To say that there is one God hinders social harmony.
To claim that there is only one way to salvation is an affront to our diversity.
To allege that a belief is wrong is the ultimate bigotry.
Christians are the problem - Christians not part of the solution.
Paul and his companions run into serious trouble in the city of Philippi. What Paul believes about God is very different than the majority of people in the city. Now, to one extent, to the people of Philippi, what Paul believes is what Paul believes, and Paul’s belief is Paul’s belief; But when Paul’s belief interferes with the beliefs of the local population, that is another thing altogether.
Why can’t we all just coexist?
You believe what you believe, I believe what I believe. Whatever you believe is whatever you believe.
Have you seen those coexist bumper stickers? I always laugh when I see a coexist bumper sticker. You know, the ones where a symbol from each major religious system is used to create the word coexist. There are several different versions, but usually they try to include Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Wiccan, and Christianity. The message is that all these religions are a little bit different, but they all carry the same message, so let’s just get along. What is funny to me is that the coexist bumper sticker is an oxymoron. See, with the exception of Christianity and Judaism all the religious systems mentioned are diametrically opposed to each other.
Is there one God or are there many gods, on maybe there is no god at all, just energy? Which one? They all can’t be correct or there is a self contradiction involved, either one is correct or another is correct. Are we reincarnated and live many lives as bugs, animals and humans or do we have one life, one physical birth and one physical death? It is either one or the other? Are we saved by the grace of God or are we saved by our many good works, or is there no concept of salvation? Either there is salvation or there is not salvation. The coexist bumper sticker is, an adhesive oxymoron.
People in our day want to believe it all, it is all good, they want to believe. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and I found a common conclusion of among my friends was, “Well, who is to say what is right, it is morally wrong to say anyone has corner on what is right when it comes to religion.”
This thought is nothing new. People have believed this for thousands of years. In fact, this is the belief that Paul and his companions run smack into in the city of Philippi. Paul, by his actions and by what he has already taught in the city, challenges this common belief: All religions lead to god.
When we read our scripture, we find Paul and the guys are just living their lives, on their way to prayer to meet with the new Christians in the city of Philippi and this slave girl starts harassing them. Day after day the girl shouts, (verse 17) “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.”
So….what’s the problem? These men are the servants of the Most High God aren’t they? Yes they are. And aren’t these men are telling others the way to be saved? Yes they are. So again, what’s the problem here? Shouldn’t Paul and the gang be thrilled with this free advertising? Wouldn’t this girl attract many to hear the message of the Gospel?
When we read this verse it appears to be great advertising; To us it appears that Paul is just tired of being pestered, and so he finally blows his top, but the reality is that it is an all out attack on the Gospel. The reality is that the slave girl is telling everyone that Paul is a henotheist, she is telling everyone that one God is as good as another. What this slave girl is doing is claiming that Paul’s god is as good as any other god.
To Jewish ears what the slave girl is saying is true. Jews would take the term “the Most High God” to refer directly to the Lord God. (Gen. 14:18-20; Num. 24:16; Dan. 3:26) The Jews were monotheistic and considered that there was only one God, Yahweh, and there were absolutely no other gods. So when Jewish ears heard the girl, they would take what the girl has to say as referring to the one and only God.
Pagan ears, they would hear a very different message.
Here in the city of Philippi, the residents were polytheists, people who believed that there were many gods. The people of Philippi were also henotheist, they would worship one particular God, but they also accepted the existence of other gods. What people in Philippi did was choose a god to follow, they chose a god to be devoted to, they followed one god among the many gods they believed in. They didn’t believe in one god any more than any other god, yet they had to be practical. There were so many gods, and one could not serve them all, so people made a choice of which god they would serve. They believed in them all, but were devoted to one god.
Yet, it is more than just choosing one particular god to worship over another god. All gods were seen as having equal value. No god was particularly better than another god. All gods could help you out in one way or another, so whatever god one chose to follow wasn’t particularly an issue for people. Your god that you follow is good for you, I choose to follow another god - not that there is anything wrong with the god you chose. To the pagans in Philippi, “The Most High God” would be the term they used for whatever deity they thought was the most high god, be that Zeus, Isis, Baal or whomever.
When the slave girl says,“These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” What the pagans hear is, “These men are servants of whatever god you serve.” See, she is saying a very ambiguous thing. The people hearing what she is saying are free to interpret it anyway they want; When they hear the phrase “Most High God” they fill in whatever name they want. What the slave girl does is emasculate the power of Paul’s message so that people ignore him, thinking that Jesus is another god among many gods.
In essence the slave girl is a verbal coexist bumper sticker.
The slave girl. We see in the Greek that she was possessed by a pythonic spirit - that is she was a person having a spirit associated with the cult of Apollo. Apollo was the Greek deity especially associated with giving oracles. At the ocular shine in the city of Delphi Greece, sat a priestess who was the main oracle, she was the priestess par excellence and would be called on to give oracles to worshippers. This slave girl is a pale reflection of this priestess in Delphi. But, what this slave girl uttered would be considered the voice of the god Apollo, just as much as what the priestess uttered in Delphi.
What we see is that both the priestess in Delphi and this slave girl are giving involuntary utterances. Plutarch, in his book, ‘The Failure Of The Oracles’, calls such people as this slave girl ventriloquists, meaning that their utterances were beyond their conscious control. In the LXX we see the same word used to describe those who have a familiar spirit, like the witch on Endor. (1 Sam 28:7) These people are not like Dianne Warwick on the Psychic Network, which went bankrupt some time ago….you would think that they would have seen the bankruptcy coming, being psychic and all…..
Let me stop here for a moment and say that spirit possession is very real. It was very real in Paul’s time, and things have not changed today. To read this passage and substitute the concept of psychiatric disorder for the term spirit possession is placing a modern concept upon an ancient text, and just can’t be done with integrity. Plus, psychiatric diagnosis two millennia out, is a little suspect, don’t you think?
In verse 19 we see that the slave girl’s owners made a great deal of money with her. What they had was a portable Delphi oracle. Instead of people having to travel all the was to Delphi to hear what the god Apollo has to say about their particular situation, folks could just come to them. The slave girl functions like a fortune teller. Customers pay a fee, and the slave girl would give an utterance concerning the customer’s situation. You can imagine, people would pay a hefty price to hear the voice of Apollo. Remember, they voice they heard from this slave girl, they attributed to the god Apollo.
Paul puts up with the situation for quite some time and finally he has enough. He turns and says, (verse 18) “‘In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!’ At that moment the spirit left her. “
Jesus did this many times, Jesus commanded spirits to leave many times, however, we see Paul do it a bit differently than Jesus. Jesus just tells the spirit to come out. Jesus is the authority, Jesus commands at will. Here we see Paul use the name of Jesus as the authority. It is not the power of Paul, nor is it the collective power of the group of Christians, it is the power of Jesus Christ that moves this spirit.
Let me just make a side note here that anything you see that Hollywood does concerning spirits and possession of spirits is way off the mark. Hollywood is fiction. Don’t be fooled into thinking that Hollywood fiction is spiritual reality.
The owners of the slave girl see that their psychic network has gone bankrupt and go nuts. They make a citizen’s arrest and demand justice from the city magistrates. They had a slave girl with a spirit of Apollo, a legitimate religion, from a legitimate temple - the oracle was a legitimate practice, what were the magistrates going to do to rectify the situation? Understand, to the Greeks, the Oracle was a very sacred thing.
So, were what the owners of the slave girl doing anything wrong? Further, was the slave girl doing anything wrong? For the owners, having a slave was legal, and having an oracle of Apollo wasn’t a circus act. As for the slave girl, she was simply exercising her right to have the oracle speak. The slave girl was doing what was considered a legitimate vocation. Everyone in Philippi would approve of the men and their slave girl, in fact they would be proud that the god Apollo had a voice in their city.
Folks, this is a cultural confrontation, bare knuckles to bare knuckles. Local culture claims one thing, Christianity claims another. Things become a bit uncomfortable.
When everything is theoretical, everyone is free to believe what they want to, when everything is theoretical, everyone loves to coexist, everyone celebrates diversity.
Interfere with lifestyle and you become part of the problem, not part of the solution.
So Paul and Silas are dragged into the marketplace. This would be the forum on the north side of the marketplace in Philippi, it still exists today. There was a platform called the ‘Bema’ where the local authorities held court. Four large steps lead up to the ‘Bema’ with the two duoviri sitting in the judgment seat. The duoviri were the local magistrates. On this platform the Roman duoviri would hear both civil and criminal cases. Standing beside the duoviri were lictors. Each duoviri would have six lictors, we will hear more about the lictors in a bit.
Here are the charges brought against Paul and Silas, listen carefully, for these are the same type of charges that will be brought up against you today: “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”
1 - These men are Jews = They are not like us.
They men assumed that since Paul and Silas were Jewish, that they were not Roman citizens and therefore had no true rights. Only Jews would promote such a disturbing religion. Curiously, people could worship any god they wanted, even if beliefs conflicted, and everyone got along, but advocate Jesus instead of these gods, and things get disrupted.
Have you noticed Islam is never challenged in the schools or other public places, Buddhism is never challenged either, nor neither are the Wiccians or Hindus? But Christianity, there is never a day that goes by that Christianity isn’t challenged.
A couple of years ago, in public school, my son had to give a little speech about something that was important to him in his life. He listened to the little girl before him who talked about Buddhism was important in her life. When my son got up to speak about how Christianity was important to him in his life, his teacher stopped him and angrily told him that he could not talk about religion in public school.
When my son pointed out that the little girl before him talked about religion when she talked about Buddhism, he was told to sit down and behave himself.
Amazing. That was not a coincidence you know and it was not a random event.
2 - They are throwing the city into an uproar = They challenge our social norms. The social norm directly challenged is the practice of the oracle. The local people believe the voice of the oracle is of the god Apollo, but Paul knows better - there is only one God, and the oracle challenges the one true God, therefore the oracle’s spiritual nature is not of God. The sprit involved is not of God, it is an evil spirit.
The local people are offended when they put two and two together: When Paul claims that there is one God, Paul at the same time claims the local gods are false. The people love these gods!
THAT certainly is not living in coexistence.
THAT certainly is not celebrating diversity.
For us today, when we step outside the circle of the relative that says all beliefs are of equal value, we can expect to be called a bigot and shamed for not ‘just trying to get along.’ ‘Just trying to get along’, means ignoring obvious theological contradictions between religions.
3 - They advocate customs unlawful = They are peddling a religion incompatible with our lifestyle. By Paul casting out the spirit, he as a practical matter, is saying that the slave girl oracle was not a good thing. If the slave girl oracle was a good thing, why would Paul cast the spirit out of the girl. In their minds, she was blessed to have a spirit of Apollo. Why would you mess with a spirit of Apollo?
Paul has done a bad thing, an offensive thing and so the crowd goes nuts too.
The magistrates, or the duoviri call on the lictors standing with them to strip and beat Paul and Silas. These lictors would have taken off Paul and Silas’ cloaks, bound them and pulled out long rods to beat them.
The custom of a lictor was Etruscan in origin. A lictor was always a very large man chosen for his physical ability. Arnold Schwarzenegger would make a perfect lictor. Lictors were highly paid, just shy of what a centurion would make. Each lictor had a bundle of rods along with an axe. This bundle of rods was called the ‘Fasces’, we derive the word Fascists from the word ‘Fasces’ which gives you and indication that these men were far from gentle souls.
The job of the lictor was to act as an escort and a body guard for the duoviri, he also was responsible to arrest and punish people. The lictor would bind the prisoner and beat him with his rods. Twelve of these lictors beat Paul and Silas AFTER the crowd had attacked them. It is like being beaten senseless by a professional football team.
Do you understand the seriousness of the situation here? Paul and Silas would be lucky to be alive after the lictors were through with them. Certainly they were carried off to prison.
Now this wasn’t a trail and sentencing that Paul and Silas received, this was a preliminary hearing where they are sent to prison to await trial. They could be completely innocent, it doesn’t matter, they would get the tar beaten out of them innocent or not, that was the Roman Empire.
Paul and Silas, no doubt, could hardly move from the injuries they received, still they are locked up by the jailer in the innermost cell and chained.
There Paul and Silas sit, beaten down and trapped in a corner with no way out - The local population says that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. The local population says that they will just cause division with their ideas.
Now this story is far from over, if you have read ahead you know that Jesus prevails. We will see what happens next week. But you know, do Paul and Silas know that as they sit in prison, beat to a pulp?
Yet let us recap and see what we have learned from our Scripture:
Paul was misrepresented by this shouting slave girl, through her the Gospel became no different than any other religion of the day. So Paul puts a stop to this misrepresentation against the Gospel.
Has Paul done anything wrong? No not really, Paul has every right to rectify misrepresentation of the Gospel.
Innocent - Paul and Silas are beaten senseless without trial and are thrown into jail.
So, from the beginning, Christianity is offensive to people who hold different religious beliefs. From the beginning, people will react against Christianity when it challenges social norms and challenges current lifestyles….
….and from the beginning, God did not just step in and save Paul and Silas from any harm. God lets these two live through difficult circumstances, because he has something bigger and better in the end.
Why can’t we just get along?
We can all get along.
But that doesn’t mean we have to agree with folks who illogically insist that all religions are basically the same. We don’t have to buy into our culture’s insistence that we water down the Gospel to make peace with our neighbors.
Paul didn’t, and life became difficult….but that’s not the end of the story.
