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Introduction
Good Morning!
My name is Danny Watton and I am your service pastor here at Minot Air Force Base.
I want to start off like I do every week and thank you for being here this morning.
It is a blessing to be together here to worship God in song, to hear His Word and to fellowship in His presence so that we can be lifted up and encouraged to do His work that He has set out for us to do.
I hope you have been enjoying going through the study of Acts as much as I have.
If you have been with us over the summer you know that we have been going through the book of Acts.
And as we have seen Acts is a book all about missions.
We are seeing the early church witnessing about Jesus and His resurrection and giving hope to the people in their own town but also they are going to other cities all around them and telling people the good news.
We have seen many people come to Christ.
Last week we talked about the Jerusalem Counsol and their debate on whether observance of the Mosiac Law was necessary in order to be saved.
The conclusion of that Counsol was that the Gentiles did not need to be circumsized or obey jewish customs in order to be Christians.
This decision was important because it set the doctrine of Salvation by grace through faith for us.
In addition, it meant that Salvation through Jesus was open to everyone and not just one people group.
This week we are going to be looking at and looking at a case study of three different conversions.
These conversions show us that God will always cross social and economic barriers to reach people no matter where they are in their life.
But before we jump into that let’s pray!
The Conversion of Lydia
11 So, setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace, and the following day to Neapolis, 12 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.
13 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.
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.
15 And after she was baptized, and 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.
Paul and Silas in Prison
16 As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling.
17 She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.”
18 And this she kept doing for many days.
Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.”
And it came out that very hour.
19 But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers.
20 And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, “These men are Jews, and they are disturbing our city.
21 They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.”
22 The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods.
23 And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely.
24 Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.
The Philippian Jailer Converted
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, 26 and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken.
And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened.
27 When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped.
28 But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”
29 And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas.
30 Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
31 And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
32 And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.
33 And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family.
34 Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them.
And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.
Now we have talked about what the Gospel is.
And for those of you that don’t know what the Gospel is I will explain it for us all to be on the same page.
Gospel - God (the Trinity) created the heavens and the earth and made Adam and Eve.
Adam and Even walked with God in perfect communion.
There was no sin in the world.
Adam and Eve were deceived by a serpent and ate of the fruit forbidden by God.
Sin now entered the world and now our perfect communion with God was broken.
And everyone now was born into this sinful world.
The Bible says that we were sinful from our mothers womb.
So all have fallen short of the glory of God.
God didn’t want it to end there.
Jesus who is God became a man and lived a sinless life that we would not.
He took Gods wrath that He did not deserve in order to bridge the gap between us and God.
That took place so if we believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior then we would get the blessing of eternal life.
The gap was filled by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This is a free gift.
We cannot buy it, earn it or get it any other way but by accepting that we need Jesus to forgive us and believe that He is our Savior.
We have also talked about what true conversion means .
Which is that True conversion comes only through Gods pursuing us first, The receiving of the Holy Spirit which transforms us from the inside out and through our praising God.
Today I want you to see how the Gospel changes people.
We see three different people from three different walks of life and how they are changed by the Gospel.
Lydia
Gospel for the religious
Lydia was wealthy.
She was from the city of Thyatira and a seller of purple goods.
Which means she was a successful business women and in fashion and other luxury goods.
Purple dye was extremely expensive so Lydia was doing really well for herself.
She would have owned her own home and was successful.
Let me put it to you this way, she was a CEO of her own company, she owned a house in LA, New York and in Paris.
We also know that Lydia was a worshiper of God.
She reminds me of Cornelius in the sense that she was seeking the God of the Hebrews but she was not a true believer in Christ.
She walked 3 miles every week round trip to pray with women and read the Hebrew Bible.
She was religious!
How was Lydia converted?
She was converted through the hearing the Gospel.
She heard Paul’s message.
Verse 14 “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.”
What do we see here?
Remember what we learned about Christian conversion?
First the Lord pursues us.
And we see here that God is the one who opened her heart.
So during this conversation that Paul was having with Lydia and the other women he probably asked them, “what have you learned about the God of the Hebrews?
And they would have said, “We see that God made a covenant with Abraham to bless all the nations through his line.
And then we see that through Moses we received the Law which was impossible to keep.
The Law for those of you who don’t know what that is refers to the commandments given to Moses for the Israelites to keep in order to gain favor from God.
But it was impossible to keep.
But God gave Moses a sacrificial system for us because we can’t keep this law.
And Paul must have told her that the fulfillment to the promise of Abraham to bless all the nations and the way for the sacrifice for all sins came through Jesus Christ and what He accomplished on the cross.
That he died on the cross and was raised from the dead.
Jesus was the only one who could have kept the law of Moses and earned His blessing.
But instead of keeping the blessing for Himself He took Gods wrath, our punishment and gave us His blessing.
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