Jesus for All (Acts #23)

Think of someone you met and immediately liked — and think about why. What was it that made you want to be fast friends straight away?

Now flip it. Think of someone you met and did not warm to at all. Don’t say the name out loud — just consider what it was that made you want to take a step back.

Here is the thing. Underneath it all, we assume everyone sees those two people exactly as we do. The one you liked — well, of course everybody would like them. How could you not? They’re great, they like what I like, they listen to the same music, we speak the same language.

And we do the same in reverse. Nobody would like them. They dress differently. They have a strange accent. They watch films I can’t stand. They listen to country music — I could never be friends with them. (I am going to make a lot of enemies in this church.)

Kids, this is why I asked you to be in here today. I want you to hear loud and clear: that is not how God thinks.

In Acts 16 we are going to see that Jesus is for all. He loves the rich and the poor. The famous and the invisible. The enormously talented and those who feel they never accomplish much at all. He loves boys and girls. He loves people with good taste in music and people with country music. He loves you, and He loves me.

How They Got to Philippi

A little context. In Acts 16:1–5 Paul invites Timothy to join him and Silas. Then in verses 6–10 the language shifts to “we” and “us” — Luke, the author, has joined them. We don’t know exactly where or why. So now there are at least four of them.

They try to enter a region called Asia — not the continent, but a district of the Roman Empire — and the Holy Spirit will not let them. They try Bithynia, and cannot get in there either. Then Paul has a dream, and God calls them to Macedonia.

Macedonia is not a city, kids — it is a district, rather like Iowa is a state. Where they are headed is Philippi, the leading city of that district and a Roman colony. And you have heard of it before, because the entire letter of Philippians is written by Paul to the people there.

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi… I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. — Philippians 1:1–5 (ESV)

We are about to watch the first day. We are about to meet the people who are the “you” in that letter — three of them, and they could hardly be more different.

Lydia, by the River

And on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer… One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. — Acts 16:13–14 (ESV)

They meet her at a river, at a place of prayer. That detail matters. It took ten Jewish men to establish a synagogue in a city — so if there is no synagogue here, there is a very small Jewish population indeed. They cannot muster ten men. So on the Sabbath a group of women goes down to the river to pray.

Had there been a synagogue, Luke would almost certainly have recorded Paul heading there first, as he always did. Instead the first place they go is this riverside, and the first person they share the gospel with is Lydia — and she believes.

Luke, being a detail-oriented physician, gives us specifics. She is from Thyatira — which is not in Philippi at all. Thyatira is a city in Asia. Remember, they had tried to get into Asia and the Spirit would not let them. God redirects them by a dream all the way to Philippi, and the first person they reach is a woman from Asia.

But the most striking thing about Lydia is her work. She is a seller of purple goods. In the Roman Empire purple was extraordinarily difficult and expensive to produce, so purple clothing could only be bought by the very wealthy — the upper crust of society. Those are her customers. Which means she is dealing with the most influential people in the city and likely the district, and is almost certainly wealthy and influential herself.

Verse 15 confirms it: she invites Paul and his companions to stay with her. She owns a house. Context suggests a family, probably servants — and she still has room for four more men. That is a large house.

Now, it can be genuinely difficult to seek God when you are wealthy, because you can simply purchase what you need. Health problem? Pay for the care. Feeling something missing? Buy it. Want friends? Throw a party.

We usually don’t seek God when things are going well. It is when we are impoverished — in relationships, financially, emotionally — that we cry out. It is usually pain that drives us to Him. When we are comfortable we might acknowledge Him, but without that same desperation.

And yet here is a wealthy woman still seeking after God. What moves me most is that while she is seeking Him, it is God who finds her — at a river, among women praying, where He brings the message of Jesus to her. She hears about the death and resurrection of Christ, she believes, and she is baptized right there.

Jesus was for Lydia.

A Girl Who Was Owned

As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling… And this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour. — Acts 16:16–18 (ESV)

Compare her with the woman we just met. We know Lydia’s name; we never learn this girl’s. Lydia was wealthy; this girl is desperately poor. Lydia is a foreigner; this girl is almost certainly local. Lydia owns a business; this girl is herself owned. Lydia was seeking God; this girl is in spiritual bondage.

They could not be more different — and the text shows that God loves this girl every bit as much.

The phrase translated “spirit of divination” is, in the Greek, a spirit of python. In Greek mythology there was a serpent-like creature by that name — which is where our snake gets its name. Anyone the Greeks considered a psychic or fortune-teller was described that way. But the reality is she is demon-possessed.

I realize that is a controversial subject now. A while back, during a Bible study with some Wartburg wrestlers, one of them read a passage in Mark where Jesus casts out a demon, paused, and said: wait — for real? Actual demons? You could see the disbelief.

A lot of people assume these accounts can be explained naturally — someone collapsing and shaking had a seizure; someone crying out had a mental health condition. And so we quietly treat those passages as fable.

Others sit at the opposite extreme and see demonic activity in everything negative. A headache is oppression. A firing means the bosses are under demonic influence. An addiction just needs the right spirit cast out.

So where do I land? Jesus talks about demons and deals with them as real, so I am going with Jesus. Yes, I believe there are demons. But I cannot go so far as to say everything negative is demonic — the sinful nature of humanity and the fallenness of the world produce plenty of pain on their own without demons getting the credit. Is there demonic activity? I believe so; go to certain places on the mission field and you would not doubt it. But not everything.

Two things convince me it is what is happening here.

First, she is working against the preaching. On the surface it sounds like the opposite — she cries out that these men are servants of the Most High God proclaiming the way of salvation. But if she were genuinely directing people to Jesus, Paul would have let her continue; she was drawing a crowd. And consider: once people put their faith in a sovereign God, they no longer need to fear the future — so why would they pay a fortune-teller? If she were truly promoting Jesus she would be destroying her owners’ business.

I think she is mocking. I think she is a deliberate distraction, being so relentlessly disruptive that Paul and the others will finally give up and leave Philippi. This is the demon actively opposing the gospel. Except it is not the missionaries who leave — it is the demon that leaves the girl.

Second, Paul says “in the name of Jesus.” Every time a demon is cast out in the New Testament it happens either by Jesus Himself or in His name. Paul claims no authority of his own. Only Jesus, the Son of God, has authority over all things including the demonic. So it is Jesus who frees this girl.

Lydia was seeking God when God found her. This girl is not seeking God — she is actively opposed to Him. And He loves her enough to free her anyway.

So Jesus is not only for rich people like Lydia. He is for the poor. Not only for the influential and well-known, but for the outcast, the overlooked, the nearly invisible.

The Jailer at Midnight

Once the demon is gone, her owners realize their income has gone with it. They complain to the city officials, and Paul and Silas are arrested, beaten with rods, and thrown into prison. I have no idea how Luke and Timothy avoided it — perhaps they were off buying groceries.

And God allows it, because there is a third person to meet.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake… and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. — Acts 16:25–26 (ESV)

Kids, you cannot imagine how tedious that jailer’s job was. He is essentially babysitting. He was probably an ex-soldier — injured, or simply old enough to retire — who has gone from the excitement of military life to watching prisoners. No phone. No email. No YouTube. Not even books, since the printing press did not exist. He could sit and twiddle his thumbs.

So I suspect he did what the prisoners did: he listened. Here are two men unjustly arrested, beaten, and jailed — and they are singing about the glory of God and praying out loud. They are not cursing God for letting this happen. They are praising Him and talking about a Jesus who rose from the dead. Everyone is listening in, and I imagine the jailer is too. Maybe he thinks they are mad. Maybe he is curious.

Then the earthquake. And I believe it was supernatural, because it is not only the foundations that shake and the doors that open — it says everyone’s bonds were unfastened. They would have been in metal shackles at the wrists or feet or both, and even those come undone.

The jailer had either fallen asleep or been knocked unconscious. He wakes to darkness — everything was lit by oil lamps, and the shaking has knocked them to the floor. He comes in with a torch, sees the doors standing open, and assumes every prisoner has escaped.

That is catastrophic for him. The penalty for letting a prisoner escape was not imprisonment — it was execution. And as a man of honor, this ex-soldier resolves to carry out on himself what he knows his superiors will do.

And Paul, with just enough light to see him, shouts: stop — don’t do it. We are all here.

Honestly? I would have been gone. I have been unjustly arrested, beaten with rods, thrown into prison — and then an earthquake opens the doors and unlocks my chains. To me that is permission to leave. That is God saying walk out.

They stay. Because God is going to use them for this man. They save his life.

But notice what he asks once he has brought them out: “What must I do to be saved?” They have already saved him physically, and he knows it. What he means is that after hearing them sing, after hearing them pray, after everything that has happened tonight, he realizes he needs something else. So they tell him about Jesus — the cross, the resurrection, how much God loves him. And that same night the jailer and his entire household believe and are baptized.

So Jesus is not only for wealthy women like Lydia, and not only for the poorest and least seen. He is also for the hardworking, ordinary, middle-of-the-road person like this jailer.

And these are the people who make up the church that Paul writes to years later. When he says “you,” he is writing to a wealthy foreign businesswoman, to a girl whose past includes demonic possession, and to a former soldier turned jailer. Three people who could not be more different. That is who God used to start a church.

Three Things to Take Away

1. Jesus is for everyone. Three socioeconomic classes. Both genders. A range of ages. Different nationalities and different religious backgrounds. Utterly different people — and this is who Jesus died for.

That is why Paul writes to the Galatians: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:27–28).

His death on the cross was not only for the people you like. It was also for the person you thought of at the beginning — the one you did not like.

2. If Jesus is for everyone, the church should be multi, not mono. The prefix “mono” means one, or alone — but it also carries the sense of same. In some churches everyone talks the same, votes the same, looks the same, earns about the same, has the same number of children. One skin color, one economic background, everyone broadly identical.

That happens because we are naturally drawn to people like us — since if we are like them, chances are they will like us back.

In college I had an assignment to sit in a local high school cafeteria and simply observe. (I am quite sure that assignment would not be permitted today.) This was the early-to-mid nineties, when the biggest music genre in the country was country music — a dark time for our nation.

Sure enough, there was an entire table of cowboys. Hats, boots, belt buckles, western shirts, the whole nine yards — on an ordinary Thursday. Across the cafeteria sat a group with textbooks open, and from how they talked and dressed I quickly worked out that was the group I would have been stuck in. Beside them was the loudest table, who plainly considered themselves the funniest and coolest — some athletes, families with a bit more money, the popular crowd. And in one corner, a small faction dressed entirely in black.

What struck me was how little the groups mixed. It was a small school, maybe a hundred students per class, so they knew each other’s names in the hallway. But they had found their faction, their clique, and they were content in it.

This doesn’t only happen in high school. It happens on sports teams, in break rooms, in neighborhoods, everywhere. But the one place it should not happen is the church — because when a church becomes mono, it has become more about the personal preferences of its people than about reflecting the heart of God. And God’s heart is plainly for all people.

Healthy churches are multi. Multi-economic. Multi-generational. Multi-ethnic. Multi-everything — because Jesus is for everyone.

3. If Jesus is for everyone, then Jesus is for you. Kids, I don’t know where you are. Some of you know He died on the cross for you and loves you. Some of you think this is mum and dad’s thing. Hear it clearly: He is not only for older people. We just watched Him come for a girl. He is not only for the wealthy. He is for everyone, and that includes you.

Maybe you identify with Lydia — God has given you a decent income or some influence somewhere, or perhaps you feel like the foreigner, but you have been blessed. Just like Lydia, you need Jesus.

Maybe you identify with the girl — not because of demonic possession, but because you feel ignored, an outcast, or bound to something you cannot break. Jesus is for you.

But looking around, I suspect many of you identify with the jailer. You are good people. You work hard. You are responsible, honorable. And you need Jesus too.

No matter what is in your bank account, how full your closet is, what car you drive, what you are fighting, what is on your record, or what your relationships look like — Jesus is for you.