Summary:

After God gave Paul a vision telling him to go to Macedonia (v.9,10), he went “straight” there (v.11).  And he must have been examining his method of going from one small town to the next, and realized he’d never reach the world that way, because he went to the “chief city” of Macedonia to preach, knowing the gospel would radiate out from there.  Ever after, he went to big cities like Thessalonica, Corinth and Athens.

History says that people in a Roman “colony” (v.12) were automatic citizens of Rome, so Paul picked the Philippians to talk about our conversation as citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20).  Two ladies in the church were quarreling (Phil.4:2), and that was no way for citizens of heaven to act!

It wasn’t even a good way for citizens of Rome to act.  If Rome thought you disturbed the peace, they didn’t care who was right or wrong.  They came down on you like a ton of bricks (cf. Acts 21:27-33).  And God doesn’t care who’s right when we disturb the peace with our quarrels in the local church.  He just expects us to restore the peace by forgiving. People think Christianity is a failure because we sing about Christ coming to bring peace on earth—and there is none!  But there will be in the kingdom.  And we can show God’s peace in the meantime amongst ourselves. You have a right to retaliate when wronged, but why not waive your rights like the Lord waived His right to live (IICor.8:9; Phil.2:2-8)?

The Philippians waived rights that Paul didn’t even ask them to waive.  History says people in colonies didn’t have to pay taxes to Rome.  As members of the Body of Christ, the Philippians also had a right not to have to pay the tithe tax to Israel. But the Lord waived His right not to pay it (Mt.27:24-27), and the Philippians did too.  They were the Macedonians who gave the Lord more than ten percent (IICor.8:1-4).

The church in Philippi (Phil.1:1) grew out of this women’s prayer group (Acts 16:13).  They must have been Jewish women, for they were meeting on the sabbath (v.13).  Paul went there instead of going to Philippi’s synagogue because colonies were considered “little Romes,” and the king had ordered all Jews out of Rome (Acts 18:2).  So all the Jewish men left town, and there was no synagogue!

Paul’s first convert was a businesswoman (Acts 16:14) who worshipped Israel’s God by keeping the sabbath.  If she kept God’s other laws, it must mean He had no law against being a working mom with kids (cf.v.15).  God opened her heart (v.15) by opening her understanding of the Scriptures (Isa. 6:10;Lu.24:45), causing her to “attend” to what Paul said (cf. Pr.4:1,20).  But in Bible days, you had to do more than just attend to Scripture to be saved.  You had to be baptized (v.15 cf. Mark 1:4). But there was a dispensational change with Paul, and now salvation is “by the washing of regeneration” (Tit.3:5), and not the washing of water baptism.

So why’d Paul baptize Lydia?  God revealed the new grace program to him gradually (IICor.12:1), so at that time Paul didn’t yet know what he knew when he wrote ICorinthians 1:17).  After he knew it, he never baptized anyone else.

But what had she done that would cause Paul to judge her “faithful” (v.15)?  She believed the new grace message after believing the law—unlike other unsaved Jews Paul encountered.  But if so, why’d she have to “constrain” Paul to stay with her?  He wasn’t afraid of how it would look to stay with a woman, for they wouldn’t have been alone. She had children, and Paul had Silas, Timothy and Luke.  It was because Paul was a Jew, and Jews couldn’t be in a little Rome.  She’d been flying under Rome’s radar, but if she got caught harboring four more Jews, she’d be in big trouble.  Paul knew that, and didn’t want to endanger her, but finally relented.

Women also showed more courage than men when the men forsook the Lord (Mt.26:56), but not the women (27:55).

A video of this message is available on YouTube: “The Apostle Paul Goes Straight” Acts 16:11-15

Summary:

Now that the Bible is complete, the Spirit speaks only through the Book He wrote. But here (v.6), He spoke either audibly or by a vision (cf.v.9).

Two years later, the Spirit did let Paul preach in Asia (19: 10), but not here. This was perhaps due to the way Paul was preaching. He was just going from one small town to the next, and “all Asia” would never hear the Word that way! In Acts 19, Paul taught his disciples in a school and converted some disputers, and they all went out together to preach. So the Spirit forbad him to preach in Asia until he examined his methods and learned how to improve them as an adult son.

That’s how God sees us! Jewish fathers recognized that their boys were sons on the day of their adoption, a day that today they call their bar mitzvah. God adopted you when you got saved (Gal.4:4-6), so He now sees you as an adult son. That means we must make our own decisions, and not wait to hear the voice of our Father guiding us every step of the way.

But you needn’t worry about the lost souls in Asia who died in the two years it took Paul to get there, for they heard the kingdom gospel when Jews who believed it at Pentecost brought it back to them 12 years earlier (Acts 2:9). We know the kingdom gospel was also preached in Bithynia (Acts 16:7) because Peter wrote a letter to saints there (IPe.1:1).

The Spirit told Paul where not to go, but didn’t tell him where to go right away, for He wanted to get Paul used to the idea that things were changing from Him telling Paul where to go to letting him decide as an adult son.

But eventually He told Paul to go to Macedonia (Acts 16:9), the area above Greece where the Mideast meets Europe. He didn’t tell Paul to go there because He loves white Europeans more than black Africans or other peoples. He just knew they’d receive the gospel faster, and word of it would get out faster. That’s not a racist thing to say, it’s a generational thing. At that time they were more open to the gospel, and the church in Greece did get it out fast (IThes.1:9). The Romans in Italy helped (Rom.1:8) by using the famous Roman roads. It helped when Paul was thrown in the palace slammer, and the royals heard about it (Phil.1:13). They wanted to meet this famous prisoner, and some of them got saved (4:22). When word of that got out down those Roman roads, it made it acceptable to be a Christian—even posh!

When Paul first passed through Galatia here (Acts 18:6) he had eye trouble (Gal.4:13-15) that Jewish kingdom prophets like Elijah used to be able to heal. But the prophet Silas (Acts 15:32) was with Paul (15:40,41), and couldn’t heal him because the dispensation was changing. God didn’t heal him, so he could learn how to be spiritually strong (IICor.12:7-9). Comparing the “they” of Acts 16:6,7 to the “we” of verse 10 shows Luke had joined Paul, Silas and Timothy (16:1-5). This proves things were changing, for Luke was a doctor (Col.4:14), and Paul now needed a doctor. God shut down Luke’s kingdom program, so he served God as Paul’s doctor.

We see a type of another dispensational change in the way God showed Paul this vision. In time past, God Himself appeared in men’s visions, or He sent an angel to appear in their visions to deliver His message. Paul saw a man delivering God’s message, typifying how today God’s messengers are men, not angels. We see this change first typified when Saul saw Ananias in a dream right after the dispensation began with his conversion (Acts 9:11,12). We see another dispensational change typified when the man begged Paul to come. In time past, God ordered men to do things. That typifies the difference between law and grace. For example, under the law, God commanded men to walk in His ways through Moses (Deut.5:33). Under grace, God beseeches us to walk in His ways through Paul (Eph.4:1; IThes.4:1). The dispensations they were achangin’!

A video of this sermon is available on YouTube: “The Dispensations Are A-changin” Acts 16:6-11