We should go to church with an expectation that we will meet with God in the preaching of his word. All of us on occasion arrive tired and distracted, and when we are in that frame of mind, there is every chance the sermon will bounce off us. But if we are hungry, expectant, and ready to engage with God, then our experience will be much more positive. So we need to listen actively, not passively.

The Lord Is Speaking
Jesus addressed a crowd at one point and laid down a command and a principle: “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you” (Mark 4:24). He said this in the context of parables he had been teaching the crowd. Sometimes we think that Jesus spoke in parables, using the imagery of first-century Israel—soil, seeds, lights, bushels, and more—to make it easier for people to understand. But Mark says that Jesus told parables to keep people at a distance. They were like riddles—people could understand the surface meaning thanks to the earthy imagery, but only those (the disciples and others) who approached Jesus to ask for an explanation received “the secret of the kingdom,” the true meaning of the parables (Mark 4:11). However, “for those outside everything is in parables, so that ‘“they may indeed see but not perceive, / and may indeed hear but not understand, / lest they should turn and be forgiven”’” (Mark 4:11–12, quoting Isa. 6:9–10). The principle is clear—those who actively listen, engage, and approach Jesus for explanation are rewarded with insight. Those who half-heartedly listen to what he says and then wander off are left outside. Therefore, we need to listen well—attentively and prayerfully—remembering that as our pastor preaches the word, it is the Lord who is speaking (1 Pet. 4:11).
Paul tells Timothy the role of the pastor is to “preach the word . . . in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2). You can help your pastor fulfill this duty by being a good listener. That doesn’t just mean staying awake and maintaining eye contact while he preaches (though that would certainly encourage him!); it means correctly receiving the word of God. After urging Timothy to preach the word, Paul immediately adds that “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions” (2 Tim. 4:3). Listening well to God’s word means hearing it eagerly and letting it confront you—that is, allowing it to challenge and rebuke you. Listening badly means putting pressure on your pastor, whether indirectly (by lack of attention) or directly (by unfair criticism). This pressure can lead him—perhaps unconsciously—to preach to please his hearers.
If you humbly, submissively listen to the Scriptures, it will be easier for your pastor to preach the word. Scripture contains many passages and ideas that people in our generation don’t like or actually hate—passages on the uniqueness of Christ or on gender and sex.
A pastor who does his job will need to preach on such passages and topics. It will be easier for him if he knows that at least some people in the church are ready to submit to God’s word and listen to it rather than simply expect God’s word to affirm their preconceptions. A pastor I know, a good and godly man, became so affected by his congregation (which contained a number of progressive and liberal Christians) that when he preached a sermon on a particularly confronting passage, he told his hearers, “I wish the Bible didn’t say this.” He went on to affirm the teaching of the passage, but he was revealing a heart under pressure. He knew what people in his congregation thought about that particular topic and was swaying to their opinions. As congregation members, we can strengthen our pastor by listening well and making sure we respond in a godly way to God’s word.
A practical way to do this is to talk with one another after the service about the sermon. It is OK to talk about the weather, sports, politics, and other topics after worship, but it is sad that, at least in my experience, we so rarely talk about the sermon.
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Why in the world should I care about theology?
All I need is the Bible.
I can follow Jesus without having to learn all kinds of obscure words.
Have you ever heard another Christian say something like these statements? Have you ever said something like them yourself? Ever thought such things? If so, you’re not alone. The vast majority of professing Christians have little to no interest in theology. In the minds of many Christians, there is no necessary connection between theology and their everyday Christian life. Theology, they believe, is irrelevant.
The disconnect between theology and the church and between theology and the Christian has had disastrous results. One need only look at recent polls examining the level of theological knowledge among professing Christians to know that something has gone awry. When large numbers of professing Christians start telling their friends and family, “You just have to read The Shack! I learned so much about God from that book,” well then, Houston, we have a problem. When large numbers of professing evangelical Christians are not sure whether the deity of Christ is an article of the Christian faith, then we have more than a problem. We are the proverbial lemmings, rushing headlong toward the precipice.
Theology Defined
In order for Christians to begin to understand why theology is necessary and relevant, we must understand what we mean by theology. Reformed theologians of the past defined theology as a “word about God” based on the “word of God.” In short, theology at its most basic is knowledge of God.
Knowledge of God is a dividing line between believers and unbelievers. Scripture characterizes unbelievers as those who do not “know God,” those who lack “knowledge of God” (Hos. 4:1; 1 Cor. 1:21; Gal. 4:8; 1 Thess. 4:5; 2 Thess. 1:8; Titus 1:16). In contrast are Christians, those who know God and who are to be growing in the knowledge of God (Col. 1:10). To be growing in the knowledge of God is to be growing in our theology.
All Christians are called to theology in this most basic sense. If Scripture calls us to grow in the knowledge of God/theology, then the pursuit of this knowledge, of theology, is an act of Christian obedience. It becomes an aspect of Christian discipleship, a non-negotiable for the believer.
When we begin to think about theology first and foremost as knowledge of God, we can begin to glimpse the truth about the relevance of theology. We can begin to see that it makes all the difference in the world to our lives. We can begin to see how it is relevant to everything we think, say, and do as followers of Jesus Christ.

God’s purpose for calling out a people for himself and unifying them together into one body under Christ is that his great wisdom might be marveled at by supernatural beings, ultimately bringing him supreme glory. Now what does it take for supernatural beings to marvel? It takes something supernatural, and God’s eternal plan of regenerating sinful people and uniting them together in one body is clearly that kind of supernatural act that would cause supernatural beings to marvel at the manifold wisdom of God.

What makes the events of Paul’s mission work in Philippi (Acts 16) so interesting for us is that this one of the first times that we are introduced to specific individuals who are converted and joined to the body of Christ. Luke takes note of a few individuals earlier in the book such as Paul himself or Sergius Paulus on Crete, but most of the time he just tells about groups of people who accepted the gospel. In Acts 16, Luke records the conversion of three specific individuals—Lydia, a slave girl, and a jailer.
The record of the salvation of these individuals serves a greater purpose than simply to provide interesting conversion stories. The fact that Luke, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, chose to record the conversions of these three specific individuals was to teach us some important truths regarding the power of the gospel and Christ’s plan in building his church. Comparing and contrasting these three individuals help us to draw some conclusions regarding the nature of the gospel and the purpose of the church.
The Universal Appeal of the Gospel
Christ could hardly have chosen three more different people to save than Lydia, the slave girl, and the jailer. Notice how different they were.
Nationality
First, their nationalities were different. Philippi was quite a cosmopolitan city. It was fairly large and influential, it was a common retirement spot for Roman military men, and it attracted much commerce. Lydia had evidently come to Philippi for the reason of commerce. Verse 13 says that she was from Thyatira, which was a city in modern Turkey. Thyatira was known for its fabric dyes, and evidently Lydia had come to Philippi to deal in dyed cloth.
The slave girl was likely a native of Philippi, and so she was probably Greek. As we’ll see in a moment as well, she was a worshiper of the Greek god Apollo, so that further indicates that she was probably Greek.
The jailer was a Roman soldier, maybe even a retired Roman official who had retired in Philippi.
So here we have three individuals who come to Christ, each of different nationality—West Asian, Greek, and Roman.
Gender
It probably goes without saying, but these individuals differed in gender as well. This may seem like a mundane point to us, but in that day women were looked down upon, and here Lydia becomes an influential member of the church, one of the few believers to be named in Paul’s letter to the church here. In fact, many scholars believe that Lydia was wealthy, and that her home was the meeting place for the church here.
Social
Which leads to the next difference. These three individuals were of completely different social status. Lydia was a business woman. She was likely wealthy. Not just anyone would have had space in their home to entertain guests like she did in verse 15.
The girl, as verse 16 tells us, was a slave. You couldn’t get much more opposite to a wealthy business woman than a slave. The girl was a member of the lowest class of their society.
The jailer fell somewhere in the middle. Being a soldier in the Roman army, he would have been your average middle-class worker.
Religion
The religious beliefs of these individuals differed as well. Lydia, according to verse 14, was a worshiper of God. She was a Gentile proselyte to Judaism. You might remember that on Paul’s first missionary journey it was his practice when he first entered a new city to visit the Jewish synagogue there. Now that his second journey had found him further away from Israel, the city of Philippi evidently had no synagogue. In order to have a synagogue, a city had to have at least 10 Jewish male heads of households in the city. So even in a fairly large city like Philippi, there were not even 10 male Jews. So Paul found the next best thing. As verse 13 tells us, on the Sabbath they went down to the river, and found several women who had gathered there to worship, and Lydia was among them. She had probably converted to Judaism in Thyatira where there was more Jewish witness, and when she came to Philippi had joined with other God-fearing woman in their Sabbath worship.
Once again, you could not get more opposite to Lydia in terms of religion than the slave girl. Verse 16 says that she had a spirit of divination. It literally says that “she had a spirit of Python.” According to the Greek myths, Zeus, the king of the gods, brought into existence at the town of Delphi an oracle, a place where the gods could be consulted. The oracle was guarded by Python, a female serpent, and answers from the gods were obtained through a priestess. According to mythology, Apollo, the son of Zeus, killed the serpent and took control of the shrine. He made the priestess, known as the Pythia or Pythoness, his servant. As a consequence, Apollo became known as the god of prophecy. Sometimes the name “Python” was associated directly with Apollo.
Based on the myth, at this time, there was an actual shrine and a succession of priestesses at Delphi, which wasn’t too far from Philippi. There are ancient pictures of the Pythoness sitting on a three‑legged stool over a cleft in the earth from which the oracle was supposed to proceed. When about to prophesy, she would go into a kind of ecstatic trance and utter a stream of unconnected phrases and obscure words. People would come from all over Greece to the shrine to enquire of the oracle, especially concerning the future. A priest would put their questions to the Pythoness, and her utterances, which were supposedly inspired by Apollo, would be interpreted by the priest and presented to the questioner, often in an ambiguous form.
The prophetic powers of Apollo, supposedly manifested in the priestess at Delphi, were also thought to be present in other women. Like the priestess, their utterances would be accompanied by convulsions or other abnormal behavior, which were assumed to be evidence of the presence of a spirit from Apollo, or a “spirit of Python.” In some cases, such behaviors may have been self‑induced; in other cases, they may have arisen from mental disturbance, or physical defects in the brain. Usually such a woman would be a slave, often owned by a group of men, who charged clients for her services.
So in Acts 16:16, the “slave girl who had a spirit of Python” was one of these women supposed to have similar powers to those of the Pythoness at Delphi, and to whom people came seeking the future. And evidently in this case she actually was demon possessed, which made her do things that people thought proved she was a Pythoness.
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