Greece: Neapolis & Philippi

Day 1: We loaded the bus for our first venture into Paul’s travels. We took a two-hour drive north to Neapolis (modern day Kavala), the location where Paul first landed in Europe after being blocked by the Holy Spirit to enter Ephesus and Asia (see Acts 16).

Neapolis features a church where they claim the location that Paul first set foot on European land. If not there, it was close by. We remembered the challenges Paul had faced just to get there. Broken relationships with the sharp disagreement over John Mark that split Paul and Barnabas into two teams. Repetition as on this trip Paul had already returned to the same places to do the same thing he’s done before — build believers into maturity and share the Gospel (Acts 15:36-41). He’d faced negative direction in being told “no” by the Holy Spirit to two locations he’d wanted to visit first. Yet here he arrives, and God is about to do something new, but it will not be easy.

Paul takes the Roman Via Egnatia into the town of Philippi. There is apparently no synagogue and not enough Jewish men (10) to start one. Maybe no Jewish men at all. Paul goes to the river to the place of prayer, looking for God-worshipers and finds women, including Lydia. God opens Lydia’s heart and she believes in Jesus and her whole household is baptized. She is apparently the head of her household – a businesswoman dealing in imports of purple cloth. The church begins here, with her. With a soft heart that responds to the gospel, she immediately begins to serve. She shares her hospitality, using what she has – her God-given gifts and resources – to house Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke.

What strikes me about Lydia, and the women with her, is that they did what they could with all they knew. The gathered to pray. The worshiped together. And God met them there with the Gospel through Paul. May it be so for us. May we worship and pray and do what we can with all that we know, trusting that God will meet us in it and continue to grow our understanding of him and relationship with him.

Paul and Silas encounter deep trouble at Philippi. After a demon-possessed fortune teller girl follows them for days proclaiming these men know the way of salvation, Paul gets “annoyed” and casts the demon out in Jesus’s name. Her owners are beyond mad. Their money-making scheme is destroyed. So they accuse Paul and Silas on us vs. them terms. Those Jews are proclaiming things unlawful for us Romans. Paul and Silas get dragged into the marketplace, in front of a council, no trial, just a beating and thrown into prison. And there they sing.

They praise in the pit. And while they are praising and singing God shakes the earth and frees them. And what do they do with their freedom? They rescue others. Set free to set others free. Set free from physical prison, but using it to set others free from a spiritual prison. The jailer about to take his life, called out to and spared by Paul who shares Jesus with him.

So now, the church in Philippi includes Lydia and her household, a Roman jailer and his household, and possibly a former demon-possessed fortune-telling girl. What a motley crew.

Paul and Silas are kicked out of town, but Paul doesn’t go quietly. You think you can just beat a Roman citizen without trial and usher us out of town? Why does he declare so boldly? Likely to protect this new, fledgling Jesus-community.

He leaves with Silas after saying farewell and heading down the Via Egnatia to the next town, probably for another beating. How many towns did Paul approach? How many beatings? How many imprisonments? And yet he didn’t stop. He couldn’t be stopped. The message too powerful. The Spirit’s leading too strong to ignore. The calling too deep. The gospel message too important. The work of Jesus so powerful in his life he couldn’t be stopped.

Are we willing to suffer like this? I have to answer for myself…likely not. My life is comfortable, so easy. Yet Paul, Lydia, and the jailer take courage in the face of a hostile, angry culture. A culture that wants to shut them up, run them out of town, even kill them. And the message is too great to stop. The stakes too high. They are compelled by the love of God.

Does this love run that deep in my life? Do I realize what I have been saved from? How big my rescue is? Paul never got over the gospel. He never got over being rescued. He wanted that for others. So much that he would give his own life. Like Jesus did. Am I willing to do the same?

We risk so little. We stay too quiet. I risk too little. I stay too quiet. Will we stand up in grace and truth with boldness and courage and share the gospel in these days? Will we seek the Spirit’s direction and ask God to show us who, where, when and how? Will we be part of his work as he opens people’s hearts to himself? A world is waiting. Are we willing?