The majority of Christendom today believes that the salvation of sinners – depends on the WORK OF MAN.
Most people believe that it is up to the sinner to DO certain things in order to be saved from his sins.
If he doesn’t meet the requirements of that particular sect, then the full weight of his sins will blast him into Hell when he dies.
This is EXACTLY what Paul had been fighting against in chapter 15, where one sect was teaching that “except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.”
But the Bible teaches that salvation from sin is totally by God’s sovereign grace.
It is enjoyed through faith, by people to whom the Lord grants repentance.
These folk talk much about grace, but unfortunately they have misdefined it.
The majority of Evangelicals still believe that salvation is dependent upon the WORK OF MEN.
And their evangelism proves their misconception.
For example, they believe that it is the work of the evangelist to convince the sinner to leave his sins, to believe on Christ, and in some way to trust His grace.
So they search high and low for the right subjects, and then they coerce, argue, corner and convince these people to “ask Jesus into their hearts” or to pray “the sinner’s prayer.”
These people think that the eternal fate of the lost soul rests on the expert shoulders of the soul-winner.
In reality, the work of the BIBLICAL evangelist is to tell the sinner about Christ, and to leave the door open for the HOLY SPIRIT to prepare the heart of that sinner to receive repentance and faith.
There is a huge difference between these two approaches to evangelism.
One of the effects of this false evangelism is the idea that so long as sinners pray the sinner’s prayer, it doesn’t matter what the evangelist does to bring him to that point.
Not every soul-winner goes as far as the next, so I’m generalizing here:
But most believe that it is their responsibility to know every answer and to use any argument in order to convince that sinner to believe in Jesus.
They will make the effects of sin so venomous that their target will feel the breath of the Death Angel on the back of his neck.
And they will argue that sinner into inescapable corners.
They were no more saved from sin than a mad dog or a cobra snake.
Another effect of this false understanding of evangelism is the unbiblical principle of ECUMENISM.
One famous evangelist often puts his arms around Roman Catholic bishops and says that they are brothers in Christ, in order to be given the opportunity to preach to their people.
I have heard of others who did the same thing with the Mormons.
I have newspaper clippings talking about a certain evangelist going backstage in Las Vegas among the naked dancers in order to witness to them.
“They won’t come out to my shows, so I’ll go to their shows.”
I don’t know that it is ever true, but definitely in the area of evangelism: the end does not justify the means.
Satan once approached the Apostle Paul with a proposal for some ecumenical evangelism.
As we shall see, a woman who claimed to be possessed of the Spirit of Python – a demon –
Declaring that those men were servants of God and preaching the way of salvation.
But they refused the opportunity to link THEIR ministry with the ministry of Satan.
Let’s use this scripture today to study the subject of Demonic Evangelism.
It’s too big a subject to focus on this morning,
So if that’s what pops your cork, then I invite you to return at 6:00 tonight.
This young lady is called a “damsel,” which is the Greek word for a “young, female bond-slave.”
It’s the same word that is used to describe Rhoda who opened the door to Peter at John Mark’s house when he was released from prison back in Acts chapter 12.
Somehow this young lady became the property of a group of men.
She was a “damsel possessed with a spirit of divination … which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying.”
She was a commodity to those men like a good horse to a farmer or an ox to a man who shipped freight.
Now, you might think that this is unbelievable or so barbaric that it belongs only in ancient history.
But the fact is that there are hundreds of thousands, and some say millions, of young women today who are treated little differently than this woman.
There are thousands of girls who are tricked or sold into prostitution and other forms of slavery every year.
And 10s of 1000s of them are right here in this country, doing some of most degrading things imaginable.
Slavery is not just a thing of the past.
And our modern American society is no different.
She was possessed with the spirit of Python, a name connected to the Greek god Apollos.
In other words, this woman was demon-possessed; she was, and was used as, a servant of Satan.
And many of the foolish people of Philippi paid her handlers money to listen to her forecast their futures.
Apparently she was accurate enough, or close enough to the source of Satanic power, often to be right.
And her masters were getting rich exploiting her abilities – and her suffering.
I think that it is interesting to recognize that the Holy Spirit gave us the name of the servant girl in Acts 12,
But this girl was not named.
Perhaps it points out that those two girls were very, very different:
I think that there is a very good likelihood that Rhoda was one God’s children.
There was no need to give us her name, because it is not found in the pages of the Lamb’s Book of Life.
“These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.”
This scripture indicates that Paul and the other missionaries were going out to the place of prayer, the “proseuche” (pros-yoo-khay’), at least once a day.
In the early church there was no such thing as a MONTHLY men’s prayer meetings.
And they didn’t have WEEKLY, mid-week prayer meetings either.
Just as “Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the 9th hour,” it appears that many of the first Christians and the first churches had public prayer meetings EVERY DAY.
Unlike most modern Christians, the early church considered prayer as VERY IMPORTANT.
Group prayer was an integral part of the work of the ministry; key to the success of that ministry.
What a fascinating story; what tragedy and what victory; what sin and what humble servitude.
Joseph was the man with the coat of many colors who was sold into Egyptian slavery by his own brothers.
But after some time he was cast into prison, unjustly accused of sexual assault.
And then eventually he moved up the ladder from being an uncommon criminal to being a SERVANT of other criminals.
Was that actually moving up?
How degrading, how humiliating, how terrible!
Whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?”
All during that time he considered himself to be a servant of Jehovah – and he was.
Even when he was promoted and became Prime Minister of Egypt he was no greater than he had been, because all along he had been a servant of the Lord.
Paul, Silas and the others in their party were SERVANTS of the Most High God.
It is the folly of Satan to want to “sit upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north.”
But that desire will end in total failure,
And Satan will spend eternity in the Lake which burns with fire and brimstone.
And that means that, in some ways, the next highest position in all creation is to be His servant.
To say, “I serve at the pleasure of Jehovah” may be among the most blessed things that anyone might ever have the privilege of uttering.
I don’t think that this woman was trying to demean the missionaries by saying that they were servants of the most high God.
And I don’t think that they considered it demeaning to be His servants.
The relationship of demons to the Lord is a subject that I have studied but never fully understood.
When a man hates God, he often does everything that he can to spit in the Lord’s face,
But when the Satanic angels, the demons, come face to face with the Lord, they humbly bow and utter words of praise.
Perhaps it is because those demons know the Lord more intimately than sinful human beings do.
One day every human “knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”
Yes, you will bow before Christ some day, whether you love Him or not.
That won’t make the wicked and the idol worshiper any less Satanic, or the children of Satan,
That Paul and Silas served the One True and Living God.
And I don’t see how that could be anything less than a confession that SHE served someone else.
Now here is an important lesson:
Let’s say that this young lady was as cute as a button, or as beautiful as a super model.
Let’s say that she was innocent or naive when it came to most of the other “BIG sins” committed by men.
Furthermore, unless YOU have been converted & been given a new heart, YOU TOO are a child of the Devil.
It doesn’t matter what your age might be, unless you have been born again, you are an enemy of God.
And it doesn’t matter whether your are DEMON-POSSESSED, or SIN-POSSESSED, or merely SELF-POSSESSED, you are in league with this woman and her master.
As the Lord Jesus told the nearly perfect Pharisee, Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again.”
Paul was preaching the Lord Jesus Christ:
“Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.”
In Christ “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.”
“For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship crated in Christ Jesus.”
Isn’t it interesting that this damsel said that Paul preached the “WAY of salvation.”
Some heretics think that gives them the opportunity to say that the forgiveness is a road to be followed.
Some think that salvation from sin is a process or a plan.
But not only was that NOT what Paul was saying,
“Jesus saith, I am THE WAY, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
Also, isn’t it interesting to notice that the woman said, “Paul is showing US the way of salvation.”
Just because a person is shown what the gospel contains; just because a person or a city is evangelized;
These things don’t mean that person is a Christian and that he possesses salvation and eternal life.
This young lady was making a scene by shouting,
“These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.”
What she was saying was absolutely true.
She was drawing the attention of lost and wicked Philippians to the truth of the gospel.
She was a walking billboard advertising the city-wide meeting of the great apostle and evangelist, Paul.
Most modern evangelists would be delighted with the free advertizing.
They would praise God for ordering this servant of Satan to serve their cause.
But Paul was GRIEVED.
What was it that so grieved this man? I can’t tell you definitively.
It might have been simply that this young woman was wicked and demon-possessed.
I’m sure that this must have been a part of the emotion that he felt.
It might have grieved him that she was giving him honors, which he felt that he didn’t deserve.
Maybe he was grieved by the way she was being used and degraded.
Perhaps he was grieved because he understood the malignant design that she had against the Lord.
These might have grieved Paul, but the tone of the verse seems to say that it was the fact that a demon-filled, servant of Satan was professing to honor the Lord.
“The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.
God doesn’t want, or need, the help of the minions of Satan in His great work of saving souls.
So “Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour.”
As we shall see more closely this evening, this demon was obligated to obey at the name of Christ.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is not any less divine than God the Father.
It was by the will of Christ that this now-fallen angel was first created, “for all things and all beings were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.”
This demon knew who Jesus Christ was, and it knew who Paul was.
There is story in Acts 19 which I think is hilarious – in a dark sort of way.
On one occasion they tried casting out a demon through “Jesus whom Paul preacheth.”
“And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?
And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.”
For Paul the name of Jesus Christ was a reference to the authority of the Son of God.
He had been given the authority of Christ and he was an ambassador for the Lord.
“By the authority invested in my by your Creator and the King of Kings, I command you to come out of this woman.”
And that demon came out of her immediately.
Did that woman become a child of God through this?
And I sincerely hope that we will all be able to meet her in glory one of these days.
That would be equivalent to saying that after six weeks in a detoxification center,
That would be like saying that the criminal became a Christian after he served his time in jail.
That would be like saying that the teenager was saved when his mom found and burned his Playboy magazines.
That is Roman Catholic doctrine, but it is not Biblical doctrine.
Sinners are saved by the grace of God when they repent of their sinfulness and trust the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And at this point in Acts 16 we are not told that this lady was repentant or believing.
I sincerely hope that came later after she came to herself and sobered up so-to-speak.
But there is no proof or even a hint that this woman became a worshipper of Christ at that time.
And that should force us to reexamine our profession of salvation.
On what do you base your claim to eternal life?
Is it because you have quit some sin or inserted some sort of religious habit into your life?
Or is it because you love the Son of God, and that you trust the work that He did for you on Calvary?
Are you sorry for some wicked sin in your life, or have you repented before God that you are a thoroughly sinful sinner and in desperate need of saving grace?
An exorcism or a personal reformation is not the same thing as salvation.
Have YOU placed your love and trust; your life and your eternity on the Lord Jesus Christ?
And yet to die lost in your trespasses and sins.
Don’t let that happen: come to the cross; repent of your sin and trust your eternal soul to the Lord Jesus Christ