Douglas Jacoby Podcast

CLEAN – podcast 18, The Slave Girl of Acts 16:16

Episode Summary

Douglas continues his series called CLEAN, today looking at The Slave Girl of Acts 16:16.

Episode Notes

For additional notes and resources check out Douglas’ website.

Introduction

• Divination and magic were highly popular and very real in the 1st century Mediterranean world.
• Also, many were enslaved by their fear of the future. Contemporary writers mention a strong and abiding sense of fate.
• The spiritual world is real!

Scriptural study: The Slave Girl of Acts 16.16-19

• We meet our character (v.16), unnamed, but able to divine by the power of a Pythian spirit, πνεῦμα πύθωνα.
• Lucrative possibilities!
• "Servants of the most high God" (v.17) contrasts with her own service to a pagan spirit.
• The term "Most high God" (see Mark 5:7) may be indirectly belittling her owners.
• She follows Paul and Sila as they head to the place of prayer (and evangelism, as Philippi lacked a synagogue).
• It sounds like she's promoting Christianity (v.17)! Was this mockery? Were her prophetic outbursts intended to turn people off to the Way of Christ?
• For Paul, her jabbering was annoying (v.18). Why?
  • Christianity doesn't need gimmicks or tricks to spread. Paul sees little promise of assistance in the Christian mission. He doesn’t just incorporate the girl’s unusual ministry into his own.
  • In a place of prayer, this girl could have been quite a distraction.
  • One would think the testimony of a competitor would be the ultimate advertising. Imagine a picture of Bill Gates happily using an iPad. (Source: link)
  • The way or a way (v.17) -- is the spirit relativizing the Way? Perhaps.
  • Or maybe it's simply a problem of emphasis. She seems to be focused on the preachers, instead of on the message. Christian missionaries didn't present themselves as elite missionaries. They preached Christ, not themselves, and presented themselves as servants for the sake of others (2 Cor 4:5).
  • There's a parallel in Luke 4:33-35. Jesus did not welcome demonic advertisement.
• Exorcism (v.18) -- "that very hour."
• We learn nothing more of the girl, though we hope that once set free, she joined the Christians in the newly founded Philippian church.
• Her owners, too, are greatly annoyed (v.19).
  • Paul and Silas are imprisoned -- which leads to Philippian jailer's family's conversion.
  • Persecution in the 1st century was born of religious motives (particularly in the case of jealous Jewish leaders), as well as of economic motives (pagan persecution), as also in Acts 19:23-27.

Application

• The account makes us think about economics. How does this exorcism inform our study of purity? See the Theology of Work Project (Tim Keller). Click here.
• The  Lord desires purity at four levels: actions, words, thoughts, heart/motives.
• This account probably has most to do with the deepest level, heart (conscience, motives, who we truly are at the core of our being). Yet her activity was off base at all four levels:
  • Her actions were displeasing to God. Enriching her pagan masters, and treating the Way of Christ as a novelty or commercial phenomenon.
  • Her words gave the wrong impression about the way of Christ.
  • We don't know her exact thoughts, yet we know that at the heart level, she was controlled by, or at the very least interacting with a heathen spirit.

Conclusion

• Paul's action changed her life -- and for the good. No longer would she enjoy celebrity -- or be used because of it. This unnamed girl got into the Bible! And we would like to believe that she became a true daughter of the Most High God.
• This girl was being used. Cash cow. We read of her "owners." May still have been a slave, but no longer would she have been pressed into service as a revenue-generating sideshow.
• Am I still a slave? Unhealthy and unholy patterns of behavior? Have I been a slave to credit card debt? I may be liberated from the darkness, yet still not freed from financial debt or other forms of bondage. In her case, her behavior changes, though she's still a slave.
• Sometimes people think that supernatural experience places us in an elite tier of the faith. Or worse, that miraculous activity proves one is saved. But this is wrong. In her case she became free from her supernatural abilities. The miraculous dimension of her old life had been hurting her -- as well as somehow impeding the cause of Christ.