Please turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 16, and we're going to be reading verses 6 through 15. This is the 18th in the sermons on women of faith. Hear God's Word. Now when they had gone through Phrygia, the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the Word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them. So, passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, Come over to Macedonia and help us. Now, after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them. Therefore, sailing from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace, and the next day came to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia, a colony. And we were staying in that city for some days. And on the Sabbath day, we went out of the city to the riverside, where prayer was customarily made. We sat down and spoke to the women who met there. Now, a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay. So she persuaded us. Amen. Father, we thank you for your Word, and I pray that as we dig into it, that you would touch our hearts and enable us to respond to your Word by grace in ways that are appropriate. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I want to look, first of all, as to why Lydia was a critical first contact in Europe Whereas the conversion of the Philippian jailer, which is going to happen later on in this chapter, opened up contacts within the civil government and within the military because of the contacts that this veteran soldier would have had. Lydia really opened up contacts with some of the most influential people in the city because she was a merchant of a very, very highly sought after product. It was known as Tyrian dye and the purple clothing that she made was the product of that dye. And so she would have been an incredibly valued member of the Philippian business community. And since she imported her products from Thyatira, the town which was her hometown, there was no church planted yet in Thyatira. She was a key contact for that city as well. And I'll try to demonstrate that her conversion blew the doors wide open for the gospel to come to the most influential people in both of those cities. Paul couldn't stay there long because it was illegal for Jews to be in that city. And yes, Paul did a lot of illegal things. That's why he was a jailbird. But it was illegal. We'll demonstrate that in a little bit. Lydia was able to say, it's providential that she had not yet converted to Judaism or she would not have been able to stay there. But I could summarize the impact by saying that in the few days before Paul was kicked out of Philippi, Paul made inroads into two very, very important spheres, influence spheres, you could call them, that any society has, and that is civics and business. Now, the Reformed missionary Douglas Leighton points out that Western missions in the last century has become way, way, way too individualistic. And as a result, they have missed out on the covenantal concept of influencing these seven spheres of society, capturing the seven spheres of society. And he identifies those as civics, religion, arts, education, business, family, and media. And I would add an eighth, which is medicine. Medicine is a very critical area, according to many scholars. And actually, I've lumped his arts and media together as one in your article, so I could put medicine as a seventh one there. We could have just put eight, but hey, seven's a nice number. But anyway, if you can make inroads into those influential spheres, you can have enormous influence within a city or within a county. Within days, Paul made inroads into three of those spheres of influence, family, civics, and business. And yes, he was asked to leave the town. But it was too late for Satan to do much of anything about it because he had already planted the kingdom in those spheres. And it resulted in one of the healthiest, if not the healthiest, of churches being planted in New Testament times. And within two centuries, the entire region was Christian. And it all started with a businesswoman by the name of Lydia. Now let's back up a bit so that you can see God's sovereign fingerprints written all over this story. Verse 6 takes place in June, at least on my chronology, in June of 8050. Paul was hoping to plant new churches in the unreached areas of the Roman province of Asia, which is quite different than modern Asia. It doesn't include China and all that. The Roman province of Asia was pretty much the western third of modern day Turkey. So he started to travel toward Laodicea and to Ephesus, which is a very logical way to go, and he was going to later plant churches in those two cities, very influential churches, but there's a timing for everything in God's plan. And God forbids the team from preaching the word anywhere else in the Roman province of Asia. Well, that definitely ruled out Laodicea and Ephesus. And so he figures, where else does he want me to go? He starts traveling northeast to Mycenae and thinking maybe we will go up into Bithynia. And on the highway that they are traveling, when the Spirit of God forbids him to go into Bithynia, they're at a crossroads. You know, if you go off to the right, you're going to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit forbids him from doing that, so the only way that he has to go is toward Troas. And why this roundabout route? Well, if he had tried to go to Europe when he was way south in Lystra, he would have gone there through Ephesus, way down in the south, and then gone by way of sea. He would have completely missed Troas. So what's the big deal of going through Troas? Well, that is where they got introduced to Luke And Luke became a very indispensable part of their mission's team. In fact, there's a lot of clues that you can see. Prior to verse 10 of our chapter, he's always saying, Luke is a historian, he's saying, they, they, they. Now he's on the team, and so he switches from they to we and to us. And so verse 10 is the first time that the we occurs. And so if God hadn't taken them way northeast to the border of Mysia and Bithynia, they would not have met Luke. Now in verse 9, God gives the vision of the man from Macedonia calling for the team to help them there. And so that's where they travel to in verse 11. Verse 11 says, therefore sailing from Troas, we ran a straight course to Samothrace, And the next day came to Neopolis. So they're finally out of Asia. They crossed the Dardanelles Straits, spent a night on the mountainous island of Samothrace, and then sailed into Neopolis, the seaport 10 miles from Philippi. Verse 12 says, and from there to Philippi. And I want to spend a bit of time giving you the background of this story because it shows the sovereignty of God in marvelous ways, preparing the church for the next 1,500 years. Philippi was just about 10 miles inland on the Via Ignatia Highway, and so it was a fairly easy trip. And Luke comments, which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia, a colony. And every word of that clause is really important. Liberals love to mock. Oh, yet another error in the Bible, because this claims that Philippi was the capital of Macedonia, and everybody knows that Thessalonica was the capital. Well, it doesn't say it was the capital. It uses a different word from capital. It says it was the foremost city in Macedonia, and it was indeed the foremost. It was the foremost in terms of a glorious history, Roman administration, finances, and influence. Any way you cut it, it was the most important city in Macedonia. It had a massive gold mining industry producing more than 1,000 talents of gold every year. Converted into modern times that would be 2,632,000 ounces of gold were being taken out of this city and throughout the Roman Empire. There was a lot of wealth in this city. There was a leading medical school there. This was also where many of the best Roman military officers retired with their beautiful, beautiful estates. And so it was a city of influence. If you could penetrate into Philippi, you would have influence throughout the entire Roman Empire as a very strategic city for them to plant a church in. But it was also extremely hostile to what they considered to be cults. And I think this factors into the story as well. And I think it explains in part why they were worshiping and praying outside of the city and along the banks of a river. They don't want to get caught. Now Paul usually tried to find a city where a synagogue could be a starting point for preaching, because they already had a lot of the worldview from the Old Testament, and so he didn't have to waste or spend a lot of time on that. But there was no such synagogue, and we'll see why in a moment. Verse 12 ends by saying, and we were staying in that city for some days. Apparently, they were not having any success in their preaching of the gospel whatsoever until they meet Lydia. And I'll jump ahead for a sec and point out that Paul's team, during the days that they are there, only succeeds in winning Lydia's household. The slave girl who was kind of you know, one of the media outlets letting people know all the current events and the juicy things that were happening in society, and then also the jailer's family. And so it doesn't look like very auspicious beginnings, at least from an American individualist perspective, but they know something. that many Americans miss out on, and they're rejoicing. They're singing praises to God in prison for what God has already accomplished. And we're going to be looking at what God was sovereignly preparing through Lydia. There are no wasted moments in God's plan. Even though the beginnings in Philippi seem small, we know that this wealthy businesswoman became a key inroad into this influential town, and the jailer became a point of contact for the military and the civic network of that city. And so, as I've already mentioned, if you can penetrate business and government, you've done pretty well. And when he cast the media demon out of the slave girl, she made their owners a lot of money, saying all of the things that were happening around town. And it really made the owners of that girl upset because they made a lot of money off of her. Anyway, because of these small inroads, Philippi very quickly becomes one of the healthiest and strongest of the New Testament churches. More than that, missions books say that her conversion was the tiny tip of a massive fulcrum which would quickly lead to the entire continent of Europe becoming Christian, and through Europe, missions spreading to the rest of the world. Are those missions books exaggerating what is going on here? I don't think that they are, and we'll see why in a bit. But one mission speaker said this, as we look back across the intervening 20 centuries, we can see that this is one of the most important events of all time. It changed the whole course of Western civilization. Perhaps no single event since the cross of Christ has so affected the world as Paul's seemingly unpretentious decision to cross a narrow neck of water to Philippi. Now, I bring all of this up because it's very easy to get discouraged with small beginnings. We get discouraged over detours and financial setbacks and slowdowns that God has orchestrated into our lives, but we need to stop and realize God is sovereign. If he's orchestrated this slowdown, if he's orchestrated this financial setback, there is something good that is going to happen. If you study the sovereignty of God, you begin to realize God uses even setbacks to His glory. He is always doing something great, yes, even through our supposed setbacks. But let's look at the prayer meeting at the river. And commentators say it was the Ganges River. They hadn't been doing too well in the city. They couldn't even find a synagogue. And so they travel about one and a quarter miles outside the city to the edge of the river. And why did they do that, first of all? Well, I think the reasons are hinted at in verse 13. Verse 13 says, and on the Sabbath day, we went out of the city to the riverside where prayer was customarily made, and we sat down and spoke to the women who met there. Two things to know. First of all, they have not been able to find a single man, Jewish man in that city. And in a city that size, that should be surprising, what's going on there. And then secondly, when they get there, all they find, they do find somebody surprisingly, but They are only women, and they are not even Jewish women. They are Gentile women. But why would he say that it is customary for them to pray there? Josephus records a Jewish decree that if there is no synagogue, people could gather on the Sabbath by the waterside for prayer. You can see that in His Antiquities 14, section 258. Now, because it was a decree, any Jew who was traveling into the city and there was no synagogue, they knew immediately, we're going to go to the water supply source, and there's probably a prayer meeting going on out there somewhere. So it's the perfectly logical place for Paul to look on the Sabbath. A second reason why they met outside the city was probably because of persecution. The year before, which would have been AD 49, Emperor Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome for what he blames as creating a religious disturbance. You can put a side note of Acts 18 verse 2, where it says because of that decree, Apollos had to leave. He was kicked out of the city of Rome. And so God providentially used that as well. But here's why this is significant. Luke mentions in verse 12 of our chapter that Philippi is a Roman colony. Why does that little word colony make a big difference in our interpretation? Well, colonies were always considered outposts of the city of Rome. They were districts directly under the control of Rome, just like the District of Columbia is directly under the control of the United States Congress. They're not their own independent entity. And so it is almost certain that all of the Jews had been expelled out of Philippi the year before, AD 49. A decree in Rome would automatically be a decree that would have to be followed in Philippi. Well, that helps to explain verses 20 through 21. And they brought them to the magistrates and said, these men, being Jews, exceedingly trouble our city, and they teach customs which are not lawful for us, being Romans, to receive or observe. Now, the owners of the girl that Paul had cast the demon out of were furious at Paul for their lost income. So they were looking for a way to get even. And when you start attacking the media, Or competing with the media, like Gab and Rumble and Epoch Times and others start to do. They're gonna fight back. They're gonna do everything in their power to get you defunded or to take you out. And if you're a Christian media outlet, it'll be even worse. But anyway, when the owners of The Girl discovered that Paul and Silas were Jews, oh, they thought, this is going to be easy. They bring them immediately to the magistrate and they say, it's unlawful for us to even look at what these people are doing. What law are they appealing to? Well, they're appealing to the law, the decree of Claudius, a Caesar that was given the year before. So Paul and Silas have the exact same charge brought against them that was brought against the Jews the year before in Rome. They didn't want Jews in that city. And so the likelihood is that any Jewish population that had been present in the past was now moved to another city in Macedonia. So if the Jews left, who were these women? And commentators say they couldn't have been Jews because it was illegal for Jews to live there at all. And so commentators say these were Jewish, not Jewish, these were Gentile women who had not converted to Judaism, but who were worshiping the God of the Jews. And so they were technically considered to be God fearers. John Polehill says that being friendly to Jews would have still made them somewhat suspect in the city, and so they decided to meet by the river. But because of God's sovereign expelling of the Jews, the lack of Jews spared the church of Philippi from all of the Judaizing problems plaguing the churches. So God knows what he's doing. The first church needs to be an extremely strong base from which to penetrate the rest of Europe. And so Claudius's tyrannical decree actually ended up protecting this church in some ways. Back to our story, because of the edict, Paul knows that the likelihood of finding any Jews praying by the river is slim, But surprisingly, when he goes to investigate, he finds, whoa, there are some women here. On further investigation, he finds out they're Gentile women, and yet this is God's penetration point into Europe. Out of weakness, God brings strength. Out of the most unlikely circumstances, God creates what will be one of the strongest churches in New Testament times. Now, the third unlikely thing that we see is who gets converted. It's a single mom. And I love the way God works. Paul, no doubt, had his plans of what would strategically be the best way to reach this city, but they weren't having any success whatsoever. And God and His sovereignty surprises them. Verses 14 through 15. Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira who worshiped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay. So she persuaded us. Now there are three things that make Lydia's house, from an American perspective, a very unlikely base for operations. First of all, she was a single mom. We don't know when she lost her husband, but she's a single mom. Second, her main home is not even in the city, so she's a foreigner. That would lessen her influence in Philippi and Europe. She's not a European at all. Her hometown is smack dab in the middle of Asia, in the town of Syetira. where no church has yet been planted. So this means she's a foreigner. It would lessen her influence to some degree. And third, she was friendly to Judaism, which made her a suspect in the city, at least if they knew about it. But think of what God was orchestrating. I just love what God's doing behind the scenes, surreptitiously undermining Satan's kingdom. First, to be a seller of purple from Thyatira meant that she was extremely wealthy, extremely wealthy. All of our historical and archaeological evidence shows that this was a rare and lucrative market with a secret recipe that nobody has discovered until recent times. And I looked at one guy who's been trying to make this dye using this ancient recipe. But anyway, they've not been able to find that, and it involved trapping hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Murex sea mollusks. Then extracting color from a little clear pigment. It's not colored inside of this mollusk. It's about two little drops in each mollusk. And then that needs to be oxidized with salt in order to change its color. And it little by little changes colors from blue to red to purple. And then they have to reduce that down to about an eighth of a drop, and then they have to grind up all of the shells. And it's a process that's extremely difficult and tedious to make over time. Apparently it took 60,000 Murex sea creatures to produce one pound of dye. That's really incredible. And that made this die far more expensive than gold per weight. Its cost ranged from a high of 15 times the price of gold to an absolute low of three times the price of gold. It got low because the emperors got fed up with paying such high prices, and so they engaged in price control. Nothing new under the world. in price control to bring the price down by law to three times the price of gold. They didn't want it to be too cheap because they still wanted to be the only ones that could afford this. And so even back in 301 AD, it still was so expensive to get any of this stuff that usually wealthy people only had a tiny stripe, maybe on a shawl or a part of their of their garment. But that was not true in AD 50. Just so you can get a little bit of a comparison of ideas, even with the modern methods of extracting with machinery this stuff, They've been trying to do that. A gram of dye today made the original way, but with modern machinery. A gram is not very much, but a gram of dye costs $3,725 today. And a gram of dye is not gonna dye very many garments. So you can see this was expensive stuff that she was selling. Lydia was probably dealing in the hundreds of millions of dollars every single year. She had an incredible business going. This was a luxury item. It was an item of prestige. Ben Witherington points out that within a few years, this particular color became an imperial monopoly. You know, the government always likes to monopolize the best stuff, right? It became an imperial monopoly, and they protected the guilds who would only serve the emperor and any other wealthy people that the emperor wanted them to serve. That was not the case, though, in A.D. 50. Everyone was trying to get a little bit of purple into their wardrobe if they could afford it, because it was a prestigious thing. And the point is, she was a very wealthy businesswoman because she was needed. Second, this was a product, as I've already mentioned, that only the wealthy of the city could afford. So this meant she had contacts with the most influential places in the city. It was a highly sought-after product among the wealthy and the influential. Now, there is some evidence. I can't prove it absolutely, but there is some evidence that Lydia had a monopoly on this product in Philippi. It does appear that within about two centuries, there were guilds besides Lydia's thing that had it. But at this time, she probably had a monopoly, which meant she was in the perfect position of influence in Philippi. Third, since this is a second home for her when she traveled back and forth from Thyatira, this meant that Paul now has contacts for reaching Thyatira with the gospel without ever sitting foot in Thyatira. And in fact, it does become a city with a church within a very short period of time. One of the letters to Revelation that's written 16 years after this. already shows a thriving church in Thyatira. And we aren't told if it was because of Lydia and her contacts, but it makes perfect sense to me. Fourth, because of her business connections, which were obviously international, there are numerous other contacts that Paul will be able to make. And so in hindsight, Lydia proves to be one of the best contacts that Paul could have made in this city. Now, Paul's team is not able to live with her very long before getting kicked out of the city. But her homes, plural, become bases of outreach throughout Asia and Europe. And contacts from the jailer would help out as well. So the whole history of this I think is absolutely fantastic. And this is something that modern missions is finally picking up on. Missions always used to do this, but modern missions in the last 150 years has not done it. So they finally picked up on this, hallelujah. The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization has in more recent years recognized that missions in the past has been the most successful when Christianity begins to capture one or more of the seven influence spheres within a society. Business being one of them. In a 2005 Lausanne article, David Clayton focused on the phenomenal way that businesses have opened up country after country that has been completely closed to the gospel. It got opened up because of business. And the point is money and influence can sometimes pave the way for the gospel. We ought not to think of that as a bad thing. It was God's strategy in this case. And it's actually easier than sending missionaries in. This article said, it is easier to teach ministry to a business person than to teach business to a mission person. They, that is, business people, focus on good business practice and integrating ministry into the business rather than starting a mission and trying to posture it as a business. If the business thrives, so does ministry to its employees and community, all without foreign funding or donations. Now, I'm not surprised at all that they have said that it's easier to teach a businessman how to engage in missions and ministry than it is to teach a guy who's graduated from seminary, because that guy didn't know anything about economics or business, even though the Bible is full of economics and business. But it's just the kind of training that people have nowadays. So anyway, another paper called Business as Mission Manifesto states, we call upon the church worldwide to identify, affirm, pray for, commission, and release business people and entrepreneurs to exercise their gifts and calling as business people in the world among all peoples and to the ends of the earth. We call upon business people globally to receive this affirmation and to consider how their gifts and experience might be used to help meet the world's most pressing spiritual and physical needs through business as mission. SIM. the organization my parents were with, Navigators, many other missions agencies are beginning to adopt some of this. Gary and I have a friend out of Nebraska, actually, who has looked for strategic people in other countries where they can train them on how to set up their own businesses. And when there is enough Christian businesses in a community, they begin to have a leverage impact upon that society. Vishal and Ruth Mongawati's fabulous book on William Carey shows how this more comprehensive approach to missions is why missions did so well in the church all the way up and through the 1800s and was far more successful than modern missions. Douglas Leighton's book, Our Father's Kingdom, the Church and the Nations, I think does a fantastic job of illustrating through his own experiences on the mission field why we need to go back to this more comprehensive approach. Andrew Sandlin said about Leighton's book, you are holding in your hands the most revolutionary book on the topic of Christian missions written in the last 100 years. And Gary and I would probably both agree. We give out that book like crazy. The point is, that we need to penetrate and eventually capture the seven spheres of society. Support alternative media. Turn off the rascals that are trying to completely brainwash the public. Turn off the mainstream TV. Turn off all of these other medias. Support alternative media. Like William, we need to support Christians seeking to penetrate the arts. Christians should be on the cusp of using new technology for Christ's kingdom. Woo-hoo! Thank you for helping me with new technology. We can no longer neglect the seven most important and influential spheres of society. So, that's the first major lesson from Lydia. Her business connections formed a wonderful launching pad for missions into Europe. and we should value the Christian businesses in our circle of friends. Christian business, I think, is a key to the spread of Christianity. But let me quickly summarize all of the ways in which God's sovereignty is also written all over this story. So this is the second level, God's sovereignty. I've already mentioned that God was sovereign over the trip, over Paul's guidance. The second, God was sovereign over finding this woman. If she had been traveling to one of her other outposts, then she would never have met up with Paul. Okay, so she and Paul had to be at the right place at the right time. Third, God was sovereign over the success that Lydia had in her business, and over the influence that she could exert, and over bases of operation that she had in Europe and Asia. He was sovereign over causing her to become interested in Judaism, but he was also sovereign in not letting her get converted yet, otherwise she would have been kicked out of the city. And the fact that she'd already been trained in a lot of Judaism meant that he didn't have to undo all of the polytheism and the evolutionism and other crazy worldview ideas. She's already adopted enough of these worldview ideas that the discipleship would go very, very quickly. And then finally, God was sovereign over the nature and the timing of Lydia's conversion. Notice that verse 14 says, the Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. Now, God could have opened her heart earlier, but he chose not to do so. He could have opened the hearts of the other women, the God-fearers that were praying by the side of the river, but he chose not to do so. He could have given success to the work of Paul and his team in the earlier days. We don't know if he was there a week or two, but in the earlier days, but he chose not to do so. In your outlines, I've written down seven indications of God's sovereignty in her salvation. As Voddie Bauckham worded it in a meme that I read this past week, quote, the gospel is not about how special you are. It's about how sovereign God is. And I say, amen. Let's look at these seven indicators of God's sovereignty in her salvation. First, out of the millions in that city, God chose to bring only three conversions while they were there. As I've already mentioned, Lydia, the slave girl that was demon-possessed, and the Philippian jailer. She no doubt heard God's word many, many times before, but for the first time in her life, her heart was open to those scriptures. She was riveted by the message of Paul. OK, she couldn't help herself. The Bible came to life within her and she came to life. She came to salvation through that word. But God was sovereign in choosing her. As Romans 9 says, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion. Therefore, he has mercy on whom he wills and whom he wills. He hardens. Now, was she any better than any of those other women that were praying by the riverside? Probably not. I mean, maybe she was, but he picked one socially good person and he left a whole bunch of other socially good people behind. But let's dig deeper into that phrase. When verse 14 says the Lord opened her heart, it implies that her heart had previously been closed, right? You can't open something that's not closed. So her heart had been closed before. And what's remarkable about that is she was a seeker. She was what you would call a seeker, and yet her heart was closed. She prayed, and yet her heart was closed. Now, the word used for worship is the word sebo. It's not the normal word for worship. It just means going through the outward motions. She went through the outward motions of worship, and yet she had a closed heart. How is this even possible? Surely such a wonderful lady could not have a closed heart, but she did. This is a critical theological truth to understand. Apart from God's grace, all hearts are closed to God, no matter how outwardly good they may seem. We speak of this as being the depravity of man, or the bondage of the will, or the hardness of a person's heart. Even the most religious of men and women have hearts that are closed and impregnable to the gospel until God opens their hearts. They may go to church, but they're going to church with closed hearts. They may pray like she did, but they're praying with closed hearts. They may go through the motions of worship, come to prayer meetings like she did, yet with closed hearts. They may be caring parents like Lydia appears to have been. And yet their hearts are closed to the gospel. Now, if you'd looked at Lydia apart from these scriptures, you might have thought she was a nice lady, devout lady. You know, surely she is a woman who's got a soft heart to God. And yet scripture is clear that her heart was slammed so tightly shut it would take a sovereign work of God's grace to open it. And I want you to listen carefully to a series of scriptures I'm going to read to you about the nature of every human heart without God's grace. And I'll start with Genesis 6, verse 5. This describes the state of every man, woman, and child that died in Noah's flood. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, so that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." That's an astonishing statement. Most people say, how could that be? Only evil continually. Nothing good in man. What does Isaiah 64 say? Verse 6 says that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rats. Now, it doesn't deny that we do good things, but it says those good things, those righteousnesses are filthy rats. You could liken it to an omelet, you know, that's got 11 good eggs and you throw in one slimy, green, smelly egg. Well, all the omelet is ruined. It stinks. It's unacceptable to eat. And in the same way, even the good things that we do are so polluted by inward sin that it's unacceptable to God. It's like that rotten omelet. Proverbs says that even the plowing of the wicked is sin. Proverbs 21, verse 4. And lest you think that these kind of descriptions are only true of adults, I'll read next passage, Genesis 8, verse 21. And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. This was because of the sacrifice of Noah that pointed forward to Christ. The Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake. Although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. It says from youth, the imaginations of man's heart is evil. How far back in their youth does that go? Well, Psalm 58.3 says, the wicked are restrained from the womb. They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. And yes, babies can lie just with the way that they cry. They learn which cries will get them picked up, you know. You think they're hungry and then they're not hungry. Yes, they can lie very, very early, though the human heart makes all kinds of counterfeit religion in order to make us look somewhat good. It is close to a true submission to God. Deuteronomy 529 says, Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear me and always keep my commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever without an open heart. They cannot fear God. They cannot truly keep his commandments. They cannot avoid judgment. I'm reading all of those scriptures because a lot of people have a hard time believing that a wonderful woman like Lydia could have a closed heart. Deuteronomy 29 verse 4, yet the Lord has not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear to this very day. So he says, it takes God's sovereign work in our lives for us to be able to see spiritually and understand spiritually, to perceive. And yet this verse speaks of God's sovereignty. He decided not to give them that heart. He could have given them a heart to believe, but he decided not to do so. Deuteronomy 30 verse 6 says that when God does heart surgery, people will always come to God irresistibly. The result of faith flows irresistibly from regeneration. Deuteronomy 30 verse 6, and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to, here's the result of that circumcision of the heart, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul that you may live. What is the only way that we can have life? It's for God to do open heart surgery on us. We call this regeneration or the new birth. 1 Corinthians 2.14 says, But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Most people do not recognize the degree of the depravity of our hearts. how sin has affected us. They do not understand it. They fool themselves into thinking that they're really better than the scriptures describe them as being, and they don't really need this new heart, which involves a new orientation to our mind, our will, our affections, even our conscience. Jeremiah 17, 9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can understand it? So the unregenerate are so self-deceived, they don't even understand their heart. Ezekiel 11, 19 says, then I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within them and take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh. I hope you can see in this imagery, every image or metaphor of our regeneration of the new heart, we are passive and God is the sovereign actor who acts upon us. Regeneration is likened to a resurrection from the dead. Ephesians 2, 1 says, and you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins. A corpse can't do anything on its own. It just lies there. It takes the work of God to resurrect a spiritual corpse. The Bible speaks of regeneration of the heart as being a new creation. How did God create the world? Did it just evolve into its place? No. God spoke the world into existence, and He did every aspect of creation. 2 Corinthians 4, 6 says, it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness who was shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So it's a sovereign, we call this monergism. Mono is one, only one, and ergo is work. God is the only one who is at work in our regeneration. Lydia cannot take credit for her conversion. I've had people object to this Calvinistic doctrine of a closed heart, and they will say, churchgoers are obviously seekers who have hearts that are soft to God. But I want you to think of Lydia. She worshipped before her heart was opened. She worshipped. Her heart was closed to God. Here's what Jesus said to the worshippers of his own day. These people draw near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. You can go to church. You can look just like a Christian. You can go to every meeting just like Lydia and yet have closed hearts. I knew one man in our previous church who if you were to watch him worship, you would have thought this man is on fire for the Lord. He always had a face radiating, smiling, raising his hands in worship. He must have a soft heart to God. But when the girl that was in our church didn't want to be connected with him any longer, he quit going to church. In fact, he left the faith. He told me later, I was just pretending to be a Christian. The only reason I was going to church was to get that gal. He was worshiping with a radiant face and a smile the whole time with a heart that was utterly closed to God. We cannot deceive ourselves into thinking because we go through the motions of worship, that's the word sebo, that we are right with God. Like these religious people, he drew near to God with his mouth and honored God with his lips, but his heart was far from God. 2 Corinthians 3.15 says of the worshiping Jews of Paul's day, but even to this day when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. This is an incredible description of a closed heart. He's got a veil completely and wrapping that heart so that the light of the gospel cannot get in. No wonder Romans 3 says, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good. No, not one. Now, it was a long list of scriptures, but I wanted you to see that as a background to properly understanding Lydia. Going back to Acts 16 verse 14, it says, now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She heard us. There was nothing wrong with her physical ears. It was her heart needing change, not her ears. She heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira who worshiped God. So you can worship and be as lost as sin. It's not the normal word for worship, it means going through the motions, but praise God, the text goes on to describe his sovereign mercy. The Lord opened her heart. Doesn't say she opened her heart, doesn't say Paul opened her heart. No, this is a sovereign work of God, open heart surgery. The Lord opened her heart, and notice that as soon as she is regenerated, God gives her faith. The text says the Lord opened her heart to heed, that's the result of the open heart, to heed the things spoken by Paul. That's faith. Armenians say that faith results in regeneration. They say that when you believe, you get a new heart. This text says the exact opposite. It says the new heart comes first. Let me give you some examples of regeneration coming first and then resulting in faith and repentance and love. Jeremiah 24 verse 7 says, then I will give them a heart. So that's regeneration, right? Then I will give them a heart to know me that I am the Lord. There's the resultant conversion. Until you're given a new heart, you can't know the Lord personally. 1 John 5.1 uses the perfect tense for being born again and the present tense for belief, and that means the present tense, that verb happened before the belief. So it says, whoever believes, present tense, that Jesus is the Christ, has been born of God. If he believes, he was already born of God before that belief. Which means you couldn't even have a second of belief without already having a regenerate heart. Now I'll give you a long, long chart of similar scriptures. All of these scriptures highlight the fact that salvation is 100% of God and we can take no credit because we did not make the first move. It's no wonder that the Bible says over and over that faith and repentance are a gift of God's grace. He sovereignly gives faith to some, and He doesn't give faith to others. John 6, verse 44 says, No one can come to Me, so coming to Him is faith. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him. Acts 3, verse 16 speaks of the faith which comes through Him. Acts 18.27 speaks of those who would believe through grace. Ephesians 1.19 speaks of us who believe according to the working of His mighty power. Without His mighty power working in us, we would not come to faith. Ephesians 2.18 calls faith a gift of God. Acts 5.31 says that God gives repentance, and Acts 11.18 says God grants repentance. And even the sudden interest in good works that Lydia shows in Acts 16.15 flows from a regenerated heart. that has been changed by God's grace. Ephesians 2.10 says, for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. He chose even the good works that we are engaged in. He is sovereign. Philippians 2.13, which is the letter that he later wrote to this church, he says, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. God is the one who even makes you willing. It's all of grace, sovereign grace. And when you begin to see that God's sovereignty covers it all, then the infant baptisms of Lydia's kids and of the jailer's kids make perfect sense. It's not our choice that counts, it's God's choice of us. And God has chosen to include our children in the covenant, so we apply the sign of the covenant to that. God symbolized his choice by having us baptize babies before they even know what is going on. And I think it's a beautiful symbol of monergism, as is the pouring of water. It's God's action, not our action, that makes the difference, right? What basis do we do it? God's choice. He says, I will be a God to you and to your descendants after you. But think of the implications of this. If it is based on His choice, then that's very encouraging. If God has chosen to have our children placed in the covenant, then we can have a much higher confidence that our children will grow up regenerated and at some point will believe. It's not by accident that over the past 2,000 years, the vast majority of believers have come from the parents who are believers. Rejoice in God's sovereign choice. I think it can give you comfort. This is why Jonah says, salvation is of the Lord. If it wasn't of the Lord, we would feel hopeless. Why pray to God for somebody's salvation if salvation's not of the Lord anyway, right? We pray to him because he's the one who can change people's hard hearts. And then once you have tasted of that sovereign grace, you cannot help but devote your life to serving his people, as Lydia does in verse 15. When she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay. So she persuaded us. Salvation results in eager service. And that actually could have been another point in this sermon, but we're not going to cover that. If we're truly saved, you're going to want to serve the Lord. But let me end with two more applications from the life of Lydia. First, don't treat your jobs, your work, as unimportant in Christ's kingdom. It can be a leveraged point of influence for Christ's kingdom. Many historians of the Protestant Reformation have pointed out that it was businessmen, many times, that spread the gospel like wildfire. And it wasn't just the import businesses that smuggled Bibles in or the printing businesses that printed illegal Bibles. It was the cobblers and the street vendors and international traders and the winemakers and restauranteurs and weavers. There are all kinds of businessmen who use their spheres of influence to get this message of the Reformation out. If we are bold to declare Christ, and if our business is a good reflection on Christ and His kingdom, then our witness can be powerful. And this passage indicates that women can be business owners. We have looked at what a phenomenal businesswoman Katie Luther was. She inspired many other women to use their businesses to grow God's kingdom. Second, Lydia's home was a powerful leverage point for the kingdom. Look at how eagerly Lydia sought to share her home with these ministers of God. She begged them to stay. And this was opening things up to a pretty large team that included at least Paul, Luke, Timothy, Silas, but there appears to have been others on that team as well. But anyway, enthusiasm for hospitality. I think that's a work of God's grace. And notice that she was willing to identify her home with jailbirds. How would this affect her business? If she was just thinking about her business, she might think, eh, I don't know what other customers are gonna think if I have you in my home. No, she welcomed them in. She didn't worry about the negative thoughts. And neighbors who looked on must have thought, wow, these guys can't be all that bad if Lydia's welcoming them in. Hospitality's a great way of serving the Lord. It shows all the neighbors who you're willing to identify with. Verse 40 mentions the brethren that were at Lydia's home, implying that they were, by this time, there were some new converts. But that means there was already a small church meeting in her home. So this is another way that your home can be a leverage point, is having Bible studies and prayer meetings and even new small churches, you know, beginning to develop out of that home. As many books have pointed out, the church in her home became the start of Christ's kingdom taking over Europe. Now, in our church, we have women whom God has strategically placed in areas of influence, in business, in medicine, in education, married to church officers, and various other ministries. And I want us to pray that God would supernaturally leverage their influence for the advancement of His kingdom. Amen. Father, I thank you for the example of Lydia. And what a difference one purse can make if they're sold out for you. And I pray that each member of this church would be sold out to you and want their lives to be leveraged for the kingdom, want their homes to be leveraged, their businesses, everything that they do to reflect your grace and thus being prospered by you. And so we pray for your blessing to rest upon this, your congregation. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen.