Hearts Prepared Before You Arrive

Transcript

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[0:00] It kind of gives you chills reading that about revelation and the heaven that awaits the faithful. It's great. All right, well, our sermon is from Acts chapter 16, and this is the third in a row on Acts. We're kind of going through Acts. This turned into a mini-sermon series on Acts, which I didn't plan, but it's really delightful. So a few words of introduction.

[0:23] This is the life. Acts is about the life of the early church after the ascension of Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit. And after Acts 9, which we saw a couple weeks ago, we start getting stories about— no, that was last week. No, it was two weeks ago. After Acts 9, which was about the conversion of St. Paul, we start getting stories about Paul mixed in with the other apostles like Peter. So there's just a lot of stories in the rest of Acts, a lot of them having to do with the resurrection, but also the missionary journeys of Paul. That's what we're looking at a bit today. So I want you to remember that Paul was confronted on the road to Damascus by Jesus, and that marked his conversion from what we would call Pharisaic Judaism, which was really strong, kind of very—that was very much who he was. And he had to change into becoming a Christ follower. And that was such a big shift that it actually didn't—it probably happened overnight in one ways, but in other ways it took longer. And so he actually went away into the wilderness for three years so that he could— learn and change and become the person that God wanted him to be. But then, after that time away, when he emerged from the desert, he set out on at least three missionary journeys that we know about.

[1:36] And he lived for a time in the city of Corinth. He has actually—he earned income while he was a missionary, so he was a self-supporting missionary, and his job was to make tents. So I guess even though he was a Pharisee, he knew how to sew things together, and he practiced a trade, and he supported— he supported himself while he spread the gospel. So that's why sometimes you—when you hear about somebody being a tent maker, that means that they're both a missionary and they're supporting themselves by having some kind of profession or job or career at the same time. So that's a little bit of a mini-biography of Paul, but basically everywhere he went, he would share the good news with both Jews and Gentiles. His normal practice was to start in the synagogue and see how that went, and then he would go to the Gentile part of the town, which could be the market, or what we call the agorist. The Greek word for that is the agora, and he would go and share the gospel there. And it didn't always go well. If you read in Acts, that sometimes people loved it, sometimes people hated it, you know? And so he was beaten, he was flogged, he was practically drowned, you know, he had a lot of problems. And so he suffered for the sake of the gospel, big time.

[2:47] And I think that those three years were also—in the wilderness, we're preparing him for that, too. Like, this isn't going to be easy. It's not just that you have to go someplace, talk to people you don't know, go places you haven't been, tell them the story that you're still learning, but you're physically going to be in danger because of this, because people don't want to hear it. And so that's what happened. And so he endured a lot of abuse as he went.

[3:10] But occasionally, there were people, like we'll see today, that welcomed him, they were happy to see him, and we're going to hear about one of them today, Lydia, we mentioned that. And you get the sense that God, in some cases, sometimes, you know, he's not going to be happy. Sometimes he had opposition, but sometimes he had welcome. And you get the sense in those cases where he had welcome that God had been preparing people before he got there. And that's kind of a theme we're going to come back to, is that God prepares people's hearts before Paul got there. And then they were ready to start following Jesus right away. They didn't take really that much convincing. So let's go to our reading. It's Acts 16, starting at verse 9.

[3:48] That night Paul had a vision. A man from Macedonia in northern Greece was standing there, pleading with us, pleading with him, come over to Macedonia and help us. So we, and pay attention to that we, so we decided to leave for Macedonia at once, having concluded that God was calling us to preach the good news there.

[4:12] We boarded a boat at Troas and sailed straight across to the island of Samothrace, and the next day we landed at Neapolis. From there we reached Philippi, a major city of that district of Macedonia. And a Roman colony. And we stayed there several days. On the Sabbath we went a little way outside the city to a river bank, where we thought people would be meeting for prayer. And we sat down to speak with some women who had gathered there. One of them was Lydia from Thyatira, a merchant of expensive purple cloth who worshipped God. As she listened to us, the Lord opened her heart, and she accepted what Paul was saying. She and her household were baptized, and she asked us to be her guests. If you agree that I am a true believer in the Lord, she said, come and stay at my home. And she urged us until we agreed. Let's pray.

[5:06] Father, thank you for this word, and we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name. Amen. So, one thing I wanted you to notice, and I kind of pointed at, is there's a literary feature of this reading that is kind of missed sometimes. Did you notice in verse 10 that this is the first time, that the author of Acts, who's Luke, uses the word we, maybe we'll put chapter, or verse 10 back up there if you're willing, Steve, to describe what's happening. So this is the first time before this, it was always Peter did this, Paul did this, Peter did this, etc. But at this point, chapter 9, chapter 16, verse 10, the first time the word we is there. So we decided to leave for Macedonia. And that means that it was at this point, that Luke started accompanying Paul on his, what was his second missionary journey.

[5:55] So, up to that point, they didn't know each other, as far as we can tell. They hadn't been traveling together. And it looks like the previous spot where they were, Troas, which is the city of Troy, you know the Trojan horse, you know the horse that got pulled into the city? That's Troy, that's Troas, the same town. That's where Luke was living. And Luke actually, we don't think he was a believer before Paul got there, we don't know, but we don't think he was. He heard Paul. He became a believer. Luke doesn't, Luke is a bit, maybe modest or something. He describes everybody else's conversion, but he doesn't describe his own conversion. Isn't that interesting? All we get is that I wasn't with Paul, and then I was with Paul. And now I'm traveling with him. Now we're going someplace together. Isn't that great? So, but Paul also, it's not like Luke is sort of a, unknown, like, you know how sometimes there's somebody who's really famous and you think you're friends with them, but they don't really think of you at all.

[6:56] And they're like, oh, your friend Hans-Erik, and you're like, who? You know, he's not that important. And that has happened to me so many times. No, I'm kidding, it hasn't. Well, maybe it has. If it has, I'm repressing it. But anyway, but Luke mentions Paul all the time, but does Paul mention Luke? Yes, he does. In at least three of his letters, Paul mentions Luke, right?

[7:17] Philemon, Colossians, and 2 Timothy. Paul mentions Luke, and fondly, in fact. So they were associates for sure. They were travel companions for sure. Luke seems like he was basically a stenographer a lot of this time, too, so he was probably writing things down a lot. Were they friends? I think so. I hope so, right?

[7:39] So Luke joins, and I think he heard Paul preaching in Troas, Troy, and he became a believer. And he left his life there and got up and went with Paul. Luke, as far as we can tell, not as far as we can tell, Paul calls him a doctor. So he was a doctor. In the Bible, he's a doctor.

[8:04] And, you know, I think maybe he called the receptionist and said, Tell all my patients that they're going to have to find another doctor because I'm leaving town with this stranger who just showed up a few days ago. You can imagine, he just left his practice, right? And he decides. He decides to get in this boat with Paul and go to Philippi, which was the capital of Macedonia. So, and Luke is such an important person in the history of the church, but in history itself. And, you know, this is like what I'm sad about is that the story of Luke's conversion is nowhere to be found, at least in Scripture, really. But it's so important because Luke is so important. Luke writes one of the four Gospels. Luke writes the Acts of the Apostles. If you put those two together, that's a huge part of the New Testament.

[8:51] And Luke brings this really unique perspective that really rounds out the Gospels. He's probably a native Greek speaker, and he's well educated because he's a doctor, so he's a good writer. And if you look at the Greek that Luke writes, and you compare it to the Greek that John writes, which is far simpler but also a little bit more poetic, you compare it to the Greek that Mark writes, which shows sort of very similar things. So it's a very simple kind of view. It could even be that Mark wasn't a native Greek speaker at all. So all these Gospels have different degrees of literary sophistication. Luke uses a lot of words in his Gospel that aren't found in the other Gospels because he's got a bigger vocabulary, he's got a bigger Greek vocabulary. That doesn't mean the other Gospels are deficient. It means that they're all different because they all come from different people who have different backgrounds. And we needed Luke's background, right? So each one has like a personality. And you could talk about what each Gospel emphasizes, but Luke's Gospel seems to emphasize that Jesus has a connection with all of humanity. So Luke is always written from the perspective of a Gentile who has been converted, and he wants other Gentiles to believe as well.

[10:05] So that's one of the themes of Luke's Gospel, is to bring about what he calls an orderly account. That's what he writes in sort of the preamble to his own Gospel, is that I set out to create an orderly account. Not that the other peoples were rubbish or messy, like they had messy rooms or something like that, but it was more like I was going to get all the facts straight, and I was going to try to present them in some order that was kind of compelling and useful. And so, for example, in Luke's case, it's the only narrative of the birth of Jesus, actually of the birth of Jesus. And you get the sense that after this, which is years after Jesus had died, of course, Luke becomes a Christian, he must have traveled to Jerusalem and found Mary. Can you imagine? Like, where is she? She's around here somewhere. Maybe she was in Nazareth. I don't know where she lived after Jesus was crucified. But he found her, and he's like, you know, and then what happened? And she's telling him stories, and he's like, this is good stuff, let's put this in chapter 2. And that's what happened. So, and it wasn't a good thing. It was chapter 2, right? The shepherds, really? You're kidding. That's great. You know, that's the only thing with the shepherds

[11:21] is only in Luke's gospel. And it's because he was a careful, orderly person. He went, wanted to get all the data. Okay. I'm really excited about Luke. But here's the other thing, is that someday, it's a very fun thing to look at all the different gospels, who wrote them, what was their background, what was the purpose of them writing that gospel. And it doesn't mean that all the gospels conflict with each other, but it's a very fun thing to look at all the different gospels, but they kind of form together this really big and beautiful kind of cohesive picture. And you get the sense that the gospel is for everybody because there's sort of a, there is a gospel for everyone, at least of the four gospels. Okay.

[11:58] So, that's one major theme of this passage, is that Luke joins Paul, and they begin to actually work together. And so, another aspect then is that this missionary, who we think of as sometimes, any missionary actually, you would think of them following the gospel, following the call of God, wherever they're told to go. Sometimes we think of missionaries like Paul as sort of solitary type people, right? Like Paul says, or God says, go to this place. And it doesn't say go and take a bunch of people with you. It says go and do these things that you're supposed to do for me. And so, Paul goes, and he was probably alone out there in the wilderness after his conversion, but in actuality, if you kind of read it closely, you realize that Paul is open to bringing on all sorts of partners, in his work. And so, he doesn't do this missionary work alone. And this is an important point.

[12:51] Luke joins him. Paul's open. Like, can you imagine Luke saying, this has happened sometimes too, like your friend is going somewhere, and you're like, do you want any company? You know, do you want somebody to come along with you? Are you going alone or with somebody else? So, Luke said, can I go with you to your next stop? And Paul's like, yeah, come along. So, Paul is open to helpers. Paul is open to people joining him in his work. So, we have Luke is a companion of Paul. Barnabas is a companion of Paul. Timothy is. And those are the major ones, but there's others. There's others too. If you go looking around, you'll find a few other names.

[13:29] So, I think it points to God saying to us, I will call you. I will call you to important work. And you might sometimes be called to do it alone, but usually I'm going to call you to do it with somebody else. I want you to do this together. You need other people around you to help you and to encourage you. In fact, Barnabas' name actually means the son of encouragement, right?

[13:55] And maybe his real name was something else, and Paul just called him that because of their friendship. I don't know, because I don't know if anyone would name their kid that. Son of encouragement? Okay. But so, you need, God says to Paul and anyone who's in missionary work or any kind of ministry, don't do this alone. Don't do this alone. You need other people around you. The enemy is out there. When you're alone, it's hard. You need two people. You need somebody backing you up, right? So, don't do it alone. And Paul, Paul doesn't do it alone. He brings people along with him. So, that's great.

[14:29] And Luke was not just a fair weather friend, it turns out. He was with Paul in difficult times. In 2 Timothy, where Paul writes about Luke, Paul talks about his own imprisonment. And he says, Nobody is with me except for Luke is with me right now. And that doesn't mean his other friends abandoned him. It probably meant that his other friends had gone off to do other things that God had called them to do. But Luke felt called to stay with Paul while Paul was imprisoned. Maybe to write down more of what he was saying and doing. Maybe just to bring him food. Whatever. So, Luke was a good, I feel like Luke was a good friend to Paul. Luke stuck with Paul through thick and thin. So, let's set that aside for a moment. I'm very excited about Luke. You can tell, you know. But let's set that aside for a moment and talk about this other feature of the text, which I alluded to earlier. Which was about God preparing people to hear the gospel before somebody gets there. Right? So, can we look at verse 13 now? Steve, if you're willing. And we read in verse 13 that in Philippi, Paul had gone out to the river to preach about Jesus. And there they went out to the river bank. Right? And it says that they met a woman named Lydia.

[15:41] Who came out to pray. And I guess she was, she, Paul just happened along when she was already out there with her friends. And it says that she was someone who was a worshiper of God. And you may be wondering what that means. Because it means that she wasn't a Christian yet. Because she becomes a Christian later on in the story. She wasn't a Christian yet. So, what does it mean that somebody was a worshiper of God? And actually we're not sure. But some, it's pretty clear that she worships God the Father. And our best guess is that she is what is known as a God-fearing Gentile. So, this is sort of a classification of people in the faith that were sort of, I guess, adjacent to the Jewish community in these towns in the Roman Empire. They had mixed with them enough to go, oh, I think your religion is the right religion. I'm going to start worshipping your God. I'm going to stop worshipping pagan gods. But because they were Gentiles. And in her case, because she was a woman. She couldn't go to the synagogue and hear the scriptures read to her. So, she was gleaning it from a community. But she wasn't directly welcomed into the community. Now, there are ways to convert into Judaism. Evidently, she hadn't taken that step yet.

[16:55] So, our best guess is that she's a God-fearing Gentile. And so, she started believing in the God who's portrayed in the Old Testament. Right? So, she had gotten sort of half the story. And that's why I think that God had been preparing her. Like, she already had half the story. She was ready to hear the, she was ready to hear, like, you know, not just the rest of the story. Like, she was ready to hear the second part. You know, the payoff, really.

[17:21] So, we see, I think, two things or perhaps three things happening. And one is that God's been preparing her even before Paul arrived. And she starts following Jesus after Paul arrived. So, God had been preparing her. But the second is that when Paul came to where she already was, it says Jesus opened her heart.

[17:41] There it is in verse 14. As she listened to us, the Lord opened her heart. So, what does that mean? Like, there was this moment where something opened up inside of her. And the message of the gospel, Paul was talking, the message of the gospel was flooding in there. You know? And she became a believer. So, Paul had to be obedient and share the gospel. But don't get me wrong. But I don't think he had to try that hard that day with her. Right? She was ready. She was ready. Her heart was opened by Jesus. Paul had to do what he had to do. He was faithful to do what he had to do. But he didn't need to try really hard to persuade her or coerce her or browbeat her or anything like that. She was ready to hear it. Once she heard it, her heart was opened and she became a believer. So, that was the second thing. And the third thing, and it's not directly mentioned in the text, but we can kind of piece it together from what we know about religious life back then. Like I said, if she believed in God, in the God of Judaism, she still couldn't participate in the gospel. She still couldn't participate in the religious life of that community in the same way that other people could. Because she was a woman and because she was a Gentile.

[18:48] And so, what I think is interesting is that Paul goes directly up to her where she is and he starts talking to her. Which is not something like the rabbi at the synagogue could do necessarily. Do you see what I'm saying? So, Paul was able to cross some social and religious boundaries that the Judaizers had not been able to cross. And the Jews of that time were not really ready to cross. And that, I think, might have been another way that her heart was opened. She's like, oh, somebody's speaking directly to me and treating me like an equal in this situation. I want whatever that is. I want that. Right? And so, this is part of what Paul's conversion was about. He had to stop hating Christians and loving Pharisaic Judaism. And he had to start loving Christians and Christianity and loving Pharisees. Like, he had to kind of come out of his own identity in a huge way. Last week, we heard about Peter and his vision that all the foods had been declared clean. And so, that was sort of the message to the early church that you have to set aside some of your identity around the dietary laws, the kosher laws. So that you can have table fellowship with other people. So you can reach them and be in relationship with them.

[20:08] So, all of that has to do with this. It has to do a little bit with letting go of these identities that you maybe have created a bit for yourself but also were prescribed. And so, but crossing over these boundaries to other people so that they can hear the word of God. And this is very important in missionary work but it's important in any of our lives. Is that, yes, you should be sort of proud of who you are as your identity. You should be secure in it. You should be valued for it. But at certain points, you have to set aside some of your own identity for that. And that's what we need for the sake of the gospel. And so, last week I was thinking about, actually last week I was thinking about what would I give up if I had to give it up. If God said what would I give up, you know, I guess I could give up cheeseburgers, you know. If you can give up kimchi, could you? No, no, no, no.

[20:58] I'll give up cheeseburgers. You can give up lutefisk. You know, some of you can give up something else. But anyone can give up lutefisk. No problem there, yeah. Oh, that was easy. Thank you. So, but there's, we sat down, and at the very end I'll tell you even more about that. So, Paul and Peter both had to learn. We set aside some of ourselves so that we can go and reach other people. What did Paul do? He went to the river. He's a Jew but a Christian. He's talking to a Gentile. That's one barrier that he crossed over. He talks to a woman. That's another barrier that he crossed over, right? And she, you know. But he's a Jew. He's got different languages, et cetera.

[21:40] So, I think that's part of what opened Lydia's heart, right? Is that Paul approached her, Paul approached her as an equal, and the message from Paul was she belonged at the table just like anyone else. There was no part of this faith that is, that you're excluded from. And I think we have to say that, too, as missionaries, as people who share the gospel, is there's There's not some secret realm inside that you can never get into. When you come in, you are fully part of the family no matter what, right?

[22:15] So as we see over and over in the Scriptures, and I think this is something else that's worth another sermon some other day, is in the New Testament a lot, but also in the Old Testament a little less, but also there, is that marginalized people, including women, are given a voice and agency and positive representation, and that's pretty good. And for the time, it was way ahead of its time. Now maybe not so much because it does look, there's some problems too, but compared to other religious texts of contemporary times, and even times after it, even 600 years after it, the Scriptures are amazingly affirming of women and their voices and their agency and how important it is that they come first. And they come to faith themselves. So that's really good news. So we'll come to that some other day. But I think that's really good.

[23:08] So I want to bring it all together now. Let's see. Oh, we're doing all right. I'm just going to see sort of bullet points, you know, and you can cross them off in your head. One, Luke is an important person in the life of the church. Luke and Acts together is a major part of the New Testament. It's indispensable. We need Luke and Acts, right? And it's all because Paul preached to Luke in Troas. Luke dropped what he was doing. It's like he dropped the Bible. He dropped his nets. But he wasn't a fisherman. He dropped his stethoscope or whatever they had back then and just jumped on a boat with Paul. Number two, God doesn't always call people into ministry alone. Sometimes he might, but he provides companions and helpers along the way. So if you're in ministry and you're alone, be careful. You need to bring people around you or let God bring people to you. And he also provides his work and his spirit going ahead of any kind of missionary work that we may do. And when I say missionary work, I'm not talking about... I'm talking about going overseas. I'm talking about you right now in your life as you leave the door here and talk to your neighbors. That's all missionary work. So God provides his work and his spirit going ahead of us, and he prepares the hearts of

[24:11] people who are ready and now at this point in lives to hear the gospel. And I think we could tell stories, and that would also be another day of, when did you meet somebody who was ready? And God put you together, and it just all came together. And that has happened to you. And that has happened to me. And I think we need to tell those stories too, because God does do things like he did for Lydia. He prepared her heart ahead of time and then opened her heart when the word was spoken. This happens still. Praise God. So we need to tell those stories to each other.

[24:46] And sometimes it's not the right time. Sometimes the preparation hasn't been done. And that's when you need to be attentive to the spirit and go, not yet. Wait. Wait until there's some other time when somebody's ready to hear it. Right? Right? We can discern that with the help of the spirit. And finally, we're going to take our cues from Peter and Paul. God may call us to do this work while setting aside some of what we think as our own identity so we can cross over into another person's culture so that we can reach them without cheeseburgers or kimchi and just go, here's the gospel in your terms, right? On your home field where we're valuing you. Right? So Paul talks about this. This is where I'm going to end. I'm going to read 1 Corinthians 9, starting at verse 19. This is where Paul talks about how he sets aside what's important to him so that he can reach other people. This is what is a little longer, but we're just going to read it and we'll be done. Verse 19, though I am free and I belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone.

[25:47] A slave, a servant to everyone to win as many as possible. To the Jews, I become like a Jew to win the Jews. To those under the law, I become like one under the law, though I myself am not under the law, correct, so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law, I become like one not having the law, though I am not free from God's law, but I'm under God's Christ law, so as to win those not having the law. To the weak, I become weak to win the weak. I have become all things to all people. So that by all possible means, I might save some. I do this all for the sake of the gospel that I may share in its blessings. Let's pray.

[26:38] Father, thank you for this word. Thank you for Luke. Thank you for Paul. Teach us this week again, how to go out into this world and be the people that you call to have these conversations and Lord, each person in this room, I'm gonna ask that you you would put into their hearts somebody whom you're preparing right now that they can talk to and whose hearts will be opened by Jesus for some conversation sometime in the future. And we ask this in Jesus' name.