Dan: 0:00

Hi, and welcome to training for life redeemed. I am your host, Dan, and I'm here with my father as always Dr. David Jackson snuck it in there again. Now we're up to episode 27. It is the beginning of part three of Acts. As we start to look at Paul's second and third missionary journeys heading out into the wider world. I guess... Taking the gospel to the end of the earth We started off at Acts 15 verse 36, and Paul is getting called out to go to Macedonia. And then he heads out there and , begins this missionary trip, which is going to take him quite a few years to get through.

David: 1:00

Yeah. And it doesn't start well. That's where the fight. Paul and Barnabas o f, are going to break up over the fact that Barnabas, his cousin ditched them on t he first missionary trip. So

Dan: 1:14

Right. Mark , who ends up writing the Book of Mark - John Mark?

David: 1:17

That's the one but he decided not to proceed. And Paul, I think got a bit cranky about that. So they split up into two mission teams and Paul heads off and ends up in Macedonia. And that's when life gets interesting. We don't, we don't hear about Barnabas anymore. Don't know what he got up to what his mission journeys involved. We do know that John Mark was with Peter and Paul in Rome all the way to the end. Paul describes him as a wonderful help. So the relationships weren't destroyed, but, he lands in a Roman city that is a Roman colony and it doesn't have a synagogue,

Dan: 2:03

Too many Romans, eh?

David: 2:04

Too many Romans. It was a city s et u p for Roman soldiers when they retired. So it's, it's fun because he's, he's using his Jewish, his Jewish culture to still make connections. So before Jew would go to synagogue, they would have a bath, a ritual bath, a miqveh, and you can't have... Synagogues would build a ritual bath as part of their facilities. But if you don't have a synagogue, you don't have a ritual bath and the rabbinic rules for a ritual bath are that you have to have that bath in running water. So you don't bath in stagnant water. So he figures the only place there'd be any Jews on a Friday evening they'd be having a prayer meeting at least if they couldn't go to synagogue. So we follow the running water. And if you follow the running water on Friday before sunset, you're going to bump into Jews and he bumps into Jews. And the leader of that Jewish community appears to be a woman named Lydia. And that opens up a whole new agenda for us. This is a church that's going to be founded through a woman.

Dan: 3:14

Oh, that's good. Yeah , exciting .

David: 3:17

It is exciting. But it reminds us that the Christian gospel, when it crosses into this particular period of Roman history, a friend of mine is a lecturer at Sydney uni. And she tells me that during the civil wars back in the days of just following Julius Caesar, one third of the male population in the Roman empire were killed. That's a massive slaughter, but what it did was it left a lot of estates where there was no male heir. And so a single woman would inherit the property of her husband, her father, her cousins, her brothers, and ended up being massively wealthy. So all across the Roman empire, suddenly we've got a lot of really, really wealthy women. And they're able to support, they use their money for political power. They bribe people to get elected, but they also use their money for the gospel. And Paul has just landed on his feet.

Dan: 4:15

Cool. That's cool . I didn't even know that. That's great. There's lots of, lots of women. Now that suddenly make sense in the Bible is culturally. It seems strange, but yeah , it makes more sense .

David: 4:26

They're wealthy, they own their own house. They've got their own slaves. They're running their own businesses and there was great temptation. But when we get to our studies on Timothy, it was great temptation for these women to just break out of the whole Roman structure of the family and become sexually liberated. So, you know, put aside husbands; get rid of the kids, let's be, have the same liberty that the men have. the end result was , lots of having to rethink how the Bible works, how the gospel works at your redeem relationships, in a society like that. And Lydia, steps into the picture.

Dan: 5:09

Cool. Now we're not just going to stay in Macedonia, but we have some

David: 5:13

Well Philippi is the capital of Macedonia.

Dan: 5:15

Okay, cool . That makes sense .

David: 5:17

Lydia is in Macedonia and then the next thing, you know , there's just got a church started. And of course, when you start a church, you got trouble. Yeah.

Dan: 5:27

All right . So for the few , it is trouble. It is for sure. Tell us a bit about the trouble that happens here. We've got a jailer that gets saved and God's still working stuff even in deep dark situations as he always does. Yeah.

David: 5:41

Yeah. Well, yeah. There's when you're stepping into Roman culture and Greek culture, there are weird and wonderful things that are happening. I went to , the great Oracle at Delphi. They believed that Delphi was the centre of the universe. And there was a Python spirit that lived there. And, a woman who would be devoted to this Python spirit would be able to tell you fortune. So everybody went to Delphi to the Oracle and submitted their questions and got the weirdest answers you've ever read that didn't actually answer the question, but everybody thought it was, they were telling t hem their future. So you have these women that have decided they're going to cash in on that. And Paul comes across a Pythian prophetess. So she's a girl who claims to have this Pythian spirit that can tell your fortune. And of course, a bunch of guys that own this woman as a business are making a fortune, and she's running along prophesying that Paul's the right guy go and listen to him, which is true be cause God, God uses all these false prophets his own way. And then he turns around and he rebukes her and he casts the python spirit out of her. And now the guys have got no business. So this is going to create a riot and they start mucking around and yelling and screaming. And the next thing you know, Paul's in jail and that's a whole other story.

Dan: 7:14

Well, yeah, in jail, he converts the , well, he doesn't convert it , but God converts the person looking after him. And we have beautiful miracles happening and the gospel continuing to be at work there. What else is going on during this section here with the time in prison and How does civil law com into this?

David: 7:37

Yeah. Well, you've got to feel for Paul and Silas and the team because they weren't just arrested. They got beaten up. So publicly stripped to humiliate them and then thrashed with these Roman rods, which wasn't like the Jewish beating , If you're a Jew and you got beaten by the synagogue officials, i t was 39 strokes was the limit, but these guys could just go at it. So the lictors have come in with their rods and thrash the daylights out of these naked men and then thrown them into a prison cell for the night. And they're singing, they're singing songs in prison, probably bleeding. And t hat angel opens the door and the Roman jailers are terrified and everybody's terrified. And the Roman jailer knows that if these guys e scape, he takes their place and he doesn't want to go through all that torture and shame and everything. So he's thinking of killing himself. And these fellows, haven't walked out of their cells they're just sitting there , singing their songs. So , so we have the Philippian jailer and his whole household and they go and have a dinner together. And it's an online Bible study and people are getting baptized and the Holy Spirit's coming and it's all very wonderful. And then in the morning he gets up, he takes him back, puts them back in jail because he's under the authority of the magistrate. The magistrate says, all right, you can let him go now. And Paul says, you're kidding. You just broke the law. We're Roman citizens. You get your body down here and apologize. And a Roman magistrate is now in a lot of trouble because you could not beat, You could not shame a Roman citizen. They had to go through a trial with evidence and accusations and the whole legal process. So he had assumed that, you know, these were just Jews. You could beat them up. And then he finds out they're Roman citizens and he's broken Roman law. And the message to Theophilus is don't assume that this Christianity stuff is Jewish. And don't assume you can just beat us up. Christians include Roman citizens, and we're entitled to Roman law and Roman law protects. so you better follow due process,

Dan: 9:59

Especially if it's a submission that Luke's making for Paul's case.

David: 10:03

Yeah. This is a report to Theophilus about the people who accuse Christians of causing trouble, you know, and now we've got a Roman magistrate causing trouble.

Dan: 10:12

Yeah. Yeah . They come down and they will Paul and Silas, right out of the city and they head off on their way to the next place. So they ended up in Thessalonica or Thessalonica, depending on how you want to pronounce your words, but , we have a very different kind of response. That's going to happen here at Thessalonica.

David: 10:34

Yeah. So the the synagogue in Thessalonica, they do the Jesus is the fulfilment of the scriptures bit, get into a raging argument, but they're not quite as nice as some other people. So t hey drive Paul out of town and a handful of believers sort of move down the road and run their own little synagogue. Then he goes-- his route changes. It looks like he was headed to Rome, but now to get away from this persecution, he does a deviation south, and they go down to Berea. When they get to Berea, suddenly you've got people who are rational. S o the whole Berean church synagogue sits down with the Bible and work through Paul's teaching and work out that he's telling the truth. And this is, so the Bereans become this classic model of rational, Let's look at the scriptures, let's work it out. Let's listen to the argument and come to a reasonable conclusion. The reasonable conclusion is Jesus is Christ. Yeah . That's a huge contrast. But then the persecutions are following Paul down the road. So they decided it's not a bad idea if Paul disappears on his own. So Paul leaves the , the mission team and goes to Athens and Athens being a Greek city. Yes. There's a synagogue there. And he visits with him for a while. Yeah. But , uh, yeah, but to , to be on his own now is the scary bit, because he has limited money, you know, what are you going to do? Meanwhile, the mission t eams off doing, we don't know what, but they're probably still working on the gospel.

Dan: 12:17

Yeah. And that does bring us to the end of episode 27. So if you would like to come and access the study notes, go deeper with Acts chapters for the end of chapter 15 through to halfway through 17, please come to trainingforliferedeemed .com/ 27. Grab the study notes there. If you enjoy this episode, we would love for you to leave us a review and make sure you subscribe so that you can come back next week for episode. Well , no , come back on Wednesday for episode 28, where we are going to be looking at Athens and Paul being on his own there and how God provides a looks after him and brings him from there through currents to Ephesus and beyond. So come back and join us then.