
1. They are representatives of three different races--the one an Asiatic, the other a Greek, the third a Roman.
2. In the relations of everyday life they have nothing in common: the first is engaged in an important and lucrative branch of traffic; the second, treated by law as a mere chattel without any social or political rights, is employed by her masters to trade on the credulous superstition of the ignorant; the third, equally removed from both, holds a subordinate office under government.
3. In their religious training they stand no less apart. In the one, the speculative mystic temper of Oriental devotion has at length found deeper satisfaction in the revealed truths of the Old Testament; the second, bearing the name of the Pythian god, the reputed source of Greek inspiration, represents an artistic and imaginative religion, though manifested in a very low and degrading form; while the third, if he preserved the characteristic features of his race, must have exhibited a type of worship essentially political in tone. The purple dealer and proselyte of Thyatira, the native slave girl with the divining spirit, the Roman jailer, all alike acknowledge the supremacy of the new faith. In the history of the gospel at Philippi, as in the history of the Church at large, is reflected the great maxim of Christianity, the central truth of the apostles preaching--that here is neither Jew nor Greek, etc. (Gal_3:28).
4. The order of these conversions is significant: first the proselyte, next the Greek, lastly the Roman. Thus the incidents in their sequence, no less than in their variety, symbolise the progress of Christianity throughout the world. Through the Israelite dispersion, through the proselytes whether of the covenant or the gate, the gospel message first reached the Greek. By the instrumentality of the Greek language, and the diffusion of the Greek race, it finally established itself in Rome, the citadel of power and civilisation, whence directly or indirectly it was destined to spread over the whole world. (Bp. Lightfoot.)
Christianity in Europe
I. Accepting Christ (verses 14, 15). It is well to note--
1. Who this convert was.
(1) She was a woman of business. Her perceptions had been sharpened by trade. She was free from the bondage of local prejudice.
(2) She was from Thyatira, a city of Asia, in which district the missionaries had been forbidden to speak the Word. When the Holy Spirit shuts the door in one place, it may be that He intends to reach it by the way of another.
(3) She was a Jewish proselyte. She had learned to worship the true God. Having made that much progress, she was prepared to go still further--much more prepared than the Jews themselves.
2. How she was converted. Whose heart the Lord opened, etc., Paul spoke the Word, but the Lord gave the Word fruitfulness. I planted, Apollos watered; God gave the increase.
3. How her conversion was shown.
(1) Her whole family was converted with her. Through her faith, her servants, and her children, if she had children, were brought into the kingdom of Christ.
(2) She constrained the missionaries to abide with her, which was no small burden. Paul, Timothy, Silas, and Luke made quite a party to take care of. And note how she puts her request. She makes it appear as though they were doing her a favour, rather than she them. They had done so much for her soul that she wanted to do something for their bodies.
II. Saved through Christ. We turn from one who was ready to accept Christ to one who was in the power of Satan. But the power of Christ was shown in the one ease as in the other. The Lord opened the heart of the one, cast out the evil spirit from the other.
1. The evil spirit in possession.
(1) Bringing gain. The unfortunate girl was owned by a joint-stock company. Her owners speculated in the credulity of men. Her insane ravings were taken as the revelation of an oracle.
(2) Bringing reproach. The same following after Paul and us, cried, etc. This she did for many days. The testimony which she bore was the same as that of the evil spirits to the Saviour. The witness was true, but it was not from a good source.
2. The evil spirit cast out.
(1) Why? Paul being sore troubled, etc. At what? Presumably at the character of the endorsement he and his friends were receiving. With this, however, there may have been a great sympathy for the poor girl.
(2) How? I charge thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. The act was done in such a way as to show the faith of Paul in Christ, his dependence upon Christ, and as to honour Christ. Those who witnessed the miracle could not have any doubt as to the power through which the marvel was accomplished.
III. Suffering for Christ.
1. The anger of the masters.
(1) How it arose. Her masters saw that the hope of their gain was gone. The maid now spoke rationally, instead of raving, or giving wild, weird utterances that made people think that they were listening to something supernatural. Now no one would pay anything to hear the girl speak good sense. It did not matter to them that the maid was released from a most cruel thraldom. Let a drunkard burst his bonds, and what rum seller will rejoice over his deliverance? Let a gambler throw off the terrible fascination, and how angry are those whom he has been enriching.
(2) How it was manifested.
(a) They laid hold on Paul and Silas, etc. The dragging, we may be sure, was not gently done.
(b) They said, These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, etc. The formal complaint did not correspond to the offence. They knew that the magistrates could take no cognisance of such an injury as they had received. They craftily word their complaint. They appeal to the Roman prejudice against the Jews.
2. The anger of the magistrates. The multitude became a mob, and the magistrates not much better. No form of a trial was even pretended. Against these Jews, the accusation of such respectable, dividend-receiving citizens was taken as conclusive evidence. Judgment and sentence were instantaneous.
(1) The missionaries were beaten with many stripes, more cruelly than if they had been committing a crime.
(2) They were cast into the inner prison, and their feet made fast in the stocks. What land is there where a similar heroic record has not been made? (M. C. Hazard.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v29 Chapter 12
Chapter 12
ST. PAUL IN MACEDONIA.
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Act_16:29-31; Act_17:1-2; Act_17:10
TROAS was at this time the termination of St. Pauls Asiatic travels. He had passed diagonally right through Asia Minor, following the great Roman roads which determined his line of march. From Troas he proceeded to Philippi, and for exactly the same reason. All the great roads formed under the emperors down to the time of Constantine the Great led to Rome. When the seat of empire was moved to Constantinople, all the Asiatic roads converged upon that city; but in St. Pauls day Rome was the worlds centre of attraction, and thither the highways all tended. This fact explains St. Pauls movements. The Egnatian road was one of the great channels of communication established for State purposes by Rome, and this road ran from Neapolis, where St. Paul landed, through Philippi on to Dyrrachium, a port on the Adriatic, whence the traveller took ship to Brundusium, the modern Brindisi, and thence reached Rome. What a striking commentary we find in this simple fact upon the words of St. Paul Gal_4:4 : "When the fulness of the time came God sent forth His Son." Roman dominion involved much suffering and war and bloodshed, but it secured the network of communication, the internal peace, and the steady, regular government which now covered Europe as well as Asia, and thus for the first time in the worlds history rendered the diffusion of the Gospel possible, as St. Pauls example here shows. The voyage from Troas to Neapolis was taken by the Apostle after the usual fashion of the time. Neapolis was the port of Philippi, whence it is distant some eight miles. Travellers from the East to Rome always landed there, and then took the Egnatian Road which started from Neapolis. If they were official persons they could use the public postal service, post-houses being established at a distance of six miles from one another, where relays of horses were kept at the public expense, to carry persons travelling on the imperial service. Paul and Silas, Timothy and Luke, must, however, have travelled on foot along the Egnatian Road from Neapolis to Philippi, which was their first objective point, according to St. Pauls usual policy, of attacking large and important centres of population, and then leaving the sacred leaven to work out into the surrounding mass of paganism. Philippi amply rewarded the wisdom of his plan, and the Philippian Church became noted for its zeal, its faith, its activity, among the Churches which owed their origin to the Apostle, as we learn from the Epistles addressed to the Corinthians and to the Philippians themselves a short time after the foundation of the Philippian Church.
Now let us look at the circumstances under which that foundation was laid. To understand them we must go back upon the course of history. Philippi was a city built by King Philip, the father of Alexander the Great. After the conquest of Macedonia by the Romans, it became famous as the scene of the great battle between Brutus and Cassius on the one hand, and Mark Antony and Augustus on the other, which decided the fate of the empire and influenced the course of the worlds history as few other battles have done. At the time of St. Pauls visit the memory of that battle was fresh, and the outward and visible signs thereof were to be seen on every side, as indeed some of them are still to be seen, the triumphal arches, for instance, erected in memory of the victory and the mound or rampart of earth raised by Brutus to hinder the advance of the opposing forces. But these things had for the holy travellers a very slight interest, as their hearts were set upon a mightier conflict and a nobler war far than any ever before waged upon earths surface. There is no mention made in the sacred narrative of the memories connected with the place, and yet St. Luke, as an honest writer setting down facts of which he had formed an important part, lets slip some expressions which involve and throw us back upon the history of the place for an, explanation, showing how impossible it is to grasp the full force and meaning of the sacred writers unless we strive to read the Bible with the eyes of the people who lived at the time and for whom it was written. St. Luke calls Philippi "a city of Macedonia, the first of the district, a colony." Now this means that in that time it was situated in the Roman province of Macedonia, that it was either the capital of the division of Macedonia, in which it was situated, Macedonia being subdivided into four distinct divisions which were kept perfectly separate, or else that it was the first city the traveller met upon entering Macedonia from Asia, and further that it was a Roman colony, and thus possessed peculiar privileges. When we read in the Bible of colonies we must not understand the word in our modern sense. Colonies were then simply transcripts of the original city whence they had come. Roman colonies were miniatures or copies of Rome itself transplanted into the provinces, and ruling as such amid the conquered races where they were placed. They served a twofold purpose. They acted as garrisons to restrain the turbulence of the neighbouring tribes; and if we study Roman geography carefully we shall find that they were always placed in neighbourhoods where their military importance is plainly manifest; and further still, they were used as convenient places to locate the veteran soldiers of Italy who had served their time, where they were rewarded with grants of land, and were utilising at the same time the skill and experience in military matters which they had gained, for the general benefit of the State.
Augustus made Philippi into a colony, erecting a triumphal arch to celebrate his victory over Brutus, and placing there a large settlement of his veterans who secured for him this important outpost. The colonies which were thus dispersed along the military frontier, as we should put it in modern language, were specially privileged. All the settlers were Roman citizens, and the government of the colony was like that of the mother city itself, in the hands of two magistrates, called in Greek Strategoi, or in Latin Praetors, who ruled according to the laws of the Twelve Tables and after Roman methods, though perhaps all the neighbouring cities were still using their ancient laws and customs handed down from times long prior to the Roman Conquest. The details given us by St. Luke are in the strictest accordance in all these respects with the facts which we know independently concerning the history and political status of Philippi.
St. Paul and his companions arrived in Philippi in the early part of the week. He was by this time a thoroughly experienced traveller. Five years later, when writing his Second Epistle to Corinth, he tells us that he had been already three times shipwrecked; so that, unless peculiarly unfortunate, he must have already made extended and repeated sea voyages, though up to the present we have only heard of the journeys from Antioch to Cyprus, from Cyprus to Perga, and from Attalia back to Antioch. A two days voyage across the fresh and rolling waters of the Mediterranean, followed by a steep climb over the mountain Pangaeus which intervenes between Philippi and its port Neapolis, made, however, a rest of a day or two very acceptable to the Apostle and his friends. St. Paul never expected too much from his own body, or from the bodies of his companions; and though he knew the work of a worlds salvation was pressing, yet he could take and enjoy a well-earned holiday from time to time. There was nothing in St. Paul of that eternal fussiness which we at times see in people of strong imaginations but weak self-control, who, realising the awful amount of woe and wickedness in the world, can never be at rest even for a little. The men of God remained quiet therefore {Act_16:12-13} till the Sabbath Day, when, after their usual custom, they sought out in the early morning the Jewish place of worship, where St. Paul always first proclaimed the gospel. The Jewish colony resident at Philippi must have been a very small one. The Rabbinical rule was that where ten wise men existed there a synagogue might be established. There cannot therefore have been ten learned, respectable, and substantial Jews in Philippi competent to act as a local sanhedrin or court. Where, however, the Jews could not establish a synagogue, they did not live without any external expression of religion. They knew how easily neglect of public worship is followed by practical atheism, as we often see. Men may say indeed that God can be realised, and can be worshipped anywhere, - a very great truth and a very precious one for those who are unavoidably cut off from the public worship of the Most High; but a truth which has no application to those who wilfully cut themselves off from that worship which has the covenanted promise of His presence. It is not a good sign for the young men of this generation that so many of them utterly neglect public worship; for as surely as men act so, then present neglect will be followed by a total forgetfulness of the Eternal, and by a disregard of the laws which He has established amongst men. The Jews at Philippi did not follow this example; when they could not establish a synagogue they set apart an oratory or Place of Prayer, whither they resorted on the Sabbath Day to honour the God of their fathers, and to keep alive in their childrens hearts the memory of His laws and doings.
The original name of Philippi was Crenides, or Place of Streams. Beside one of these streams the Jews had placed their oratory, and there St. Paul preached his first sermon in Europe and gained Lydia, his first European convert, a Jewess by blood, a woman of Thyatira in Asia Minor by birth, of Philippi in Macedonia by residence, and a dyer in purple by trade. The congregation of women assembled at that oratory must have been a very small one. When Philippi did not afford a sufficient Jewish population for the erection of a synagogue such as was found among the smaller towns of Asia Minor, and such as we shall in the course of the present tour find to have existed at towns and cities of no great size in Greece and Macedonia, then we may be sure that the female population, who assembled that Sabbath morning to pray and listen to the Scriptures, must have been a small one. But St. Paul and his companions had learned already one great secret of the true evangelists life. They never despised a congregation because of its smallness. I have read somewhere in the writings of St. Francis de Sales, Bishop of Geneva, a remark bearing on this point. De Sales was an extreme Roman Catholic, and his mind was injured and his mental views perverted in many respects by the peculiar training he thus received. But still he was in many respects a very saintly man, and his writings embody much that is good for every one. In one of his letters which I have read he deals with this very point, and speaks of the importance of small congregations, first, because they have no tendency to feed the preachers pride, but rather help to keep him humble; and secondly, because some of the most effective and fruitful sermons have been preached to extremely small congregations, two or three persons at most, some one of whom has afterwards turned out to be a most vigorous soldier of the Cross of Christ. The most effective sermon perhaps that ever was preached was that delivered to Saul of Tarsus when to him alone came the voice, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" And here again, in the Philippian Oratory, the congregation was but a small one, yet the Apostle despised it not. He and his companions bent all their powers to the work, threw their whole hearts into it, and as the result the Lord rewarded their earnest, thorough, faithful service as He rewards such service in every department of lifes action. The Lord opened the heart of Lydia so that she attended to the apostolic teaching, and she and all her household when duly instructed became baptised disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.
This was an important incident in the history of the Philippian Church, and was attended by far-reaching results. Lydia herself, like so many others of Gods most eminent saints, disappears at once and for ever from the scene. But her conversion was a fruitful one. St. Paul and his friends continued quietly but regularly working and teaching at the oratory. Lydia would seem to have been a widow, and must have been a woman of some position in the little community; for she was able to entertain the Apostle and his company as soon as she embraced the faith and felt its exceeding preciousness. When inviting them, too, she uses the language of a woman independent of all other control. "If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there," are words with the tone of one who as a widow owned no superior, and whose will was law within her own household; as well as the language of a woman who felt that the gospel she had embraced demanded and deserved the consecration to its service of all her worldly possessions. Previously to this conversion St. Paul had lived in hired lodgings, but now he moved to Lydias residence, abiding there, and thence regularly worshipping at the Jewish oratory. The presence of these Jewish strangers soon attracted attention. Their teaching too got noised abroad, exaggerated doubtless and distorted after the manner of popular reports. And the crowd were ready to be suspicious of all Eastern foreigners. The settlers in the colony of Philippi belonged to the rural population of Italy, who, after the manner of countrified folk of every generation, were a good way behind, for good or ill, their city brethren. The excavations made at Philippi have brought to light the fact that the colonists there were worshippers of the primitive Italian rustic gods, specially of the god Silvanus, eschewing the fashionable Greek deities, Jupiter, Juno, Venus, Diana, Apollo, and such like. A temple of Silvanus was erected at Philippi for the hardy Italian veterans, and numerous inscriptions have been found and have been duly described by the French Mission in Macedonia to which we have already referred, telling of the building of the temple and of the persons who contributed towards it. These simple Western soldiers were easily prejudiced against the Eastern strangers by reports spread concerning their doctrines, and specially concerning the Jewish King, of whose kingdom they were the heralds. Political considerations were at once raised. We can scarcely now realise the suspicions which must have been roused against the early preachers of Christianity by the very language they used. Their sacramental language concerning the body and blood of Christ, the language of Christian love and union which they used, designating themselves brethren and sisters, caused for more than two centuries the dissemination of the most frightful rumours concerning the horrible nature of Christian love-feasts. They were accused of cannibalism and of the most degraded and immoral practices; and when we take up the Apologists of the second century, Justin Martyr and such like, we shall find that the efforts of these men are largely directed to the refutation of such dreadful charges. And as it was in morals so was it too in politics. The sacred and religious language of the Christians caused them to be suspected of designs hostile to the Roman Government. The apostles preached about a King who ruled the kingdom of God. Now the Romans abhorred the very name and title of king, which they associated with the cruel acts of the early tyrants who reigned in the times of Romes fabulous antiquity. The hostility to the title was so great that, though the Roman people endured a despotism worse and more crushing at the hands of the Caesars, they never would allow them to assume the title of kings, but simply called them emperors, imperators or commanders of the army, a name which to their ears connoted nothing savouring of the kingly office, though for moderns the title of emperor expresses the kingly office and much more. The colonists in Philippi, being Italians, would feel these prejudices in their full force. Easterns indeed would have had no objection to the title of king, as we see from the cry raised by the mob of Jerusalem when they cried in reference to Christs claim, "We have no king but Caesar." But the rough and rude Roman veterans, when they heard vague reports of St. Pauls teaching to the Jews who met at the oratory by the river-side, quite naturally mistook the nature of his doctrine, and thought that he was simply a political agitator organising a revolt against imperial authority. An incident which then occurred fanned the sleeping embers into a flame. There was a female slave the property of some crafty men who by her means traded on the simplicity of the colonists. She was possessed with a spirit of divination. What the nature of this spirit was we have not the means of now determining. Some would resolve it into mere epilepsy, but such an explanation is not consistent with St. Pauls action and words. He addressed the spirit, "I charge thee in the name of Jesus Christ to Come out of her." And the spirit, we are told, came out that very hour. The simple fact is that psychology is at the best a very obscure science, and the mysteries of the soul a very puzzling region, even under the Christian dispensation and surrounded by the spiritual blessings of the kingdom of God. But paganism was the kingdom of Satan, where he ruled with a power and freedom he no longer enjoys, and we can form no conception of the frightful disturbances Satanic agency may have raised amid the dark places of the human spirit. Without attempting explanations therefore, which must be insufficient, I am content to accept the statement of the sacred writer, who was an eye-witness of the cure, that the spirit of divination, the spirit of Python, as the original puts it, yielded obedience to the invocation of the sacred Name which is above every name, leaving the damsels inner nature once more calm and at union within itself. This was the signal for a riot. The slave-owners recognised that their hopes of gain had fled. They were not willing to confess that these despised Jews possessed a power transcending far that which dwelt in the human instrument who had served their covetous purposes. They may have heard, it may be, of the tumults excited about this same time by the Jews at Rome and of their expulsion from the capital by the decree of the Emperor, so the owners of the slave-girl and the mob of the city dragged the Apostles before the local Duumvirs and accused them of like disturbances: "These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, and set forth customs which it is not lawful for us to receive or to observe, being Romans." The accusation was sufficient. No proof was demanded, no time for protest allowed. The magistrates with their own hands dragged the clothes off the backs of the Apostles, and they were flogged at once by the lictors or sergeants, as our translation calls them, in attendance upon the Duumvirs, who then despatched their victims to the common prison. Here a question may be raised, Why did not St. Paul save himself by protesting that he was a Roman citizen, as he did subsequently at Jerusalem when he was about to be similarly treated? Several explanations occur. The colonists were Italians and spoke Latin. St. Paul spoke Hebrew and Greek, and though he may have known Latin too, his Latin may not have been understood by these rough Roman soldiers: The mob again was excited, and when a mob gets excited it is but very little its members attend to an unfortunate prisoners words. We know too, not only from St. Pauls own words, but from the testimony of Cicero himself, in his celebrated oration against Verres, that in remote districts this claim was often disregarded, even when urged by Italians, and much more when made by despised Jews. St. Paul tells us in 2Co_11:25, that he received three Roman floggings notwithstanding his Roman citizenship, and though the Philippian magistrates were afraid when they heard next day of the illegal violence of which they had been guilty, the mob, who could not be held accountable, probably took right good care that St. Pauls protest never reached the official ears to which it was addressed. These considerations sufficiently account for the omission of any notice of a protest on the Apostles part. He simply had not the opportunity, and then when the tumultuous scene was over Paul and Silas were hurried off to the common dungeon, where they were secured in the stocks and thrust into the innermost prison as notorious and scandalous offenders.
No ill-treatment could, however, destroy that secret source of joy and peace which St. Paul possessed in his loved Masters conscious presence. "I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christs sake," is his own triumphant expression when looking back a few years later over the way by which the Lord had led him, and therefore at midnight the astonished prisoners heard the inner dungeon ringing with unwonted songs of praise raised by the Jewish strangers. An earthquake, too, lent its terrors to the strange scene, shaking the prison to its foundations and loosing the staples to which the prisoners chains were fastened. The jailer, roused from sleep, and seeing the prison doors opened wide, would have committed suicide were it not for Pauls restraining and authoritative voice; and then the astonished official, who must have heard the strange rumours to which the words of the demoniac alluded-"These men are the servants of the Most High God, which proclaim unto you the way of salvation"-rushed into the presence of the Apostles, crying out in words which have ever since been famous, "Sirs, what must I do to be Saved?" to which the equally famous answer was given, " Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house." The jailor then took the Apostles, bathed their bruised bodies, set food before them, gathered his household to listen to the glad tidings, which they received so rapidly and grasped so thoroughly that they were at once baptised and enabled to rejoice with that deep spiritual joy which an experimental knowledge of God always confers. The jailor, feeling for the first time in his life the peace which passeth all understanding, realised the truth which St. Augustine afterwards embodied in the immortal words: "Thou, O God, hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee."
Let us look for a little at the question of the jailer and the answer of the Apostle. They are words very often used, and very often misused. The jailer, when he rushed into St. Pauls presence crying out "What must I do to be saved?" was certainly not the type of a conscience-stricken sinner, convinced of his own sin and spiritual danger, as men sometimes regard him. He was simply in a state of fright and astonishment. He had heard that these Jewish prisoners committed to him were preaching about some salvation which they had to offer. The earthquake seemed to him the expression of some deitys wrath at their harsh treatment, and so in his terror he desires to know what he must do to be saved from this wrath. His words were notable, but they were not Christian words, for he had yet much to learn of the nature of sin and the nature of the salvation from it which the Apostles were preaching. The Philippian jailor was a specimen of those who are saved violently and by fear. Terror forced him into communion with the Apostles, broke down the barriers which hindered the approach of the Word, and then the power of the Holy Ghost, working through St. Paul, effected the remainder, opening his eyes to the true character of salvation and his own profound need of it. St. Pauls words have been misunderstood. I have heard them addressed to a Christian congregation and explained as meaning that the jailor had nothing to do but just realise Christ Jesus as his Saviour, whereupon he was perfect and complete so far as the spiritual life was concerned; and then they were applied to the congregation present as teaching that, as it was with the jailor, so was it with all Christians; they have simply to believe as he did, and then they have nothing more to do-a kind of teaching which infallibly produces antinomian results. Such an explanation ignores the fact that there is a great difference between the jailor, who was not a Christian in any sense and knew nothing about Christ when he flung himself at St. Pauls feet, and a Christian congregation, who know about Christ and believe in Him. But this explanation is still more erroneous. It misrepresents what St. Paul meant and what his hearers understood him to mean. What did any ordinary Jew or any ordinary pagan with whom St. Paul came in contact understand him to mean when he said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved"? They first had to ask him who Jesus Christ was, whence He had come, what He had taught, what were the obligations of His religion. St. Paul had to open out to them the nature of sin and salvation, and to explain the obligation and blessing of the sacrament of baptism as well as the necessity of bodily holiness and purity. The initial sacrament of baptism must have held a foremost place in that midnight colloquy or conference concerning Christian truth. St. Paul was not the man to perform a rite of which his converts understood nothing, and to which they could attach no meaning. "Believe on the Lord Jesus" involved repentance and contrition and submission to Christian truth, and these things involved the exposition of Christian truth, history, doctrines, and duties.
This text, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved," is often quoted in one-sided and narrow teaching to show that man has nothing to do to be saved. Of course in one sense this is perfectly true. We can do nothing meritoriously towards salvation; from first to last our salvation is all of Gods free grace; but then, viewing the matter from the human side, we have much to do to be saved. We have to repent, to seek God for ourselves, to realise Christ and His laws in our life, to seek after that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. There were two different types of men who at different times addressed practically the same inquiry to the Apostles. They were both outside the Church, and they were both seekers blindly after God. The Jews on the day of Pentecost said, "Brethren, what shall we do?" and Peter replied, "Repent ye, and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, unto the remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Such was apostolic teaching to the Jews of Jerusalem. The jailor demanded, "What must I do to be saved?" and St. Paul replied, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved." Such was apostolic teaching to an ignorant pagan at Philippi; more concise than the Jerusalem answer, but meaning the same thing, and involving precisely the same doctrines in the hands of such a great master of the spiritual life as was the Apostle of the Gentiles.
The remainder of the story is soon told. When the morning came there came quiet reflection with it as far as the magistrates were concerned. They became conscious of their illegal conduct, and they sent their lictors to order the release of the Apostles. St. Paul now stood upon his rights. His protest had been disregarded by the mob. He now claimed his rights as a Roman citizen. "They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned men, that are Romans, and have cast us into prison; and do they now cast us out privily? Nay, verily; but let them come themselves and bring us out." These are St. Pauls words, and they are brave, and at the same time wise words. They were brave words because it took a strong man to send back such an answer to magistrates who had treated him so outrageously only the day before. They were wise words, for they give us an apostles interpretation of our Lords language in the Sermon upon the Mount concerning the nonresistance of evil, and shows us that in St. Pauls estimation Christs law did not bind a man to tolerate foul injustice. Such toleration, in fact, is very wrong if it can be helped; because it is simply an encouragement to the wicked doers to treat others in the same scandalous manner. Toleration of outrage and injustice is unfair and uncharitable towards others, if they can be lawfully redressed or at least apologised for. It is a Christian mans duty to bring public evil-doers and tyrants, instruments of unrighteousness like these Duumvirs of Philippi, to their senses, not for his own sake, but in order that he may prevent the exercise of similar cruelties against he weaker brethren. We may be sure that the spirited action of St. Paul, compelling these provincial magnates to humble themselves before the despised strangers, must have had a very wholesome effect in restraining them from similar violence during the rest of their term of office.
Such was St. Pauls stay at Philippi. It lasted a considerable time, and made its mark, as a flourishing Church was established there, to which he addressed an Epistle when he lay the first time a captive at Rome. This Epistle naturally forms a most interesting commentary on the notices of the Philippian visit in the Acts of the Apostles, a point which is worked out at large in Bishop Lightfoots Commentary on Philippians and in Paleys "Horae Paulinae." The careful student of Holy Writ will find that St. Pauls letter and St. Lukes narrative when compared illuminate one another in a wondrous manner. We cannot afford space to draw out this comparison in detail, and it is the less necessary to do so as Dr. Lightfoots writings are so generally accessible. Let us, however, notice one point in this Epistle to the Philippians, which was written about the same time (a few months previously, in fact) as the Acts of the Apostles. It corroborates the Acts as to the circumstances under which the Church of Philippi was founded. St. Paul in the Epistle refers again and again to the persecutions and afflictions of the Philippian Church, and implies that he was a fellow-sufferer with them. St. Paul dwells on this in the beginning of the Epistle in words whose force cannot be understood unless we grasp this fact. In the sixth verse of the first chapter he expresses himself as "Confident of this very thing, that He which began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ: even as it is right for me to be thus minded on behalf of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defence and confirmation, of the gospel, ye all are partakers with me of grace." St. Paul speaks of the Philippians as personally acquainted with chains and sufferings and prison-houses for Christs sake, and regards these things as a proof of Gods grace vouchsafed not only to the Apostle, but also to the Philippians; for St. Paul was living at that high level when he could view bonds and trials and persecutions as marks of the Divine love. In the twenty-eighth verse of the same chapter he exhorts them to be in no wise "affrighted by the adversaries," and in the next two describes them as persons to whom "it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer in His behalf: having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me," words which can only refer to the violence and afflictions which they witnessed as practised against himself, and which they were now themselves suffering in turn. While to complete St. Pauls references we notice that in an Epistle written some five years later than his first visit to Philippi he expressly refers to the persecutions which the Philippian Church in common with all the Macedonian Churches seems to have suffered from the Very beginning. In 2Co_8:1-2, he writes: "Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of God which hath been given in the Churches of Macedonia; how that in much proof of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality." Now all these passages put together confirm for us what the Acts expressly affirms, that from the very outset of their Christian career the Philippian Church had endured the greatest trials, and experienced a fellowship in the Apostles sufferings. And surely we may see in the character of the Philippian Epistle something eminently characteristic of this experience! It has been remarked that the Philippian Epistle is the only Epistle addressed to a Church in which there is no trace of blame or reproof. Temptation and trial and chastisement had there worked their appointed purpose. The Philippian Church had been baptised in blood, and grounded in afflictions, and purified by the cleansing fires of persecution, and consequently the tried Church gathered itself closer to its Divine Lord, and was perfected above all others in His likeness, and profited above all others in the Divine life.
After the terrible experience of Philippi Paul and Silas passed on to other towns of the same province of Macedonia. The Apostle, however, when quitting Philippi to do the same evangelistic work, breaking up the ground in other towns after the manner of a pioneer, did not leave the Church of Philippi devoid of wisest pastoral care. It is most likely, as Dr. Lightfoot points out in the Introduction to his Commentary on Philippians, that St. Luke was left behind to consolidate the work which had been thus begun by such a noble company. Then Paul and Silas and Timotheus proceeded to Thessalonica, one hundred miles west, the capital of the province, where the proconsul resided, and where was a considerable Jewish population, as we see, not only from the fact that a synagogue is expressly said to have existed there, but also because the Jews were able to excite the city pagan mob against the Apostles and drag them before the local magistrates. St. Paul at Philippi had for the first time experienced a purely pagan persecution. He had indeed previously suffered at the hands of the heathen at Lystra, but they were urged on by the Jews. At Philippi he gained his first glimpse of that long vista of purely Gentile persecution through which the Church had to pass till Christianity seated itself in the person of Constantine on the throne of the Caesars. But as soon as he got to Thessalonica he again experienced the undying hostility of his Jewish fellow-country-men using for their wicked purposes the baser portion of the city rabble. St. Paul remained three weeks in Thessalonica teaching privately and publicly the gospel message, without experiencing any Jewish opposition. It is an interesting fact that to this day St. Pauls visit to Thessalonica is remembered, and in one of the local mosques, which was formerly the Church of Sancta Sophia, a marble pulpit is shown, said to have been the very one occupied by the Apostle, while in the surrounding plains trees and groves are pointed out as marking spots where he tarried for a time. The Jews were at last, however, roused to opposition, possibly because of St. Pauls success among the Gentiles, who received his doctrines with such avidity that there believed "of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few." In Thessalonica, as elsewhere, the spirit of religions selfishness, desiring to have gospel promises and a Messiah all to themselves, was the ruin of the Jewish people. The Jews therefore, assisted by the pagans, assaulted the residence of Jason, with whom St. Paul and his friends were staying. They missed the Apostles themselves, but they seized Jason and some of the apostolic band, or at least some of their converts whom they found in Jasons house, and brought them before the town magistrates, who, acting under the eye of the resident proconsul, did not lend themselves to any irregular proceedings like the Philippian praetors. A charge of treason was formally brought against the prisoners: "These all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another King, one Jesus"; in the words of which charge we get a glimpse of the leading topic upon which the Apostles insisted. Jesus Christ, the crucified, risen, glorified King and Head of His people, was the great subject of St. Pauls teaching as it struck the heathen. The Thessalonian magistrates acted very fairly. They. entered the charge, which was a serious one m the eye of Roman law. Bail was then taken for the accused and they were set free. The Apostles, however, escaped arrest, and the local brethren determined that they should incur no danger; so while the accused remained to stand their trial, Paul and Silas and Timotheus were despatched to Beroea, where they were for a time welcomed, and free discussion permitted in the synagogue concerning the truths taught by the Evangelists. After a time, however, tidings having reached Thessalonica, agents were despatched to Beroea, who stirring up the Jewish residents, St. Paul was despatched in charge of some trusty messengers, who guided the steps of the hunted servant of God to the city of Athens. We see the physical infirmities of St. Paul, the difficulties he had to contend with, hinted at in the fourteenth and fifteenth verses of the seventeenth chapter. "Then immediately the brethren sent forth Paul," and "They that conducted Paul brought him to Athens," words which give us a glimpse of his fearfully defective eyesight. His enemies might be pressing upon him and danger might be imminent, but he could make no unaided effort to save himself. He depended upon the kindly help of others that he might escape his untiring foes and find his way to a place of safety.
Thus ended St. Pauls first visit to Thessalonica so far as the Acts of the Apostles is concerned; but we have interesting light thrown upon it from an Epistle which St. Paul himself wrote to the Thessalonians soon after his departure from amongst them. A comparison of First Thessalonians with the text of the Acts will furnish the careful student with much information concerning the circumstances of that notable visit, just as we have seen that the text of the Philippian Epistle throws light upon his doings at Philippi. The Thessalonian Epistles are more helpful even than the Philippians in this respect, because they were written only a few months after St. Pauls visit to Thessalonica, while years elapsed, eight or ten at least, before the Philippian Epistle was indited. First Thessalonians shows us, for instance, that St. Pauls visit to Thessalonica lasted a considerable time. In the Acts we read of his discussing in the synagogue three Sabbath days, and then it would appear as if the riot was raised which drove him to Beroea and Athens. The impression left on our minds by St. Lukes narrative is that St. Pauls labours were almost entirely concentrated upon the Jews in Thessalonica, and that he bestowed very little attention indeed upon the pagans. The Epistle corrects this impression. When we read the first chapter of First Thessalonians we see that it was almost altogether a Church of converted idolaters, not of converted Jews. St. Paul speaks of the Thessalonians as having turned from idols to serve the living God; he refers to the instructions on various points like the resurrection, the ascension, the second coming of Christ, which he had imparted, and describes their faith and works as celebrated throughout all Macedonia and Achaia. A large and flourishing church like that, composed of former pagans, could not have been founded in the course of three weeks, during which time St. Pauls attention was principally bestowed on the Jewish residents. Then too, when we turn to Php_4:16, we find that St. Paul stayed long enough in Thessalonica to receive no less than two remittances of money from the brethren at Philippi to sustain himself and his brethren. His whole attention too was not bestowed upon mission work; he spent his days and nights in manual labour. In the ninth verse of the second chapter of First Thessalonians he reminds them of the fact that he supported himself in their city, "For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached unto you the Gospel of God." When we realise these things we shall feel that the Apostle must have spent at least a couple of months in Thessalonica. It was perhaps his tremendous success among the heathen which so stirred up the passions of the town mob as enabled the Jews to instigate them to raise the riot, they themselves keeping all the while in the background. St. Paul, in First Thessalonians, describes the riots raised against the Christians as being the immediate work of the pagans: "Ye, brethren, became imitators of the Churches of God which are in Judaea in Christ Jesus. For ye also suffered the same things of your own countrymen as they did of the Jews"; a statement which is quite consistent with the theory that the persecution was originally inspired by the Jews. But we cannot further pursue this interesting line of inquiry which has been thoroughly worked out by Mr. Lewin in vol. 2 Ch 11, by Conybeare and Howson in ch. 9, and by Archdeacon Farrar, as well as by Dr. Salmon in his "Introduction to the New Testament," ch. 20. The careful student will find in all these works most interesting light reflected back upon the Acts from the apostolic letters, and will see how thoroughly the Epistles, which were much the earlier documents, confirm the independent account of St. Luke, writing at a subsequent period.
Before we terminate this chapter we desire to call attention to one other point where the investigations of modern travel have helped to illustrate the genuineness of the Acts of the Apostles. It has been the contention of the rationalistic party that the Acts was a composition of the second century, worked up by a clever forger out of the materials at his command. There are various lines of proof by which this theory can be refuted, but none appeal so forcibly to ordinary men as the minute accuracy which marks it when describing the towns of Asia Minor and Macedonia. Macedonia is a notable case. We have already pointed out how the Acts gives their proper title to the magistrates of Philippi and recognises its peculiar constitution as a colony. Thessalonica forms an interesting contrast to Philippi. Thessalonica was a free city like Antioch in Syria, Tarsus, and Athens, and therefore, though the residence of the proconsul who ruled the province of Macedonia, was governed by its own ancient magistrates and its own ancient laws without any interference on the part of the proconsul. St. Luke makes a marked distinction between Philippi and Thessalonica. At Philippi the Apostles were brought before the praetors, at Thessalonica they were brought before the politarchs, a title strange to classical antiquity, but which has been found upon a triumphal arch which existed till a few years ago across the main street of the modern city of Thessalonica. That arch has now disappeared; but the fragments containing the inscription were fortunately preserved and have been now placed in the British Museum, where they form a precious relic proving the genuineness of the sacred narrative.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv13, 16, 19, 25, 35 13–15. Went out … by a river side. The…
13–15. Went out … by a river side. The Gangas, a small river which flows by the city. Where prayer was wont to be made. Where there was a praying place. There seems to have been no synagogue, but a few pious Jews, women at least in great part, met on the river banks, out of the city, for prayer. We … spake unto the women. Either Jewish women, or proselytes to the Jewish faith.
Lydia. The name is Greek. She was probably a convert to Judaism. A seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira. Thyatira, afterwards one of the seven churches of Asia, was beyond the Ægean Sea, hundreds of miles away. It was on the borders of Lydia, which was famous for its purple cloths. She was at this distant place for purposes of trade. Thyatira was a Macedonian colony, and Lydia probably had acquaintances or kinsmen in Macedonia itself. Whose heart the Lord opened. How, it is not stated. Possibly some of his providences especially fitted her for the reception of the gospel.
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And when she was baptized. In the apostolic period baptism always at once followed acceptance of the gospel. And her household. Some have held that this implies the baptism of infants. It rather implies that her servants and friends also accepted the gospel. There is no ground for the inference that she was even married, or had children. Meyer (Acts, p. 311), himself a German Lutheran, says: “If, in the Jewish and Gentile families which were converted to Christ there were children, their baptism is to be assumed in those cases, when they were so far advanced that they could and did confess their faith on Jesus as the Messiah; for this was the universal, absolutely necessary qualification for the reception of baptism.… Therefore the baptism of the children of Christians, of which no trace is found in the New Testament is not to be held as an apostolic ordinance.” Olshausen and Neander, also Pedobaptists, take the same view. Lydia's household was probably composed of women who assisted her in her business. She constrained us. Paul did not usually accept aid from his converts (Acts 20:33; 2 Cor. 12:17), but it seems that her urgent entreaty prevailed.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv14, 16, 19 Act_16:14. Lydia.—“Certainly a proper name, not a patronymic” (Zöckler).…
CRITICAL REMARKS
Act_16:14. Lydia.—“Certainly a proper name, not a patronymic” (Zöckler). “She had probably become addicted to Jewish religious practices in her native city” (Ramsay). Thyatira.—A town in Lydia, famous for its dyeing.
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Act_16:15. Come into my house, and abide there.—Up to this time the four teachers may have supported themselves by their own labours, Paul as a tent maker, Luke as a physician, Silas and Timothy in ways unknown. That Paul was reluctant to accept Lydia’s invitation has been argued from the words, And she constrained us (compare Luk_24:29); and this he may well have been, not because of unwillingness to partake of the hospitality of others (see Rom_16:23), or to receive assistance from them when his circumstances required (Act_24:23; Act_28:10; Php_4:15), but because he wished to avoid the imputation of being actuated by mercenary motives (Act_20:34; 2Co_12:17; 2Co_12:19).
HOMILETICAL ANALYSIS.—Act_16:14-15
A Sabbath in Philippi; or, the Conversion of Lydia
I. The antecedents.—
1. Lydia’s settlement in Philippi. A native of Thyatira, on the confines of Lydia and Mysia, afterwards the seat of a Christian Church (Rev_2:18); a seller of purple, for which the Lydians were celebrated, the guild of dyers at Thyatira, οἱ βαφεῖς, having left behind them an inscription which attests the accuracy of the sacred historian; Lydia, so called not from her native district, since the name was common among both Greeks and Romans, in prosecution of her calling had crossed the Ægean and settled in Philippi. Had she not done so, she might never have met Paul. But a good man’s (and also a good woman’s) footsteps are ordered by the Lord (Psa_37:23).
2. Lydia’s conversion to Judaism. That like the Eunuch (Act_8:27) and Cornelius (Act_10:2) she had become an adherent of the Jewish faith, a proselyte, is the clear sense of the clause, “one that worshipped God.” Had she been been still a heathen she would not have been found in the proseuche, or place of prayer. An illustration of how God leads those who fear Him and seek the truth (Psa_25:9).
3. Lydia’s presence in the house of prayer. Had she on that memorable day when Paul visited the proseuche been absent from any cause—ill-health, business, pleasure, or indifference—she had missed the blessing that was that day being prepared for her. A lesson for irregular attenders of the sanctuary. Compare the case of Thomas (Joh_20:24).
4. Lydia’s attention to Paul’s words in the meeting. Lydia listened—all worshippers do not this. Listening for Lydia proved the way to faith (Rom_10:17). A hint for careless hearers of the word.
II. The accompaniments.—
1. The opening of Lydia’s heart. By an inward work of grace performed thereupon by the Lord, i.e., Jesus Christ, through His Spirit. Man’s heart, naturally shut against the truth (1Co_2:14; Eph_4:18; Rev_3:20), can be opened only by heavenly influence (Mat_11:25; Luk_24:45; 1Co_3:6-7).
2. The attention of Lydia’s spirit. This more than such hearing as the understanding gives. The language points to such inward marking of the truth, whether heard or read, as an awakened or opened spirit supplies, discerning the suitability of the truth to its needs and laying hold of the truth so discerned for the satisfaction of those needs.
3. The decision of Lydia’s will. Faith a voluntary act of the soul appropriating to itself the Lord Jesus Christ as presented in the gospel and a deliberate resting on Him for salvation (Gal_2:20; 2Ti_1:12).
III. The consequents.—Confession.
1. By baptism. Necessary after faith in the case of adults (Act_2:38). As to its bearing on the baptism of infants, see below. Whether Lydia was baptized at once or afterwards and whether immersed or sprinkled are points not determined.
2. By good works. She desired to attest the sincerity of her conversion and her gratitude to those through whose instrumentality it had been brought about by pressing on Paul and his companions the hospitalities of her roof.
Learn.—
1. That God’s hand is in every conversion.
2. That God’s grace alone can effect any conversion.
3. That without God’s word there can be no conversion.
4. That obedience to God’s commandments, ceremonial and moral, best attests conversion.
HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Act_16:14. The Church of Christ in Europe.
I. Commenced in the important town of Philippi.—The keystone of Rome’s greatness became the foundation-stone of Christ’s kingdom.
II. Planted by Divine direction.—God guided the steps of Paul and Silas to Macedonia.
III. Founded by the apostle of the Gentiles.—Paul’s preaching the instrument used to convert Lydia.
IV. Originated in a prayer meeting. The kingdom of God comoth not with observation.
V. Rooted among the humbler classes of society.—Not many wise, not many mighty are called.
VI. Begun with the conversion of a woman.—If first in the transgression, woman is oftenest first in repentance, faith, and salvation. “In Tinnevelly, in South India, where are now 120,000 converts, the first convert was a woman. Clarinda heard Schwartz preach, received light into her heart, was baptised, and by her efforts in obtaining a native evangelist and in building a church was instrumental in giving light to large numbers of her countrymen and countrywomen” (Zenana Mission Quarterly of the United Presbyterian Church, No. I., p. 4).
VII. Started with a representative of commerce.—Upon the bells of the horses should be holiness unto the Lord.
The First Convert.
I. Who was this person that was the first in Philippi to experience the saving power of the gospel?—We are told that it was “a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God.” In the account which is here given of her, I think there are several things which made it unlikely, beforehand, that she should be the first person converted to the faith of Christ. In the first place, she was a stranger in the country. She was not a native of Philippi, nor even of Macedonia. She was from Thyatira, a city of Asia Minor. When the gospel crossed over from Asia into Europe, we would expect that the first person to whom its preaching should be blessed should be some person of the country. Again, there was another circumstance connected with this woman which made it unlikely that she should be the first convert to the gospel. She was not a Jewess by descent; she was only a Gentile proselyte. This is what is to be understood by the expression that she “worshipped God.” It is almost the same as that made use of about Cornelius (Act_10:2). There is one other circumstance mentioned concerning Lydia, which might also have made it unlikely that she should have been the first brought under the saving influence of the gospel. It was the busy trade in which she was engaged. Others there may have been in the group which Paul addressed, the mothers of families quietly occupied in their home duties, with such influences surrounding them as would draw out their minds in devotional and solemn feeling. It is not those whom we think the most likely or the most promising that are always brought to the saving knowledge of the gospel; but it is sometimes those whom we would judge the most unlikely.
II. And now we are to look at the manner in which she was converted.—It is very briefly, but at the same time very plainly told—“Whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.” I think it means first that she felt interested in them as a matter of personal concern. What we each want, what makes the saving difference in any individual case, is that God the Holy Ghost should open the heart to receive that truth which is heard with the outward hearing.
III. I can only just refer to what we are told of Lydia, in the next verse, after her conversion.—“She was baptised and her household.”—M. F. Day.
Lydia’s Heart Opened.—Look at this incident in the light which it casts on personal conversion.
I. We have the central faculty on which this change is wrought: the heart. The heart is the generic term in which primarily we include the entire phenomena of the animal and the spiritual man. Metaphorically it concentrates whatever distributively belongs to the physical, the emotional, and the intellectual nature. In popular speech it is the organ of vitality; the great arterial centre, the common ground and basis on which all the functions of life are dependent. In its Scriptural import the heart is the normal status that conditions man’s relations to God.… The heart, therefore, is the power in man that most of all needs to be changed. Individual tendencies, constitutional idiosyncrasies, even moral aberrations and vicious practices, can be arrested and are frequently mastered by culture. The heart never outgrows its inherent depravity.… To change the heart in man, then, whatever else it may mean, is not merely to amend the life; for the life may be superficially correct, while the heart is utterly false. For the same reason, it cannot be any mere intellectual change, such as a new way of thinking of God, of His claims, or of His worship; nor yet does does it consist in any quickened sensibility of the conscience in its outward reverence for the truth; all of which are perfectly congruous with the felt, ascendent alienation of the heart from God and goodness.… The new birth, as our Lord’s language implies, is the coming into life of that which did not previously exist.… Redemption through Christ is potentially the recreation of the lost Divine order in the soul. Its aim is not to awaken or to direct merely the religious instincts, but to renew the soul after the image in which it was created.
II. From the subject we pass to the method of this change.—Let us mark—
1. The supernatural source in which the charge originates. Regeneration is a supernatural work wrought by the exercise of a Divine power upon the soul. It is always this where it is real. It may not be miraculous, it probably is not; it would not be more real or superhuman for being miraculous; but it certainly is not the product of human nature. It may be simulated, but it cannot be fabricated by any art or device of man.
2. A second characteristic of this Divine power in conversion is in the variety of methods in which it operates. In the instance before us the work was done silently as the young spring bud is opened by the morning sun. It was the sublime serenity of a translation out of darkness into light. In the history of the jailor, the same work is done, not in silence, but in tumult; not in a translation, but in a resurrection. Instead of the gentleness of the budding leaf or the silence of the falling dew, there were the throes of the earthquake, shaking the prison walls, and turning into a storm of agony the soul of the man.… And this variety in the methods of the Divine working according to the constitutional differences in men unfolds to us in perp tuity, the mental difficulties with which the gospel has to contend and the different methods in which it proceeds in dealing with them. Uniform in its effects, it is yet multiform in its modes of action.
III. The reality of Lydia’s conversion was seen in its immediate fruits.
1. She attended unto the things which were spoken by Paul. If listless before, if curious only, if speculative, she is awake now.
2. She was baptised, and her household. She took upon herself and upon her home the professon of the Christian faith.—John Burton.
Act_16:14-15, The Conversion of Lydia. (Another treatment.)—Remarkable as—
I. The conversion of a woman.—The first instance of such in the Acts. Others occurred afterwards (Act_17:4; Act_17:12; Act_17:34). Relation of woman to Christianity. What the gospel has done for woman, and what woman can do for the gospel.
II. The conversion of a merchantess.—Again first example recorded in the Acts. Trade and religion not incompatible. Commerce might be the handmaid of the gospel. The gospel fitted to purify and ennoble commerce.
III. The conversion of a European. Or, at least, of one on European shores. Once more the first case mentioned in Luke’s narrative. Whether the gospel had before this found its way to Rome is uncertain. But in any case Lydia may be regarded as the beginning of the Church of Christ in Europe.
The Conversion of Lydia. (A third treatment.)
I. How occasioned.—
1. By attending a prayer meeting.
2. By listening to a sermon.
II. Through what effected.—
1. By Divine grace.
2. Through human faith.
III. By what followed.—
1. Baptism.
2. Good works.
Act_16:15. Household Baptism.
I. The apostolic practice.—To baptise the entire household when its head became a believer, as in the cases of the jailor (Act_16:33), Crispus (Act_18:8), Stephanus (1Co_1:16), and no doubt others, in addition to that of Lydia.
II. The probable basis.—Not the faith of each individual baptised. If it cannot be argued that any of the households baptised contained children—though children in a household are the rule rather than the exception—it can as little be reasoned that all who were baptised, assuming them to be relatives, servants, grown-up sons or daughters, believed. In the case of the jailor and his household, it is not said that they, but only that he believed on God (Act_16:34). Yet they as well as he received baptism, and probably on the following grounds.
1. The fact was recognised that children had been included in the Abrahamic covenant, and through circumcision were admitted into the Hebrew Church. From this the step was doubtless easy to argue that children of believing parents should be received into the Christian Church through baptism, which like circumcision partook of the character of an initiatory rite, and all the more that Christ had not enjoined their exclusion.
2. The language of Christ concerning children had declared that of such was the kingdom of heaven (Mat_19:14); and from this the inference was not difficult to draw that, if children might without personal faith receive the substance of salvation, they might also on the same terms receive its external sign.
3. The instructions given to the apostles by Christ to baptise all nations, “teaching them to observe all things,” etc. (Mat_28:20), might appear to them to warrant the deduction that “discipleship” might in certain cases, as for instance of children of believing parents, go before instruction and therefore before faith.
III. The warrantable inference.—That infant baptism accords with Scripture. This seems borne out by the view the apostle takes of the children of believing parents or of parents of whom one only is believing (1Co_7:14). “What would Lydia have said” asks Besser, “if the preachers of the Lord Jesus had refused to baptise the little children of her house? She must have become doubtful of her own faith—the free gift of God.”
The Characteristics of True Faith.
I. Humble.—Submitting itself to the judgment of advanced Christians.
II. Learning.—Longing after further progress in knowledge.
III. Thankful.—Both to God, the prime author, and to man, the instrument (when he is so) of its existence.
IV. Active.—Working by love—“come to my house.”
V. Obedient.—She and all her house were baptised.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 24, 27, 34, 40 12. Traveling on foot twelve miles to Philippi, the…
12. Traveling on foot twelve miles to Philippi, the capital and metropolis of Macedonia, the most northern province in Greece. It is a Roman colony and a free city, ruled by Roman magistrates.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v13 Section 2. (Act 16:13-40.)
Section 2. (Act 16:13-40.)
Progress through conflict.
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Philippi is evidently the starting-point of the history proper, as the Spirit of God is pleased to take it up for our instruction. It begins with conflict, and the power of Satan is more nakedly manifest here than at Paphos upon the former journey. It is no longer, however, debased Judaism that is the instrument, but heathenism, the rule of the demons or false gods, which had for the world at large usurped the place of the One true God. The power of the world has here therefore to be reckoned with,, and the progress of the gospel in the teeth of persecution. Yet under no circumstances does the gospel succeed so well; and Philippi is a marked instance of this, -always in lively sympathy with the gospel, as we know from the epistle to the saints there; and to whom the apostle speaks as to sympathetic bearers of his own earnest pressing forward in what was to him a race for a prize. The name Philippi, "fond of horses," naturally reminds us of this, and stamps with its significance spiritually those who now come before us, as well as the whole-hearted laborers the fruit of whose work they are. Progress through conflict may well characterize this section; and there is little true progress made where the adverse power is not realized.
1. The beginning here is in a humble way enough. Here, where they have been brought by, a vision of imploring need, the very man of the vision does not appear; and in the absence of any synagogue, such as in general provided them with their first opportunity, they are fain to go outside the city-gate, by the bank of the river where it was the custom for prayer to be, and speak to the women who seem alone to have the heart to come together. We see that they are not men who will miss a small door open in seeking a large one; and here also, if there be effectual entrance, it must be the Lord who makes it. The heart of Lydia* is thus divinely opened to attend to the things spoken by Paul. Her baptism soon follows, with that of her house, or family, as if the natural consequence of her own faith. So undoubtedly would a proselyte to Judaism as she was have considered it; and the Lord has long since assured us that such a rule as to the kingdom of God has not been repealed (Mat 18:14). Entrance into the Church is not at all in question; to which the baptism of the Spirit alone could introduce. It is the confusion between Church and Kingdom which has largely been the cause of the difficulty upon these points which has arisen. The doctrine is not here before us to consider. Lydia, as the faithful person that she desires to be known as, does not shrink from identifying herself with those who have been the means of bringing her the truth which has won her. In those days it was not possible to be long ignorant of what it involved to do this; but with whole-hearted decision she at once presses the little company of. Christ’s witnesses to come into her house and abide there; and her earnestness will admit of no refusal: she constrained them. In fact the clouds were already gathering which portended a storm which was soon to break.
{*Lydia’s occupation and the city whence she came are given, and these with the significance of her name, would doubtless help in illuminating the brief narrative we have of her conversion, had we eyes to see. Thyatira was a city in Asia, where the door had just been closed on Paul. The first convert in Europe was from that city, and thus the continuity of the work is shown. Her business -said to be characteristic of the city -had to do with the adornment of the natural man. Her lowliness is in striking contrast with the Church of Thyatira (Rev 2:18, etc.), which represents the Church of Rome, the "woman arrayed in purple and scarlet color." -S.R.}
2. The enemy does not begin, however, with an open attack -far from it: he announces himself in the first place as himself a witness to the message that Paul brings! A female slave, having a spirit of Python (supposed to be inspired by Apollo) and who brought her masters much gain by her divinations, followed Paul and his companions on their way to the place of prayer, and day after day cried out, "These men are servants of the Most High God, who show you the way of salvation." It was an astonishing testimony from one accredited by the multitude as a true prophetess, but whose whole condition spoke to those who could discern the truth of dreadful bondage to an evil spirit! Yet it was in this case a true testimony, and which from such lips would naturally bring the attention of many to the truth. Nor had those accredited by it any responsibility apparently in the matter. Why should they not even accept such homage to the truth forced from the mouth of a demon? So had the evil spirits in the Lord’s time owned Him as the Holy One of God whom men scoffed at as the Nazarene. But He had silenced them, and cast them out; and now also there could be no alliance between the awful power that held the world captive and Him who is its Deliverer. Satan, if he will testify, shall testify in being cast out; and the apostle, though for a time simply ignoring his effort to attach himself as a parasite to the tree of life, at last brings to bear on him the power of the Name of Jesus Christ, and his captive is set free.
Alas, not always was there to be the wisdom to discern the attack of the enemy in that which spoke highly of the way of salvation, and glorified its ministers. And so in fact was the way to be perverted, and the ministry to become the chief agency in its perversion; the little seed became a tree, with the birds of the air lodged securely in its branches. Who can doubt that we have here a forecast of that which has now become history? -though the disaster wrought is not yet all told out.
Alliance or persecution, -these are the alternatives: false friendship or open war. The apostle’s act shows at once his acceptance of the issue, and presages the final result; though for the present -and this in the ordering of God for blessing to His own -the conflict may seem largely to go against them. The cross must be the way to the crown, as the Lord fully assured us; and "if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him." The world is adverse, and the condition of progress is that we make our way through hostile forces. At Philippi, the enemy seeks to turn his first discomfiture into success. The loss of their gains stirs up the girl’s masters to drag Paul and Silas before the magistrates, with the charge that as Jews they are troubling the city by introducing customs unlawful to them as Romans. The prejudice against Jews was great, and the last part of the charge had in it a certain amount of truth, as well as ability to rouse the fanaticism of Romans. "The letter of the Roman law, even under the republic, was opposed to the introduction of foreign religions; and though exceptions were allowed, as in the case of the Jews themselves, yet the spirit of the law entirely condemned such changes in worship as were likely to unsettle the minds of the citizens, or to produce any tumultuous uproar . . . . Thus Paul and Silas had undoubtedly been doing what in some degree exposed them to legal penalties; and were beginning a change which tended to bring down, and ultimately did bring down, the whole weight of the Roman law on the martyrs of Christianity" (Conybeare and Howson).
Thus the prince of this world had taken means to secure himself against the truth which might dethrone him; and at Philippi different causes combined to rouse the excitement of the mob so as to carry the magistrates along with it. The arrested men are stripped and beaten in the merciless way natural, not merely in the hard pagan world, but in the lawless condition in which things were at present. Bruised and bleeding they are thrust into prison, with a charge to the jailer to keep them safe; who on his part thrusts them into the innermost dungeon, and their feet into the stocks.
These are the world’s weapons, which are freely used upon unarmed and defenceless men, teachers, as an oracle of their own had loudly proclaimed, of the way of salvation. But if the weapons of these men are not carnal, they are, in the language of one of the sufferers here, "mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds," and presently the prison walls are stirred to their foundations, as vibrating to the unaccustomed sound of prayer and praise from lips that cannot be silenced as the hearts that move them cannot be stilled.
3. "At midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God; and the prisoners listened to them."
What a new sound it must have been! Had it been in a Christian land, as we say, however poorly any land may be that, we should think of memories that it would awaken in whatever hardened hearts; but here there were no memories to awaken; it was a new gospel of gladness going forth, which in such circumstances those old Romans knew not. They could die well, as we know; -sternly, grimly, they could die; with their song too upon their lips, as heroes, patriots, and in softer moods of love and loyalty; but all this was inspiration from earthly sources, and not strange to men: here was inspiration of another kind, -a new strain that held the listeners by its rapt unearthliness, its confidence and joy in an unseen God. Here was its revelation -its gospel: would there be answer to this undoubting claim upon One assumed so near and competent?
Suddenly an unexpected answer came: a great earthquake rocked the prison to its foundations; and in a moment all the doors were opened, and every one’s bonds were loosed! Yet all the more the wonder held them: they were in hands so manifestly mighty, so interested too, and guided by purpose for the manifestation of which they could only wait. Did not some realize perhaps, that there was here a God worth waiting for, whom it must be a joy to know?
There was one, however, to whom what had taken place was a message of death, or seemed such. The jailer, roused from sleep by the sudden shock, and seeing the prison doors open, supposed that the prisoners had escaped. In that case, from the severity of the Roman law there would have been for him no escape. He had drawn his sword to kill himself, in despair of life, when a voice of quiet assurance from the depths of the prison arrested him. "Do thyself no harm," it called; "for we are all here." In that instant the voice of God had spoken to him; the keeper and his captives had changed places: the perfect authority breathing in these words, coupled with mercy to himself so great, which had laid aside all that self-concern prompted to, to care for a mere careless and hardened persecutor, smote him with conviction that God was with these men. He was in their hands, and not they in his. Conscience and heart were roused in him together; the sense of sin, and of goodness that drew him after it. He called for lights, and sprang in, and fell down before Paul and Silas, trembling with these new emotions; and bringing them out, with the voice of the prophetess, no doubt, ringing in his ears, he said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
It was such a cry as divine grace awakens and responds to. The facing of death immediately before, the consciousness of the divine hand in all that had taken place, had been used of the Spirit of God to make him understand what salvation would mean, though not the way of it. The way he did not understand; nor could he have understood without further help the simple words (to us, thank God!) in which it was made known to him: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, -thou and thy house." It is a blessed word; blessed in the largeness of assurance that clings to it; and which, though on opposite sides misconceived, we are not to give up on that account.
It is faith in a personal Saviour that is preached to the convicted man, -a committing himself to One mighty to save; a believing on, which is trusting, leaning on. It is not a doctrine simply that he is to accept, but a living Person who is to be trusted.
But then it is a Person who has accomplished a work for men, in the power of which He is Lord and Christ; not simply Sovereign Ruler, but the "Anointed" Priest, the Representative of His people. As having stood in our place upon the cross, He stands as the One in whom we are accepted before God.
It is necessarily, therefore, faith which saves, just because it is Christ who saves; it is not the value of faith in itself, although there is value in faith; for it is the real active principle in every soul: so that it can be said, "Faith, if it have not works, is dead, being alone." It works because it puts Christ in His place, and so God (as manifested in Christ) in His also. But as contrasted with works it is the very confession of creature nothingness and worthlessness, in which it lays hold of Another as all its competence and all its boast. Repentance and faith are thus but the opposite sides of the amazing change which is wrought in conversion: the one is the face turned towards God, as the other is the back turned upon self. Each therefore implies the other.
But now as to the closing words, "thou and thy house:" have they any special encouragement as to the family of a believer, or have they not? Do they mean only "thou, if thou believest, and thy house also, if they believe"? Or do they mean something more than this? Would there be need to assure the penitent here, that faith being the way of salvation, it was as open to his house upon their believing as to himself? It does not seem as if he would need to be assured of that.
On the other hand, there should not need to say, that if faith be, as it surely is, the way of salvation there is no exemption of the family of a believer from the necessity of faith. If there should possibly be any, as is sometimes stated, who with the plain word of Scripture before them can yet hold that for a believer’s house there is even the possibility that without faith they may still please God, or that the father’s faith can in anywise be proxy for that of the child, such a superstition needs only to be brought into honest daylight to be refuted. Quite a different thing it is to believe that there are special promises to a believer’s house, not unconditional, and yet conditioned only upon his being in practical reality, and in relation to that which is in question, a believer. Such a belief has plenty to ground itself upon in Scripture, and is not a superstition but a faith.
Take Abraham, "the father of all them that believe" (Rom 4:11), as an illustration and somewhat more. "I know him," says the Lord, "that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He hath spoken of him" (Gen 18:19). Here is, indeed, not a promise but an assurance, grounded upon that which the practical character of his faith wrought in the Old Testament example of it. Himself called out from the idolatry around to keep the way of the Lord, he acknowledged Him as the God of his household as well as his own God. With such purpose of heart the wise man’s proverb would be fulfilled as to his house, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it" (Pro 22:6). This is the rule of the Christian’s house, according to which he is to bring up his children in the "nurture (or discipline) and admonition of the Lord" (Eph 6:4). To this the promise applies that assures him that it shall be effectual; and not in vain is the assurance. The faith which it is true they need cannot be imparted by all that man can do for them: how comforting then the word which entitles confidence in the Lord to whom we bring them, and whose we would have them, that nevertheless this "discipline and admonition" shall be effectual! Discipleship, government, discipline belong to the kingdom; and "thou and thy house" have always been the rule in the kingdom of God. Yet all here is distinctly conditional, not absolute, as the Gospels fully show us; and to this, and not to the Church, is baptism introductory (see Mat 28:18-19, notes); all is perfectly intelligible, therefore, when we find directly here, that "they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house;" and that the jailer "was baptized, he and all his, immediately."
Notable it is that of Israel’s "set times" (Lev 23:1-44), which typically present God’s ways (as we say dispensationally), on to the end which is God’s rest, those from Passover to Pentecost speak of what was indeed offered to Israel, and thus might have been hers, but being rejected through unbelief, they have passed from her in their spiritual significance and become the peculiar portion of the (characteristically Gentile) Church. No doubt can be entertained as to Pentecost; but the Sheaf of First-fruits also, which is Christ in resurrection, the promise of the harvest to come, is also ours whose portion will be with Him in this, while Israel inherits hers upon earth. Accordingly the feasts which speak of the national blessing come afterwards, with an interval between, in the seventh month; the feast of trumpets gathering them afresh, at the new moon, when the Sun of righteousness begins to shine afresh upon Israel; the day of atonement then showing their sins put upon the scapegoat and sent away; and finally the feast of tabernacles consummates their blessing.
Passover, let us notice, is not like the day of atonement, one sacrifice covering all the people, but "a lamb for a house," each family distinctly represented. Nay, if one should be defiled at the time of its celebration, or on a journey afar off, a second Passover can be kept, to remedy the omission. I do not say but that, in a secondary sense, this may apply to Israel, who were indeed defiled at the time of Christ’s suffering for men; but this would only confirm the more the application of the Passover primarily to the present going out of the gospel in the day of Israel’s rejection.
But what then is the principle that faces us in the Passover? Clearly, it is "Thou and thy house;" the heads of the houses kill the lamb, and sprinkle the blood upon the lintel and the two side-posts of the houses where they eat it. The family character of the redemption feast is manifest; and notice again that it is at Philippi, among those who are Gentile -no synagogue of the Jews in the place, and not a word of any man of Israel in the place, save only the preachers themselves, that we hear what we may call now the passover gospel -"Thou shalt be saved: thou and thy house."
What a change has passed, and as in a moment, upon the hardened instrument of heathen cruelty and opposition to the word of Christ! "He took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes, and having brought them up into his house, set food before them, and rejoiced with all his house, believing God." Although we have to translate perhaps in this way, on account of the difficulty of other rendering in English, yet it should be understood that the expression "with all his house" is not here as in the case of Crispus afterwards where it is said that he "believed with all his house" (Act 18:8). Here it is an adverb, and there should be a reason for the difference, the effect of which would be to make the joy more simply his own. It is certain, at least, that although they had spoken the word to all that were in his house, faith is ascribed to himself alone.
The work in the prison is done, and now indeed the prison doors can hold them no longer. The day having come, the magistrates sent the lictors with a curt message to "Let those men go." But Paul is concerned that there should be no avoidable reproach left upon the testimony, and he refuses to be dismissed in this manner after the public wrong upon men uncondemned. The magistrates are afraid when they hear that they are Roman citizens they have been treating in this manner, and come in humble fashion to bring them out; begging them, however, to leave the city. They return therefore to Lydia’s house; and after having there met the brethren (of whom, in the time that had elapsed, and as from the epistle afterwards we cannot but infer that, there were many), and having comforted them, they departed.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv13, 19, 30, 32
Acts
PAUL AT PHILIPPI
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Act 16:13.
This is the first record of the preaching of the Gospel in Europe, and probably the first instance of it. The fact that the vision of the man of Macedonia was needed in order to draw the Apostle across the straits into Macedonia, and the great length at which the incidents at Philippi are recorded, make this probable. If so, we are here standing, as it were, at the wellhead of a mighty river, and the thin stream of water assumes importance when we remember the thousand miles of its course, and the league-broad estuary in which it pours itself into the ocean. Here is the beginning; the Europe of to-day is what came out of it. There is no sign whatever that the Apostle was conscious of an epoch in this transference of the sphere of his operations, but we can scarcely help being conscious of such.
And so, looking at the words of my text, and seeing here how unobtrusively there stole into the progressive part of the world the power which was to shatter and remould all its institutions, to guide and inform the onward march of its peoples, to be the basis of their liberties, and the starting-point of their literature, we can scarcely avoid drawing lessons of importance.
The first point which I would suggest, as picturesquely enforced for us by this incident, is-
I. The apparent insignificance and real greatness of Christian work.
There did not seem in the whole of that great city that morning a more completely insignificant knot of people than the little weather-beaten Jew, travel-stained, of weak bodily presence, and of contemptible speech, with the handful of his attendants, who slipped out in the early morning and wended their way to the quiet little oratory, beneath the blue sky, by the side of the rushing stream, and there talked informally and familiarly to the handful of women. The great men of Philippi would have stared if any one had said to them, ‘You will be forgotten, but two of these women will have their names embalmed in the memory of the world for ever. Everybody will know Euodia and Syntyche. Your city will be forgotten, although a battle that settled the fate of the civilised world was fought outside your gates. But that little Jew and the letter that he will write to that handful of believers that are to be gathered by his preaching will last for ever.’ The mightiest thing done in Europe that morning was when the Apostle sat down by the riverside, ‘and spake to the women which resorted thither.’
The very same vulgar mistake as to what is great and as to what is small is being repeated over and over again; and we are all tempted to it by that which is worldly and vulgar in ourselves, to the enormous detriment of the best part of our natures. So it is worth while to stop for a moment and ask what is the criterion of greatness in our deeds? I answer, three things-their motive, their sphere, their consequences. What is done for God is always great. You take a pebble and drop it into a brook, and immediately the dull colouring upon it flashes up into beauty when the sunlight strikes through the ripples, and the magnitude of the little stone is enlarged. If I may make use of such a violent expression, drop your deeds into God, and they will all be great, however small they are. Keep them apart from Him, and they will be small, though all the drums of the world beat in celebration, and all the vulgar people on the earth extol their magnitude. This altar magnifies and sanctifies the giver and the gift. The great things are the things that are done for God.
A deed is great according to its sphere. What bears on and is confined to material things is smaller than what affects the understanding. The teacher is more than the man who promotes material good. And on the very same principle, above both the one and the other, is the doer of deeds which touch the diviner part of a man’s nature, his will, his conscience, his affections, his relations to God. Thus the deeds that impinge upon these are the highest and the greatest; and far above the scientific inventor, and far above the mere teacher, as I believe, and as I hope you believe, stands the humblest work of the poorest Christian who seeks to draw any other soul into the light and liberty which he himself possesses. The greatest thing in the world is charity, and the purest charity in the world is that which helps a man to possess the basis and mother-tincture of all love, the love towards God who has first loved us, in the person and the work of His dear Son.
That which being done has consequences that roll through souls, ‘and grow for ever and for ever,’ is a greater work than the deed whose issues are more short-lived. And so the man who speaks a word which may deflect a soul into the paths which have no end until they are swallowed up in the light of the God who ‘is a Sun,’ is a worker whose work is truly great. Brethren, it concerns the nobleness of the life of us Christian people far more closely than we sometimes suppose, that we should purge our souls from the false estimate of magnitudes which prevails so extensively in the world’s judgment of men and their doings. And though it is no worthy motive for a man to seek to live so that he may do great things, it is a part of the discipline of the Christian mind, as well as heart, that we should be able to reduce the swollen bladders to their true flaccidity and insignificance, and that we should understand that things done for God, things done on men’s souls, things done with consequences which time will not exhaust, nor eternity put a period to, are, after all, the great things of human life.
Ah, there will be a wonderful reversal of judgments one day! Names that now fill the trumpet of fame will fall silent. Pages that now are read as if they were leaves of the ‘Book of Life’ will be obliterated and unknown, and when all the flashing cressets in Vanity Fair have smoked and stunk themselves out, ‘They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.’ The great things are the Christian things, and there was no greater deed done that day, on this round earth, than when that Jewish wayfarer, travel-stained and insignificant, sat himself down in the place of prayer, and ‘spake unto the women which resorted thither.’ Do not be over-cowed by the loud talk of the world, but understand that Christian work is the mightiest work that a man can do.
Let us take from this incident a hint as to-
II. The law of growth in Christ’s Kingdom.
Here, as I have said, is the thin thread of water at the source. We to-day are on the broad bosom of the expanded stream. Here is the little beginning; the world that we see around us has come from this, and there is a great deal more to be done yet before all the power that was transported into Europe, on that Sabbath morning, has wrought its legitimate effects. That is to say, ‘the Kingdom of God cometh not by observation.’ Let me say a word, and only a word, based on this incident, about the law of small beginnings and the law of slow, inconspicuous development.
We have here an instance of the law of small, silent beginnings. Let us go back to the highest example of everything that is good; the life of Jesus Christ. A cradle at Bethlehem, a carpenter’s shop in Nazareth, thirty years buried in a village, two or three years, at most, going up and down quietly in a remote nook of the earth, and then He passed away silently and the world did not know Him. ‘He shall not strive nor cry, nor cause His voice to be heard in the streets.’ And as the Christ so His Church, and so His Gospel, and so all good movements that begin from Him. Destructive preparations may be noisy; they generally are. Constructive beginnings are silent and small. If a thing is launched with a great beating of drums and blowing of trumpets, you may be pretty sure there is very little in it. Drums are hollow, or they would not make such a noise. Trumpets only catch and give forth wind. They say-I know not whether it is true-that the Wellingtonia gigantea, the greatest of forest trees, has a smaller seed than any of its congeners. It may be so, at any rate it does for an illustration. The germ-cell is always microscopic. A little beginning is a prophecy of a great ending.
In like manner there is another large principle suggested here which, in these days of impatient haste and rushing to and fro, and religious as well as secular advertising and standing at street corners, we are very apt to forget, but which we need to remember, and that is that the rate of growth is swift when the duration of existence is short. A reed springs up in a night. How long does an oak take before it gets too high for a sheep to crop at? The moth lives its full life in a day. There is no creature that has helpless infancy so long as a man. We have the slow work of mining; the dynamite will be put into the hole one day, and the spark applied- and then? So ‘an inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning, but the end thereof shall not be blessed.’
Let us apply that to our own personal life and work, and to the growth of Christianity in the world, and let us not be staggered because either are so slow. ‘The Lord is not slack concerning His promises, as some men count slackness. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.’ How long will that day be of which a thousand years are but as the morning twilight? Brethren, you have need of patience. You Christian workers, and I hope I am speaking to a great many such now; how long does it take before we can say that we are making any impression at all on the vast masses of evil and sin that are round about us? God waited, nobody knows how many millenniums and more than millenniums, before He had the world ready for man. He waited for more years than we can tell before He had the world ready for the Incarnation. His march is very slow because it is ever onwards. Let us be thankful if we forge ahead the least little bit; and let us not be impatient for swift results which are the fool’s paradise, and which the man who knows that he is working towards God’s own end can well afford to do without.
And now, lastly, let me ask you to notice, still further as drawn from this incident-
III. The simplicity of the forces to which God entrusts the growth of His Kingdom.
It is almost ludicrous to think, if it were not pathetic and sublime, of the disproportion between the end that was aimed at and the way that was taken to reach it, which the text opens before us. ‘We went out to the riverside, and we spake unto the women which resorted thither.’ That was all. Think of Europe as it was at that time. There was Greece over the hills, there was Rome ubiquitous and ready to exchange its contemptuous toleration for active hostility. There was the unknown barbarism of the vague lands beyond. Think of the established idolatries which these men had to meet, around which had gathered, by the superstitious awe of untold ages, everything that was obstinate, everything that was menacing, everything that was venerable. Think of the subtleties to which they had to oppose their unlettered message. Think of the moral corruption that was eating like an ulcer into the very heart of society. Did ever a Cortez on the beach, with his ships in flames behind him, and a continent in arms before, cast himself on a more desperate venture? And they conquered! How? What were the small stones from the brook that slew Goliath? Have we got them? Here they are, the message that they spoke, the white heat of earnestness with which they spoke it, and the divine Helper who backed them up. And we have this message. Brethren, that old word, ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself,’ is as much needed, as potent, as truly adapted to the complicated civilisation of this generation, as surely reaching the deepest wants of the human soul, as it was in the days when first the message poured, like a red-hot lava flood, from the utterances of Paul. Like lava it has gone cold to-day, and stiff in many places, and all the heat is out of it. That is the fault of the speaker, never of the message. It is as mighty as ever it was, and if the Christian Church would keep more closely to it, and would realise more fully that the Cross does not need to be propped up so much as to be proclaimed, I think we should see that it is so. That sword has not lost its temper, and modern modes of warfare have not antiquated it. As David said to the high priests at Nob, when he was told that Goliath’s sword was hid behind the ephod, ‘Give me that. There is none like it.’ It was not miracles, it was the Gospel that was preached, which was ‘the power of God unto salvation.’
And that message was preached with earnestness. There is one point in which every successful servant of Jesus Christ who has done work for Him, winning men to Him, has been like every other successful servant, and there is only one point. Some of them have been wise men, some of them have been foolish. Some of them have been clad with many puerile notions and much rubbish of ceremonial and sacerdotal theories. Some of them have been high Calvinists, some of them low Arminians; some of them have been scholars, some of them could hardly read. But they have all had this one thing: they believed with all their hearts what they spake. They fulfilled the Horatian principle, ‘If you wish me to weep, your own eyes must overflow’-and if you wish me to believe, you must speak, not ‘with bated breath and whispering humbleness,’ but as if you yourself believed it, and were dead set on getting other people to believe it, too.
And then the third thing that Paul had we have, and that is the presence of the Christ. Note what it says in the context about one convert who was made that morning, Lydia, ‘whose heart the Lord opened.’ Now I am not going to deduce Calvinism or any other ‘ism’ from these words, but I pray you to note that there is emerging on the surface here what runs all through this book of Acts, and animates the whole of it, viz., that Jesus Christ Himself is working, doing all the work that is done through His servants. Wherever there are men aflame with that with which every Christian man and woman should be aflame, the consciousness of the preciousness of their Master, and their own responsibility for the spreading of His Name, there, depend upon it, will be the Christ to aid them. The picture with which one of the Evangelists closes his Gospel will be repeated: ‘They went everywhere preaching the word, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following.’
Dear brethren, the vision of the man of Macedonia which drew Paul across the water from Troas to Philippi speaks to us. ‘Come over and help us,’ comes from many voices. And if we, in however humble and obscure, and as the foolish purblind world calls it, ‘small,’ way, yield to the invitation, and try to do what in us lies, then we shall find that, like Paul by the riverside in that oratory, we are building better than we know, and planting a little seed, the springing whereof God will bless. ‘Thou sowest not that which shall be, but bare grain . . . and God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv12–40 See notes on verse 11
See notes on verse 11
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20, 25, 30, 31, 35 i.e. a Roman colony.
colony
i.e. a Roman colony.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv14, 16, 19, 25, 29, 35 The conversion of Lydia:
The conversion of Lydia:
v. 14. And 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 were spoken of Paul.
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v. 15. And when she was baptized and her household, she besought us, saying, if ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us.
In the audience on the river bank, on that memorable morning when the first Christian service was conducted on European soil, was a certain woman, a merchant by the name of Lydia, the name by which she was probably known for business purposes, since she hailed from Thyatira in Lydia, a district of proconsular Asia. She was a dealer in purple, that is, in garments dyed with a very costly dye, and must therefore have been comparatively well-to-do. "Thyatira was noted for its dyeing. Madder root, with which they dyed a Turkey-red, grows abundantly in the neighborhood. As the ancients employed the names of colors with great laxity, this was often termed purple. " Lydia was a God-fearing woman, that is, she was a Jewish proselyte, she believed in and reverenced the God of the Jews, whose worship had been taught her. She listened carefully to the entire discourse, and the Lord opened her heart fully to attend to the matters which were explained by Paul, the news that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah. So thoroughly was she and all the members of her household (she may have been a widow with a number of children, as well as a number of servants] convinced of the truth of the Gospel that she and they all confessed their faith forthwith and were baptized a fine nucleus for a congregation in whose welfare Paul always took great interest. The gratitude of Lydia for the blessings of which she had now been made a partaker prompted her to extend a cordial invitation to the missionaries to accept her hospitality. It was in the form of earnest pleading that she said to them: If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, since the fact that you baptized me seems to argue that you consider me a believer in the Lord, please come to my house and abide there. And she did not rest until she had persuaded them to come and be her guests. Such hospitality in return for the great spiritual gifts received is a proof for the change of heart produced by faith, and is well-pleasing to the Lord.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv14, 16, 19, 22, 25, 27, 29, 32, 35, 37, 40 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
This ends the story of Lydia.
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A certain woman named Lydia
Here "A certain woman" introduces a new person in the story. AT: "There was a woman named Lydia" (See: Introduction of New and Old Participants)
a seller of purple
Here "cloth" is understood. AT: "a merchant who sold purple cloth" (See: Ellipsis)
Thyatira
This is the name of a city. (See: How to Translate Names)
worshiped God
A worshiper of God is a Gentile who gives praise to God and follows him, but does not obey all of the Jewish laws.
The Lord opened her heart to pay attention
For the Lord to cause someone to pay attention and believe a message is spoken of as if he were opening a person's heart. AT: "The Lord caused her to listen well and to believe" (See: Metaphor)
opened her heart
Here "heart" stands for a person's mind. Also, the author speaks about the "heart" or "mind" as if it were a box that a person could open so it is ready for someone to fill it. (See: Metonymy and Metaphor)
what was said by Paul
This can be stated in active form. AT: "what Paul said" (See: Active or Passive)
When she and her house were baptized
This can be stated in active form. AT: "When they baptized Lydia and members of her household" (See: Active or Passive)
her house
Here "house" represents the people who live in her house. AT: "the members of her household" or "her family and household servants" (See: Metonymy)
translationWords
worship
God
lord
heart
Paul
baptize
judge
faithful
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 22, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31, 37, 40 16:12 At Philippi, about ten miles (17 km) inland…
16:12 At Philippi, about ten miles (17 km) inland from Neapolis, Paul began his missionary labors in Europe.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.