MODEL CHRISTIANS - THE PEOPLE OF ACTS

6. ACTS 16:11-40     MODEL CONVERTS

INTRODUCTION: What sort of person would you have met in the very earliest Christian church in Philippi?  This week’s passage tells us that you might have sat down beside a business woman at the top end of the social scale (Lydia); or a slave girl, newly delivered from demonic possession; or even a sturdy, middle-class ex-soldier-cum-jailer. What a cross-section!  What radically different people.  AND WHAT RADICALLY DIFFERENT CONVERSIONS!

This week we focus on the importance of being ‘converted’ (Matthew 18.3).  And we see just how different the conversion experience can be in different people.

READ ACTS 11.6-10: to see how Paul came to travel to Philippi - and so into Europe for the first time.

I. LYDIA’S CONVERSION (16.11-15)

(Lydia was the first convert in Europe!)

What impression do you get of Lydia? Her person, background and status in society?

What about her spiritual life before she met Paul and Silas? (Remember she wasn’t a Jew by birth, but had become a worshipper of the Jewish God.  Who, in today’s world might be her equivalent?

How would you describe her conversion? What does it mean, in practice, that ‘the Lord opened her heart’? Did any of you have a conversion like Lydia’s?

What were the consequences of her conversion?

II. DEMON-POSSESSED SLAVE GIRL’S CONVERSION (16.16-20)

(A rather more spectacular conversion!)

Talk together about this girl: what must life have been like for her?  How do you understand her plight and its causes?  What do you make of the things she shouted out and why she gave this ‘testimony’ to Silas and Paul? Why did they resent it?

What do you think of ‘her owners’? Discuss together her deliverance and conversion. How does this show us the superior power of Christ? What should be our attitude to occult powers?

What were the consequences of her conversion? For her? And for others? Should we be surprised at its results? Can conversions cause trouble today? For whom?

III. JAILER’S CONVERSION (16.22-34)

(Highly dramatic conversion)

What sort of man do you suppose the jailer to be?  (given the fact that in a Roman colony like Philippi we know that almost certainly he would have been an ex-soldier - probably a retired centurion).  How open to ‘religion’?

What various factors impacted him that night, do you suppose, to lead to his astonishing conversion?  What part did ‘men’ play in this and what part God?

Does anything surprise you about the jailer’s (and his family’s) baptism?  What things does it tell you about baptism?

CONCLUSION:

What have you learnt about ‘conversion’ through this passage? What of your conversion? When and what sort was it? Like Lydia, or the girl, or the jailer? Or different?

Why not pray together for the conversion of friends or family members for who you are concerned?