Study Notes Week 39

Torah Study Notes for Week 39 of the Torah Reading Cycle

• Torah (T): Bereshiyt (Genesis) 39:1-23
• Prophets (P): Isaiah 52:3 – 53:12
• Apostolic (A): Acts 16:16-40
• Additional (ADD): Jubilees 39:1-13

Apostolic Summary
Context and coherence (Nehemiah 8:8)

1. It can be difficult to read scripture in context – that is, with the historical narrative as the back drop to the prophets, writings, or the Apostolic scriptures. 
   1. For example, we can study the book of Isaiah but neglect to place his prophecies in the biblical narrative of 2 Kings 16 and 2 Chronicles 28 during the reign of the wicked King Ahaz. 
   2. Or, we read the words of Psalm 56 without considering the specific circumstances in King David’s life recounted in 1 Samuel 21.
2. This approach is quite normal for us but often has a subtle effect on our understanding.
   1. We miss actual context and substitute it with something that is more relatable to our modern perspective.
   2. Passages that should be interpreted through the understanding of the people living in that historical context can be spiritualized or turned into allegory. 
   3. Rather than keep the historical narrative and the contextual genres unified, we separate them and miss out on the fullest wisdom of God’s Word.
3. In this same way, when reading the Epistles, it is important to understand the specific events, people and places of the early church recorded in the book of Acts. 

Apostolic Exhortation
Counsel, comfort, and encouragement (Acts 13:14-15)

1. This week’s portion comes from Acts 16, which recounts the founding of the Believing community in the city of Philippi in the region of Macedonia.
   1. Today we’re going to look at some of the details that are easily missed but provide us with important context.
2. Paul’s second missionary journey took him through the modern-day coastal regions of the Aegean Sea.
3. 
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1. It is significant that the Lord led Paul on a very specific path in this region.
   1. “Paul came also to Derbe and to Lystra. They passed through the Phrygian and Galatian region, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia; and after they came to Mysia, they were trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Yeshua did not permit them; and passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas” (Acts 16:1,6-8).
      1. The journey through Asia was approximately 700 kilometers and would have taken between one and two months.
2. In Troas, we read that Paul had a vision that led him to the region of Macedonia and ultimately to Phillipi.
   1. “A vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing and appealing to him, and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’” (Acts 16:9).
      1. How did Paul know this was a man of Macedonia? 
3. Some scholars have concluded that Luke himself was the “man of Macedonia” whom Paul saw in his vision.
   1. Perhaps the most significant evidence is that this is where Luke mentions himself for the first time in the book of Acts.
      1. “When [Paul] had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia” (Act 16:10). 
      2. Luke then accompanies Paul through the events of chapter 16 but then stays in Philippi while Paul moves on in chapter 17. 
   2. While the region was large and diverse enough that it would be difficult to differentiate a man of Macedonia from another Greek, if Paul had seen Luke in his vision, this would be a stronger confirmation that this was the Lord’s will. 
4. Thessalonica was the largest city in Macedonia, but Philippi was the first city Paul, Silas and Luke entered in the region.
   1. The town derives its name from Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. After the battle of Pydna in 168 B.C. it was annexed by the Romans; and when Macedonia was divided into four parts for administrative purposes Philippi was included in the first of the four districts. 
   2. Philippi was a great strategic city in the Greek empire as it was surrounded by mountains and close to the sea. Much traffic to Rome from the east went through Philippi, which served as a gateway city to Greece and Italy (a major crossroad on the Egnatian Way – one of the empire’s interstates linking the Aegean and Adriatic Seas).
   3. The population at the time is estimated to be about 10,000–15,000 people, which is about the size of Monument, CO (approx. 13,000).
5.  Unlike Paul’s other destinations, there was no synagogue in the city.
   1. Throughout the book of Acts, Paul is recorded as entering the synagogue in the cities to which he journeyed.
      1. See Salamis in Cyprus (Acts 13:5), Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13:14, 43), Iconium (Acts 14:1), Ephesus (Acts 18:19, 26; Acts 19:8), Thessalonica (Acts 17:1), Berea (Acts 17:10), Athens (Acts 17:17) and Corinth (Acts 18:4).
   2. Typically, a city with at least ten Jews would organize a synagogue because that was the minimum required according to the Oral Torah (Mishnah Megillah 3b, 5a).
6. Another possible reason for the absence of a synagogue was that Philippi was an actual Roman colony.
   1. “In the time of the Emperor Augustus Phillipi became a Roman colony, i.e., a military settlement of Roman soldiers, there planted for the purpose of controlling the district recently conquered. It was a ‘miniature Rome,’ under the municipal law of Rome, and governed by military officers, called duumviri, who were appointed directly from Rome. The citizens in the colony were given the same rights and privileges as those who lived in Italy. They were able to maintain their own senate and magistrates and were not subject to regional government (Easton Bible Dictionary). 
7. This explains how Paul and Silas could be arrested and without any trial or hearing, were beaten with rods (vs. 22) and thrown into prison.
   1. As a Roman colony, Phillipi would have operated under martial law where the military controls civil government functions, enforcing civil laws and overseeing the civil court system.
      1. It was only after the local authorities discovered that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens that they showed them differential treatment (vs. 35-39).
   2. This sounds like a difficult city for Jews to establish a public presence with a synagogue. 
8. This background is significant because it helps us understand the context for how Paul brings the Gospel to Phillipi.
   1. “And on the Sabbath day we went outside 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” (Acts 16:13).
      1. Paul is still obedient to his mandate to bring the Gospel to the Jew first (Rom. 1:16; 2:9-10), and he does it in the place where the Jews of the city have gathered for prayer on Shabbat. 
9. There is a familiar pattern in Acts in terms of the planting of a church – 
   1. It begins with a small number of Believing Jews and a contingent of Gentile Proselytes, and an eventually even larger number of Gentile converts.
      1. “After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Yeshua was the Messiah. But when they opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent of it. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.’ Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized. One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city” (Acts 18:1-10).
10. Every city that Paul witnessed in had those from among the nations that also feared YHWH and sought to worship Him alongside the Jewish community.
    1. See also Acts 2:11; 6:5; 13:43,50; 16:14; 17:4,17;18:7.
    2. The proselytes were perhaps the most zealous group to receive the Gospel because they had prior knowledge of the One True God and His Torah but had been excluded from the covenants with Israel because of their ethnic status.

KEY POINT:

Gentiles who feared Elohim and kept His Torah were some of the earliest and most influential Believers in the 1st-century church. 

1. Lydia is another one of these individuals described as a “worshipper of God” (Acts 16:14).
   1. “Her name suggests the possibility that she was a freedwoman and because of the fact that we hear of her household and her house (Acts 16:15; compare 16:40), while no mention is made of her husband, it has been conjectured that she was a widow of some property” (Baker Encyclopedia).
2. Having arrived at our portion, beginning in verse 16, Luke recalls his first-hand account of some very unusual events.
   1.  “It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave-girl having a spirit of divination (Lit., “a Python”) 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 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 distressed, and turned and said to the spirit, ‘I command you in the name of Yeshua the Messiah to come out of her!’ And it came out at that very moment” (Acts 16:16-18).
      1. “The term used here to describe a diving spirit identified in the Greco-Roman world with the mythical Python of Delphi, the serpent slain by Apollo. Oracles of Delphi were widely respected, and traveling ventriloquists capitalized on that reputation. Possession by a “Python-spirit” was therefore both religiously prestigious and economically lucrative” (Easton).
      2. The scripture treats such phenomena as spiritual, not merely psychological (How should this make us think differently about some extreme forms of mental illness?)
      3. The girl’s cries (Acts 16:17) reveal that demonic beings can voice partial truths (“These men are servants of the Most High God”) while still opposing the Gospel.
3. The casting out of this demonic spirit lights a spark that puts the entire city in an uproar.
   1. Notice that the charge from the slave’s owners relates to the fact that Paul and Silas are Jewish.
      1. “[A]nd when they had brought them to the chief magistrates, they said, ‘These men are throwing our city into confusion, being Jews, and are proclaiming customs which it is not lawful for us to accept or to observe, being Romans” (Acts 16:20-21).
   2. Even though persecution was nothing new to Paul and his traveling companions, this incident affected Paul in a unique way.
      1. The treatment at the hands of the authorities is mentioned in Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians.
         1. “But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict” (1 The. 2:2).
      2. His shameful treatment was likely due to the fact that he was not given the opportunity for a trial or hearing as to his crimes.
         1. The Greek word translated “uncondemned (KJV)” and “without due process (NASB)” in 16:37 probably reflects the Latin re incognita or indicta causa, i.e. ‘without examination’. 
4. It is noteworthy that Paul upholds a standard of justice even for those who oppose and persecute him.
   1. Could this perhaps be the reason for God intervening supernaturally to free them from prison?
      1. “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” (Acts 16:25-26).
5. This miracle leads to the salvation of a certain jailer who later becomes a central figure in the early church.
   1. “And he called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas, and after he brought them out, he said, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ 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 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 his household” (Acts 16:29-33).
   2. The jailer was called Stephanas and became a central figure in the church.
      1. “Now I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other” (1 Cor. 1:16).
      2. “Now I urge you, brethren (you know the household of Stephanas, that they were the first fruits of Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves for ministry to the saints)” (1 Cor. 16:15).

KEY POINT:

The places, events, and people of Paul’s missionary journey to Philippi provide relevant context for understanding his Epistle to the Believing community.

1. There was something very special about the ekklesia in Philippi.
   1. Paul calls this church his “joy and crown” (Philippians 4:1).
      1. They were a generous community and contributed to Paul’s ministry and benevolence in other regions.
         1. “You yourselves also know, Philippians, that at the first preaching of the gospel, after I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving except you alone” (Phi. 4:15).
         2. See also Acts 20:33–35; 2 Cor. 11:7–12; 2 Thess. 3:8. 
      2. Their generosity is even more remarkable given that the Macedonians were, as a class, very poor (2 Cor. 8:2); 
         1. The vast majority of that population would have consisted of slaves, service providers, and peasant farmers.
         2. “Now, brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a great ordeal of affliction their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality. For I testify that according to their ability, and beyond their ability, they gave of their own accord” (2 Cor. 8:1-3).
   2. In the entire epistle to the Philippians, there is nothing but exhortation and encouragement, without the mixing in of any censure or reproof to this church.

Does anyone have specific questions or need any clarification from what was said during the Summary or Exhortation?

Application & Discussion
Living the Word and following Yeshua (Acts 2:37; Romans 2:13)
Questions, input, and sharpening (Proverbs 27:17; Luke 2:46)

Romans 2:13 For it isn’t the hearers of the Torah who are righteous before Elohim, but the doers of the Torah will be justified.

James 1:22 But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves.

1. 1. What questions or comments came up during your family’s discussion of this week’s study?
   2. “What other related Scriptures did you find during your study of this week’s portion?”
   3. Have you ever experienced something from this study or something related to it?
   4. “What changes do you need to make in your life to align with what you learned during this week’s Torah Study?”
   5. What is something you learned from a deeper dive into the context of Acts 16? What questions do you have?
   6. In Acts 16:1-3, we read that Paul circumcised Timothy because he was “the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek”. How should we understand Paul’s action in light of his statement in Galatians 5:2: “Look! I, Paul, tell you that if you have yourselves circumcised, Messiah will be of no benefit to you!”?

Additional Notes