Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Importance of Diverse Connections | New Testament | Acts 16

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Looking to learn how to connect with people who are different from you? In today's episode, Keith discusses the importance of spaces where diverse people can come together to work toward a common goal. Take a look at Acts 16 to see how three very different people were brought together in the church in Philippi, and learn how to create spaces where diversity is valued and celebrated. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Acts 16

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. In our fractured society, we've lost spaces that we meet and work together with people who are very different than us. I mean, where do you go to work on a common goal with people who have different races, who have different socioeconomic statuses? Maybe they have different education levels. Where do you go to work with people who are rich and poor, who are.

are black, white, Latino, Asian, educated and uneducated, where do Republicans and Democrats, conservatives, progressive, libertarians, those with blue-collar jobs and white-collar jobs, hang out and work together? Now, maybe you say, why is this important? Well, it's important because it's in those spaces that we learn to respect and empathize with people different than us. When we don't have those relational connections, it's easy to caricature people who are different than us. It's easy to believe the worst about them. But when you have relationships with people who are very different than you, you end up believing the best about them, not the worst. One of the most

important places that diverse people live in community with each other is the church. The church is made up of all kinds of people who, humanly speaking, don't have a lot in common other than they follow Jesus. But we just can't take the diversity of the church for granted, because all those same pressures that cause people to want to hang out with people like themselves, well, all those pressures are present in the church. It's tempting to go to a church where everyone is like you or to spend time with people in the church who are most similar to you. We have to make room in our life. We have to make room in our church for people who are different than us. Now look, that's easier said than done because diverse people have diverse interests

and diverse taste and diverse politics and diverse preferences. We say that we value diversity, but oftentimes I think what we really crave is uniformity. Act 16 introduces us to three people who went to church together in a city called Philippi. They all have interesting stories, but humanly speaking, they don't have much in common, and they make up a diverse church. Before we meet these three people, let me tell you just a little bit about Philippi. Paul wrote the letter of Philippians to the church in this city. Philippi was a Roman colony that was settled with a lot of military veterans.

That explains why they didn't have the 10 Jewish men that were required to start a synagogue. The city was almost exclusively Gentile. Verse 12 tells us that Paul stayed in Philippi for several weeks sharing the gospel and planting this church. During his time in the city, there must have been many who came to faith in Jesus, but Luke only chooses to tell us about three of them. The first person in the church that we meet is a woman named Lydia. Verse 13 tells us that she was with a group of women who met to pray outside the city gate. These women were called worshippers of God because they were interested in the Jewish faith,

but hadn't officially become Jews. As she listened to Paul preach on that Sabbath, verse 14 tells us that God opened her heart to respond in faith to the message that Paul preached. It's a good reminder that our responsibility is to talk with people about Jesus, but only God can open hearts. Lydia was a businesswoman, who was an agent for a manufacturer of cloth that had been treated with a very expensive purple dye. When God opened her heart to believe the gospel, she opened her home to help start the church. The second person we meet in Act 16 is an anonymous slave girl. Luke tells us that she had a spirit by which she predicted the future and that as a slave she had been exploited by her owners who are making money of her ability to tell people's fortune.

The girl was following Paul for many days and eventually Paul grew frustrated and he commanded the evil spirit in the name of Jesus to come out of her. The last person we meet is a jailer. After Paul had cast the demonic spirit out of the slave girl, she was no longer able to tell her. the future. So her owners were angry with Paul because that's how they had made their money. They had exploited her talents, I guess you could call them talents, for their own financial gain. So now with all that gone, they drugged Paul and his companion Silas before the judges. The judge ordered a severe beating followed by jail time. While they were in the stocks in jail, Paul and Silas refused to complain, but instead sang songs of praise to God. In response,

God sent an earthquake that opened the prison's doors. The jailer was scared because of the earthquake, but also because he was responsible to keep guard of the prisoners. If the prisoners escaped, then he would lose his life. Paul and Silas didn't leave the jail, even though they could have. Instead, they stayed and talked to the jailer about Jesus, and we learned that he repented and believed the gospel. His whole family was baptized.

Then the jailer washed Paul and Silas. his wounds and they shared a meal together. So here are three people who are a part of the church in Philippi, Lydia the businesswoman, an anonymous slave girl, and a Roman soldier. They had different nationalities. Lydia was from Asia Minor, so she's Asian. She was an immigrant to Philippi, not a native. The slave girl was Greek. She could have been a foreigner since slaves were imported from everywhere, but there's nothing in the story to indicate this. This was probably her hometown. The soldier, or he was more likely a retired soldier or a veteran of a war, was a Roman citizen. Each of these three had been brought up in a different national culture.

They had possessed different values, were exposed to different customs, they had different world views. They also had different social backgrounds. Lydia was wealthy with a large enough house for the early church to meet in. The slave girl was at the bottom of the social scale. She had no possessions, no rights. the jailer was what we might think of as middle class. The head of a Jewish household would pray every morning and thank God that he had not made him a Gentile, a woman, or a slave. But these are the very people that God is bringing into his church.

Galatians 3 says, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Of course, that doesn't mean there's no longer something called Jews or Gentiles or slaves. or free people or men or women. It just means that our unity in Jesus needs to trump all our other identities. These three also had different personal needs. Lydia seems to have an intellectual need. It says in Acts 16 that she kept listening as Paul was teaching. The slave girl had lots of needs, one of them a psychological need. I mean, she had legally lost her identity. She belonged to other people. The jailer had a moral need. His conscience bothered him, which is why he asked. asked Paul, how do I be saved? But whatever differences they had, different nationalities,

different cultures, different social backgrounds, different economic situations, different personal needs, for whatever differences they had, what they had in common was even greater. And here's what they had in common. They all needed Jesus's grace, love, and mercy. What bound them together in the church was Jesus, that they wanted to follow Jesus together. I'm sure it was not always easy for them to be inside the same church. But it did bring God glory. Paul says that the church is like a family. And in this family, you have a wealthy business woman, an exploited slave girl, and a rough Roman jailer. They'd all been brought into relationship with one another. They were now brothers and sisters in Christ. I'm sure they experienced some tensions. In fact, we know that they did, because in the letter,

Paul wrote to Philippi, he had to deal with conflict inside this church. He had to remind them that they needed to stand firm in one spirit, that they needed to be like-minded, have the same love, be one in spirit and purpose. So it's not as if they all got along perfectly all the time. But as they work together, very different people with very different backgrounds, learn to work together, learn to follow Jesus together, learn from one another, repented of their sins, humbled themselves, and put others' needs above their own. As they did that, they grew to become more like Jesus. The church today needs to reclaim that kind of diversity. In an age of social fracturing, we need to demonstrate the unifying power of the gospel.

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