HOW GOD PREPARED THE WORLD FOR JESUS PERSONALLY
“And the Lord opened up her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.” Acts 16:14
Lydia was a Jewish business woman and she became the first recorded convert in Europe. In that town God saved a demented slave girl and a Roman jailor. They represent the upper class, the middle class and the lower class of Roman society. The word was ready for the gospel because the God who prepared it geographically and historically also prepared it in the hearts of men and women spiritually;
1. Spiritual Preparation
It is a miraculous fact of history that a religion born among a despised people, the Jews, in 200 Years (312-332 AD), had such an impact on Roman society that it was chosen by Rome as its religion to help cement its crumbling Empire. It is almost unbelievable that Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew, still looked down on by almost all nations, could be so universally held in reverence as He is today. This universal appeal began in the first century.
By the end of the first century the Bible says the gospel had been “preached to the whole world” and was bringing blessings (Col. 1:6). After one century the name of Christ was being sounded as Savior throughout all the world.
In the second and third centuries it burst the bonds of the Roman Empire and extended all the way from what is Russia all the way down to the Persian Gulf.
Why this rapid growth? How could an obscure Jewish sect rise in three centuries to become the official religion? How could the name of Jesus, a Jew, become a name of hope and salvation for people of every nation, every tribe and every language?
Ioffer the answer in a word - God. God worked it and God accomplished it. This was a 300 year revival and revivals are always God’s sovereign gifts to the church.
God had prepared the hearts of men to receive the gospel. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father Who sent me, draws him” (John 6:44).
The gospel is powerless to save without the preparatory work of the Holy Spirit. It is like seed scattered on the pavement or a match thrown into a river. But when the Christian gospel fell on to the first century world it fell like seed into rich, dark soil in hearts plowed by God.
DEPRAVITY
(Rom. 1:18-32)
God used Satan’s work against him. He let him drag people so low that they woke up to what they were and what they were doing. It was when the Prodigal really saw the hog pen that he longed for the Father’s house (Lk. 15).
The first century world was rotten to the core with all kinds of cruelty and violence and deviant sexuality – the very reasons God destroyed the world in Noah’s day and Sodom in Abraham’s day.
There was unparalleled luxury combined with abject poverty. One Emperor spent millions of dollars on food alone; even though he ruled for only eight months.
On the other end of the ladder were the sixty million slaves. To many people a slave was not a person but only a thing. A master, by law could torture, mutilate or kill his slave. Close to the slaves were the “rabble” - the lower class people for whom moral restraint was an unknown.
Unwanted children were thrown into the streets to starve and die, or be picked up and made slaves.
The low moral condition on every level of society was shocking. Pagan worship was characterized by three things: Sexual vice, drunkenness and gluttony.
In the worship of Aphrodite at Corinth a thousand priestesses devoted themselves to prostitution. One Emperor, talked about on the History Channel had a steady stream of slave children brought to him for his sexual pleasures. When he finished with him his servants threw them off the cliff near his palace to their deaths.
The cruelty was unbelievable. Loads and loads of sand were hauled constantly to the amp-theatres throughout the Empire to replace the sand stained with blood. People reveled in bloodshed. Crucifixions were common. The Greek philosophers saw and spoke of this. Virgil wrote: “Right and wrong are confounded.”
Tacitus in his history of the period wrote:
“I am entering upon the history of a period, rich in disasters, gloomy with wars, rent with sedition, savage in its very hours of peace ... All was one delirium of hate and terror.”
Matthew Arnold wrote,
“ On that hard pagan world, disgust and secret loathing fell / Deep weariness and sated lust, Made human life a hell.
(Quoted by William Barclay,“Paul- The Adventurer)”
Paul summed it up Romans 1:18-32:
“God has given them over to do the filthy things their hearts desire, and to do shameful things with each other ... God has given them over to shameful passions ... to corrupted minds ... they are filled with all kinds of wickedness, evil, greed, and vice ... they speak evil of one another, they are hateful to God, insolent, proud and boastful ... they think of more ways to do evil.”
DESIRE
“There was a man in Caesarea named Cornelius, a Centurion (Arny Captain). He was a devout man who feared God with all his household. He gave alms to the Jewish people and continually prayed.” Acts 10:1-2
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.” Matthew 5
The Centurions were the backbone of the Roman army. Only her best men- men of honesty, integrity, loyalty and courage were assigned. An amazing fact is that every NT reference to a Centurion presents him in a favorable light.
Cornelius was one who accepted the truths of Judaism and was loyal to their God.
God opened people’s eyes to all the filth and pain and made them long for something better. Made in God’s image all of us have a conscience which Scripture says is, “God’s laws written into our hearts.” (Rom. 2:14ff). It is warped; it is twisted; it is misguided but it is there as God’s “unbroken hold on the human heart”. It is that which makes the Prodigal realize he is eating with hogs.
All over the earth there was a longing for a better kinder world and a universal hunger for some kind of unifying Savior who could bond all peoples into a brotherhood.
Never before had man been so hungry for a revelation of truth from heaven. This was why the Wise Men traveled hundreds, and perhaps thousands of miles to Bethlehem saying, “We saw His star in the East, and have come to worship Him” (Matt. 2:2).
That is why Athens, with its hundreds of altars to diverse gods had one for “The unknown God” (Acts 17). Greek philosophers and Philo the Jewish philosopher were talking about the “Word” who was the word behind all words and the truth behind all truth.
John latched on to this and said the “word’s” name was Jesus (John 1).
The average man, from the top of society to the bottom was dissatisfied with the old ways and the evils associated with them. Some, touched by God, like the Roman captain Cornelius (Acts 10) were looking for a nobler life and was helping the poor.
Man is not content to live forever in the dirt. It is to the pig-pens of life that the Holy Spirit often comes and does His best work. Until God intervenes prodigals love the hog pen (Lk. 15). But when God comes He instills a holy discontent, a sacred dissatisfaction toward this lower level of life which is the first ray of hope.
It was to these many thousands of dissatisfied men and women that news of forgiveness and the power to change into loving fell like bread from heaven. Men, who by the grace of God were reaching up found a God who was leading them to reach up and was reaching down.
DELIVERANCE
“God sent His Son, born of woman, born under the Law.”
Galatians 4:4
1. Forgiveness
The Lord is salvation” and salvation means “to deliver or rescue”. Jesus paid our sin debt, suffered in our place and reached out His hand to that world with forgiveness, a rescue from he awful guilt of wrongdoing.
Paul wrote the Christians at Corinth:
“Do not be deceived- the fornicators, the idolaters, the adulterers, the effeminate, the homosexuals, the thieves, the covetous, the drunkards, the revilers, the swindlers, etc, will not inherit the kingdom of God- and SOME OF YOU WERE LIKE THAT. But
you were washed – you were sanctified – you were justified
in the name of the Lord.”
Early in my large pastorate a couple visiting our church came to see me. I knew their story but they told it anyway. He had been a church worker. He committed adultery with a young girl in the church. They had a baby and were now married. They told the story and asked if I still wanted them in our church. I said I did “on one condition”.
When I said that their hearts sank, and they thought “O no, here it comes.” Then I went on and told them my condition was that they leave the past behind and come into our churh saying, “Today is the first day of the rest of my life.” They went on to build a Christian family and to serve God in our church and in the world. That is the good news of forgiveness.
2. Changed Lives
The centurions in the NT were good men, made good by their contact with God. Cornelius helped the poor and because part of the Jewish church. One centurion built a synagogue. People truly touched by God’s Spirit want more than forgiveness, they want to live lives of love and usefulness. They cry:
O that one would arise in me
That the one I am would cease to be
David asked forgiveness for his adultery and murder but he also asked, “Create in me a clean hear O Lord” (Psalm 51). Spurgeon said to forgive us and not cleanse us would be like leaving a leper in his leprosy.
3. The Savior’s Salvation
All this is because of Jesus. The good news is the news of Jesus. God prepared His Son for His prepared world. The phrase “sent forth His son” points to His deity. Jesus Christ was God in the flesh.
The phrase “born of woman” points to His humanity. He was fully and completely a man. As man He reaches up for us and takes God’s hand; as God he reaches down to us and takes our hand.
Only He could stand between the Holy God and sinful man and bridge the gap between them. The phrase, “born under the law” means Jesus obligated Himself to live a sinless life, to completely live by the Law of God.
Against fierce temptations He never transgresses the law of God in thought, word or act. He did not die as a sinner, He died for sinners. He lived a life we could not live and presented it as a spotless sacrifice on our behalf (Eph. 5:1-2). He live a life we could not live and paid a sin debt we could not pay.
He laid down His life for us. He laid it down when He left heaven to become one of us. He laid it down for those thirty plus years when He was obedient in all ways. He laid it down when He died.
He was building a bridge between the Holy God and sinful man. He was throwing Himself across the awful chasm which separates us from our Creator and over which we could never cross.
A couple who had been divorced for several years accidentally met at the grave of their child one Christmas. The father had gone to place flowers and, unknown to him, his former wife had gone at the same time. They met on opposite sides of the grave.
Each, speechless, laid their flowers in place. And their eyes met and then, their hands and ultimately, their hearts. They were reconciled over the grave of their dead boy. God today reaches over the death of Christ to us who crucified Him and reaching back, we can find peace with God.
DUTY
“But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace, PREACH HIM AMONG THE GENTILES ...”
Gal 1:15-16 - Paul
Although God displays this awesome power in history and in the hearts of people, He still needs us to get the word out. As Paul said, “How shall they hear except through preaching.
After Paul was converted he later looked back and saw his life had been directed by God from the time he was in his mother’s womb. The success of Christianity moving from the Jews to Gentiles is because of Paul.
He was a prepared man for God’s prepared world. God had the Gentile world ready for a Paul and a Paul ready for a Gentile world.
He was a dedicated Jew, well versed in the OT. It opened doors to the synagogues. But he was part Gentile and grew up in Tarsus, one of the great learning centers in the Gentile world.
Thus he could quote their poets and writers as easily as He could the OT word of God. Here was a man uniquely prepared to be a bridge between the world of the Jew and the world of the Gentiles.
This is true of all of us. All of our life experiences have fitted us for our place in the kingdom. We cannot all be a Paul or a Billy Graham or a Mother Teresa. But we can all be what God wants and needs us to be.
David Livingstone was a ten talent giant for God. What Paul was to the first century he was to Africa. He broke open the dark continent and let in the light of Jesus. He was so devout that when a reporter named Stanley went to interview him he was converted. When asked what Livingston said to convince him he said, “Nothing. All I had to do was watch his life.”
Livingston died and the Africans buried his heart in Africa. When his body was sent back to England the tribe assigned a native to stay with it until it was buried, as was their custom. Livingstone’s body lay in Westminster Abbey as thousands, including government officials and royalty passed by. Standing there through it all was that native.
I believe with all my heart that when David Livingston when into heaven our Lord said, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”, and he got his rewards.
And it could be that that faithful tribesman, who did what was asked of him, will not only hear those same words, but might receive more rewards than Livingston. The same is true of each of us .
