A lousy day in the life of the apostle Paul

Conveying the gospel to people unfamiliar with it is not an easy task, as the apostle Paul discovered in Acts 16. Paul and his companions were in Philippi, a Roman colony in Macedonia, enjoying the hospitality of Lydia, their first convert there. Paul was getting increasingly irritated by a slave girl who followed them everywhere shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved” (Acts 16:17).

To be called “servants of the Most High God” seems fairly benign, and perhaps Paul was just annoyed by her continual interruptions. On the other hand, Paul and his companions were no longer in Israel, the population of Philippi was almost completely gentile, and in that context the slave girl’s shouts could refer to any number of local gods. To gentile ears, the slave girl’s cries reduced the gospel to one of a number of ways of salvation. After this had gone on for days, Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment, the spirit left her (16:18).

If Paul exorcised the slave girl merely out of annoyance, it’s not a very attractive proclamation of the gospel. Whatever his reason, his action put into motion a series of events. The slave girl was owned by some men for whom her spirit of divination was quite profitable (Acts 16:16,19). If Paul had been annoyed, her owners were now even more annoyed. They seized Paul and Silas, dragged them before the authorities and said, “These men are Jews and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice” (16:19–21). In one fell swoop, Paul had managed to rally religious, economic, political and racial forces against him. Luke then tells us that “the crowd joined in the attack . . . and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten” (16:22). After a severe flogging, the apostles were thrown into prison and ordered to be kept under the tightest security (16:23–24).

Then follows a violent earthquake, which could have discouraged Paul and Silas even more. It certainly discouraged the jailer, who thought he had lost all of his prisoners and was about to attempt suicide (16:26–27). It has been suggested that the jailer may have been one of many retired Roman soldiers in Philippi, for in the Roman army any failure of duty was deemed reason enough to commit suicide. Paul intervened (16:28), however, and in the end the jailer and his household were won to the Christian faith (16:29–34).

Now, I don’t know about you, but this series of incidents does not appear to me to be a very promising start to get the gospel firmly rooted in Philippi. If I had been Paul, I would have chalked the whole thing up to experience and tried again in another city – which, of course, he did.

A series of failures

My general impression of the book of Acts is of a series of stories revealing the dynamic and amazing spread of the gospel to Jerusalem, Antioch, Athens, Rome, Philippi, Ephesus, Joppa, Perga, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Troas, Thessalonica, Berea, Corinth, Miletus and Caesarea. It’s such an amazing story, and the gospel so often amazed those who heard it (e.g., Acts 2:7,12; 3:10–11; 4:13; 8:13; 9:21; 10:45; 12:16; 13:12) that it’s easy to miss the failure motif in the book of Acts.

Acts begins in Jerusalem, but when the gospel was announced to those already prepared by their Scriptures to hear it, some of the apostles were thrown into jail – twice (4:3; 5:18), and an enraged crowd stoned Stephen to death (7:54–60). If the gospel gets this kind of reception among those who speak the language of Scripture, how will it be heard among those who speak other languages?

The apostles then took the gospel outside Judea, but there, even when they were not opposed, it was a struggle to be understood. What the apostles faced, and what we continue to face, is the challenge of making the gospel comprehensible to people whose worldview is different from our own. When the presence of Paul and Barnabas in Iconium proved divisive (14:4), they moved on to Lystra in Galatia. It was a place where Rome had succeeded in establishing a local aristocracy of soldiers and well-educated Greeks, but much of the population remained uneducated Anatolian mountain tribespeople, and when Paul healed a man of his lifelong inability to walk (14:8–10), the crowd mistook Barnabas for Zeus, and Paul for Hermes. The apostles were dismayed (14:14). Appealing to Scripture might work with Jewish audiences, but here Paul and Barnabas had to think on their feet and trace the good news back to the common source of all life (14:15–17). Their effort proved a failure. The crowds continued trying to offer sacrifice to the apostles (14:18). Visiting Jews who were jealous of Paul’s success incited the crowd to violence. Paul was stoned, dragged outside the city and left for dead (14:19).

Then follows Paul’s visit to Philippi, with the irate owners of the slave girl and all, and then on to Thessalonica, where the presence of the apostles caused such an uproar that Paul and his companions had to leave the city under cover of darkness (17:1–10).

Then on to Athens, where Paul was dismissed by the local philosophers as a “seed-picker” (17:18) – someone who picks up bits and pieces of knowledge from anywhere. When Paul told them about “Jesus and the resurrection”, they dismissed him as an “ignorant showoff” (17:18, TEV). Paul tried to step back and find a common language for conversation, but his mission to Athens was almost a total write-off. He gained a few converts (17:34) and a lot of derision (17:32).

There are a lot more stories in the book of Acts that reveal the formidable challenge of taking the gospel into new places. Even near the end, when Paul makes his plea in a Roman courtroom (Acts 24), following to a tee the rules of rhetoric by which educated Romans made their opinions known in such formal circumstances, Paul and the gospel got lost somewhere in the cracks of financial shenanigans (24:26) and political expediency (24:27).

One can go through the book of Acts and compile an impressive list of missionary failures. Despite his translation of the gospel into the languages of economics, philosophy and imperial law, many of Paul’s listeners did not accept the Christian faith.

The irrepressible apostolic spirit

What I find astonishing is the persistence of Paul and the other apostles to spread the gospel in spite of their record of failure, in spite of misunderstanding, in spite of severe opposition. Though their bodies were often beaten, flogged, abused and imprisoned, their spirits could not be squelched.

What was it that kept Paul and the other apostles going? I think that Paul had a rather buoyant personality to begin with, but his buoyancy was not a light, frothy, shallow enthusiasm. Like the other apostles, he demonstrated perseverance, tenacity, a dogged determination well-rooted in deep conviction. In Philippi, everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong, yet while they were in prison, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns (16:25). One might expect the earthquake to quell their spirits, but instead they took command, making sure the jailer didn’t get into trouble (16:28). Paul and Silas took the worst of a lousy day and turned it into an opportunity.

When Ethiopia changed rulers in 1974, the Christian church became a target of severe repression. The next 20 years were a very difficult time for Christians there. A pastor named Yadessa, who was director of evangelism for the Ethiopian Evangelical Church, called a meeting of evangelism leaders. The logistics of planning the meeting were extremely difficult, but all arrived safely. Yadessa and the other leaders had scarcely begun their meeting, however, when seven policemen barged through the door of the house, arrested them and locked them in prison. Yadessa says that their first hour or two in jail were moments of great despair. “But then,” he says, “we realized that God had given us a great opportunity. Here we were all together in one place with nothing to do but pray together and talk together and think about evangelism together. We found ourselves on a wonderfully unplanned evangelism retreat” (Richard A Jensen, God’s Evangelism Plan).

Just before Jesus ascended into heaven, He told His disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). By chapter 16, the apostles had already crossed over into Europe. That’s a long way from Nazareth and Bethlehem, a long way even from Antioch. “Go into all the world,” the church heard Jesus say, and so the gospel began spreading throughout the world, one area at a time, one country at a time, one continent at a time. The book of Acts presents one surprise after another as the early Christians spread the gospel in the face of incredible obstacles. They persevered, because they shared a keen expectancy, a belief that God is at work, at midnight in a Philippian prison, in Caesarea, in Antioch, in Athens and in any other city to which God sends His emissaries.

Don Friesen is pastor of Ottawa Mennonite Church. This article is based on a sermon preached in that church May 27, 2001.