The Bible Study Podcast, episode 225. Today, the Bible Study podcast wraps up a study on freedom.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. I feel like the storyteller who says, I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

One of the reasons that I wanted to do a study on freedom is because of the story that we're

going to talk about today.

And this is the story of Paul and Silas in Philippi.

And this is part of Paul's second missionary journey, or what we call Paul's second missionary

journey. The first one, he goes off with Barnabas, and the second one he goes off with Silas.

And this is a story that I find particularly useful as I do prison ministry, as I do ministry

in Juvenile Hall, and see if you can figure out why this is a

story that I like to tell to the kids of Juvenile Hall. Once when we were going to the place of prayer,

we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great

deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. She followed Paul

and the rest of us, shouting, these men are servants of the most high God, who are telling you the

way to be saved. She kept this up for many days. Finally, Paul became so annoyed that he turned

around and said it to the Spirit, in the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her.

At that moment, the Spirit left her. When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone,

they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face authorities. They

brought them before the magistrates and said, these men are Jews and are throwing our

city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice. The crowd

joined in the attack against Paul and Silas and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and

beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison,

and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them

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