Although the journey to be described in the next chapters is customarily called the “Second Missionary Journey”, Acts 15:36 makes it clear that Paul’s original intention was not further outreach geographically, but rather a revisiting of the churches he and Barnabas had founded on their previous trip.
Summarizing the accomplishments of this journey, the IVP Acts Commentary writes:
“The mission … now takes several new directions. Strategically, there is the Lord's direct guidance throughout the journey (Acts 16:1-10; 18:9-10). Geographically, the gospel invades Europe (Acts 16:10-18:22). Politically, Christianity faces its opponents' challenge concerning its status in the empire (Acts 16:20-21; 17:6-7; 18:13). At the same time earlier themes continue: contextualized witness, persecution, power encounter and divine protection.”Acts 15:37-41 Paul and Barnabas Disagree on Mark as a Traveling Companion and go their separate ways.
Luke includes this material in order to show how sincere and devout believers could disagree on minor matters involving strategy and yet be independently guided by the Holy Spirit into fruitful areas of service to further the spread of the gospel and the growth of the Church.
NIV Commentary on Acts (also IVP Acts) believes that Mark and Barnabas had both been more sympathetic to the Judaizing party at Antioch than Paul was (Gal 2:11-14), and this may have been at the root of this parting of the ways. But surely this is too speculative a view. Luke says nothing about such a reason, even though he clearly sides with Paul on Mark’s earlier “desertion”, and assigns the cause of the separation to Paul’s lingering distrust of Mark’s personal reliability on a dangerous and arduous mission. Witherington (Acts 472) also rightly notes that the very fact that Paul asked Barnabas to go with him shows that he had no qualms about working together with him despite any lingering differences related to the incident mentioned in Gal 2:11-14.
41 The mission in the Province of Cilicia was “strengthening the churches” that Paul had founded in the three years between his first visit to Jerusalem after his conversion and Barnabas’ fetching him from Cilicia to minister in Antioch. the “strengthening” probably included general biblical and ethical instruction, but in particular making sure that the poisonous teaching of the Judaizers was eradicated, together with delivering the letter from the Jerusalem authorities (see Acts 15:23).
16:1-5 First Stop: Derbe and Lystra.
Barnabas had wanted Mark to travel with them as a third associate. Instead Paul takes Silas (Latin Silvanus) to replace Barnabas as the number two missionary. On the excellent qualifications of Silas as a missionary partner the NIV Acts Commentary notes:
“Paul’s selection of Silas (or “Silvanus,” as he is referred to more formally by his Latinized name in 2Co 1:19; 1Th 1:1; 2Th 1:1; 1Pe 5:12) to accompany him on his return visit to the churches was wise. He had evidently come to appreciate Silas in their contacts at Jerusalem and Syrian Antioch and concluded that he would make a congenial colleague. More than that, Silas was a leader in the Jerusalem congregation (Acts 15:22) and was explicitly identified in the Jerusalem letter as one who could speak with authority on the attitude of the Jerusalem church (Acts 15:27). He was also, it seems, a Roman citizen who could claim, if need be, the privileges of such citizenship along with Paul (Acts 16:37). This was not true of Barnabas. Likewise, Silas was a prophet (Acts 15:32), who appears to have been fluent in Greek (Acts 15:22, 32) and a helpful amanuensis (1Th 1:1; 2Th 1:1; 1Pe 5:12).“Paul also seizes the opportunity in Lystra to bring a third member of the team on board: young Timothy (Acts 16:1-3). Being the son of a mixed marriage (mother [Eunice] Jewish, father Greek), Timothy had not been circumcised. But since according to Jewish law, Jewishness was passed by the mother, not the father, he was in the eyes of Jewish law a true Jew by birth (see Witherington, Acts 474f., who disagrees with a study by S. Cohen showing that this law only came into effect in the 2nd Cent. AD). It was, therefore, appropriate for Paul to have him circumcised in order not to offend the Jews in those regions, who expected him to be circumcised since only his father was non-Jewish (v. 3). (See also Witherington, Acts 435.) It has also been suggested that this illustrates a strategy that Paul claimed he used in his evangelism:
“To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” (1Corinthians 9:19-22 NIV).In 2Tim 1:5 Paul refers to the faith of Timothy's grandmother Lois and mother Eunice, which must mean that both of these women had been converted to Christianity during one of the earlier missionary journeys, unless of course the "faith" that dwelt in the grandmother was valid pre-Christian Judaism.
6-8 These verses give us the route that the missionaries took from Iconium to Troas (see the map at the head of this posting). From Iconium they traveled directly westward to Antioch in Pisidia. At this point Luke tells us that they were “prevented by the Holy Spirit from preaching the message in the province of Asia” (v. 6). How this was accomplished Luke does not say. Wenham (Paul and Jesus, 78) and D. Aune (Prophecy in Early Christianity, 266) think a Christian prophet confronted them with the prohibition. Certainly such prophets opposed Paul’s journey to Jerusalem later in Acts (20:22-24; 21:10-13), and in fact his traveling companion Silas was himself a prophet (Acts 15:32). But judging from the vision Paul received in Troas and from his own statements in his letters about his frequent visions, this was most probably the form in which the Spirit’s message came. In his own letters Paul never mentions visions of any other figure than the exalted Christ. It is, however, somewhat interesting to reflect that ancient armies of the Hittites and Babylonians employed omens and oracles (i.e., divination) to ascertain what routes their gods wished them to take as they marched against enemies. Here Paul, Silas and Timothy can be seen as “soldiers of Christ”, waging spiritual warfare against “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:10-13), and they too are guided by God at every turn.
Luke does not tell us why the Holy Spirit prevented them from proceeding further directly westward into the Roman Province of Asia, whose principal city was Ephesus, later a major Christian center. Perhaps the missionaries themselves were not told why. God either had other Christian missionaries operating in those fields so that Paul was not needed yet, or the area was not yet ready for the gospel.
So, turning directly northward, they passed through Mysia heading for Bithynia, where later there were Christian churches to which Peter wrote his first epistle (1 Pet 1:1-2). But again the Holy Spirit put up a roadblock. Unless they were prepared at this point to double back and retrace their steps south and east to Syria, only one other direction and route lay open to them: westward, skirting the northern edge of Mysia, to Troas on the Aegean Sea cost, the famous city of King Priam described in Homer’s Iliad.
9 In the night while at Troas Paul received a vision (not a dream), in which a Macedonian man implored him to “Come over to Macedonia and help us”. It is ironic that the figure in the vision was a man, yet the first converts in Macedonian Philippi were women (Acts 16:13-15)! It is also of interest that Luke does not report him as asking for the gospel, but for “help” in general (βοήθησον ἡμῖν). In his letter to Corinth Paul seems to equate the OT word “help” with salvation in Christ: “For he says, 'In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.' I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” (2Corinthians 6:2 NIV).
But supernatural and mystical revelations were not the only factors dictating Paul’s routes. Sometimes it was political developments. When Paul’s party arrived in Philippi, they found themselves poised on the threshold of the Via Egnatia, the main East-West trunk road leading westwards to Rome itself. Paul later told the Roman Christians that he has “often intended to visit” them, and this may have been one of those times. But a dramatic turn of events in the capital city made this impossible: in A.D. 49 Emperor Claudius banished all Jews from Rome because of disturbances having to do with someone named “Chrestos”, which most scholars think reflects a misunderstanding of the title “Christ” (the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word "Messiah"). If Rome was now off-limits to Jews and especially to Christian Jews, it was clearly not the time for a visit. (See R. Barnett, Jesus & the Rise of Early Christianity, 330.) As Barnett concludes:
“Thus the die was cast for Paul to remain in the Aegean region. For the next eight years (50-57) Paul devoted his energies to preaching and church building in Philippi and Thessalonica on the Via Egnatia, in Corinth, the capital of Achaia , and in Ephesus, the leading city of Roman Asia. Moreover, he had missionary designs on Alexandria Troas (2 Cor 2:12-13). To be sure, Paul preached in Beroea and in Athens, as well as in other places not mentioned in the records; yet he appears to have had a decided preference for establishing centers of Christianity in Roman cities.”16:11-40 First Stop: Philippi.
11-15 Preaching in the Jewish Place of Prayer. The conversion of Lydia.
13 Unlike Thessalonica and Berea, other Macedonian cities Paul would visit, Philippi’s Jewish population was too small to merit a synagogue. According to later Jewish law (perhaps already effective at this time) a community had to have a minyan, a group of ten adult men, in order to be able to form a synagogue (m. Sanhedrin 1:6; Pirqe Abot 3:8). If the community was smaller than that, they could have a “place of prayer”, usually (like synagogues themselves [see Sanders, Judaism 224]) near to a body of water:
“The reference in Aristeas to washing hands in the sea may explain the fact that several Diaspora synagogues were near water. According to Acts 16:13, Paul and his companions went to the riverside near Philippi, expecting to find a synagogue there. It is quite likely that, before the synagogue service, many Diaspora Jews walked down to the shore and washed their hands, and probably their feet as well.”Witherington (Acts 490) suggests a less convincing purpose for the need for nearby fresh water: the women, who constituted almost the entire group, had to perform ritual ablutions in running water after their monthly period in order to be considered clean and able to attend Jewish worship. this could not be done in their homes, even if they had plumbing. The problem with this explanation is that a woman bathed on the morning after 7 days of menstruation and remained unclean until the evening.
13 From the Jewish custom of standing to pray but sitting to teach we can gather that Paul “sat down” in order to teach the women gathered there from the (OT) Scriptures, and as was his custom let the Scripture passages assigned to the week lead into a presentation of the good news of Jesus the Messiah.
14 Since full conversion to Judaism only posed a serious problem for men, for whom it entailed adult circumcision, but not for women, one wonders why Lydia, a wealthy woman born in Thyatira on the western coast of Asia Minor, was at this time only a “God-worshiper” (σεβομένη τὸν θεόν, see above on Acts 10:1), poised on the threshold of entering Judaism. Could it have been the Jewish dietary laws which would have interfered with eating together with her clients in the purple dye trade? Thyatira was not only a center of the purple dye and dyed garment trade, but being situated on a major border between provinces was ideally locateed to foster inter-province trade. Since Lydia had a spacious home in Philippi, it has been guessed (not more than a guess!) that she: “was probably the overseas agent of a Thyatiran manufacturer; she may have been arranging the sale of dyed woollen goods which were known simply by the name of the dye (IVP New Bible Dictionary, sub “Thyatira”). Her work didn’t require travel, but it did require entertaining, at which she was obviously very good. She became the host of the new Christian study and worship group. this is a good example of how the Lord is able to use skills that we may have before we become converted to serve Him in our new lives as believers. Lydia’s was hospitality, for which she became an example.
Lydia is the first of three persons Luke singles out among the converts at Philippi. Each has a different background and different reason to be open to the message. Lydia does not appear to have any desperately felt need for God: she was wealthy, had a respectable job, friends and a large beautiful home. We know of no scandalous sin of which she was guilty. Yet something in her hungered for God. Otherwise she would not have stood poised to enter Judaism as a “God-fearer”. Some of us may have been that way: no huge guilt that we felt, but with an indefinable inner hunger to know the Creator in the way that only a believer in Jesus can.
But whatever her conscious need, Luke emphasizes that it was because “the Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul” (NRSV).
15 If Lydia was widowed, her “household” could have included her children; otherwise it was her household servants who joined her in putting faith in Jesus and undergoing baptism. While she only stood at the door of Judaism rather than entering it fully, she did not hesitate by baptism to enter the door of faith in Jesus fully and publicly.
The first step in conversion is an open heart and sincere faith. The second is public profession of faith by baptism. The third is an earnest desire to serve Christ by serving his people. This she did by offering her house as a meeting place.
16-18 If the first example Luke gives is Lydia, a wealthy person from the uppermost ranks of wealth and social standing, the second is near the bottom: a slave girl who had a “spirit of divination”. The phrase “had (i.e., possessed) a spirit” may give the impression that this woman was in control of the spirit. But in fact the very opposite was the case: the spirit had her, as is always the case with occult powers. What the woman had was not some natural talent that she controlled and that made her more useful to society and happy with herself. Rather — somewhat like today’s addictions — she had begun by yielding to a power that she did not fully understand, thinking it might bring her success and fortune, and then found herself unable to free herself. Luke makes it clear also that her owners (v. 19) would not have wished her to free herself of this curse, since they were making a very large profit (ἐργασίαν πολλὴν) from renting out her services, much as a prostitute is “run” by her pimp! The poor woman desperately needed a Savior, such as only Jesus is.
To a modern reader reading what the woman was doing in v. 17 almost seems to have been a service for Paul and Silas, like an advertising campaign. For she was announcing in an approximate way the truth of what they were doing. Yet it was in part the very ambiguity of her announcement that troubled Paul (With. Acts 495). The “Most High God” (ὁ θεος ὁ ὑψίστος, Hebrew אֵל עֶלְיוֹן el elyon) in Judaism denoted the One True God, not just the “god” who happened to be the head of a pantheon of deities, such as was Zeus of the Greeks or Jupiter of the Romans. And “a way of salvation” in pagan parlance meant nothing more than what today’s “miracle” cures from a lingering disease or the latest self-help book might offer. Furthermore, Paul understood that this “spirit of divination” was nothing more than a demon, not a spirit from God. And just as during his earthly ministry Jesus refused to allow demons speaking within their “host” humans to testify to his identity as the son of God (see Mark 1:23-25; Luke 4:33-35), so also Paul was greatly annoyed by the “testimony” of this demon. In fact, Luke (who was with him at the time; see the use of “we”) tells us he put up with it for “many days” (v. 18) before taking action.
I dare say that most of us have never witnessed an exorcism and only know of such from either the accounts of Jesus in the gospels or through one of the kitchy movies of modern times such as Exorcist 1, 2 or 3. But because we have never witnessed one does not mean that those recorded in the Bible were unreal or fictitious. Paul was not in the business of hawking supernatural powers: we only read of his displaying such powers when the situation was truly drastic. He could not keep this woman from pestering him, and he undoubtedly saw that she herself was in the tragic grip of this demon and longed herself to find this “way of salvation”. So finally he acted and by doing so put himself, Silas and Luke at risk (as we shall see).
19-22 The first consequence was that the woman’s owners found themselves without a way to make money from her services, and made a “citizen’s arrest” of Paul and Silas, dragging them before the authorities. The charge, however, was not theft of property but advocating customs not lawful to Roman citizens (which the citizens of Philippi were). Although Luke was with them on the first occasion (see the “we” in v. 16), he was apparently not with Paul and Silas “many days” later (v. 18) at the time of the exorcism and was therefore not present at the arraignment, the beating or the imprisonment. If, as a number of scholars believe, Philippi was actually Luke’s hometown (Witherington, Acts 490), he may have been either at his home or treating a hometown patient at the time Paul and Silas were arrested.
We are not told what these unlawful “customs” (ἔθη) were. The IVP Acts Comm. notes:
“At the same time there is actually a kernel of truth in their words. In the Roman Republic a cult of Apollo centered on healing and prophecy, and under Augustus a magnificent temple to Apollo was erected on the Palatine. ‘Apollo Palatinus was in some sort the equal of Jupiter Optimus Maximus’ (Rose and Robertson 1970:82). Preaching the way of salvation in the Lord Jesus, in whose name the ‘spirit Python,’ inspired by Apollo, was cast out, might certainly be viewed as advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”It is interesting that the missionaries are assailed as “Jews”, which is ironic: if this had transpired in Judea, it would have brought protest from the Pharisees, since it was performed on the Sabbath (Acts 16:16) and violated the Sabbath laws!
“The crowd” (v. 22) may have been those standing around at the time fo the exorcism, who were either brought along to the magistrates as witnesses or simply followed out of fascination. As is typical of crowds observing something sensational, they shift their attitudes very quickly and a lust for violence leads them to “pile on” to the victims, in this case Paul and Silas. Added to this was the anti-Semitism so widespread in Greco-Roman society. All of this (i.e., a charge of disturbing the peace) may have prompted the lictors to use the rods they carried to beat the two prisoners, which was legal enough, provided the prisoners were not Roman citizens. The Roman citizen of Paul and Silas is not revealed until later (v. 37), perhaps because the loud shouting of the crowd prevented the magistrates from hearing the prisoners’ claims.
“Since prisons functioned in ancient times more as places of detention for those awaiting trial than as places of punishment, the praetors' consignment of Paul and Silas to the jailer for safekeeping is not part of the summary justice … but precedes handing them over for trial before the proconsul (Sherwin-White 1963:82). Security seems to have been of the utmost concern, for these pagan minds must have wondered, If they can cast out a soothsaying spirit, what will prevent them from using their magical powers to escape incarceration?” (IVP Acts Comm.).25-34 God rescues his servants by an earthquake and saves a terrified jailer and his family. Earthquakes are common enough in the region of the Aegean Sea. The miraculous aspect was the timing: Paul and Silas were only in jail overnight. It was not necessary to liberate them from the jail to prevent them from long-term custody. At the formal trial the following day there would have been occasion to reveal their roman citizenship and to clarify the misunderstanding about the exorcism. Paul might even have relished to opportunity to bear a public witness at the trial to the magistrates! Yet God had other plans for him. there was a jailer — probably a retired military man — who needed to hear and be convinced by the gospel. That the earthquake opened the prison doors and broke open the stocks in which their feet were helf was also not miraculous: earthquakes do such things ordinarily.
If the prisoners had escaped, the jailer would have been punished, even though the earthquake was clearly beyond his control. It was for this reason that, thinking the prisoners had escaped, he was about to take his own life rather than face disgrace and punishment of himself and his family.
But the fact that Paul and Silas and the other prisoners (“we are all here”) did not use the open doors to flee custody was remarkable. The jailer had probably heard them singing hymns before the earthquake (v. 25), and now their remarkable composure and unselfish behavior after the prison doors were sprung open (more concerned with the jailer’s attempted suicide than with their own wounds and discomforts: “Do yourself no harm!” v. 28) was in many respects even more miraculous than the earthquake.
Trembling from both the recent scare and the deep impression that the prisoners’ faith and concern for him had left on him, the jailer asked the question: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” As we noted above, “saved” and “salvation” were terms that meant different things to different groups in Greco-Roman society and in different social contexts. We have to ask ourselves: What was the danger that the jailer thought himself in? Now that the prisoners had not fled, he faced no threat of punishment from his superiors: he needed no “salvation” from that. But the behavior of these men during and after the earthquake showed that they were remarkable, to say the least: men whose integrity and therefore message could not be doubted. Furthermore, as we noted above, although earthquakes themselves were not unusual in that region, the timing of this one — immediately after these men had been beaten and imprisoned — certainly looked like God (or “a god”) was angry about their treatment. So it is quite likely that the jailer feared implication in the injustice done to these ambassadors of the “god” Jesus whom they were preaching (see the demons' words through the slave girl: “These men are slaves of the Most High God”, v. 17). He needed to be “saved’ not just from the anger of this “god”, but even more from his own complicity in their imprisonment.
This would be a minimal meaning of the jailer’s question. But we should not exclude the possibility that he had comprehended much more of the meaning of the gospel from the hymns he heard the prisoners singing in the hours leading up to the midnight earthquake. Perhaps he had heard in their singing and audible praying something about Jesus’ death, resurrection and offer of forgiveness of sins. If so, then by being “saved” he could very well have meant most of what we as Christians understand by that term. He wanted what Paul and Silas obviously had: not just forgiveness for this one misdeed, but full pardon for a lifetime of sin, and a peace of mind that allowed such joy and confidence and concern for others in the midst of injustice and suffering.
The answer given was short and direct: “Believe in/on the Lord Jesus”. The very brevity of the reply suggests that indeed Paul and Silas knew that the jailer had heard from them the basic facts of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, and his offer of forgiveness. What was now needed was not more information, but a personal decision to trust Jesus as Savior and obey him as Lord.
A retired military man such as the jailer would have known what it meant to acknowledge Jesus as “lord” (κύριος kyrios), a term he would have used to address his military superiors (see the words of the Roman centurion to Jesus in Luke 7:7-9).
The promise “and your household” merely means that the same condition needed to be met by them; hence, “They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house” (v. 32). The tender ministrations of the jailer and his family (v. 33-34) to the bleeding and dirty prisoners demonstrated already the radical transformation that faith in the Lord Jesus would continue to work in them in days to come.
35-40 Confronting the Magistrates.
When Paul and Silas last stood before the magistrates, a noisy crowd may have drowned out their objections. Now they will have their vindication. It isn’t clear why the magistrates now ordered their release without trial. The NIV Commentary suggests:
“They had probably only wanted to teach them a lesson about the peril of disturbing the peace in a Roman colony and felt that a public flogging and a night in the city’s jail would be sufficient to do that. So they ordered the jailer to release Paul and Silas.”Witherington (Acts 499) reaches a similar conclusion.
But whatever the reason, Paul will have nothing short of an admission of wrong-doing by these magistrates. His and Silas’ rights as Roman citizens have been violated not once, but twice:
“The Lex Valeria (509 B.C.) and the Lex Porcia (248 B.C.), reaffirmed in the Lex Julia (23 B.C.), shielded Roman citizens from humiliating punishments in public, such as beating with rods (Cicero Against Verres 2.5.161-70; On Behalf of Rabirius Charged with High Treason 12; Bruce 1990:366). Further, a Roman citizen was always entitled to a trial before punishment was administered. Paul demands that the magistrates come and publicly escort them from prison. This will be a public admission that the magistrates were wrong and that Christians pose no threat to Roman law.” (IVP Acts Comm.).For these two men to make such a claim falsely was not likely, since persons falsely claiming Roman citizenship could be executed by beheading (Witherington, Acts 499 n. 127). In Rome itself wearing the toga was a sign of Roman citizenship (Cowell, 72), but Paul was a manual laborer and furthermore would never have worn a garment that set him apart from the simple people whom he was called to evangelize. Witherington (Acts 501) suggests that a citizen could demonstrate his status by carrying “a testatio, a certified private copy of evidence of his birth and citizenship inscribed on the waxed surface of a wooden diptych, in a stereotypical five-part form”.
Faced with exposure of having been guilty of a flagrant violation of the law they were sworn to uphold, the magistrate gladly came in person to the prison and escorted Paul and Silas out. Paul may have used this ploy in order to force the magistrates to be especially favorably inclined toward his group of new believers.
No comments:
Post a Comment