Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJames Nisbet Commentary - Acts 16:14 - 16:14
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.’
Act_16:14
I. An industrious woman.—We admire her for her industrious habits, her sensible, practical character. She was not ashamed to work for her living. She followed an honest trade, and apparently was a person of considerable independence of spirit. She was not a wearer of purple, but a seller of it. To be ‘clothed in purple and fine linen’ was a token of rank and wealth; to sell it was a sign that she belonged to what might probably be called the middle classes of society. The Jews of those times had far more sensible ideas than we in England have to-day as to what constitutes true gentility. Indeed, it was one of the enactments of their civil law that every young person should be taught some trade.
II. A devout woman.—We see here, too, a devout person, who faithfully avails herself of religious privilege. It was at the little meeting by the river-side, when she listened to the words of St. Paul, that her heart was really opened to receive the truth; but though only then did she experience the great change, she had evidently already felt an interest in Divine things. There was no eloquent preacher to attract her to that quiet spot by the river-side. She did not know that St. Paul was to be there. It was just ‘a place where prayer was wont to be made.’
III. A Christian woman.—We see here, not only an industrious and devout, but a really Christian woman, a converted person, ‘whose heart the Lord opened ‘to receive His truth. We are not informed what were ‘the things which were spoken of Paul,’ and which were divinely blessed to effect the saving change, but we can have little doubt on that point. ‘Jesus and His resurrection’ was his theme wherever he went. Her great desire was to place her house and substance at the disposal of her new and Divine Master, and to show all hospitality to His servants. Her home, such as it was, was at their service, and we have reason to believe was not refused; for on the liberation of St. Paul and St. Silas from prison they gladly bent their steps thither, and remained during their stay at Philippi; and on their departure, Luke and Timothy made it their headquarters whilst they followed up the work that had been begun, and set upon a firm basis the infant Christian Church of Philippi. No church afterwards had a more honourable record; no church yielded so much joy and satisfaction to the great Apostle of the Gentiles; and the significant fact should never be forgotten, that it owed its origin to the conversion of a woman.
Illustration
‘When Jenny Lind, at the height of her popularity, was visiting America, she was asked to write something in a private album, and she dipped her pen in ink and wrote—
“In vain I seek for rest
In all created good;
It leaves me still unblest,
And makes me cry for God.
And, sure, at rest I cannot be
Until my soul finds rest in Thee.” ’
LYDIA’S CONVERSION
Lydia was an attendant on the means of grace. Take heed that it may be said of you too, not now and then, but constantly.
(a) To whom the glory of the change belonged. The Lord opened her heart. Let the glory be ascribed to Him, to Whom it is due. To the right apprehension of this truth we need simplicity of faith and guidance from above. The Scripture gives all the glory of man’s conversion unto God.
(b) The gracious change itself. Pride, self-love, indulgence, thoughtlessness, ‘bars of iron, and gates of brass,’ yet ‘the Lord opened.’ Oh, the power of the change! Have you experienced it?
(c) The manner of the change. ‘She attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.’ What things? Humbling things; she hearkened to that which told her, ‘In thee dwelleth no good thing,’ she turned not away from the word of truth when it cast down self-righteousness. Mysterious things; the great mystery of godliness—‘God manifest in the flesh’; the doctrine of Christ crucified—‘to the Jews a stumblingblock, to the Greeks foolishness,’ to her was made ‘the power of God unto salvation.’ Heavenly things—absorbing things. Whatever she heard she gave heed thereto; conscience received the application.
II. And afterwards.
(a) She acknowledged Christ by obedience to His commands. Baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Mat_28:19), she ‘put on Christ’ as her Saviour and her God; she framed no excuses to avoid the open confession of her Lord.
(b) She claimed the promise for her household.
(c) She braved danger in the cause (Act_16:15). ‘Come in and abide’; the city might threaten, the cost might be burdensome, but to all this what would she reply? The Lord hath opened my heart, can I but open my house?
(d) She remained steadfast in the faith. At least the persecution that forthwith arose moved her not; the indignities done to St. Paul and St. Silas made her not ashamed, and though they were about to separate and necessarily leave her and a few others to combat their difficulties alone, ‘none of these things moved her.’ Hers was the house (Act_16:40) into which they retired on being brought out of prison; there they met the brethren, and thence they departed on their way.
—
Rev. Francis Storr.
Illustration‘The trade of Lydia was a profitable one, and in her wealth, joined to the affection which he cherished for the Church of Philippi beyond all other Churches, we see the probable reason why St. Paul made all other Churches jealous by accepting pecuniary aid from his Philippian converts, and from them alone.’
‘Whose heart the Lord opened.’
Act_16:14
I. Sympathy with truth.—And, first of all, there is our sympathy with truth, or rather, with Him Who is the Truth. He declared in the most solemn hour of His life that He came into the world to bear witness of the truth, and said that whoever was of the truth would hear His voice. The faith that saves is one, the vitality of which consists in trust in and love towards a personal Saviour. Religious reality is, in fact, to have our hearts in some sense and degree like those of the two disciples at Emmaus, burning within us as He—Christ, the subject of the revelation—interprets to us in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Here, then, is the inner essence of all true religion.
II. Sympathy with goodness.—‘He that receiveth a righteous man,’ says our Lord, ‘in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.’ He admires, in other words, the beauty of holiness, and is not without some hope, trembling though it be, not without some desire, however faint, that it may be seen. These, and such as these, are they whom Jesus called to Him, and continually addressed in the days of His flesh—the weary and heavy laden, they who felt a constant sense of discomfort as they saw something above and beyond them they could not attain, but were dissatisfied to remain where and as they were.
III. Sympathy with others.—We think of our Blessed Lord, of the depth of the force, of the reality of His sympathy. Touched with the feeling of our infirmities, tempted on all points like as we are, made perfect through sufferings, He traversed all the rounds of earthly experience. Sympathy was His, deep as the human heart, broad as human necessity, filling into every thought and feeling, and aspiration and condition, and experience possible or conceivable to us human beings; sympathy, which is the same to-day that it was yesterday, that should be for ever; for it is the sympathy not merely of man but of God, and therefore it cannot be weary or exhausted, not till seven times, but till seventy times seven; full as the fountains of heaven, He ever lives to love, to chasten, to soothe, to bless. Shall not the same mind be in us which was also in Christ Jesus?
(a) Some known to you have fallen deeply.
(b) A few may be sadly tried with doubts on religious questions.
(c) Then there is the poverty and misery which abound around us in our great centres of population, the appalling contrasts of modern civilisation—shall not our hearts, brethren, be open to feel it? It is true that we are familiar with it.
—
Dean Forrest.
Illustration‘Alas that there are so many who profess and call themselves Christians who take their very familiarity with suffering as a reason why they should not pause to examine into the appalling fact! The slave-owners of the Southern States of America at one time regarded slavery, with all its attendant atrocities, with all the misery connected with that pitiless traffic in human beings, as almost a kind of Divine institution, or, at any rate, they calmly accepted it as the necessary result, the unavoidable details of a predetermined kind of natural arrangement. But with what changed feelings, as I am given to understand, is slavery thought of now by the population of these States! It is seen in its true colours, and the descendants of the old slave-owners would no doubt feel it almost to be an insult if they were asked to defend what their forefathers regarded as something like sacrilege to attack.’