Wednesday 19 December 2012

Philippians: Changed Lives

Changed Lives - Sermon by Keller.

Philippi was perhaps the healthiest church that Paul planted.

Here's what we find: three absolutely different persons

Racially:
Lydia - Asia Minor in Turkey (Asian)
Slave girl - native Greek
Jailor - Roman
Asian, Greek, Roman

Economically:
Lydia - extremely wealthy. A dealer in dyes, a respected business with more than one house. She is like a successful fashion CEO. A person of power and influence. Homes in different towns - paris etc.
Slave Girl - Opposite end of the power spectrum. She is powerless, economically exploited
Jailor - not wealthy, not a mess like the slave girl. Blue collar, working class, ex-GI.

Analogous to...
Lydia - eating at Espinars, living on 5th Avenue
Slave Girl - prostitute controlled by pimps, living under the bridge
Roman jailor - guy living in Queens drinking at his pub

Utterly different worlds.

Rationally:
Different ways we learn - cognitive, intuitive and concrete relational
Cog - arguments, discussion, case, evidence
intuitive - experience, encounter
concrete relational - show me

Lydia wants a disuccion
Slave girl needs a powerful encounter
Jailor - impatient with argument and rationality and turned off by emotion, he doesn't want to talk, he wants to be shown something concrete (doesn't go to church)

Spiritually:
Lydia is empty. Lydia has achieved something that was hard for a woman back then but we're told she was a worshipper of God even though she was a gentile. Turned away from her pagan roots. She's seeking.
Slave Girl. Utterly out of control. Text doesn't say 'Spirit of prediction' text says 'Spirit of a python' We met a 'pythonas'. In Delphi (Southern Greece) the oracle of the temple could tell the future and the temple was guarded by a python.

Info from Wiki-
In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god Apollo after he slew the Python, a dragon who lived there and protected the navel of the Earth. Python (derived from the verb pythein, "to rot") is claimed by some to be the original name of the site in recognition of the Python that Apollo defeated.[2] The Homeric Hymn to Delphic Apollo recalled that the ancient name of this site had been Krisa.[3]
Because of the girls strange and awful behaviour her parents had sold her into slavery.
Servants of 'The Most High' gave them shudders because they knew their Bible - Isaiah 14 and account of how one of the great angels became Satan. Lucifer says 'I will be as the Most High'. The term 'The Most High' is the envious resentful way the Devil himself talks about God. She was in utter torment and yet was attracted to them. Spiritually in utter despair.

Jailor - no spiritual interest.

Lydia - knew about God from ehr studies
Slave girl - knew about God from her evil Spirit
Soldier - knew nothing and cared nothing

Totally different: in every possible way. Yet God comes after them. He comes after them in three completely different ways.

Lydia - through her mind - she knew something about the OT and that God had provided means for atonement. She was trying to live morally. She'd tried paganism and now she was trying Jewish morality. The Lord opened her heart. 'Proseko' - to 'get it'. God helped her 'get it.' How? Through a Bible study, through arguments and a seminar. Lydia did not know the gospel.

Slave girl - Paul doesn't say 'let's sit down and study the Bible'. She couldn't discuss it but she knew it and she hated the gospel. She was a slave on the inside to bad masters which made her slave on the outside to good masters. She encounters Jesus' greatness over her spiritual master. A power encounter, not a sweet little seminar.

Jailor - Jailor doesn't care. The jailor is reached. Jailor is told simply to 'keep them safe' but instead he puts them in the inner prison and puts their feet in stocks (a form of torture). God confronts him with two things. 1) The Roman jailor sees two men singing and praising in the middle of the night. He's never seen anyone with joy so deep they can still praise God in difficulty. 2) The presence of the prisoners after the Earthquake. The prisoners had his life in their hands. 'All I want to know is... where does this joy and conviction come from?'

They're all different on the outside but actually they're all similar - they're all slaves.
Jailor was going to kill himself because he's a slave to duty. His self-worth was gone and he was going to kill himself.
Lydia was a slave to wealth and yet she was empty.
Slave girl was a slave

The reason Paul and Silas's master impressed them was because they had the only slave master who forgives when you fail and who gives you a joy so deep you can sing even when your feet are in stocks.

The gospel is a divine power. The gospel is the greatest thing in the world to bring people together.

Paul as a Jewish male had been taught since birth to pray a prayer. Every time that he got up would have prayed a pray - O Lord I thank thee that I'm not a woman, a slave or a gentile. That's exactly who God led him to here in Philippi.

Do you want to be used in the gospel? Check your idols and make sure you're flexible and see that God will come after all kinds of people.


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Fall short of the mark: Hebrew word for sin 'Hatah' which means 'to fall short fo the mark

To 'us' the message has come, we are in the people to whom the message has come.

1) AFFIRM the culture
2) CHALLENGE the culture
3) BETTER than the culture



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