"A Strategic Witness"

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Sermon Notes May 22, 2022 I.     A Strategic Witness                       Acts 16:9-15                                         A.    A mission team at work.               1. This is a new team – Paul has split from Barnabas, formed a partnership with Silas and picked up Timothy and Luke along the way (notice the change to first person plural in v. 10).               2. As an apostle, Paul was no stranger to visions or to direct instruction from the Lord.                     a. Yet even with this vision which will dramatically change the church, Paul recognizes the need to seek the wisdom of the others.                     b. Verse 10 - “we ….concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.”                     c. Despite the vision and despite the presence of apostolic authority, they chose to go to Macedonia without complete certainty. Just as decisive was the fact that God had closed the door to their other intended destinations.      B.    Off they go!              1.    Asia Minor was familiar territory for Paul, but Europe was not. They end up in the strategic city of Philippi.              2.   Verse 13 – “we went” – They tried to identify a place where they could find some common ground. They couldn’t expect people to come to them and there was no synagogue.              3.   They find a group of women (vv. 13-15).                     a.  Lydia, who had most likely led the others to the place of prayer, was from Thyatira where she had probably been exposed to dispersed Jews through whom she became a believer in God.                     b. God has prepared her heart to understand and receive the good news of Jesus Christ (v. 14) and with her, her entire household comes to believing faith.                     c. Lydia is clearly a woman of substance in the Gentile world. She is a merchant in purple cloth (big business in Thyatira), has a home in Philippi and maintains a household.      C.    The beginning of something big.              1.    This small “prayer meeting by the river” is the foundation for the gospel being spread throughout Europe …. hundreds of years later, the Europeans    will take the gospel to a New World as they struggle for religious freedom (and some of them will even build a church at Bethel and Smithbridge Roads in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania!).      D.    Are you a person who keeps banging your nose on closed doors instead of daring to see what God might have on the other side of the open door at the end of the room?