Conversion Across Social Classes

Danny Watton

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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!

English Standard Version Chapter 16

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. He was the ultimate sacrifice.

Lydia after hearing this message responded to the Gospel. It was beautiful to her and realized that this makes sense.

So we see here that Lydia, like Cornelius, was religious. But she didn’t have Jesus. And this conversion of a religious women understanding that Jesus was the way to salvation and nothing else.

Her religious acts could not save her. Lydia’s act of trying to earn her salvation was outside in.

If she obeyed the law then she could earn her right standing with God.

But Christianity is inside out.

We are changed inside through the Holy Spirit and because of His love for us we want to do good things. Not because we earn salvation but because He loved us first and we have an outpouring of love towards others.

So, Lydia through a regular conversation saw the Beauty in what Christ did and see was forever changed by Christ. No longer was she burdened by the Law but freed from the Law.

Slave Girl

Gospel for the oppressed

The slave girl is the opposite of Lydia in many ways.

Lydia was wealthy and the slave girl was poor, but not just poor she was a slave.

She was being exploited and taken advantage of. She did not have the success that Lydia had.

Quite the opposite.

And the slave girl was not religious. She didn’t attend a Bible study but rather it says she was demon possessed. This slave girl opened herself up to demon possession because she gave into debauchery. She began playing with fortunetelling she did not have Christ in her.

She was opposite of Lydia. So, if Lydia was a wealthy business owner then it might be appropriate to say that the slave girl was a drug addicted prostitute.

But we see the slave girl hounding Paul and Silas.

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.”

It’s hard to say why the slave girl was doing this. But how was she reached? It wasn’t like Lydia through a conversation but rather through a powerful experience.

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.

She was not trying to support Paul and Silas but rather she was antagonizing and taunting them, trying to derail their attempts to spread the Gospel.

We know this because demons are not going to aid the message of Jesus.

As she was demon possessed and we see this annoyed Paul and he was fed up.

If she was trying to support and further the Gospel Paul would have not been annoyed but rather embraced her as a disciple of Jesus.

But that wasn’t the case here. So Paul turned to her and commanded the demon to leave the slave girl.

The slave girl was liberated. She was not only liberated and freed from the demon possession but also saved from her human masters that were making money off of her. She no longer could make her masters money because she no longer could tell the future. And this angered her masters.

But before we look at what happened next, how do we know that the slave girl was now a Christian?

It doesn’t say that she was converted and baptized like it did with Lydia and Cornelius or the jailer, but I think that we can make a valid assumption that she was converted and now is in Heaven with Christ.

Christ Taught

43 “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. 45 Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.”

If an evil spirit leaves a person and that space that it occupied was not filled with something, mainly the power of God, then it would return with even more demons and occupied that space.

And I believe that did not happen to the slave girl.

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.

She could no longer make her masters money and it looks like something moved in. The Holy Spirit moved in. And once the Holy Spirit occupies that space no demons can dwell where God dwells. I think we can assume that the slave girl is a part of the family of God and this is another conversion story.

So Paul and Silas were seized because of this and thrown in Prison and that’s where we see our last conversion

Jailer

Gospel for the secular

The Jailer is a Roman soldier.

How do we know this. All civil servant jobs were given to retired Roman soldiers. So we look at this Romans soldiers life and see how it compares to the other two conversion stories that we see.

He is neither the major success story that Lydia is and is not the hot mess that the slave girl is.

We can gather that the Roman soldier was not wanting to seek an intellectual/spiritual conversation with Paul or looking for an emotional experience.

He has reached the end of his career and is enjoying the fruits of his hard work. He has left a good legacy and is ready to go to work to probably make some extra vacation money and nothing else.

He had the midnight shift and a cake retirement job. He could take a nap and it would be pretty near impossible for any of the prisoners to escape. He has his honor and reputation and that’s all he needs.

But the jailer is a normal guy. He is not seeking God nor is he in spiritual turmoil. And we see Paul bring the Gospel to Lydia and we see Paul bring the power of the Gospel to the slave girl.

But he doesn’t do that with the jailer. He brings the love of the Gospel to Him. Let’s look how he does that.

The jailer receives Paul and Silas after they have been beaten. Oozing from the beating that they received and almost beaten to death. He has no sympathy for them and we see that he puts the in the inner most cell and chained their feet to the wall.

And what the jailer is about to witness will change his life forever.

So the Jailer sees that Paul and Silas react to suffering in a way that he has never seen before. They are praying and singing hymns to God. And it wasn’t quietly to themselves. Everyone could hear them. The prisoners and the jailer. Their joy was rooted in something so deep that you could take everything away from them and they will still be praising God

Side note!!! That’s how I want us to worship on Sunday. I want us to lift our voices so high that people driving by can hear us. Let’s do that for our closing song.

And the second thing that the jailer sees is the great earthquake that opens all the jail cell doors.

It shook so hard that it shook the foundations of the jail and opened all the prisoner doors. And when he woke up he realized that all the doors where open and feared that all the prisoners were gone.

Why wouldn’t they be gone?

And in those days if you lost any prisoner the jailer would pay for it with his life. They would execute him.

So he draws his sword to kill himself.

Really he was dead anyway and he would be saving himself from the public humiliation.

But Paul and Silas knew that once the doors were open they could escape. They didn’t deserve to be there. But what they did know is that if they escaped the jailer would be executed. And if the other prisoners escaped then they would get their freedom at the cost of the jailers life.

But we see something remarkable. Paul and Silas keep the other prisoners in their cells.

Paul and Silas paid evil with a blessing.

The jailer has never seen anything like this before.

Paul and Silas could do this because Jesus had repaid evil with good. He died on the cross and Paul and Silas didn’t need freedom at the expense of the jailer because Jesus had already granted them freedom for eternity.

And what happens?

A theological conversation wouldn’t have worked for the jailer, an emotional experience wouldn’t have worked for him but the love of the Gospel immediately changed the jailers heart. We See

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. [1]

The jailer realizes that there was something different about Paul and Silas and he wanted it.

He needed it.

And Paul tells him about a man who forgives all sins. Who climbed on a cross to grant freedom for eternity. Who loves more than anyone who has ever lived. Who died and rose again three days later. And the jailer was baptized and all of his family.

Conclusion

What have we learned from these three cases?

The Gospel is for everyone.

One : The Gospel is for everyone. Its not for one type of person. That means the gospel is for the religious person who is trying keep the Mosiac law. The Gospel is for them. To lift their burden off of them and into the arms of Jesus. Its for the dug addicted prostitute. The murderers, thieves. The point is it is for everyone. So if you are here today and your saying that I am not the born again type. Then you are in the right place because Christianity is not for one type of person. Its for all people. And if you are thinking that your outlook will exclude you from not accepting Jesus then you are mistaken. And the Christians in the room. If you look at anyone in your family, neighborhood and work centers and say that kind of person will never accept Jesus . And you are? Then you don’t understand the Gospel.

Its not for one type of person.

That means the gospel is for the religious person who is trying obey all the rules.

The Gospel is absolutely for them.

To be freed from a burden they could never carry on their own.

The Gospel is for the drug addicted prostitute. The murderers, thieves.

The point is it is for everyone.

So if you are here today and your saying that I am not the religious type.

Then you are in the right place because Christianity is not for one type of person. Its for all people. And if you are thinking that your outlook will exclude you from not accepting Jesus then you are mistaken. No one goes to the Father except through Jesus. You can’t get to heaven without Jesus.

And the Christians in the room. If you look at anyone in your family, neighborhood and work centers and say that kind of person will never accept Jesus .

Second

And you are? You were the perfect candidate to accept Christ? Your not!!! I am not!! If you think you are then you don’t understand the Gospel.

You still think that you have something in you that Christ needs. Your wrong. We have nothing that Christ needs but He has everything that we need. He loves us that much.

Go to Him. embrace Him and allow His love to change everything about you and everyone around you.