July 26, 2026

"Our Prowling and Roaring Adversary" (Acts 16:16-24)

Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church Scripture: Acts 16:16–24

Hear now the word of the Lord. As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gained by fortune telling. She followed Paul and us, crying out, these men are servants of the most high God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation. And this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.

And it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, these men are Jews and they are disturbing our city. They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice. The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods.

And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fasten their feet in the stalks. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated. And as you're taking your seats, let's join our hearts together this morning in prayer.

Gracious heavenly Father, as we come to your word, we pray for your spirit. We pray that you would give us grace, Father, that you would give us hearts to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear all that is contained in the good news of the gospel of your son, Jesus Christ. As we live in a world where there is a constant spiritual war, unseen but raging around us, we pray that you would give us discernment to be watchful, knowing that our adversary, the devil, prowls like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

We have this morning a story that is unsettling, because here we have a story about a demonic oppression, a demonic possession of a young girl. And I think it's sometimes difficult in our culture today to know what exactly to do with stories of demonic oppression like this. Our culture has so sanitized any sense of spiritual influence from our understanding of the world that it seems a foreign thing to think that something like this would happen. But the Scriptures are very clear. As I prayed, our adversary, the devil, does prowl around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

In my own experience as a pastor, I have shepherded people who have been converted out of significant involvement in demonic oppression. Some of them through occult practices, others through various reasons. And I have dealt with individuals at times whose evil was so obvious, not only to me, but to other believers who could just feel it, that it's hard for me to avoid thinking that there was some demonic influence there. But what does this look like for us today? Again, this seems like a long time ago and something that happened far, far away and maybe doesn't influence our lives of buying groceries and getting the mail and coming to church on Sundays.

But I want to suggest that there are aspects of what we are reading about here that are becoming more prevalent in our culture than you might realize. And I want to speak to some of those today. But as we consider what we are seeing here, I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that our adversary is still prowling, still roaring. But the good news is that Jesus Christ has already conquered him.

He has no power save what the Lord gives him on a leash. And so our theme this morning is that Jesus power over demons provokes demonic rage. Jesus power over demons provokes demonic rage. And so we're going to look at this passage in two sections. First, Jesus power over demons in the first three verses 16 through 18, and then demonic rage against Jesus in verses 19 through 24.

1. Jesus' Power over Demons (Acts 16:16-18)

Demonic rage against Jesus. So first, Jesus power over demons. At the beginning of our passage in verse 16, we read as we again, this is Paul and Silas, but if you remember, they picked up Timothy along the way. And then this we language silently drops Luke, the author of the Book of Acts, into the story of what's happening here. So Luke is here involved.

We don't read directly about Timothy, and Luke is going to drop out, as we will see a little bit later. But Luke writes as we were going to the place of prayer, this place of prayer we had seen in the previous section back in verse 13. So Acts 16:13 says, and on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside where we supposed there was a place of prayer. And we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. If you remember, in Philippi, there apparently were not enough men.

There had to be 10 Jewish men for the formation of a synagogue. Without 10 Jewish men without the formation of a synagogue, then there had to be other places for those who feared the Lord, for those who worshiped God, to gather and to offer the normal prayer services that would have happened in the Jewish synagogue synagogues there at that time, one of the women. We don't read about any men in this place of prayer. But in verse 14 one of the women they met was Lydia in chapter 16, verse 14. She was a wealthy woman.

She owned a business of luxury goods. We also read that she was a worshiper of God. And we read that very gently, in very ordinary ways, the Lord opened her heart and she believed what Paul had been preaching. But now, as they go back to the same spot, this place of prayer, they meet an entirely different woman. One commentator says we meet three people who are converted to Christ in this chapter.

Lydia, this woman, and then the Philippian jailer, whom we'll look at more next week. And all of them are so different, this commentator said, that you wonder if of all the people who were converted, these people had been selected to show the great diversity, just in one chapter, of the people whom Jesus Christ is reaching with his gospel in these far flung Gentile areas. But this woman, again, is nothing like Lydia. She is not wealthy. She's a slave girl.

She is not a worshiper of God. She is rather someone who is demon oppressed and demon possessed. She is not someone who quietly has her heart open to believe the Gospel. She is someone who persists for a very long, long time in demonic mocking of the Gospel of Jesus. Look at the mocking she's engaged with by this slave girl who had a spirit of divination.

We'll come back to talk about that spirit of divination and brought her owners much gained by fortune telling. But in verse 17, we read she followed Paul and us. Luke is still there crying out, these men are servants of the Most High God who proclaim to you the way of salvation. Now, at first, on the surface, that sounds complimentary, sort of an endorsement or a testimonial here, but that's not what's happening, particularly because for Gentiles, especially in Greek areas like this, God Most High or Most High God was a title that was typically understood as associated with Zeus. So who is she talking about here?

And then as she talks about the way of salvation? In the Greco Roman world, there were many saviors, there were many ways of salvation. It's kind of like living in the United States today. You go online, you scroll through Facebook, see all these ads for all kinds of saviors and, and ways of salvation for you to change your life or lose weight or whatever it is you want to do, all kinds of options available to you for the way of salvation. And so what she is doing is not endorsing what they are preaching, she's mocking it.

And this has to be creepy to have this girl following around these men who are there to preach the gospel of Jesus. And we see that in verse 18 that this was unceasing and this she kept doing for many days. It's obnoxious, it's creepy, It's a maniacal, demonic, crazed reaction to undercut and undermine the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus. The demons hate Jesus and they hate him particularly because they know and acknowledge when they come in contact with him that he has authority over them. It's not a battle really, it's not a tug of war where sometimes Jesus gets the upper hand and sometimes demons do.

It is one sided victory by the Son of God to put these demonic forces into their place. As we confessed in our call to worship, he is God alone over all the so called gods of the nations. But we see in the scriptures that the demons express their hatred for Jesus in a variety of ways. Here it's by casting this dark cloud over their mission. As the scriptures say, what does light have to do with darkness?

And here we see darkness clinging on to attach herself to preachers of light. Now eventually we read that Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the Spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And it came out that very hour. Eventually she was freed from this demonic possession. But some people ask, and maybe you're wondering why the delay?

Why did Paul let this go on for so long? Well, if you read the commentaries, there's lots of stories what I would consider to be sort of speculations. Maybe it was for this reason, maybe for that reason. Without going into speculations, I think there are a few reasons that are just objectively true. The first thing is that obviously for this or anything else that they did, they had to wait for the Lord's timing.

If the Lord had prevented them from doing this, then they were not able or at liberty to just move forward with it apart from the Lord's will. But the second thing is, one thing that happens over the course of time is at first people might have been thinking that this was a testimonial. But you have to imagine the more this cackling, maniacal young girl was calling this out, it became very clear. And you could see the frustration of the missionaries who were trying to get on with ministry. You could see that this was not someone who was coming to their aid.

This was an enemy who was undermining them. And the longer this played out, the clearer the division between darkness and light became. But the final thing we see is as soon as they cast the demon out of her, very quickly this turned into an attack by the entire city against them. And so, as one commentator says, the demon could not be cast out until the first part of declaring the gospel in Philippi had run its course. They had to preach enough of the gospel before turning on to this next phase.

Now, from this I need to give a pastoral warning that the forces of darkness, particularly in a spirit of divination, are not to be trifled with. Now, what's divination? It's maybe not the first thing that comes to our minds when we think about our day to day life, but. But divination was the practice of seeking advice or counsel or direction through some secret or higher power or insight. And it's all over the scriptures, the language of this, this spirit of divination.

It's the spirit of a python is literally what this word says. And it's connected to a myth of the oracle at Delphi. The oracle of Delphi had a lot of wisdom to share supposedly with people. And that oracle of Delphi was guarded by a goddess who took the form of a python. And this girl was believed to have possessed that python goddess, guardian of the oracle of Delphi.

So what she spoke presumably had wisdom, the wisdom of the oracle of Delphi herself. In the Old Testament, though, we see divination all over the place. In fact, the law Deuteronomy is filled with prophet prohibitions against Deuteronomy. One particularly interesting example is in Ezekiel 21:21, where we read that a king takes an animal and kills it. And we read that that king examines the liver.

He examines the liver. Why does he do this? Well, the belief was that if you could open the liver, you could sort of see something about the future or gain some wisdom or direction in your life. Now that seems odd, strange, foreign. We may think of this story as the relic of a forgotten age, but the spirit of divination is alive and well.

Some of the areas where people consult a spirit of divination are obvious Ouija boards that spell out words seeking messages from the beyond. You think of. You can hardly drive down a street without seeing a stand for a palm reader. If you think a liver can show you information, how much more can your palm. If you go into a bookstore like Barnes and Noble, you'll find the New age section and it is filled with dark demonic influences.

Don't touch those books, don't pick them up. They are evil. But I want to give you a pastoral warning about the use of artificial intelligence for divination. Now, that may sound odd, and I want to Be really clear. I am not forbidding all uses of artificial intelligence.

I want to be really clear about what I'm saying. I use artificial intelligence for vibe coding, certain software projects or to run automated tasks and sometimes even to make silly pictures for my children. If you're wondering, I do not use AI to write my sermons. But if you want to come and talk to me about any uses of AI, I'd love to talk with you. This is a serious important new thing that we deal with.

Our denomination formed a study committee this last year to try to talk about spiritual influence and uses of AI. That's not out yet, but I think it'll be a very good resource once it does come out. But in the meantime I do want to give you a very significant warning about the use of artificial intelligence for a spiritual kind of divination. Something like chat, GPT or other Claude or any kinds of chat type based artificial intelligence has given people the ability to pour out their hearts before this machine and very quickly. You don't have to have any training to read a palm or to read a liver.

Very quickly you can get responses that will give you advice about where to go and how to conduct your life, especially in spiritual areas. And if you do a search, there are many AI cults that are spinning up of religions that have come from artificial intelligence. And they are reacting, responding to and really reflecting nothing more than these users deepest desires. But they are so sophisticated they there is an allure to them. They give a strong delusion of the truth because they are calculated to feel truthy, but they are not actually in accordance with truth.

I once heard a video, in a video a man who talked about exploring past incarnations of his life with the use of artificial intelligence. There's a subtle line here. You know what many of us used to do on Google, you know, you think about I have these physical symptoms, what's wrong with me? Now maybe is more sophisticated or better with AI. And indeed if you type questions into Google now you are getting some AI answer.

But what those systems do well is they work off a database of patterns. So they're helpful to determine patterns that human beings might miss. But when you start bouncing off spiritual desires and it's drawing from the patterns of all the world's wisdom as especially dark spiritual influences, you cannot help but get worldly, dark demonic wisdom and advice and direction. If you were using it not just for how to cook something or maybe what might be going on with you medically, but trying to get spiritual advice for your life. Now I Say this, this is new.

It's powerful technology. But ultimately there is no difference between pouring out your heart before the mythical python goddess that guarded the oracle of Delphi, then in pouring your heart out to a machine that spits back to you an AI generated answer. If you have spiritual questions, I'd encourage you, don't put those into the computer. Come talk to a pastor. I love to do that.

And I will be careful to shepherd you according to the word of God. But divination and the reason it was forbidden is a push putting of too much trust in anything outside of God's word. Whenever we are doing this, we are functionally practicing divination. We must be so careful. If you're on the McShane Bible reading plan, you might have read recently Jeremiah 14, verse 14.

And the Lord said to me, the prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. What was true about looking at the liver is far more true and far more insidious and seductive with the user. Tailored answers we get from AI.

Well, let's see where this goes. There's an initial encounter, an initial foray into the demonic. Paul, by the power of Jesus Christ, commands that the spirit come out of this girl. And it came out, that very answer. But then you see a different side to demonic influence in this world, and it's demonic rage against Jesus.

2. Demonic Rage against Jesus (Acts 16:19-24)

This is the second section, Demonic Rage Against Jesus. In verses 19 through 24, we read. But when her owner saw that their hope of gain was gone, or literally it had come out. This is actually the same verb that's used to describe the coming out of the demon. Paul says, come out.

And in that very hour, it came out. And now these owners saw that their hope of gain had come out. And so they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, these men are Jews and they are disturbed, disturbing our city. They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.

Now, these accusations are not new. If you look at Haman's accusations against the Jews in the book of Esther, it's almost like they're borrowing exactly from Haman's playbook. Vague accusations directed to some people that we don't like. Haman sort of concealed who they were, but here they are named. They're Jews.

And these customs that we Cannot follow again. For Haman it was. They're advocating things against the authority of the empire. Same exact accusations, very vague, designed to elicit racial bias. And that's exactly what happened.

And so in verse 22, the crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates turned, tore their garments off of them and gave orders to beat them with rods. And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. Do you see how the whole crowd, everyone is involved, the crowd joined in attacking them. The owners had originally brought them, they brought them to the magistrates, the magistrates gave orders, other people beat them with rods, and now a jailer is involved. And they ordered the jailer to keep them safely.

That's not a word that refers to their safety. Make things comfortable for these prisoners. It's actually a threat against the jailer. If you would like to be safe in your own life, then you better keep them safely. Make sure they do not escape, which is going to be a big deal next week when the doors open miraculously and the jailer is worried and suddenly just draws his sword to start.

Start to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But this jailer, because this jailer takes that order seriously, verse 24, having received this order, he put them into the inner prison, sort of maximum security area, and he fastened their feet in the stocks. This was a torture device. The pain and the brutality continues in the abuse of these missionaries. Now, we don't have an indication yet, but this journey jailer is the third person we meet who is converted in Philippi.

And we'll read about his story, Lord willing, next week. So what's our application from this story? The application is be watchful. Be watchful, since our adversary the devil both prowls and roars. As I was thinking about this passage, I drifted toward 1 Peter 5:8, where Peter says, be sober minded, be watchful.

Quoted this a couple of times. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. And I became very fascinated that the devil both prowls and he roars. Sometimes the devil prowls. Prowls is not making a lot of noise letting you see the devil coming.

In fact, the devil would prefer in most cases to remain hidden and under the radar and be speaking to you through a chat prompt in an AI software. The devil would far prefer to work that way, where you weren't even aware of his presence. May not seem like divination, it may not seem like anything spiritual is happening. But the Scriptures say, should not God's people inquire of their God rather than the diviners and the necromancers who chirp and mutter? But beyond divination, even today, the devil sometimes prowls in the ways that he tries to distract the gospel by mischievous annoyances, like this girl here.

I was once out doing evangelism with a more experienced pastor, and we came across a man. And when we started to talk to him about Jesus, he went into talking about this grandiose cosmic vision for his own life and his own role. And this other pastor that I was with immediately said, sir, do you have a demon? Can we pray for you? And he started praying for this man.

He started declaring to this demon the power of Jesus. Jesus. But this man just doubled down on this grandiose, cosmic sort of vision for what he was doing in the world. And it didn't take long before this pastor said, let's go, let's move on. And he explained to me later, these are people that are not just confused, but when he starts hearing this cosmic language, he suspects that it's a demon, and he prays for the demon to be cast out.

But again, if even Paul did not, perhaps could not cast out the demon right away, sometimes we do not have that power. But the longer we stay and try to work with that, it distracts us from the mission of actually sharing the gospel with the people whom the Lord has appointed to eternal life. It was tragic. But if you think about even Jesus own actions, he never wasted time dialoguing with demons. The demons would often come up to him and he would give very minimal answers.

He would simply quote the Scriptures, and ultimately he would say, be gone or cast the demons out by the word of his authority. He was not ever interested in a conversation because they cannot be reasoned with, cannot be converted from their lost permanent state. Less darkly, maybe. When you're doing evangelism, have you ever had that moment where you've worked up the courage to finally say something to someone that you've been talking about, and then someone comes into the conversation and maybe loudly starts distracting, starts moving the conversation in a different level, a different direction? It's no longer possible to try to say those sorts of things.

If our adversary can prevent the spread of the gospel from spreading and he can keep out of sight, that's his goal. He wants to. To prowl. But other times, when his schemes are exposed, he roars. When he lose ground, he roars.

When the gospel of Jesus Christ challenges and makes inroads against the domain of Darkness. The prowling lion drops the veil and begins to roar. Now that sounds scary, but it's actually encouraging. It's interesting when Jesus made a promise about his church that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. The gates of hell are not offensive.

The gates of hell are fixed in one place. They can't go out. And to make progress into the world, the gates of hell are in one place. It is when the Gospel begins invading the territory of of the devil. When the Gospel prevails against the gates of Hell, that's when the devil begins to roar.

And we Read in Revelation 12:12 we hear this. Therefore rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them. But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he knows his time is short. Satan and his demons rage, especially because they know they have already lost the battle, because they cannot hold on to death. Because Jesus Christ has already defeated the grave and defeated sin and defeated the power of the devil that he once held when he held sway over the nations.

Is our worldly well being and safety in danger because of the devil's rage? Yes, so Revelation says. Woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath. Because he knows that his time is short. Our worldly well being is very much in danger.

This is what fuels persecution against the Church around the world. But part of the devil's rage is that he knows he cannot inflict damage beyond this life. D Do not fear the one who can harm your body, but fear the one who can cast body and soul into hell. And if you belong to that one, the Judge of all the earth, if you are his, through faith in Jesus Christ, there is a protection from you, not only against the wrath of God Almighty, which is exhausted and drained already for you at the cross of Jesus, but even from the devil who hated our Savior so much.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has already defeated him. Hebrews 2, verses 14 through 15 says this. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death. Satan formerly held this power, but now that power has been vanquished through Jesus Christ, the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. Through Christ's death on the cross, through his resurrection from the dead, through he fulfilled the promise from Genesis 3.

He crushed the devil's head under his pierced and bruised feet. All our enemy can do is to rage by persecution, by reviling, by oppression, by murder. But the chains of his bondage have been broken forever by our Savior's victory. Hallelujah. What a savior.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we are so frail, especially against the prowling and the roaring of our adversary. But as vulnerable as we are in our own flesh and strength, you, Christ Jesus, have the perfect, perfect power, and we entrust ourselves to you. I pray that if there is anyone who is outside the covering of protection of the blood and righteousness of Jesus, that they would recognize what they are dealing with in the adversary.

And by faith they would turn to you and trust in you for their salvation, protection and safety. There's no hope outside of Christ, and there is every hope in Christ, our refuge and strength in times of trouble. And so we pray all of this in the powerful, strong, omnipotent name of Jesus Christ, the only Savior of sinners. Amen.

other sermons in this series

Oct 4

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"Preparation and Fulfillment" (Acts 19:1-7)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: Acts 19:1–7 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church

Sep 20

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"Many Gifts among Many Members" (Acts 18:18-28)

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Sep 13

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"My Grace Is Sufficient for You" (2 Corinthians 12: 1-10)

Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:1–10 Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church