Philippi

And I don't remember what town.

Maybe it was Philippians or Philippi, the town.

But he went there.

Um, I think it was one of the first places he went to start his ministry.

But consider Paul as a good example of someone that is not dominated by anger, but is Instead, shows the fruit of joy.

And we see that in Acts chapter 16 when he goes to the city of Philippi.

And this woman named Lydia gets saved.

There seems to be a growing community of believers there in Philippi.

He's eventually going to write the letter of Philippians to the church in this city.

But then Paul and his friend Silas, they are lost.

unjustly falsely thrown into prison and not just not just thrown into prison verse 22 the crowd joined in attacking them and the magistrates the people that should have been responsible for a just solution 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.

And if you know about that, that would have added to the pain and the discomfort.

Accordingly we put out to sea from Troas and ran a straight course to Samothrace.

The next day we came to Neapolis, and thence to Philippi, which is a city in Macedonia, the first in its district, a Roman colony.

And there we stayed some little time.

On the Sabbath we went beyond the city gate to the riverside, where we had reason to believe that there was a place for prayer.

This answer the lictors took back to the praetors, who were alarmed when they were told that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens.

Accordingly they came and apologized to them, and bringing them out, asked them to leave the city.

Then Paul and Silas, having come out of the prison, went to Lydia's house, and after seeing the brethren and encouraging them, they left Philippi.

The end of chapters 12 through 16 of the book of Acts from the New Testament in Modern Speech.

But let me tell you what happened along the way.

Paul ends his letter to the church at Philippi in Philippians 4.22 with these words.

He says, all the saints greet you, but especially those who are of Caesar's household.

A few years later, when Paul writes the letter to the church at Philippi, he ends by saying, there's some new believers in Caesar's household.

You know why? Because Paul, in the process of being transported, ending up in Rome, testifying before Nero, shares the gospel enough such that members of Caesar's household get saved.

Maybe Nero didn't, but members of his household did.

carved into it.

If you want to see how attached people can become to the right side of a border, Philippi is the case study scripture hands you.

It wasn't an ordinary provincial town.

After Octavian's victory at Acumen, Philippi was resettled with retired Roman legionaries and granted the highest legal status available in the empire.

Ius Italicum.

That means, its full name means something close to a piece of Italy.

That's Acts 16.21. Roman identity was the whole defense.

And the kicker, Paul was a Roman citizen misidentified.

Let me read Acts 16, 13, and 14.

Paul ends up in Philippi.

If you remember in the second missionary journey, he tries to go north, closed door, tries to go south, closed door.

Everywhere they go, it's like the Lord won't permit them.

And the gospel is opened in Europe.

And for the next thousand years, Europe becomes the center of Christianity.

And it starts with a Philippian, it starts actually with Lydia.

And so we read here in verse 13 of Acts 16, and on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to a riverside where we were supposing that there would be a place of prayer.