Sermon Tone Analysis

Confronting evil is costly

Confronting evil is costly

, “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.

She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.”

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.

But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers.

And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, “These men are Jews, and they are disturbing our city.

They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.”

The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods.

And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely.

Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.”

Confronting evil is costly, but you must call it out

As Paul and Silas are continuing in their missionary work of preaching and teaching the gospel, they run into yet another women.

But this time she is not in search of a relationship with God by the Holy Spirit, but on a satanic mission for an unclean spirit.

So, an unnamed female slave, with an ‘ unclean spirit’ by which she told fortunes, recognized the Paul and Silas as ‘servants of the Most High God’.

Moreover, she perceived that they were offering ‘a way of salvation’.

‘Unlike Lydia, who was a businesswoman in control of a successful business, being a seller of purple; this woman is in control of nothing.

Instead of being a businesswoman, she was a business.

She was a slave, being used to make money for her owners.

Unlike Lydia, she earns money, but it belongs to someone else.’

There is no indication that she became a Christian; only that the evil spirit in her was exorcised out by Paul.

Being released from such spiritual bondage must have been a blessing for her, but Luke leaves her story there and places the emphasis on the outcome for Paul and Silas rather than completing the story of the slave girl.

Her owners were clearly angered and annoyed by the consequent loss of income.

Because of this they brought Paul and Silas before the magistrates, who ordered them to be flogged and thrown into prison.

The charge ignores the economic reason for their opposition, but they focus on religious and socio-political issues.

This is Paul’s second encounter with demonic forces and their impact on popular religion.

Remember in , “When they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they came upon a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet named Bar-Jesus.

He was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence, who summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God.

But Elymas the magician (for that is the meaning of his name) opposed them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.

But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?

And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.”

Immediately mist and darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand.

Then the proconsul believed, when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.”

In both cases, the encounter leads to a significant demonstration of the power of Christ, though here with negative consequences for the missionaries.

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Confronting evil is costly but you must call it out!

The link between this event and the preceding event with Lydia is the fact that the missionaries had their next significant encounter while going to the place of prayer.

Remember to form a synagogue, required the presence of ten Jewish men who were heads of a household.

Evidently Philippi’s Jewish community was too small to form a synagogue, so in such a place they would have instead a place of prayer.

A place of prayer, under the open sky and near a river of a sea

Paul went first to a ‘place of prayer’ on the Sabbath, where he shared the gospel with the Jewish women and others who gathered there outside to the riverside.

They were intent on winning someone else from the gathering of Jews and God-fearers by the river when they met a Gentile slave girl she is being, described as having a spirit by which she predicted the future (, ‘a pythonic spirit’ or ‘a pythian spirit’ ‘a spirit of divination’]).

Luke assumes that his readers are familiar with such terminology and pagan modes of divination.

Unlike the demonic beings in Luke’s Gospel, who made their victims impure and ill this spirit in the present story is characterized chiefly by its routine inspiration of wise pronouncements’.

With this gift, she earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune telling.

Most of the girl’s contemporaries would have considered this spirit beneficial or neutral, but Luke indicates its evil nature in two ways.

First, the term he uses “Python” which is the word for divination here, was a serpent or a dragon in Greek Mythology that dwelt on the in the region of Phyto and was said to guard the oracle of Delphi.

Phthia was the high priestess of the temple of Apollo.

‘by giving oracles’) crying out points to something prohibited in Scripture

, “There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD.

And because of these abominations the LORD your God is driving them out before you.”

, So Saul disguised himself and put on other garments and went, he and two men with him.

And they came to the woman by night.

And he said, “Divine for me by a spirit and bring up for me whomever I shall name to you.”

The woman said to him, “Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the necromancers from the land.

Why then are you laying a trap for my life to bring about my death?”

But Saul swore to her by the LORD, “As the LORD lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.”

, “For there shall be no more any false vision or flattering divination within the house of Israel.

For I am the LORD; I will speak the word that I will speak, and it will be performed.

It will no longer be delayed, but in your days, O rebellious house, I will speak the word and perform it, declares the Lord GOD.”

Second, as in 8:4–24, there is Simon the Magician and later in the sons of Sceva who in 19:11–41 reek havoc.

Look at , And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul,12 so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.13

Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying,"I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims."14

Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this.

15 But the evil spirit answered them, "Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?"16

And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

17 And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks.

And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled.”

Luke shows a close connection between ‘magic, pagan or false religion, and the profit motive of humans who practice it’.

The girl followed Paul and the rest of his team, shouting, ‘These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.”

Such clear and compelling insight recalls the fact of the recognition of Jesus by the demon-possessed people through -out the course of his ministry.

Isn’t it interesting that demon always can identity the Holy One or the Son of the Most High God.”

, And in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, “Ha!

What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

Have you come to destroy us?

I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”

, When Jesus had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons.

For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs.

When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?

I beg you, do not torment me.”

Indeed, as James says in , “You believe that God is one; you do well.

Even the demons believe—and shudder!”

God is one.

This affirmation of monotheism stems from the core Jewish creed called the Shema (; see ; ).

But James stresses its inadequacy, since even the demons believe this, and they shudder.

Mere mental assent to the Christian faith does not save anyone.

The faith that saves, as both Paul and James affirm, embraces the truth of the gospel and acts accordingly.

Luke suggests that the girl is portraying Paul as ‘a legitimate and very loyal follower’ of Jesus.

The evil spirit within the slave girl enabled her to acknowledge the true identity of the travellers (these men are servants of the Most High God) and the true nature of their mission (is to proclaim to you the way of salvation.

Although the designation the Most High God (ho hypsistos) was common in the time and was also used in pagan literature, so that ‘a resident in Philippi, with no first-hand knowledge of Judaism, might well identify the one Jewish God with the highest god in his own pantheon’.

Salvation in material and spiritual ways was the object of vows and prayers to many gods in the Greco-Roman world, and it was ‘the desired object set before initiates in various mystery cults’.

But, salvation in Luke’s understanding involved the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit through trusting in Israel’s Messiah, with the ultimate blessing of sharing in God’s eternal kingdom through resurrection.

What the slave girl was saying was true at one level, but because it lacked the shining clarity of the true gospel perspectives the light of her message was severely dimmed and seem false.

Her message was false because she was someone who did not really know what she was talking about.

She did not know God and, even the assertion that there was ‘a way of salvation’ could so easily have been misinterpreted in a polytheistic and pagan fashion.

If she did not know the true and living God who is the way of salvation, then how could she direct others to Him?

The text tells us in 18a, that “And she kept doing this for many days, this implies, daily and regular contact with her as the Paul and Silas sought opportunities for teaching and preaching.

There is no suggestion that she was hostile to them, no suggestion that she was harassing them and even her haunting cries may not have seemed offensive at first.