ACTS 16
Read Acts 16:1-40
At the Council of Jerusalem in the last chapter, the differences between different factions were set aside and everyone agreed that the gospel was for all people. Now we see that Paul and his companions Silas and Timothy are back on the road spreading the good news of Jesus as saviour, and we see three people from differing backgrounds come to the Lord.
First there is this lady Lydia whom we meet in vv11-15. She is described as a dealer in purple cloth. This is a luxury item and out of the reach of most pockets, so Lydia is probably a well-to-do businesswoman. Later, she invited Paul and his companions to her house, so she seems to have been reasonably well off. Paul met Lydia when he was looking for a place of prayer. Normally he would go to the synagogue, but there didn’t seem to be one in Philippi; maybe there weren’t the ten adult males that you need to constitute a synagogue. The next best thing is a place of prayer and when Paul found it. He found Lydia and a group of women. Paul spoke and we read that the Lord opened Lydia’s heart to respond to his message (v14) to the extent that she was baptised. Lydia would have believed in God and worshipped him at this place of prayer, but until she heard Paul she did not know about Jesus.
The next episode saw a slave girl who was inhabited by a demon giving her the ability to predict the future. Through this, she earned a lot of money for her owners. She went around following Paul and the others shouting, “these men are servants of the most high God, who are telling you the way to be saved” (v17). Now this, of course, was perfectly correct and you would think Paul would be happy. After all, any publicity is good publicity. But Paul recognised that this was an evil spirit at work, so he cast the spirit out. This meant that the girl was free from possession, but also that she lost the ability to predict the future. And now her owners would no longer get any financial benefit from her.
Now, these owners of the slave girl were so upset at their loss of income that they arranged to have Paul and Silas thrown into prison. As we have seen before, the Lord took action, and an earthquake shook the prison and the doors flew open. As the jailer was about to take his own life (the prisoners were his personal responsibility and if any escaped then he would be held responsible) Paul intervened. Rather than take the chance to escape Paul and Silas spoke to the jailer and he too came to the Lord.
Did the slave girl come to the Lord? We are not told in so many words, but since we have three stories here and both Lydia and the jailer believed and came to the Lord then I think we can assume that the slave girl did as well, What we have here is, following the decision of the Council of Jerusalem that Jesus is for everyone, three people from completely different backgrounds coming to Christ: a wealthy businesswoman, a slave girl that had nothing, and a non-Jewish man. Jesus is, indeed, for all people.