God Opens the Heart

Salvation Is Not a Transaction

Let's turn our attention now to the book of Acts. We're going to be in Acts chapter 16. And when it comes time for the reading, we're going to read verses 11 through 15. So Acts chapter 16, verses 11 through 15.

Modern evangelicalism has reduced salvation to a simple transaction. The focus of many evangelical movements, evangelical leaders, churches, conferences, and crusades is on getting a decision from the audience.

As a result, most of what passes for evangelical preaching today is nothing more than an attempt to move people toward some type of positive response, whether it's an emotional response or a physical response.

And in years past, this response was the encouragement to come forward. Come before the church. Come before the conference. Come before the crusade. Come and profess your faith in Jesus Christ. And they would play songs that would try to encourage people to come just as I am.

Very popular song. Then when that seemed less successful, it changed. Now simply standing where you were, sitting while the church sang stand up for Jesus, was good enough. As long as you were out in the congregation, you stood while everyone else sat.

That was your proclamation of faith. You didn't have to come forward anymore. Just stand up wherever you are and let everyone see that you're standing up for Jesus. Well then that became less popular.

And it was observed that fewer and fewer people were standing up. So then they said, well, we'll just have you raise your hand. Don't have to come forward. Don't have to stand. Just raise your hand if you're willing to receive Jesus Christ.

Well that too began to be unpopular. So then it was, with every eye closed, and with every head bowed, so that no one need know that you are coming to Jesus, raise your hand. We would hate for you to be embarrassed for Christ.

That's right. Well over and over again, the process of salvation has been watered down. Until at this point, it's really been reduced to where it seems to have little or no real commitment at all. If one talks about taking up your cross, dying to self, committing everything, being willing to sell everything you have and go to the mission field, you're just extreme.

You're too extreme. And the leaders of evangelicalism, which really doesn't mean much anymore. It does have a biblical meaning, but it certainly doesn't seem to be applied much anymore. But the leaders of the movement are saying, well, you can't use that language because it just frightens people off.

It's too hard for the modern ear. We must soften it. We must make it more palatable. Like babies needing baby food, we must grind it up and soften it down and water it down before it will be able to be digested.

You see, the problem is, in all of this, we have missed the fact that we have missed the whole idea of what salvation is in the beginning anyway. Because the problem with all of that is that it sees salvation as a transaction.

And in doing so, it robs us of a vital understanding of what actually happens when salvation occurs. When we begin to think that our participation, however small, is the active agent in salvation, we begin to think that our will is the causal factor in our salvation.

And in doing so, to put it another way, when we begin to think we are saved because what we have done, we've responded, we've made a decision, we've gone forward, we've raised our hand, we've prayed a prayer, when we begin to think of salvation like that, we are missing the truth of what God has done in salvation.

Salvation is not a transaction between you and God, where He does His part and you do your part. That is not what salvation is. The Bible clearly says salvation is of the Lord. It is not the Lord and you.

You are not saved because you fulfilled your end of a divine transaction. You are saved because the Lord your God did a work of grace in your heart. Now certainly you did respond and certainly you did exercise faith.

But you did so not independent of His grace, but because of His grace. His grace is what enabled you to come. And His grace is what secures you in your coming and will take you to the end. It is grace alone, sola gratia.

God Opens Lydia’s Heart in Acts 16

Well today we find ourselves in the book of Acts and I gave that introduction because we are going to see God working in the heart of a person, a woman from Thyatira named Lydia. And we are going to see how her conversion is in many ways a template for the conversion of all believers.

For when she heard the word of truth, God opened her heart to believe what she heard. Let's stand together and we are going to read Acts 16 verses 11 through 15. So setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace.

And the following day at Neapolis and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city some days 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. One who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.

And after she was baptized in her household as well, she urged us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay. And she prevailed upon us. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.

I pray, oh Lord, please keep me from error. Please let me speak only that which is in accordance with your truth. Guide and direct my thoughts and words. And open the hearts of your people to understand it.

For the believer, Lord, I pray that this would be a reminder of how you saved all of us in the ultimate sense by opening our hearts to believe. And Lord, if there are those here, which there always are, those among us who do not believe or have yet to be regenerated, that today would be the day.

That you would open their heart. That is our prayer, oh Lord, in accordance with thy will. For all things, Lord, are subservient to your will. Through Jesus Christ we pray, amen. If you have been with us, you will know that this is our continuing study in the book of Acts.

And we have been following the Apostle Paul now on his second missionary journey. He and his three ministry partners, two named, one unnamed at this point, have come to Troas, which is on the shore of the Aegean Sea.

Silas and Timothy are named as his partners. And the first person plural that Luke uses as the rider indicates that he is along at this point as well, possibly having been converted by the Apostle Paul as he was traveling and now having come under his tutelage and is ministering alongside of him as a learner and of course as a historian.

He is going to be the one who writes the Gospel of Luke and of course the book of Acts. Paul has received in Troas a vision. The vision was of a man of Macedonia who called out to him for help. Come over to Macedonia and help us.

Now they all prepared to make their way in pursuit of God's will for them. God had told them do not preach in Asia Minor, do not preach there. He had kept them from preaching there and the reason why we are seeing now is God had a different plan for them.

It was to take them across the Aegean Sea and into Europe. This was the first time that we know of that the Gospel was being proclaimed in Europe. So we begin in verse 11, it says, So setting sail from Troas, we, again Luke using the first person plural there, he is saying we along with me, made a direct voyage to Samothrace and following we went to Neapolis and from there to Philippi which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia, a Roman colony and we remained in that city some days.

Now this trip from Troas to Macedonia takes them two days and that is noteworthy because later on in chapter 20 they are going to come back from there and it is going to take them five days to get back.

Takes two days to get there and five days to get back. Well the indication at least in some sense is that God had given them smooth sailing and right conditions to get there as quickly as possible and getting there was more important than getting back because getting there meant getting the Gospel there.

So God had given them straight passage and smooth sailing and no difficulties. Now they did make a stop on the way at Samothrace. Now Samothrace is essentially a mountain that comes out of the ocean. It's 5 ,000 feet tall.

It's a huge rock that essentially comes out of the mountain and it's where a lot of the pagans came to worship. You can imagine a big mountain coming out of the sea. This would be a hotbed for religious activity especially pagan religious activity which saw things like that as things worthy of attention and worthy of worship and oh this is where the spiritual energies come down.

This must be a great place where we can go and worship. Well it's interesting I only mention that because it seems to me that Paul would have probably been urged to stay there. A hotbed of paganism. Let's stay here and preach the Gospel.

But he didn't because that wasn't where God had called him to go. That wasn't where the vision had led him to go. He continued on. He didn't stay at Samothrace. He continued on to Macedonia and he ended up at Neapolis which is the port of Philippi.

Neapolis is about 10 miles from Philippi which is about 10 miles inland. Philippi was named after Philip II who was the father of Alexander the Great. Just to give you a little history of the city. And Luke makes a point to tell us that Philippi is a Roman colony.

In fact this is the only place in the book of Acts where this is identified. It's not the only Roman colony. In fact it's not only the only Roman colony that Paul visited but it is the only place it's identified as that in the book of Acts.

And this tells us something about Philippi. It tells us that they used Roman law. They used the Roman Constitution and it was modeled after the municipal constitution of Rome and basically it was like a little Rome.

And it was governed that way. That's going to play an important factor later when the Apostle Paul is arrested and he mentions what? I'm a Roman citizen and everything changes. Because up until that point they didn't care how they treated him but when they found out he was a Roman citizen everything changes because there's rules for how you handle a Roman citizen.

So it goes on in verse 13 to tell us that 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.

Now we'll just stop there at verse 13. It was Paul's custom and we know this and we've studied the book of Acts long enough to realize that it was Paul's custom to always go to the Jews first. In fact Romans tells us the gospel is to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

And when Paul would go into a place he would always go to the synagogue first and he would proclaim the gospel and people say well why would he go to the synagogue first? Well it made sense to go to a place where there was at least some common ground.

They have the scriptures. When Paul ever talked about the scriptures like in 2nd Timothy 3 when he says all scriptures given by inspiration of God. He's talking about the Old Testament because at that point the New Testament isn't written yet it's certainly not codified it's not put together.

Nobody had this during the time of the Apostle Paul nobody had what we have today in the way that we have it. So when the Apostle Paul was talking about the scriptures he was talking about all this stuff back here.

So he would go to the place where the people knew what that was and then he could proclaim to them the Messiah who was promised to them in their scriptures and it made sense that he would begin there.

The problem is he doesn't go to the synagogue in Philippi. He goes outside to the riverside to where a group of women are praying. The reason for that at least what scholars have conjectured and I tend to agree with this the reason for that is there were not enough men Jewish men to constitute a synagogue during the time in history at this particular time in history unless you had ten or more men you could not have a synagogue.

That constituted a quorum F .F. Bruce tells us he says no number of women could compensate for the absence of even one man necessary to make up the quorum of ten. So there's a group of women Jewish women who want to worship God but because there's not enough men there's no church.

Well there's no synagogue. I don't want to I don't want to confuse terms. There's no synagogue. So what do they do. They have a prayer service that I have a place to have the prayer service so they go outside the city to the riverside and there they have their prayer service.

Now in these prayer meetings it would be appropriate to give ear to traveling rabbi. So Paul is a Jewish man. He's trained as a Pharisee. He's considered by many to be a teacher. That's what a rabbi was.

So it makes sense that when he comes there to what they're doing to give him a hearing. So Paul expounds the gospel to these women. And I want to just stop here and make a note about something. The Christian faith is often demonized by folks who say that the Bible is sexist.

Maybe you've heard I've been called a sexist several times and not just online. I've had it in my face with a crooked finger. You are a sexist. They make the claim that men like Paul treated women as second class citizens, as property, and not as people.

The reality is this, and you need to understand this, Christianity exalts women to this position in Christ as spiritual equals. Both men and women are seen as image bearers of God. There was a time in history where there was a prayer among the Jewish men.

Thank you God that I was not born a Gentile or a woman. There was not a lot of respect and appreciation for the fact that their own scriptures said that both man and woman were made in the image of God.

Men and women have equal spiritual value. The Apostle Paul tells us this in Galatians. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female. The ground is level at the foot of the cross, folks, and that's the truth.

Now, I want to add to this, only because I know somebody is going to ask me later. Pastor, you believe that certain roles women are not supposed to do in the church. For instance, the role of elder, and that is true, but that does not mean that I believe that women are inferior spiritually.

Neither do I believe they are inferior in levels of importance. In fact, I would say women are more important than men, because when the time comes for battle, the women stand behind the men. Men are willing to be sacrificed, not women.

I'm serious. I think women are more important in that sense. But positionally, God has established an order in the home, and likewise He has established an order in the church. Man has the responsibility for his family as the leader, and as such in the church, so too the leadership is invested in godly men.

But in the same way Paul tells us that the eye cannot say to the ear, I have no need of you, for if all you were was an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? That is the same way where a man elder cannot look at a woman who serves in another capacity in the church and say, I have no need of you.

I couldn't look at a woman in the church and say, your job isn't as important as mine, because the value is equal in the eyes of God. If God has called you to whatever ministry in the church, your ministry that God has called you to and gifted you to is just as valuable as any other ministry.

So there is absolute equality of value in Christ. And I tell you all this because Paul didn't look at a group of women praying by the riverside and say, oh, it's just women, I'm going to keep going. He didn't look at a group of women and say, well, there's no value there.

No, he saw a group of women and he said, here's an opportunity to preach the gospel. Here's an opportunity where a soul might come under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Let me go and preach to these women the gospel.

Lydia’s Conversion and Household Baptism

So verse 14, one who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.

Now this woman, according to the text, is the first convert to Christ in Europe that we know of, which is interesting to me because Paul saw a vision and it wasn't of a woman. Paul saw a vision of a man saying, come to Macedonia and help us.

But that's not the first thing he runs into. He runs into a lady. And she becomes the first convert. Now she's from Thyatira, which is in the region known as the Lydian region. So this makes some people wonder and even myself, I kind of wonder at times whether or not her name is proper Lydia or whether she is identified as the Lydian woman, because if she was from Thyatira, which is in the region of Lydia, she would have been known as the Lydian woman.

So it really doesn't make a difference because the text calls her Lydia. So it could be that her name was Lydia in the same way that someone might be from a place and bear the same name as the place that they're from.

We don't know for certain, but it is interesting that Thyatira is in the region called Lydia. And she's mentioned to be a seller of purple goods. The color purple was difficult to achieve and thus very expensive.

The dye was taken from a shellfish and it was used to dye the fabric. And the shellfish, of course, were not as prominent as other dyes and things. So the purple fabric, purple goods, were the most expensive.

And that's why they were normally worn by the upper echelon of society. The elite and the royalty were the ones who wore purple. Now there was a... I learned this from John MacArthur. It was kind of neat because he said that there was also another type of purple that was taken from the madder root.

It was just like a... It was dye. It was boiled out and used as dye. But it was totally looked different and you could tell. And so poor people would try to wear purple, but it just didn't look the same.

I thought it was kind of a neat historical anecdote. He said, so you had the good purple and you had the lesser purple. But Thyatira was actually known for this. It was an industry there. So this was the good stuff.

And she was the seller of the good stuff. Well, as a result, people probably... She has a position in society because she has money. She has a position as a businesswoman. And like Cornelius in chapter 10, she also was known as a person who feared God, who believed in the God of the Old Testament.

But she was still a Gentile. This is a category that we talk about. There's different categories. We talk about unbelievers and Gentiles. We talk about the Israelites who believed in the God of Israel.

But then there were Gentiles who converted to Judaism and they were converts and they actually went through the circumcision and the cleansing and all that and became converts to Judaism. But then there were Gentiles who didn't go through all of that, but still would go to synagogues or would participate.

Remember, there was the court of the Gentiles outside the temple. That was a place where Gentiles could go. They couldn't go in where the Jews were, but they had their own specific place. These people believed in the God of Israel, but they were not fully converted to Judaism.

Well, that's what Lydia is identified as here. She's a woman who actually feared God. She believed in God. Well, upon hearing what Paul had to say, the text says that God opened her heart and she believed and her conversion was so profound that she immediately demonstrates her faith.

Verse 15 tells us what she did and after she was baptized. Now it doesn't tell us how long after. There is no indication of timetable here, but if we use a little bit of conjecture, we can say that Paul preaches the gospel and there was a river there.

So it probably wasn't that there was an interim time. Much like the Ethiopian eunuch who says, here is water, what preventeth me from being baptized? And probably in very much the same way, here is water, here is a prominent woman in society who says, I believe, and upon her profession of faith, she's led down into the water and baptized.

But then there's an additional statement that is made. It says, and her household as well, which makes you wonder, did she go home and talk to her servants? Again, she's a woman of prestige. She probably has people who work for her.

Did she go home and talk to those in her employ? Did she have children? The text does not say. We realize that she's a businesswoman. She's a woman who goes about doing business. It's likely she didn't have small children at this point.

Possibly she did. The text doesn't say, but less likely that she would have small children and be an avid businesswoman, especially at this particular time in history. Her husband is not mentioned. If she's married at all or if she's a widow, none of that is mentioned.

All we know is that once she was baptized, her household went with her. And it says, she urged us, saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay. And she prevailed upon us.

Now, there is a sense in which you could think this. It's likely her household was with her. It's likely that when she went to prayer, her family or her servants or her employees came with her. And so they all heard the gospel and were saved.

And the reason why I mention that is because baptism upon profession of faith is the normal routine that we see in Acts. But in this situation, it says the household was baptized and it doesn't mention their faith.

Later on, the same thing is going to happen with the Philippian jailer. We're going to see a man who is baptized and then his household. And that leads some to believe in what is called household baptism or the idea that if a parent or two parents in a family are baptized and they have children in the home, particularly infant children, that those children are to be baptized as well.

We call this pedo baptism. This is one of the verses that they use to make that argument. They'll say, well, if Lydia was baptized and so was her household. Or if the Philippian jailer was baptized and so was his household, if Stephanus was baptized and so was his household, then it stands to reason that when we baptize a person or a couple who come to Christ, that if they have children who are not old enough to reject Christ, then those children would be baptized.

Well, I will simply say this. We do not practice that in this church. I do know many people who do and many churches that do. As I said already, I don't see any evidence in the text that Lydia would have had small children.

Again, I think her position as a business woman would probably indicate that that wasn't the case. No husband is mentioned. So again, she may have been never married or possibly a widow. We don't know.

But I just want to say to force into the text the idea of infant baptism is to say something that the text isn't saying. You do have to make a point that isn't there, because there is no reason from the text to believe that any person who's baptized has not confessed faith.

We just it's just not there. So having said that, I just want to move on. I want to make that because I know that this is an important verse which is used for that argument. And I just want to make a statement in the book of Acts.

The normative baptism formula is confession, repentance and baptism. It's always repentance and baptism. We don't see baptism outside of confession and repentance. Now, Lydia is the head of her home. I mentioned this already.

And this, again, indicates that she is not married at this point because she's the one inviting these men into her home. Had she been married, the man would have been responsible for inviting the man and making their home open to him.

Now, the phrase that she uses here is interesting. She says, if you have judged me faithful, if you have judged me faithful, come and come to my house and stay. Well, the Greek construction here is a little different because it actually has the idea of something that is true, not something that is possibly true.

It probably in the English is better rendered since you have judged me faithful, come and stay in my house. And we see this actually in other places in scripture as well. And so ultimately what she is saying, and I think what she is saying anyway, is that by baptizing her, they had judged her faith as genuine because Paul wouldn't have baptized her, seeing that she was baptized, if he didn't believe that her conversion was true.

And since you judge me as somebody who's faithful, come stay at my home. And the word she prevailed upon them, that's an awkward English word because we think about prevailed as somebody who wins a contest, somebody who's fighting.

But the Greek word simply means to urge. She urged them, come and stay at my house. I have everything that you need and I have everything that you're going to need. Come to my house and I will put you up and I will provide for you.

This, again, demonstrates the Holy Spirit's work in her heart as an immediate thing because she immediately becomes a disciple of Jesus Christ wanting to serve other believers. She immediately has a change where she wants to do and she wants to act.

And this new convert and her desire to serve Christ opens her home to the apostles. And this begins what will eventually become the church at Philippi. And you know, the church at Philippi, that's the book of Philippians that Paul wrote to.

And the reason why I mention that is because Paul speaks of that church very fondly in his letter to the Philippians, he speaks very well of them. And I want you to just pay some attention to what he says in the first chapter of Philippians.

If you want to make a note of this, it's Philippians chapter one, verses three through six, Philippians one, three, three through six. The apostle Paul says this, I thank my God. And all my remembrance of you, he's talking to the church of Philippi, I thank my God and all my remembrance of you always and every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will continue to bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. How many of you have heard that verse? But now you hear it in context, you hear people say, oh, he who began a good work in you is sure to complete it in the day of Jesus Christ.

You've heard that verse, right? In the context, he's talking to the people at Philippi. He's talking about this day from the day it started. You have been faithful to this day, which was written many years later.

So this is testimony to what's happening here. God has done a work in the heart of Lydia, in the heart of her household, the people there, and this is the beginning of that church. It's an amazing testimony which would come out later in the book of Philippians.

God Regenerates the Dead Heart

Now, I want to move to an application for this now that we understand the passage. Because the conversion of Lydia is often seen in redemptive history as one of the most important passages of scripture, not just because she was instrumental in bringing about the founding of the church at Philippi and the sense of being instrumental in providing a place to meet and things like that, and not just because she's a demonstration of the gospel for all people, both men and women, and not just because she's the first European convert.

All those things are important, but that's not why her conversion stands as an important moment in redemptive history. Lydia's conversion is important because of what it teaches us about the way that God saves a soul.

We are not saved because of what we do. We are saved because of what God has done within us. We are born fallen sons and daughters of Adam. And as a result of that fallen nature, we do not, by nature, seek after God.

If you have your Bibles, turn with me. I just want to show you this a few places, because there are people who don't believe this. There are whole churches called seeker-sensitive churches. Do you know what a seeker-sensitive church is?

It's a church that is designed on the premise that there are people out there who are just seeking for God, and they're looking for him, and they just can't find him. So we got to make it very acceptable for them so they can find him.

Romans chapter 3, go there with me first. Everybody knew I was going there. If you've been around me any time, you know we're going to look at Romans 3, because in Romans 3, the apostle Paul spent two chapters making the point that all men are sinners.

He spends chapter 1 talking about Gentile sinners and chapter 2 talking about Jewish sinners. And then at the beginning of verse 9 of chapter 3, he says, what then? Are we Jews any better off? Meaning, are we any better off than the Gentiles?

No, not at all. For we've already charged both Jews and Greeks are under sin. As it is written, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. Now, either Paul is right. Or he's not.

He's very clear. And he goes on to say, all have turned aside together, they have become worthless, no one does good, not even one. And I've heard people balk at that and they'll say, well, I know many people who do good.

Well, most people do socially acceptable things, it's what keeps us out of jail. Well, it's what keeps us able to maintain relationships. But the good that's being spoken of here in Romans 3 is good towards God.

And no one does that outside of grace. Very simple. And he goes on to say, their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood and the paths of ruin in their paths are ruin and misery and the way of peace they have not known. And there is no fear of God before their eyes. This is the natural state of man.

Let me tell you something, though. This is what's important about this text with Lydia. This wasn't the state Lydia was in. God had already begun a work in her because when we get to act 16, God has already worked in her because she's already fearing him.

Go back to act 16 and just look. It says in verse 14, one who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods who was a worshiper of God. She was already a worshiper of God.

She, like so many of her Jewish contemporaries, she wasn't a Jew, obviously, but so many of the Jewish people at that time, they knew the God of the Old Testament and God had already worked a miracle of grace in their heart to be able to understand and believe.

So that's the thing that we have to understand with Lydia, that God had already worked a miracle of grace in her heart just so that she would begin to worship him. But. Because of this time in history, the gospel still needed to be preached to her and she still needed to hear it and she still needed to believe it.

If it was not necessary for someone to hear the gospel and be saved, it wouldn't be necessary for Paul to go on a missions trip. Right. Now, I will say this, some people have said, well, was there anyone in that time period who was saved maybe after Jesus died without hearing about him, who was who was still fell under the old old covenant?

Again, that's a that's a that's a conversation that we could have. But the reality is there's a reason why Paul had such urgency in going to preach the gospel to the Jews. If the Jews were saved without Jesus Christ, Paul wouldn't have any reason to go to them.

So there is an urgency in what Paul is doing. So some people say, well, was she saved already? Grace had already worked in her heart that we know. Grace had already worked in her heart because she was already worshiping God.

But it was only at the moment that she heard the gospel that we can say with certainty that God regenerated her and that she became saved from her sin. And I only say all that because. When Paul is talking in Romans, chapter three, he is talking about the natural condition of the human heart.

No one seeks after God naturally. God is the one who comes to us and works in our heart to seek after him. I want to show you one other place in scripture just to show you, because you have to understand this, guys, this is key, especially those of you who go out evangelizing, which we all should be doing.

But going out and evangelizing, we can we can fall under the false assumption that we have some part in convincing the person to be a believer. All we can do is proclaim the truth. It is God who converts the heart.

It's God who opens the heart to believe what we have to say. No amount of apologetic training that you receive, no amount of polemic advancement that you make, no amount of good arguments that you memorize will save a soul.

I'm not saying don't study apologetics. I'm not saying don't become proficient in polemics. I'm not saying don't have good answers because we need to have good answers. But know this, the hard hearted unbeliever will hear every answer you give and spit it back at you with great vitriol.