The Way of the World – Acts 16:16-24

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I despise and detest those men who were using this slave girl.

There is no doubt that she was demon-possessed and filled with evil.

Despite her age, she was, by definition, a witch,

And based upon an abundance of Old Testament scriptures,

If she had been an Israelite or a resident of Israel, she would have been worthy of execution.

But to my mind, that woman’s owners were far more wicked than she was.

If a soldier, who guns down innocent women and children, is a murderer,

Then the politician or the general who ordered that soldier to slaughter those women and children

Is a thousand times more culpable and despicable than he is.

This woman’s “masters,” whether or not they themselves were demon-possessed,

Were just as guilty before God as their slave girl.

Spiritually speaking, the death penalty isn’t confined to murderers and witches,

For the wages of ALL SIN is death.

AND EVERY soul that sinneth it shall die.

In several ways, this young lady had very little control or choice in what she was doing.

Not only was she demon-possessed and under that demon’s direction,

But these men were also her masters, her pimps, her Fagin, commanding her to serve them,

And they deserve nothing but contempt.

Am I being too harsh?

Having said that, what if I went on to show that some things about those men are found in everyone of US?

I think that in examining these men, we can catch a glimpse of the world in general.

And there is far too much of the world and worldliness even in those who profess to have been born again.

I’d like to show you five things about those men, which illustrate our modern society – any lost society.

They were characterized by PROFITS over people; HYPOCRISY over sincerity; and TROUBLE over truth.

They were characterized by VIOLENCE over temperance and CONTINUITY over connection with the Lord.

These men were characterized by more concern for PROFITS than for PEOPLE.

As I said last week, we have no idea how this young lady became demon-possessed.

But it is reasonable to assume that it had something to do with Oracle at Delphi and the worship of Apollos.

Perhaps her parents were slaves, and they presented her to Apollos in the hope of delivering her from the misery that they had to endure.

But when their owner discovered that their child was possessed, he capitalized on the situation.

And perhaps that owner then sold shares in his slave girl to some of his wicked associates.

Or perhaps it was the girl’s parents who actually sold her to these men.

Who can say?

But as I pointed out, as far as her masters were concerned, this human being, this young lady, this damsel, was nothing more to them than a horse to a farmer or an ox to a shipper.

Isn’t it hard sometimes to really grasp and feel what it was like to live the days of the Bible?

Things which used to be done by people 2,000 or 3,000 years ago and half way around the world are often inexplicable to me.

But that just proves how sheltered I have been.

As I said last week, our world is not greatly different today.

For example, slavery is not merely a footnote in history; it is as alive today as it has ever been.

And Satan has not yet been bound and cast into the bottomless pit.

Demon-possession hasn’t yet come to an end.

And without a doubt the world hasn’t stopped putting profits above people.

If anything, society is more about this today than it has ever been.

Thursday, while I was waiting for the weather, I half-heard a news report on the trade deficit with China.

I wasn’t paying close attention, so I missed the details,

But the commentator was complaining that we are sending billions upon billions of dollars to China,

And in the process we are losing thousands and thousands of jobs here in America.

Obviously, those companies would rather buy cheap products from Asia than to pay high wages here.

The trade deficit is caused by greed.

We are putting profits above people – our neighbors.

But wait a minute, isn’t that an over-simplification?

Isn’t part of the issue the fact that Americans want to keep BOTH their jobs AND their billions of dollars?

Isn’t it true that we want our billions, and we don’t care what happens to that factory-worker in Beijing?

Doesn’t the knife cut both ways?

No matter how you look at it, our society is fueled by profits.

And there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that, unless there is unnecessary collateral damage.

There is no sin in designing a product that people need and then to sell it at a profit.

That is not only not sinful, it is highly commendable.

But if that product is RU486, the morning after abortion pill, then there IS terrible evil involved.

Not only is there the death of that new-conceived baby;

Not only is there the de-humanizing of American society,

But the manufacturers of that pill have proof that their product also severely harms many of the women that take it.

Yet they keep making it, because profits are more important than people.

The whole abortion industry is about profits over people.

Years ago I was preaching in fundamental Baptist churches in Kentucky and Tennessee.

I couldn’t believe it when I learned that members of those churches raised and sold tobacco,

And that some of those churches and their missionaries were financed principally by tobacco money.

Don’t those churches or their people care that they were killing people?

It was about profits over people.

The entertainment industry seems bent on finding more ways to make disgusting things amusing.

And in the process they are pulling their clients further and further into the sewer.

Profits over people.

Every Christian needs to look at his life from time to time to see how much of this has crept into him.

A second thing that we see in these men, is that they put HYPOCRISY over SINCERITY.

“And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers,

And brought them to magistrates, saying, These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city,

And teach customs, which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, being Romans.”

Don’t you see in this another bit of evidence that this woman’s soothsaying was not a matter smoke & mirrors?

When with authority of Christ, Paul commanded the demon to depart, it was forced to immediately obey.

And with that demon expelled, the girl was useless to her masters as a soothsayer.

Some say that verse 19 should read, “And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was GONE OUT of her,” they were furious with Paul and Silas.

The key to this woman’s profitability was the Spirit of Python which had taken possession of her.

It was all about profit and the loss of profits.

Seeing that the hope of their gains was gone, those men violently grabbed the missionaries and dragged them before the magistrates

But why didn’t they say anything about their financial problems?

Because they were hypocrites.

Despite the fact that many of the people of Philippi knew what was going on, these men decided that they could garner more sympathy by pleading secondary concerns rather than the real ones.

They played the very common RACE gambit – “These men are JEWS.”

That has been a tool used with some success for thousands of years.

And it is not going to go away until after the Tribulation.

In fact the scripture indicates that the use of this argument is going to intensify during the Tribulation.

Then they used the PATRIOTISM card – “We are ROMANS and we should stand for Roman values.”

How often does the subject of patriotism come up in arguments simply because there isn’t enough real logic and weight to carry the fight.

For example, how often is patriotism argued in the fight over the trade-deficit?

How often is patriotism used to cover up an American corporation’s hunger for profits?

And how often is patriotism used to justify American intervention in sovereign affairs of other nations?

I have nothing against patriotism, but must not be a substitute for truth or for allegiance to Christ.

Hypocrisy is alive and well and still living in our society.

Those men pleaded that Paul and Silas were teaching customs that were unlawful to receive or observe.

I have read that it might have been illegal at that time to proselytize Roman citizens.

At various points in Roman history, the Emperor was supposed to be worshiped as a god.

But if that was true then these ambassadors of Apollos were guilty of the crime that they were charging against he Apostle.

What a hypocritical stench there was about all this.

And still today so much of the fighting between sects and religions is filled with hypocrisy.

Most religious people know so little about their own faith, and they don’t practice what they do profess,

That their attacks upon their neighbors sound very little different than the words of these men.

A third thing that we see here is VIOLENCE over TEMPERANCE.

“And the multitude rose up together against them: and the magistrates rent off their clothes, and commanded to beat them. And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely: Who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks.”

Verse 19 says that after the exorcism, the woman’s masters CAUGHT Paul and Silas.

This doesn’t mean that they had to chase them down as the missionaries fled from the scene.

It means that they laid hold of them, or grabbed them as if they were criminals in the act of murdering someone else.

They ran up to them and got them in head-locks until someone could find enough rope.

Then the verse says that they “DREW them into the marketplace unto the rulers.”

They were dragged down the street to the place where the judges could be found.

It wasn’t that the missionaries were resisting them.

It was that these men were so furious that they had become violent.

And the violence didn’t stop there.

The mob got very rowdy and that in turn excited the magistrates.

Politicians by nature usually react to their constituents rather than to logic, reason or justice.

Those magistrates either ripped the clothes off Paul and Silas or ordered it to be done.

And then they commanded the lictors to start beating the servants of God.

Paul and Silas were whipped for saving a poor woman from her demon-possession.

And then they were committed to prison where they were further hurt and humiliated by having their feet put into stocks.

Since there is nothing said about their heads, we shouldn’t assume that Paul and Silas were pilloried.

They were apparently forced to sit, probably on the floor, with their feet spread apart.

Their ankles were then locked into wood contraptions called “stocks” so that they couldn’t move.

The stocks were probably designed in such a way that the victims couldn’t lay down, and undoubtedly they had no support for their backs.

This arrangement accomplished two things; it confined the prisoners and they tortured them.

All because Paul and Silas had eased the suffering of a poor woman.

This was not only unnecessary – but unlawful.

There was no need for this violence.

I guarantee that Paul would have been delighted to address the magistrates and explain what he had done.

There was room for reason and logic; for discussion and dialogue.

But no room was going to be given, because they, and we, live in a violent society.

A fourth thing about these men of the world, was that they saw trouble rather than truth.

“And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers,

And brought them to magistrates, saying, These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city,

And teach customs, which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, being Romans.”

The best thing that had ever happened in Philippi was taking place before their eyes.

It wasn’t the discovery of gold in the mountains just outside of town.

It wasn’t the battle between Claudius and Brutus, Antony and Cassius.

It wasn’t the day that Claudius Caesar declared Philippi to be a Roman colony.

The greatest event that ever took place in that village-of-the-damned was when Paul, Silas, Timothy, Luke and whomever else was in their little troupe walked into town.

They were bringing with them the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ; the good news of eternal through Christ.

“Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven, given among men whereby we must be saved.”

The people of Philippi were, without exception, all headed towards eternal death before the arrival of those missionaries.

God’s judgment wasn’t going to be confined to the men in the Philippian jail, or to demon-possessed girls.

Those men were correct in assuming things would change as people began submitting themselves to Christ,

But they were wrong in saying that Paul and Silas were trouble-makers.

The missionaries were problem-solvers, crime-stoppers, pain-relievers and soul-savers.

Paul and Silas were the best thing to ever happen to Philippi; Philippi NEEDED those missionaries.

There was only one Person that could EVER be more beneficial – the Person of the Lord Jesus.

And again, nothing has changed.

As far as the world is concerned there is nothing more dangerous than a person who believes in uncompromiseable truth.

The world says that there is nothing more dangerous than a fundamentalist – a fundamentalist anything.

And the lost world of Egypt, Philippi or the United States of America would include this church in that list.

But we possess the ONLY answer to the sins and problems of this world.

It’s not us; it’s not that we have anything in which we can boast personally,

But we are servants of, and ambassadors for, the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, it appears that even Christians think this worldly way sometimes?

Why is it that so many people who claim the name of Christ, are only partially committed to the Lord?

Why is it that the man who is totally sold out to the Lord is considered to be a fanatic even by other saints?

Why is that if someone espouses an unpopular, but Biblical doctrine, he is shunned?

Isn’t it because even Christians would rather avoid the trouble rather than admit the truth?

Lastly, we see in this scripture that the world seeks CONTINUITY rather than CONNECTION with the Lord.

Permit me to share with you a really big word.

It’s not very often that I get to use, and you get to hear, an eight syllable word.

I use it this morning because it is right at the heart of battle between creation and evolution.

And it doesn’t stop with academics, but seems to run right down the heart of modern life generally.

“Uniformitarianism” is the idea that life, lives, society, the world and just about everything else, change very slowly and gradually – uniformly.

They say that evolution takes zillions of years, because evolutionary change is very, very slow.

The digging of the Grand Canyon took millions of years, because the Colorado River isn’t powerful enough to have done the work in a short period of time.

The knowledge that man possesses today has been gathered since before he was swinging through trees.

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

And the natural implication is: “We’d like to see this uniformitarianism, this slow development, continue.”

The fact is: once there was nothing and then in less than six days there was everything.

The fact is: the Grand Canyon was dug in less than a year’s time as the waters of Noah’s flood receded.

The fact is: man hasn’t even begun to learn anything that really needs to know.

And the truly important things were revealed to our fathers though immediate, special revelation.

The greatest events of human history took place suddenly, if not cataclysmically.

Creation was almost instantaneous.

The earth was transformed in period of months by a world-wide, God-ordained flood.

And the greatest of all human-related events was the incarnation of our Lord and Saviour.

It occurred at the time of God’s appointment:

“When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law; to redeem them that were under the law.”

One day “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory the glory as of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth.”

II Kings gives us a wonderful little anecdote out of the history of Israel.

Samaria was in the midst of a terrible war with Syria and the capital was under siege.

There was almost no food or water left in the city, and the people were starving to the point of eating their own flesh and blood.

But the Lord intervened and miraculously drove the Syrian army back to their homeland.

They retreated in such terror and speed that they left nearly all of their provisions and spoils behind.

But the people of the city, knew nothing about that.

However, four sickly lepers had been caught in the no-man’s-land between the city and the invaders.

They had been expelled from Israelite society, but they were still considered to be the enemy of Syria.

Eventually, starvation drove them to turn to the Syrians in order to beg for food,

But instead of swords and spears they found the camp deserted, and victuals enough to feed a city.

If we could turn that story inside-out, upside-down and then look at it in a mirror, we would see what was happening in Philippi.

The city was in a state of spiritual starvation and its citizens were dying every day.

But they didn’t realize the extent of those deaths.

The Lord, however, had intervened and provided an eternal feast in the person who is called the Bread of Life.

Along came a little band of missionaries, the lepers of Roman society.

They were the only people in Macedonia who knew about the bounty that the Lord had miraculously and graciously supplied.

And now they were pounding on the gates of the city with the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ.

My point is this:

If the people of Philippi had continued in the direction that they were headed, there wouldn’t have been a single soul in that city to escape the fires of Hell.

Continuity in sin can mean only one thing: “the wages of sin is death.”

But the Lord has made a way of escape through Christ Jesus.

Those people and you and I have been given a choice: Christ – or death.

Spiritual evolution is a figment of Satanic imagination.

What is needed by sinners like us is the cataclysmic change of regeneration – the new birth.

As it had been in the life of the Apostle Paul, we are headed in the wrong direction and the only way that direction can be changed is by the omnipotent hand of God.

When Christ presented Himself before Saul of Tarsus, that man fell to his knees before Him.

His heart was filled with repentance, and there was a 180 degree change in his heart and life.

He became filled with awe, respect and eventually love for the Christ he had previously hated.

The man was born again, born from above.

That was the need of Philippi, and that is still the need of sinners today.

Is that your need this morning?

Are you absolutely sure that your demons have been expelled and replaced with the Holy Spirit?

Please, come bow before the cross of Christ this morning.

Give the Lord your heart in repentance and faith.