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Reading Acts 16:11-15 where the Apostle Paul preaches to a woman named Lydia, and the Lord opened hear heart to understand the gospel, as God has done with all believers. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos.
When Paul and Silas came to Philippi, they found a woman named Lydia, and it's said that the Lord opened her heart to hear the gospel that they preached. This is what God has done for every one of us who believes in Jesus when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will. For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.
Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky, and greetings, everyone. I apologize for the delay in this episode. This is actually the second time I've recorded it because it didn't record the first time.
I'm also having trouble holding onto my voice, so we'll see how far I'm able to get with this. We come back to our study in Acts chapter 16, and we're reading today about a woman named Lydia and how the Lord opened her heart to hear the gospel.
Let me read in Acts 16, verses 11 to 15. Hear the word of the Lord. So setting sail from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace, and on the day following to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia, a Roman colony, and we were staying in this city for some days.
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 sitting down, we began speaking to the women who had assembled. And a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening, whose heart the Lord opened to pay attention to the things spoken by Paul.
And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, saying, If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay. And she prevailed upon us. And then from this point on, Paul and Silas go throughout Philippi preaching the gospel, and they get in trouble for that, end up getting thrown in prison.
We're going to come to that part of this chapter next week, when we return to our New Testament study on Monday. When Paul and Silas encounter that servant girl who has a spirit of divination, in verse 16, it says that they were going to the place of prayer.
So most of their ministry coming into Philippi had to do with this place of prayer, where they also find this woman named Lydia. And like I said, in verse 14, it says that the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to the gospel that Paul preached.
The way that Lydia comes to salvation is the same way all of us come to salvation. That's what we'll consider as we look at this passage today. So let me come back up to verse 11. Setting sail from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace, and on the day following to Neapolis.
Now, remember, they left Troas, which is in the far northwest side of what is modern-day Turkey, that area that's called Asia Minor, though Asia Minor on a map for them was more in the southern area.
So they kind of bypassed Asia into Troas. They're sailing across the Aegean Sea into the area that is primarily Greek. But where they come to Philippi, this is said to be a Roman colony, and this is that area that is known as Macedonia.
Little bit further south, when you get into Corinth and Athens and some of those cities in the southern portion of Greece, that place is called Achaia. So in the north is Macedonia, and then the region of Achaia.
So here's where they have come in fulfillment of the vision that Paul had received. Remember that Paul had a vision of a man in Macedonia saying, come over to Macedonia and help us. They have crossed the sea to come into that region, and the first place that Luke writes about them going and ministering is this city called Philippi.
Now, it says they were in Symothrace, they were in Neopolis, but Luke doesn't tell us anything about the kind of ministry that may have happened there. They did not spend as much time there because when they get to Philippi, it said in verse 12, we were staying in this city for some days.
It doesn't say the same thing about Symothrace and Neopolis. So they may have been cities that they were just passing through as well, just like passing around the northern side of modern day Turkey to go to Troas.
So it would have been the same thing with Symothrace and Neopolis. Philippi, again, it said is a leading city of the district of Macedonia, and it is a Roman colony. It is named after the father of Alexander the Great, who was King Philip.
There's a lot of Greek influence here, but this part in particular seems to be Roman occupied. And this woman that Paul and Silas meet was likely a Gentile convert. We'll talk about that as we keep going here.
Verse 13, on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to a riverside where we were supposing there would be a place of prayer. Now, typically when we read about Paul coming into a new place and he is sharing the gospel there, where does he go first?
He goes to the synagogue, but here he doesn't go to the synagogue. Maybe there wasn't a synagogue in Philippi. I don't know if there was or not. It would be unusual to have a city that large and there not be a synagogue, but maybe there wasn't.
Maybe it was just so Roman occupied. Maybe it was kind of during that period of the Jews being expelled that the synagogue was not occupied. There wasn't anybody there. Maybe that was the case. I don't know.
I'm just speculating. But where Paul and Silas go is a place of prayer, and they would have suspected to find Jewish converts there and even Gentile converts. And in this case, there would not have been the kind of separation that you would have found in a synagogue because, you know, the Gentiles can't sit in the same place that the Jews sit, but they would go there to hear the word of God spoken.
This woman, Lydia, is said to be a worshiper of God. So let me come back to that. Let me come back up to verse 13 here. On the Sabbath day, ordinarily that day, Paul would go into a synagogue and preach.
He goes outside the gate of the city to a riverside where we were supposing that there would be a place of prayer. And this becomes a focal point of the ministry that Paul and Silas do because like I said later on, they're going to the place of prayer when that servant girl with the spirit of divination is warning people about what Paul and Silas are doing.
So this is kind of a focus area of where they are sharing the gospel, this place down by the river where many women had assembled. The women are probably there to do one of two things, to wash clothes or to gather water, maybe even washing dishes.
But it would either be a place of washing or a place of gathering up water. There were wells for that too, but you could also go down to the riverside. And if it was a flowing river, then that would have been good water for them to be able to draw from.
So they go down there to find this place of prayer. And sitting down, it says, we began speaking to the women who had assembled. The interesting picture that's being painted here is that Paul and Silas are sitting with these women and talking with them.
It's not Paul finding a big rock and standing on top of it and then just like a soapbox preacher with his bullhorn being there and just shouting, you're all going to judgment unless you turn to Jesus Christ.
He certainly would have said things like that in his presentation of the gospel that he gave. But he's gentle with these women. He sits down with them and speaks on a level face-to-face with them. It's not just like a crier in the town square.
That tends to be the picture that we have of Paul's ministry, that he just goes into the middle of a city and he just begins preaching loudly to all the people who can hear him. And there are occasions of that, of course, as we go through the book of Acts.
But in this instance, it's just private one-on-one conversation. Well, you know, a small group. He would sit there among them and would teach to them. This was the way that R .C. Sproul did a lot of his evangelism.
He wasn't much of a street preacher, and he wouldn't do the whole soapbox thing, but he would go to dining clubs and restaurants and things like that, and he would just find a table and sit down with those people and begin sharing the gospel with them.
I think sometimes we can get a little intimidated by evangelism because we think of it as, I have to have this public persona or this bravery that puts me in a place where I'm just standing in front of people and shouting.
And that's not the way that evangelism is going to go for most of the time. I'm not discounting that because I've done that same sort of thing, the street preaching type of evangelism. You just walk up to people and hand them a track and have one-on-one conversations if you want to do it that way, or sitting down with a person at a restaurant asking if, hey, you see somebody sitting on a bench and say, can I sit down and talk with you?
Somebody waiting for the bus. I've talked with people at the gas pump. I know I've only got probably 90 seconds standing right there, but maybe this is an opportunity to share the gospel with somebody who's never heard it before.
So we have Paul just sitting down with the women, and he starts speaking with those women who are there. There were other men with him, of course, too. His whole missionary group that includes Luke and Timothy and Silas, they're all with him as they are ministering to these women.
And verse 14, a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira. Now Lydia is a Greek name, but that doesn't automatically tell us that she's a Gentile because James is also a Greek name. James, the half-brother of Jesus, James the Apostle, and that tends to be a Greek translation of the Hebrew name Jacob, Yachob.
So James is a Greek name of a Jewish person. So Lydia doesn't automatically mean that she is a Gentile, but I'm going to argue that she probably was because of where it says she came from. A woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics and a worshiper of God.
For Luke to include that detail is probably showing that this woman is a Gentile who is a convert and worshiper of God, but not yet a knower of Christ. She hasn't yet heard the gospel to hear about Jesus being the Son of God who was sent, who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave, and whoever believes in him will be forgiven their sins, reconciled to God, and have eternal life.
She's not yet heard that message, but she knows the true God, probably from Hebrew missionaries, Jewish missionaries or something like that to the area, who have spoken about the law of Moses and the true God and the things that he did through the Jewish people.
She has come to be a worshiper of the true God. Just because a person worships the true God in the context of Acts, that doesn't automatically mean they are a Christian or will become a Christian. Because remember, in Acts 15, in the previous chapter, you had those heretics who were teaching that you had to be circumcised in order to be saved.
Acts 15 records them as being believers. These were men who even believed that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again from the dead, but into their teaching had crept this heresy, that you're not actually saved by faith in Jesus Christ.
You have to be saved by your works. You have to be saved by your keeping of the law. As Paul would say to the Galatians, if you have to be circumcised in order to be saved, then Christ is of no use to you.
But these men who are teaching falsely are still described as believers. It's one of the reasons why I think we need to be careful when it comes to the way that we call out false teachers. We not just say of a person they're not Christian or they're not believers or something to that effect because Acts called them believers even though they spoke heresies.
And in 2 Peter 2, for example, it is said of these heretics that they deny the master who bought them. So these men who would otherwise be followers of Jesus Christ have become heretics speaking things that lead people away from the true gospel.
It doesn't say that they aren't believers. It just simply says that they are filled with all kinds of false teaching. Anyway, I say all of that so that you know, just because a person is described as a worshiper of God doesn't automatically mean that they are a Christian or will become one.
But at least this much is known to Lydia, who the true God is, and she worships him. So she's listening to what Paul is saying, and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to the things that are spoken by Paul.
All of the women that are sitting there are hearing what Paul is saying. But it's specifically being said of Lydia that God opens her heart to pay attention to those things and actually become a believer in those things, coming to find that Jesus is the Son of God who was sent to die for us and rise again so that whoever believes in him will truly be reconciled to God.
And as I said in the beginning, this is the way that all of us have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is because of a work that God has done in us through his Holy Spirit. You once did not believe, but now you do.
And how did that happen? Is it because you made up your mind to believe? Well, it's said in 1 Corinthians 2 .14 that the naturally-minded man cannot discern the spiritual things of God, because they are spiritually discerned.
So how do we have a spiritual mind to conceive of spiritual things? It takes a spiritual rebirth. And this is exactly what Jesus talked about with Nicodemus in John 3. Unless a man is born again, he cannot see, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
We must be born again of his Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God comes into our hearts, takes out that cold heart of stone that was unbelieving and was rebellious against God, and puts in a soft heart that is now convicted over our sin and looks to God for salvation that is given to us in Jesus Christ.
If you, before you became a Christian, were listening to a person sharing the gospel and you had an unbelieving friend who was with you, you both listened to the same gospel. You came to believe in that gospel, but your friend did not.
They thought it was a bunch of nonsense. Or maybe they just excused it as, oh, he's talking about judgment and being saved by faith in Jesus. You know, all a person has to do is be good. We will all be received by God if we just try to be good people.
That's the basis of every religion, isn't it? Even Christianity. So if I'm a good person, then how could God refuse me on that day of judgment this guy is talking about? We're all going to get to go to heaven as long as we just try to be good.
Hell is for all those really, really bad, evil, wicked people, right? So how is it that you came to be convicted of your sin and recognizing that you are just as deserving of hell as anybody? But God sent his son Jesus to die for you so that if you believe in him, you'll be forgiven your sins and have everlasting life.
How did you come to believe that? But your friend, your unbelieving friend who heard the same message did not come to salvation because the Holy Spirit changed your heart to listen to and believe what was being said.
Whereas the heart of your unbelieving friend just became more hardened to the truth. The Holy Spirit played on both of you, but for you, God had mercy and for your friend, their heart was hardened. Just like we read about in Romans chapter nine, God has mercy on whomever he wills and he hardens whomever he wills.
And right here by the providence of God, Lydia was at this Riverside on this day to hear Paul preach and the Holy Spirit opened her heart to pay attention to the things that were spoken by Paul, that she would come to believe in the gospel of Christ and be saved all by the work of God.
Now, this does not mean that God makes us believe. It's not like God is believing for us when he gives his Holy Spirit into our hearts, but rather makes us a new person that will believe. Not a person who has been dead in their sins and their transgressions, but a person who is now alive in the spirit of God to receive the gospel of life and believe in it so that we may live with him forever in glory.
That's what happened to Lydia. It happens in every one of our hearts, this work that God has done, that we would believe the gospel and walk in this truth. We go on to verse 15 as we kind of wrap this up here.
And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and stay. Now, the first thing that ends up happening for her after she believes in the gospel is what?
She's baptized. And even her entire household. Now, there is this same phrase that comes up again later on in Acts 16 regarding the Philippian jailer, he and his whole household were baptized. We'll talk about what that means when we get to that later on.
But right now, I just point out that the first order of business for Lydia as a new believer is to be baptized. I have been washed in Christ Jesus and risen to new life. And then saying to the apostles, if you have judged me or saying to Paul and his friends, if you see me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, that we may be one people of God under the same roof.
And she prevailed upon us, meaning that she convinced us and she showed hospitality to us as we came into her home and were treated well by her. And it's likely that the home of Lydia became the house where the church in Philippi met.
That does not make her a pastor. I've heard some people make that argument, but that's not what that means at all. Simply that she is the matriarch of her household and she opened her home up for the church to be able to gather there.
Paul, when he writes to the Philippians later on, that letter to the Philippians, four chapters long later on in the New Testament, he addresses that letter to the elders and the deacons and those elders would have all been men.
But Lydia still being the matriarch of her household is the one who opened her home up for the church to be able to gather there. And we see that at the end of Acts chapter 16, where after Paul and Silas leave prison, they go to the house of Lydia to see the brothers, to see the church that is gathered there.
Paul and Silas's ministry in Philippi begins and ends with Lydia. They find her. They bring her to a saving knowledge of Christ, the Lord opening her heart to hear the message that they preached. And then being someone who hosted the church in her home, that's where they go before they leave Philippi at the end of Acts 16.
And we're going to continue in this adventure together as well when we come back to Philippi and hear what is next for Paul and Silas. But in the meantime, as we kind of wrap this up today, we give thanks to God for his mercy and his compassion toward us, opening our hearts to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and believe in him and be saved.
May the Lord also guide your heart in all holiness, that you would put away sin and all wickedness and live holy lives unto him with his Holy Spirit dwelling within you. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read and I pray that our hearts would continue to be receptive to the good things that you have taught to us.
Now having your Holy Spirit, that we may hear of spiritual things, put to death the deeds of the flesh and walk in the fruit of the spirit. Give us courage to share the gospel with somebody else, knowing that you can do a mighty work in that person's life to bring them to a saving knowledge of you.
It's in Jesus name we pray, amen.
You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.
On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.