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Good morning. Good morning. And howdy. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Kevin Walton, and my wife Kim is over in the corner. We were just thinking about that this morning, that this is our second year to be here at Emmanuel. Two years ago on July 4th, 2021, was the day we rolled into town after having spent almost 40 years living in Virginia.

And that was a lot of change that came about coming to Texas. People have often asked us, what brought you to Bryan, Texas? Well, I often tell them it was because of our kids and our grandson Joseph. But actually, there was a long chain of events that happened prior to our move.

None of these events were random occurrences. And I'm so glad that the praise team chose that last song about the sovereignty of God because that was exactly what was going on in our lives. God was sovereignly bringing us to a place we didn't even know where Bryan, Texas was.

I mean, that's kind of neat up there to see that little symbol, but I had no idea where we were going. But God sovereignly worked all those things together for our good. And somehow, all of the random things, those seemingly unrelated events, brought us to Texas. Our daughter Amy was working part-time as an orthodontic assistant for a practice in Culpeper, Virginia.

And she was hoping to make a life for herself. And she found several opportunities for full-time employment as an orthodontic assistant in Raleigh, North Carolina. She'd never been to Raleigh before, but there were job opportunities there, so she decided to explore them. And she was able to obtain some interviews and was offered a position with better pay and benefits.

So Kim and I began the process of looking for an apartment for her, sadly, packing up our daughter, getting to U-Haul and driving all the possessions that she had to an apartment that we'd set up for her not too far from the practice. And I'll tell you, that was a difficult day for dad to drive away and leave his little girl there.

But we did it. Amy wanted to find a church. So we were looking around, and we had some friends from Bible College who had gone to Colonial Baptist Church, which was right there in Cary, a suburb of Raleigh. And she decided that she would go there. And we'd heard some good things about their pastor, whose name was Stephen Davey.

And as she got involved in different ministries there, she came across a young man from Chile. His name was Daniel Cookin. And he was a student at Shepherd's Theological Seminary, which is attached to, which is now called Shepherd's Church or Colonial Baptist Church at the time. And we just thought, random coincidences, huh?

All these things about Amy going to Raleigh and going to Colonial and finding Daniel. Nope. That was all part of the plan to bring us to Texas. We just didn't know it at the time. After getting to know Daniel and his family, Amy and Daniel were engaged. And Pastor Davey drove up to Culpeper, Virginia to perform their marriage ceremony.

And many, many more events transpired, including the birth of their son and our first grandson, Joseph. And Daniel was offered a position for them to relocate to Bryan, Texas, where Daniel was going to work for shepherds here as well as for the church. And again, I thought, where is Bryan, Texas?

I was retiring at the end of June of 2021. Son Ben and his wife and his wife Erin had just moved from Fort Bragg, North Carolina to Colorado Springs. Ben's in the Air Force, and Daniel and Amy and Joseph are going to Texas. More random coincidences, right? It was actually a simple decision for us, but a very emotional one for me.

We would be driving away from friends who we had known for decades. A wonderful church family, the Blue Ridge Mountains. But I really wasn't going to miss that big long drive into Washington, D.C. every day. So Kim and I decided to leave it all and live closer to our kids.

And then we packed up everything and we drove for two days to Bryan, Texas. And our first service again, which is what you see up behind you, was on July 4th, 2021, almost two years to the day that we've been here in Bryan. God sovereignly used all of these random circumstances from our perspective to bring us to Bryan.

We just didn't realize it. But God was actively intervening in the events of our lives. And there's a theological term that's called the imminence of God, which means that God is present and active in all of his creation. There's another word that we use, the transcendence of God, which means he's over all things.

But the imminence of God is the fact that he's in our lives, doing things, working in our situations, in our circumstances, if you will, and our lives to accomplish his will. Cooper Tuggle recently shared a lesson on Psalm 23 for our adult Sunday school class, and I really like the quote that he used from John Piper, which said, God is always doing 10,000 things in our lives, and we may be aware of only three of them.

That statement accurately captures the imminence of God. Let's have a word of prayer as we start this morning. Father, thank you for today. And again, thank you for our church. Lord, we are grateful for this building in which we've now occupied for two years. And Father, thank you for allowing Emmanuel to be here, for my family, and so many other families who are a part of this wonderful body of Christ.

We're thankful for our elders. We're thankful for our deacons. We're thankful for everyone who serves in this body. God, thank you for giving us opportunities to gather together like this and to be able to go from this place and tell folks. About Jesus Christ. God, give us opportunities to do that more and more each and every day.

Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for the way that you're deeply and intimately involved in our lives. And God, thank you for bringing each and every one that's here this morning to Emmanuel. God, may you be glorified. May your Son be exalted in the preaching of your word this morning.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. You know, one of the things that I've noticed as I've been here is that each of our elders seem to have a particular book or a theme that they're working through. Pastor Tom, of course, has been preaching through the book of Revelation.

Matt Gentry's been working on Ephesians for a little while. Russell McGee has been working his way through the parables of Jesus. And Pat Johnson has been teaching us about church history. So I decided, you know, I really need a book. I'm going to try and fit in. So I decided, after some prayer, why not begin a book of the Apostle Paul's letter to the Philippians?

So if you would, please turn in your Bibles to the book of Philippians. Philippians is one of the prison epistles that Paul wrote from Rome. And as you're finding your place there in Philippians, look up at the top of the page, if you would, above chapter 1 and verse 1.

And you should all see a statement, the letter of Paul to the Philippians, or the epistle of Paul to the Philippians. The word epistle is just another word for letter. And honestly, that's as far as we're going to get in the book today. Before we get into the book of Philippians, I'd like to take a look at how the church in Philippi got started and how the imminence of God was clearly demonstrated in the lives of Paul, his companions, and the church in Philippi.

So roll back, if you would, to the book of Acts, chapter 16. Acts chapter 16 is where we're going to spend our time today. Acts chapter 15 talks about the Jerusalem Council and the decisions that were made there according to their interaction with the Gentiles. And then we have the confrontation between Paul and Barnabas.

At the end of 15, they go their separate ways. Barnabas takes John, Mark, and goes his way. And Paul chooses his new traveling companion named Silas, and they begin their second missionary journey. In the first few verses of Acts, which Matt read for us this morning, we're introduced to Timothy, a young man from Lystra, who was converted under Paul's ministry and became Paul and Silas' ministry assistant.

Actually, Timothy is what John Mark should have been. But John Mark was gone now, so Timothy became the ministry assistant that would travel along with Paul and Silas. And as they traveled from town to town, they shared the decisions that were reached by the apostles and the elders from the council of Jerusalem back in Acts chapter 15.

And the churches were strengthened in their faith, and they grew daily in their numbers. We see in Acts 16, verses 4 and 5. And evidently, Paul and Silas and Timothy had hoped to travel to certain provinces in Asia, which is modern-day Turkey. But their plans, for some random reason, didn't seem to work out.

The Holy Spirit forbid them, it says in verse 6, to go in a certain direction. And I thought, well, that's a random thing. Why wouldn't they be allowed to go and plant churches? But that wasn't God's plan, nor would it be Paul's plan. Then they tried to go to another place, to another province called Bithynia.

And yet again, their plans didn't work out. It says that the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them to go there. And I'm sure Paul was thinking, What's going on? We're trying to do your work, Lord. We're trying to go here. And you said, No, we're trying to go here.

And you said, No, where do you want us to go? We're confused now. Where do you want us to go? Remember the imminence of God. God is sovereign, and we are not. Proverbs 19:21 says, Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails.

Let me read that again: Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails. So the three men continued on their westward journey, confused and uncertain where to go next until they arrived in the town of Troas, says in verse 8, which is near the ancient site of Troy.

They just needed to wait on the Lord. And in the night, Paul saw a vision of a man from Macedonia, which is over in Greece, standing and calling to him, Come over to Macedonia and help us, it says in verse 9. And now they had their direction. They were going to Europe.

The church thus far had only been in Asia. Now it was transcending and going further into Europe. This was the first time Paul had ever been there. And it was at Troas that Luke, the author of Acts, joined them. How do you know this? Well, if you look in verse 10, you'll see a change in pronouns from they and them to we and us.

And you'll see that all down through chapter 16. So apparently, Luke joined them in this travel in Troas and then traveled with them over into Philippi. Again, Paul had not planned to go to Europe. He'd never been there before. But God was sovereignly guiding Paul's team to fulfill his divine plan of establishing the first church in Europe.

Here's a little bit of the remains of what's in Philippi right now. They had a giant stadium, which still exists today. The four men sailed from Troas to Neapolis, a port city in Macedonia. And from Neapolis, it was 10 miles to Philippi. And according to Acts chapter 16, verse 12, Philippi was a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony.

Philippi's original Thracian. Name was Crenides, which means fountains. And the city was conquered by a king whose name was Philip of Macedon. Anybody heard of him? Most haven't. He was the father of Alexander the Great. But Philip was a conqueror in his own right. And when he conquered the city of Crenides, he renamed it after himself and called it Philippi.

In 168 BC, Philippi came under Roman control, and after a battle almost two centuries later called the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, many Roman soldiers were told to stay there, to stay in this city, because Philippi would become a great strategic location for their army. And ten years later, in 31 BC, Octavian, who would later be called Caesar Augustus, resettled many more people, primarily former soldiers, in Philippi as Roman colonists.

These colonists would be given special privileges, including Roman citizenship and exemption from taxes. So Philippi became a seat of Roman culture, Roman religion, and national pride, and would also become a major trading center along an east-west road called the Via Ignatia. Some of the things that are along that road that you can see today.

And it was into this environment that Paul and his companions were led by the Lord to plant the church, the very first church in Europe. So, in Acts chapter 16, verses 30, excuse me, 13 through 40, we're going to spend some time this morning looking at four individuals or groups of individuals, each of them very, very different from one another.

We might see them as random interactions, random conversations that Paul had as he was there in Philippi with the missionary team. But God had a very specific purpose in mind that Paul would meet each of these people in order to lay the foundation for the church in Philippi.

Read with me, if you would, Acts chapter 16, verses 13 through 15. And on the Sabbath day, we went outside of the gate to a riverside where we were supposing that there would be a place of prayer. And we sat down and began speaking to the women who had assembled.

A woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshipper of God, was listening. And the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things that were spoken by. Paul. And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, saying, If you have judged me to be faithful in the Lord, come into my house and stay.

And she prevailed upon them. The first thing that we're going to look at in the first individual that Paul meets is a lady named Lydia. Paul's typical strategy when he entered into a city was first to go to the Jews and find their synagogue where they could preach.

But there's a problem when they came to Philippi, there wasn't a synagogue. And according to Jewish tradition, in any city where there were at least 10 men, they were to establish a synagogue. And its primary purpose would be a place of prayer. But search as Paul and Silas could, they could not find a synagogue anywhere in the city.

And you begin to think, weren't there even 10 Jewish men living in the city of Philippi, a city of 15,000 people? That's highly unlikely. What's more likely is that there weren't 10 Jewish men in Philippi who were willing to put their necks on the line and establish a place of worship.

Perhaps they were afraid of persecution by the city's pagan Roman culture, and they chose to remain. Silent. We're just really not told why there was no synagogue there. So Paul and Silas continued to look for any faithful Jews who still cared about God. And finally, on the Sabbath day, they found some ladies having a prayer meeting down by the riverbank.

Perhaps they were discussing a portion of the Old Testament because the New Testament didn't exist yet. They're looking at the Old Testament, and here came a former Pharisee, a teacher of the law by the name of Paul, who sat down with them. And like Paul Harvey, who some of you might know, he said, Ladies, would you like to know the rest of the story?

And one of the women, whose name was Lydia from the city of Thyatira back in Asia, a seller of expensive purple cloth and a worshipper of God, listened intently to Paul. And the Lord opened her heart, and she was saved. The dying and selling of purple cloth had brought her great wealth, but Lydia lacked a relationship with Jesus Christ.

And now she believed. Was it a coincidence? Was it a random thing that Lydia was at that prayer meeting that day? Or some random Random coincidence that Paul and Silas decided to walk down to this riverbank and interact with them. No, this was all part of God's sovereign plan to bring Lydia and several members of her household into the family of God.

After Lydia and those of her household who were saved were baptized, Lydia urged Paul and Silas and Timothy and Luke to stay in her house. She said, If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay in my house. Obviously, her house was very large and spacious enough to accommodate these four men without disrupting her daily affairs.

She basically said to them, Where's John Gardner? Mikasa esukasa. My house is your house. And this brought great joy to Paul and his companions. And it would be something that Paul would never, ever forget. The kindness of this family, the generosity that they had experienced, and the joy that it gave him.

But things don't always go well when you're trying to serve the Lord. You know that? There was a confrontation. With a slave girl, which happened next. Let's read chapter 16, verses, or excuse me, yeah, 16, 16 through 24, a little lengthy passage. And it happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, that same place where they had met Lydia, a slave girl, having a spirit of divination, met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling.

Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, These men are the bondservants of the Most High God who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation. She continued doing this for many days. But Paul was greatly annoyed and turned and said to the Spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.

And it came out at that very moment. But when her master saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. And when they had brought them to the chief magistrates, they said, These men are throwing our city into confusion, being Jews.

And they are proclaiming customs which is not lawful for us to accept or to observe, being Romans. And the crowd rose up together against them, and the chief magistrates tore their robes off. And proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods. And when they had struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely.

And he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in stocks. It would be great if everything turned out as well as it did as in the conversion of Lydia. But when our goals and plans are changed by God, we have to adapt and change as well.

Although Lydia responded positively to Paul's preaching, others responded very, very negatively. Satanic opposition to the new church in Philippi immediately arose in the person of a demon-possessed, fortune-telling slave girl we see in verses 16 and 17. She followed Paul and Silas to the place of prayer and kept crying out, These men are the servants of the Most High God who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.

It was a true statement, but Paul really didn't want the advertising coming from her. And she continued to harass them for several days, and eventually it began to frustrate Paul. So he cast the demon out in the name of Jesus Christ. Although this was very good for the little girl, Girl, it was very bad for her master's business.

Because she could no longer predict the future, and obviously the demons had something to do with knowing what was going on around, she could no longer do this. And their source of income had dried up, and their tempers flared, and they dragged Paul and Silas into the marketplace to appear before the magistrates.

Church planning, indeed, has its own risks. But Paul and Silas did not quit. They endured the trials and they stayed the course. That's something we can all learn from this. When the times get tough, don't give up. Keep on going. Keep on doing what's right, even though you may be suffering for it.

They were charged with throwing the city into confusion, it says in verse 20, and teaching things that are not lawful for Romans to believe or to observe. The Romans had their own pantheon of gods, of Jupiter, and all the others that they followed. They didn't want to follow this Jesus.

And really, the Romans didn't understand the distinction between the Jews and Christians. They just knew that this is something they weren't supposed to believe, but they knew that they were Jews. And obviously, they had a problem with Jews being there teaching. Proselytizing to Judaism amongst the Romans there in Philippi was illegal.

They weren't supposed to do that. But this was Christianity, but the rulers didn't really understand that. But really, it was just a bunch of trumped-up charges. The guys were mad because they lost their source of income, and it was probably a very lucrative business to have this young girl doing what she did, actually, having a demon doing what it did.

But it was now gone. The Romans insisted on peace and order in their colonies and strongly disapproved, again, of Jewish proselytism. The devil doesn't accept defeat graciously. The crowd was swayed by the accusations of the slave girl owners. And the magistrates ordered Paul and Silas to be severely beaten and then thrown into prison.

And their feet were held in wooden blocks, which basically, if you've ever been to Williamsburg, anybody ever been there? You know that little thing that they have outside of the courthouse? That sort of stocks. But these are stocks that they had to lay down in, and their feet and their legs were extended very, very widely.

And it was excruciating pain that they had to endure as they lay there on their backs, their legs stretched out in the dark. And they're thinking, Paul looking at Silas and Silas looking at Paul, going, is this really God's plan? For us, I thought we came here to plan a church, and now we're laying in this deep, dark prison.

But they knew that God had not forgotten them. You know, I've often wondered what happened to that little slave girl after the demon was gone. Would Lydia and the other believers have reached out to her? Many commentators actually believe that she became a Christian after the demon was gone and perhaps became a part of the church in Philippi.

And I would like to think that happened as well, but the text just simply doesn't tell us that. So we've seen two confrontations, two conversations, if you will, the conversion of Lydia, the confrontation with the slave girl, and the third interaction that we're going to see with Paul and Philippi is the conversion of this jailer, the one who now has them in his prison.

Let's look at verses 25 through 34. But about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. And suddenly there came a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's chains were unfastened.

When the jailer awoke and saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying, Do yourself no harm, for we are all here. And he called for lights and rushed in.

And trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas. And after he had brought them out, he said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. And they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all those who were in his house.

And he took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds, and immediately he was baptized, he and all of his household. And he brought them into his house, and he set food before them and rejoiced greatly, having believed in God with his whole household. This third interaction is the conversion of the jailer.

Paul and Silas were indeed men of faith. They didn't blame God for their circumstances, quite the opposite. They joyfully prayed and praised God in song. And you know what? It says that the rest of the prisoners heard them. How would you handle a situation like this? Have you ever been?

Treated badly after doing what you thought was right? I have. It didn't seem fair. It didn't seem right. It wasn't what I wanted. But I just kept on doing what I knew was right to do, even when things got tough. At midnight, an amazing thing happened in the Philippian jail.

Actually, it didn't just happen, right? God caused an earthquake to shake the prison. And in that part of the world, there are many, many earthquakes, but this was a rather significant one. Because not only did it shake the prison, all the doors in the prison flew open. And all of the chains that were attached to the walls were shaken and had fallen off of the prisoners.

And the jailer could not believe what had just happened. And thinking that the prisoners had escaped, he prepared to kill himself. He knew that he would be executed by Roman law. If a prisoner lets his prisoners escape, or a jailer lets his prisoners escape, he basically assumes their penalty.

And that penalty is typically death. But before the jailer had time to commit suicide, Paul shouted to him, Don't hurt yourself. Don't hurt yourself. We're all right here. And I kind of wonder. Why the other prisoners didn't run away? You know, if you're in that jail, wouldn't you think, hey, these doors are open, these chains are off, I'm out of here.

But for whatever reason, they were still there. I'm pretty sure God had something to do with this. Do not harm yourself. The jailer's thoughts quickly shifted from suicide to salvation. Perhaps he had heard of the story of the slave girl, and these men were the servants of God who proclaimed the message of salvation.

Perhaps he too had listened to Paul and Silas's prayers and singing in their cell. Kind of gives us encouragement too that when we're going through a tough time, maybe we also should be singing and praising God instead of bemoaning our problems to the world around us. Let them know that God is still in charge, even though it's kind of hard for me right now.

I still trust Him. And perhaps Paul's reassuring words after the earthquake caused the man to fall down at their feet and say, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Oh, how we long to hear those words. How we long to hear them from our kids. Daddy, mommy, what do I need to do to be saved?

Our family, our friends, when we're down. At First Friday, that is a conversation that we want to have every time. What must I do to be saved? And we're ready to tell them. Paul and Silas responded and he said, Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.

Verse 31 is a key passage about the message of faith. All that is needed for justification is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not faith and works, faith and giving to the church, faith and it's nothing else, but faith alone. And that's exactly what this jailer did.

To believe does not merely mean to intellectually agree with some facts about Jesus Christ, but one must believe that Jesus is who he claimed to be and believe in what he did. John 20, verse 31 states, These things have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life, eternal life in his name.

They admonished the jailer to trust or to believe in Jesus Christ to save him and nothing else. And he did. Praise the Lord. And those in the jailer's household who believed in Jesus Christ were also saved, it says in verse 32. And the jailer humbled himself and washed their wounds.

And then the jailer and those of his household who had believed were baptized. Now remember, all this happened after midnight, right? This was midnight when the earthquake occurred. And we have all these things that are going on. The doors are open. The prisoners didn't run away. This conversation occurs with the jailer.

He's washing their wounds, and now they're baptized all after midnight. It was a pretty busy night. And the jailer took them home and fed them and rejoiced greatly, having believed in God with his whole household. What a happy, joyful time this had become. You're going to see this word repeated again and again, joy, as we get back into the book of Philippians.

That word, that theme, is repeated many, many times throughout that book. The jailer and his family had come to Christ. Why? Because Paul had cast a demon out of a slave girl, and they were thrown into prison. You're like, what? Yeah. Bad things happened to Paul. Why? Because God had a plan for them to go into that prison and meet that jailer.

Had all those things not transpired, had not the imminence of God. Been involved in all of those people's lives, and that's what God does, to bring all things together for good, they would have never met that Philippian jailer. But God had a plan, and he met him, and he was saved, and those who believed in his house were also brought into the family of God.

This may not have been Paul's plan, but it was the way that God had planned it. And sadly, even after all this was done, Paul and Silas still had to go back to jail. They couldn't stay there. They were from jail. The jailer was taking a risk by taking them home, but they had to go back to jail because that's what jailers do.

They put you in prison. So back to jail these guys went. And there's one more confrontation, one more interaction that Paul has to have, or that Paul is going to have, and that is the confrontation with the magistrates. These guys who had illegally, unlawfully beat them and put them into this prison, Paul has to talk to them one more time.

For whatever reason, and we're not told, the magistrates decided to release Paul and Silas from prison. So they sent word to the jailer to let them go. Verse 35 says, Now when they came, when the day came, the chief magistrates sent their policemen and said to them, Release them.

The men. And the jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, The chief magistrates have sent to release you. Therefore, come out now and go in peace. But Paul said to them, They have beaten us in public without a trial, men who are what? Romans. And the jailer's mouth probably dropped open at that moment.

And they have thrown us into prison, and now they're sending us away secretly. No, indeed. Let them come themselves and bring us out. And the policeman reported these words to the chief magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Romans. And they came and appealed to them.

And when they had brought them out, they kept begging them to leave the city. And they went out of the prison and entered into the house of Lydia. And when they had saw the brethren, they encouraged them, and then they departed. Again, for whatever reason, the magistrates decided to let them go.

Maybe it wasn't a big deal. We're not really told why. And they told the jailer, let them go. However, Paul and Silas had been condemned and beaten without a trial. And to make matters worse, they were Roman citizens. And Roman citizens were exempt from beatings, and they were also guaranteed a fair.

Trial. So their rights as Roman citizens had been wildly violated by these magistrates. So Paul refused to leave the prison privately unless these magistrates came down to the prison themselves and escorted them out. And when Paul's demands reached the magistrates, they feared what Paul and Silas might say or do.

And rightly so. The magistrates could be in big trouble or even punished by the Roman government for their illegal actions. Timidly, the magistrates went to the prison, escorted them from the prison, and urged them to leave Philippi. And I'm sure there was a great deal of apologizing going on as they did.

You know, I've often wondered why Paul had to wait that long before mentioning his Roman citizenship. I mean, he could have said it right there when they're getting ready to beat him. Hey, I'm a Roman citizen, and so is Silas. You better not be doing this. But he didn't.

He took the scourging. And there could have been some reasons, maybe at the time, to delay in sharing his legal status, but one thing was very certain. The city's magistrates now did not want to make matters even worse for the Themselves, for Paul, or for the people that he had associated with there in Philippi, which was basically the church which was now meeting in Lydia's home.

He was actually providing them some protection because he allowed himself and Silas to be beaten. And they're like, we're not going to mess with these people anymore. So Paul, before he left the city, wanted to meet with his brothers and sisters one more time. Made one more visit.

Where did he go? To Lydia's home, which again leads me to believe that's where the church may have continued to meet in its initial stages. And he encouraged them, it says. God's work in Philippi began with Paul's brief missionary visit. That visit only produced a few converts. And God had intervened in Paul's life to place him where he wanted him to be.

God had also intervened in the lives of many people in Philippi, and he'd saved them. They had formed the very first church in Europe in this town called Philippi. These interventions were not painless for Paul and his co-workers, but they were very, very productive. In time, this church would become a thriving church of saints of Jesus.

Christ, including the overseers or elders and deacons. It says in Philippians 1.1. God's interventions are always well-timed and always purposeful. Things just don't happen by chance. You know, two years ago before we came to Bryan, we were getting ready to sell our home in Culpeper, Virginia. Kim and I had just finished a long day of buyers walking through our house.

Anybody ever been through that experience? In the door, out the door. And then you have to go away. You can't be there when they're there, so you have to go find someplace else to go. And so I was at work, and Kim kept going back and forth to the lake.

That's where she liked to go to read her book. And so the realtor told us, we're all done. No more tonight. Go have your supper. So we were sitting down to eat. And as we were sitting there, a car pulls up in the street. And I see this lady get out and go, I'm like, she's coming in.

And Kim's like, no, she's not. I'm like, yes, she is. And just a little bit later, another car pulls up in front. And he gets out and he comes back and talks to her. And they're pointing at our house. And I'm like, they're coming in our house. We better put this all away.

And sure enough, a realtor pulls up and she comes and she knocks on the door and says, hi, I'm here to show my clients your home. And we're like, no, you're not. You're not supposed to be here. Didn't your realtor tell you? We have an appointment. We applied online.

And I'm like, you're not supposed to be here, but sure, come on in the house. And so we got in our car and we drove away. I had a meeting at another town. Kim took her book back to the lake. And I'm like, who did we just open our home to?

She never gave us her card. I don't even think we knew her name at that point. And here's these people. They want to come see your house. Bruno and Bob, right? And they have this big truck up the street, which I didn't see. And it's like, I'm driving.

I'm thinking, what a dumb thing I just did. Kim, go put your book down and go back and like park up the street and see if you see a big truck pull up because I don't want to lose my stuff. And so she sat there for a while, and about 15 minutes later, they came out and got in their cars and they drove away.

And Kim drove up and she went back in the house and there was this little card. And she called her realtor and said, Do you know this person? Oh, yeah, that's my friend. Something must have got up and gotten wrong in this scheduling. They're fine. And I thought, wow, what a great way to rip off a house.

Hi, we're here to see your home. And no, you're not. It's a crazy thing. But you know what? Here's the Paul Harvey part of this thing. They bought our house. And they paid more for it than we asked for it. God. Intervened in our lives again. Sometimes we're kind of silly in what we do, but that's what he did in order to allow us to come to Brian, Texas.

We could have sent them away. We actually should have sent them away. But again, we believe that God showed his imminence in our lives. He intervened in so many other ways to bring us to Bryan, Texas. He intervened in the lives of Paul and his ministry team in Philippi.

He intervened in the life of Lydia. He intervened in the life of the demon-possessed girl, in the life of the jailers, family, and even of those of the city magistrates. And he's also very, very active in each of your lives, too. God is working in your lives. Nothing happens by chance.

God sovereignly works all things together for our good, it says in Romans 8:28. But the purpose that he does that for is found in verse 29, so that we may be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord for who he is and for all that he has done for us.

And I'm looking forward to our study in the book of. Philippians. And now you know the rest of the story. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for the way that you do intervene in our lives. God, that you are sovereign, that you are over all and that you are in all.

God, you are transcendent. You are above everything that we can possibly do or think. But you're also intimately involved in the very circumstances of our lives. God, the way that you weave things together is so far beyond us. But the way that you do that is good. You work all those things together for our good to make us more like your Son, Jesus Christ.

Father, help us to be more like him in the things that we do, the things that we say, the conversations that we have. Lord, help us to draw them to Jesus Christ. Lord, we love you and we thank you for this time. And we look forward to a wonderful day to spend with family and friends.

God, thank you so much for this service. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.