A Woman, a Slave and a Gentile
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Welcome to Gospel in Life. We live in an increasingly fragmented culture, one in which it's more and more difficult to come to a consensus about what's true and what's right. As Christians, how do we navigate the challenges of living among competing worldviews and systems of thought? Join us as Tim Keller teaches on how we can live faithfully and wisely in this cultural moment. Good morning. Good morning.

The scripture reading for today is taken from the book of Acts, chapter 16, verses 13 through 34. On the Sabbath, we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God.

The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. If you consider me a believer in the Lord, she said, come and stay at my house. And she persuaded us.

Once, when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, "'These men are servants of the Most High God who are telling you the way to be saved.'"

She kept this up for many days. Finally, Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, in the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her. At that moment, the spirit left her.

When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, "'These men are Jews and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.'

The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, all the prison doors flew open, and everybody's chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped.

But Paul shouted, Don't harm yourself. We are all here. The jailer called for lights, rushed in, and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? They replied, Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house.

At that hour of the night, the jailer took them and washed their wounds. Then immediately he and all his family were baptized. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them. He was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God, he and his whole family. This is the word of the Lord. Christianity was born into a culture that was...

Every bit as resistant and unsympathetic to its claims as ours is. In those days, the people heard about it and Christianity sounded to the people in that original culture where it was born, sounded dangerous, sounded impossible, sounded outrageous, just like today. But the case for the truth of Christianity was made with such strength. People believed in it in such numbers that it changed that entire brutal society.

Now, what we've been doing is we've been looking at the book of Acts, because in the book of Acts, we see that case being made. The book of Acts was written to a theophilus. It was written to a man who was culturally and intellectually sophisticated, and each week we've been looking at how this message was made, how this case was made. Today, we stay in Acts, but for today and the next couple of weeks, we're going to change our focus a bit. Instead of looking at what the message is, we're going to look

at how the message came into the lives of people and actually changed people. What we have in the book of Acts are more case studies of conversion than you really have anywhere else in the Bible. More case studies of conversion. In fact...

In this particular passage, this particular chapter, chapter 16, we have almost, as I'll show you in a minute, it's almost been scientifically chosen. There were probably many conversions. There had to have been many conversions in Philippi. They started a church there, and there were no Christians there to start with. But Luke has chosen these three to show us both how incredibly different and yet how incredibly similar Christian conversions can be.

So we begin to understand, we're addressed, we're able to address the question, what does it mean to be a Christian? How do you become a Christian? Christian conversion. Let's take a look at these three case studies that Luke has very carefully selected to teach us something about what it means to be a Christian and how to become a Christian. We see Lydia, the slave girl, and the jailer. Lydia is a case of the gospel for the religious.

The slave girl is a case of the gospel for the oppressed. And the jailer is a case of the gospel for the secular. Let's first of all look at Lydia. First of the case studies is Lydia. Lydia, who is she? Profile her. She was wealthy. We see that she was a businesswoman.

She was a dealer in purple goods, which means since purple dye was extremely expensive, she was a retailer of fashion and luxury goods. She was therefore, in some sense, she owned her own home. She was probably wealthy. She was the CEO of her own company. She lived in Upper East Side. She had a house at the Hamptons. She had a house in Palm Beach.

And the other thing we see about her is that she was a moral and spiritual person. When it says that here, when it describes her as a worshiper of God, that actually was a technical term almost. It meant a Gentile who was reading the Hebrew Bible and trying to please and seek out the God of the Hebrew Bible.

And so when Paul went down to the water side to find this prayer meeting, this would be something like a kind of proto-synagogue meeting. It would have been a place where the Bible was being read and prayers were being offered. Now how does the gospel come to Lydia? And the answer is through a rational discourse. Because we're told here that her heart was open to Paul's message. It's a word that means a discourse, a discussion.

And the word respond, you see the word that says the Lord opened her heart to respond. The word respond means to be attracted. She had an aesthetic experience on the basis of a rational discourse. She got it. She saw the beauty of what? Well, this is almost certainly what would have happened. Paul would have come and said, tell me what you're learning about the God of the Bible.

And the women would have said something along these lines. They would have said, well, we've learned that he made a promise to Abraham, that through Abraham he would bless all the nations of the earth. And we also know he came to Moses, and through Moses he brought the great law of God, the Ten Commandments, a law that is wonderful but impossible to fully fulfill it. And then in addition to the law, God also gave to Moses the sacrificial system.

He gave them the tabernacle and the sacrifices. And though it's very mysterious and rather confusing, the sacrificial system means that there must be some way for atonement for sin to be made for the people who are unable to live up to this great law. Paul must have said, let me give you the key. Let me give you the key to the whole Bible. Let me make sense of it all. Jesus. Jesus is the fulfillment.

of Abram's promise. He's the one through whom all the nations of the earth can be blessed. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Mosaic law. He is the only human being who ever lived absolutely perfectly righteous life, loving God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind, loving his neighbor as himself. But on top of that, he was also the Lamb of God. He was the ultimate sacrifice. In other words, he came and he fulfilled the law perfectly.

So he earned the blessing that such a life deserves. But at the end of his life, he went to the cross and he took the curse that our life deserves. So that when I believe in him, my curse is transferred to him and his blessing is transferred to me. In other words, Paul says, every prophet, every priest, every hero, every lamb, every sacrifice, every suffering servant, every majestic Lord,

Every returning king is Jesus. They're all pointing to Jesus. And you see that word respond. It means that Lydia, we don't know about the others, but we know when Lydia listened to that, it was beautiful. It made sense. She had an aesthetic experience. She realized, wait, it clicks. The penny begins to drop. One of the things Paul was going to show her, and this is very important for you, because you see, the gospel doesn't make people religious.

The religious need the gospel. Lydia was religious, but she needed the gospel. And here's why. Because religion is outside in. If I really obey the law, really, if I live right, then God will come in and bless me. But Christianity is inside out. God, through Christ, completely loves and blesses me, and therefore, I try to please him. Those are two completely different dynamics, as we often say here. Because...

In religion, God is useful. I obey because he's useful. Why? My obedience is useful. I obey. If I obey, then God will give me things. God will bless me. He'll answer my prayers. He'll give me good health. He'll take me to heaven. I obey because God is useful. But in Christianity, you obey because God is beautiful. You don't obey him to get things because in Christ you've got everything. Why are you obeying him? Aesthetically, you're praising him.

The way C.S. Lewis puts it is, in his famous place in Reflections on the Psalms, he says, when you hear a piece of music or you see a beautiful sight or you feel like you've got to grab somebody else and praise it with them. You grab your friend and you say, look at this. Isn't this great? Why are you praising it? Because it's beautiful.

And the more you praise it, the more you enjoy it. Isn't that right? The more you praise it, the more you enjoy it. And the more you say, look at this. This is great. Look at the lines. Look at the colors. Look at this and that. The more you praise it, the more you're enjoying it, the more the other person's enjoying it, right? Why are you praising it? Does it need it? It's beautiful. An end in itself. Lydia had a God who was useful. But that day, she received a God who was beautiful. On that day...

Before that, she was not bearing false witness, not committing adultery, honoring her father and mother, observing the Sabbath. And after salvation, what happened? After the gospel came in, what happened? Did she start lying? Did she start committing adultery? No. Well, there's no difference. All the difference in the world. All the difference in the world. It's not a burden. It's not crushing.

She's not doing it because God is useful. Now she's doing it because God is beautiful. She obeys to enjoy him. She obeys to delight him. She obeys to praise him. And let me tell you something. That is a dynamic that will make you grow and grow and grow. And it won't drain you, but it will fill you. A rational discourse, right? A message. And she saw the beauty. It made sense. The whole Bible now made sense. The whole thing made sense.

The gospel for the religious. Religious people need the gospel more than anyone else, maybe, because they think they have it. And everybody else knows they can't because of how grumpy they are, or at least how burdened they are, or how guilty they are. If they're not grumpy, they're guilty, you see. If they think they're living up to their standards, they're not guilty, but they're grumpy, and they're harsh on everybody else. On the other hand, if they're not living up to their standards, they may not be grumpy, but they're guilty. Boy, they need it. Lydia got it. Rational discourse.

aesthetic experience, she saw the beauty. So first of all, we have Lydia and the gospel for the religious. Secondly, we have the slave girl and the gospel for the oppressed. Now let's look at this next case study. Clearly, Luke chose the slave girl to tell us about because she's the opposite of Lydia in several ways. First of all, she's economically the opposite. Lydia was financially wealthy. She was financially independent, we'd say.

The slave girl was not just poor, she was a slave. She was completely powerless, she was completely exploited. And they were also at the other end of the spectrum morally and spiritually. Lydia was moral and spiritual and read the Bible and went to and worship every Sabbath day. The slave girl wasn't just irreligious, she was demon-possessed. I mean, that's about as far in the other direction as you can possibly go.

And Lydia was quietly spiritually seeking, obviously. In a very quiet way, she was seeking God. This girl, it's kind of hard to say what she is, because she was literally hounding Paul and Silas. She was hounding them, and she was saying, these men are servants of the Most High that are telling you the way to be saved. She knew the truth, in other words, in some ways, of the three cases. She knew the most, and yet she was most troubled. She was most in pain.

I mean, you can't really say she's seeking. On the other hand, you can't really say that she's indifferent. She's filled with spiritual turmoil. If Lydia is a business owner who lives in the Upper East Side, it might be helpful to think of this girl as a teenage drug-addicted prostitute working under one of the East River bridges. And how does the gospel come into her life? The most interesting thing for us to notice is how different this is. Lydia was reached through reason.

Lydia was reached through a kind of rational discourse. This girl was reached through a power encounter, a deep existential power encounter in the deep recesses of her being. But this is the most interesting thing for us to notice, especially for us, especially for Christians to notice this.

is that she doesn't only have demonic masters, she has human masters. She's psychologically bound through the demons, but she's socially bound through human masters. She's exploited socially. She's the victim of social injustice as well as demonic oppression. See that? And when she's liberated by the gospel, she's liberated across the board.

She's not just liberated internally, personally, and individually. She's also socially liberated because when the demon is cast out, she no longer fits in the old exploitative economic system. And of course, the people who were making money off of her because she was demon-possessed, she was clairvoyant, and she could tell fortunes, and the people who were exploiting that and making money off of her were furious because, you see, what Paul and Silas were doing was social action.

And the powers that be were furious, and that's the reason why they were beaten, and that's the reason why they were pulled into the, they were upsetting the social system. Because this girl, in order to be liberated by the gospel, was not just liberated in an individual way, but in a social way.

Not just on the inside, but also, in other words, she didn't become a Christian just through an individual personal choice, but also through the confrontation of the structures, the powers that bound her spiritually, socially, and economically.

Now, if you want an example of what I'm trying to get at, here's a perfect example of it. A man named Robert Linthicum wrote a book some years ago, because I know some of you will email me and say, what's the name of the book? I'll tell you now, save you the stamp. And Robert Linthicum wrote a book called City of God, City of Satan. He was a Christian minister.

And he tells about the fact in 1957, excuse me, in 1957, he was, I guess, a student and worked in a church in an inner city area of some Midwestern city. And he worked for a church. He worked for a youth ministry.

For the summer, and this is what he tells about one woman he met, one girl he met. He says,

But through the youth ministry, she came into a personal relationship with Christ and hope began to return. Just before I left at the end of the summer, she said to me, Bob, I'm really under terrible pressure. A large gang from the projects recruits girls to be prostitutes for wealthy white men in the suburbs. They make the money and the girls are like their slaves. They're trying to get me.

Linthicum remembers saying, "Well, the Bible says if you resist the devil, he will flee from you, so stick with your youth group, keep up your daily prayer and Bible study, and you won't fall into temptation." "I was naive," he says. "I figured if she was a real Christian, a real Christian wouldn't give in to temptation." "Months later I returned and found she had stopped coming to the study. I tracked her down, but she would hardly look at me." "Look, I gave in. I'm working for them, okay?"

"'How could you give in like that?' I said, completely unsympathetically. She said, "'Well, first they beat my father, then my brother, who ended up in the hospital. Then they threatened my mother. So I joined.' "'How could you?' I cried. "'Why didn't you go to the police?' "'Bob,' she said, "'who do you think they are, anyway?' And in one fell swoop, Bob Linthicum, who understood that

salvation completely in terms of an individual decision, suddenly realized the only way that Eva was going to be, the only way he could minister to Eva and minister to the people in Eva's neighborhood was if he went after unjust social structures. She couldn't go to the police because the police were part of the gang. They were behind the gang.

So now how do you minister in a place like that? How do you bring liberation in a place like that? What you have to do is you can't just minister through individual decisions. The individual decision, the psychological conversion has to happen, but the social structure has to be confronted as well. Now what do I mean by this? Just this. People desperately want, desperately want to put a church somewhere on a spectrum between liberal and conservative. Everybody wants to peg everybody else.

And I'm not saying that we've done it right, and I'm not saying I know of any church that's done it right, but if you're true to the gospel, a church that is true to the gospel would be impossible to peg. Because on the one hand, does the gospel bring profound psychological transformation? Of course. Look at the transformation of identity that is possible. Look at the deep power encounter that can go on, even with a demon-possessed person.

Look at the absolute liberation that the gospel can bring, of course. But on the other hand, does the gospel bring social change as well as psychological change? Of course. Because think of how salvation came. Jesus Christ brought salvation. He triumphed through losing. He got wealthy through giving all of his money away through poverty. He got power by completely serving the cross.

When the cross comes into the center of your life, you can never look at the poor the same way again. You can never look at your own career the same way. You can never look at your money, your status. Those things, recognition, those things don't matter anymore. Not if you understand the gospel. And therefore, any church that is being true to this gospel is going to be just as involved in social justice issues as in bringing people to radical conversion through the gospel. Absolutely. Absolutely.

How can we understand the meaning of life's milestones through the lens of the gospel? In the How to Find God series, Tim Keller offers three short books on birth, marriage, and death that will help you understand the meaning of these milestones within God's vision of life with biblical insight for how the scripture teaches us to face each one. These books of pastoral care are designed for specific life situations you or someone you know will go through.

When you give to Gospel in Life during the month of April, we'll send you the How to Find God series as our thanks for your support of this ministry. To receive this short three-book set, simply make a gift at gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Your gift helps us share the message of Christ's love all over the world. So thank you for partnering with us because the gospel truly changes everything. So there we have the slave girl and the gospel for the oppressed. Now, last of all,

We have a third guy. We have a guy. Fine. We got to do a guy, guys. And got a man. And we got, in other words, everything in here. Even men are able to be saved. Only one, but even men. The jailer is almost certainly, let's do a profile on him. He's almost certainly a Roman soldier. Former Roman soldier. Why? Because all civil service jobs were given to retired Roman soldiers. It was just a given. Because they were good jobs. Yeah.

And almost certainly, well, besides the fact that we see that his life is neither a success nor a mess. He's not the success of Lydia. He's not the mess of the poor slave girl. But we can almost be sure that he would not have needed or wanted a long intellectual discourse, nor would he have wanted or needed a deep emotional encounter.

He's an ex-GI, blue collar, regular guy. And you can sort of get a hint of why he would neither expect or want a deep emotional experience or rational kind of argument is by look at how he responds when he thinks the prisoners are gone. In those days, well, I'll get to that in a second, but the point is he straws a sword. Why? What matters to him? He's a soldier. What matters to him is not sentiment, it's honor.

He lost the prisoners. He's going to fall on his own sword. I mean, there you go. This is a person who's a practical man, you might say. Not an emotional person, not a rational person. You might say a practical man and someone who, by the way, is spiritually indifferent. Of all these three cases, he's the one who's not seeking at all. Not in the slightest. He has no spiritual interest at all.

You know, if Lydia lives on the Upper East Side and the slave girl works under one of the East River bridges, this is a guy who lives in Queens. He works for the post office. You know, he lives in a... And he's fine. He's not spiritually seeking. He's not a worshiper of God. Nor is he spiritually in turmoil. He's not really a very good person or a very bad person. He's just a regular guy, spiritually indifferent. And notice, and this is very important to notice, Paul brings the gospel to Lydia.

Paul brings the power of the gospel to the slave girl, but he doesn't do it to this guy. This guy has to come to Paul. Why? Because you don't tell the gospel to somebody who doesn't give a rip. You show the gospel to somebody who doesn't give a rip. This man was the jailer, and he receives these two prisoners, and they're all beaten up.

They've been beaten by rods, which means they would have been oozing. They would have been dripping with blood. And notice, at the end, by the way, he binds up their wounds, which is what he should have done when they first got there. They weren't just normal prisoners. They'd been beaten within an inch of their life. But what he does is he puts them in the stocks, which is a form of torture, mild torture, because your legs were pulled way apart to get your ankles into these two holes that were pretty far away.

So he shows no concern for them. He's absolutely callous. And how do they respond to him? Two things that happen that he's never seen before in his life, and they completely change him. The first thing he sees, well, the main thing, actually, there's only two aspects to it, is their attitude towards suffering. The first thing he sees is verse 25. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.

They're praising God in the midst of their suffering. In other words, they had a joy that was rooted in something so deep that when you took their money away, you took their freedom away, you took their comfort away, and you look like you might be about to take their life away, the joy was still there. Their joy was rooted in something so deep that you could take almost anything away, and the joy was still there. That's weird. And then the second thing the jailer's never seen is

besides that kind of joy, is that there's an earthquake. And of course, because there's an earthquake, the jailer sees the doors are open. And in that time, in that day, the law was that if you were a guard and you were guarding a prisoner and the prisoner escaped, the guard was executed.

If you were a jailer and any of the prisoners escaped, the jailer was executed. The reason he was about to kill himself was actually because it would have been a public humiliation. He would have been executed anyway, so this was his way of, in a sense, saving himself that humiliation. Paul and Silas knew, once the doors were open, that they could escape. And after all, they didn't deserve to be there, right? But they also knew if they escaped, they escaped at the cost of the jailer's life.

And they knew that all the other prisoners, if they escaped, they would only escape and get their freedom at the cost of the jailer's life. But guess what? They kept them in there. They repaid evil with good. They knew that all they had to do was let even one guy leave. The jailer was gone. And after what the jailer did to them, get this.

They repay evil with good, and the jailer has never seen anything like that. Now, we know that at the very center of Paul and Silas' personality was a whole new pattern. And what is the pattern? The ultimate example of repaying evil for good was Jesus Christ dying on the cross, Jesus Christ praying for forgiveness for the people who were killing him. Or put it another way, the reason that they would not get their freedom at the expense of the jailer's life is because they'd already gotten their freedom at the expense of Jesus' life.

So they now were people who overcame evil with good. And when the jailer saw that, this practical man, an argument wouldn't have worked, an emotional encounter wouldn't have worked. This practical man gets on his knees and says, you have something I don't have. I want it. What actually he was seeing was that a story had come into Paul and Silas' lives that enabled them to handle suffering and to handle abuse in a way he never could before.

A story had come into their lives, a narrative structure that had now created a new narrative world, and it changed their character. So whereas Lydia got words, a rational discourse, and the slave girl got a power encounter, this guy gets an embodiment of utterly changed character.

He gets a glimpse of a new narrative world. That means a world, a character, a heart that's utterly changed. People who live in a world that has been very changed because there's a new story that overarches their life and has changed the way in which they handle abuse and suffering. Let me give you an example of it. William Williman is a...

pastor, but he also is the chaplain now at Duke University. He's a very prominent faculty member there, but he's a minister, and he tells this story from early in his ministry. He says, early in my ministry, I arrived at a hospital room where a woman in my church had just given birth. I had been told that there were problems with the birth. A couple sat in the hospital room waiting for the doctor. The doctor appeared shortly after I arrived, and he sat down and he said to the new parents, you have a new baby boy, and

But there are some problems. Your child has been born with Down syndrome. And your baby also has a rather minor and correctable respiratory condition. My recommendation is for you to consider just letting nature take its course. And then in a few days, there shouldn't be a problem. The couple seemed confused by what the doctor had told them. If the condition is easily corrected, then we want it corrected, said the husband. And the wife immediately nodded in agreement.

You must understand that studies show that parents who keep these children have a high incidence of marital distress. And is it fair for you to bring this sort of suffering upon your other two children, said the doctor. At the mention of the word suffering, it was as if the doctor had finally begun speaking the woman's language. And she said, our children have had every advantage in the world. They have really never known suffering. They've never had the opportunity to know it.

I don't know if God's hand is in this or in what way God's hand is in this, but I could certainly see why it would make perfect sense for a child like this to be born into a family like ours. Our children will do just fine. As a matter of fact, the more I think about it, it's a great opportunity for us. The doctor looked absolutely perplexed. He abruptly departed. I followed him out into the hall. He turned to me and said, Reverend, I hope that you can talk some reason into them, he said.

And Willimon finishes this way. The couple was using reason, but it was a reasoning that was foreign to the doctor. For me, it was a vivid depiction of the way in which the church at its best is in the business of teaching a different language from that of the world. The church, through the story of Jesus, teaches a different language whereby words like suffering, words that are unredeemably negative in our society, change the very substance. Here was a couple who had listened to the ultimate story.

The life and death and resurrection of Jesus for them in which suffering could be reasonably redemptive. That's what the jailer saw. He didn't understand it. He says, I want that story in my life. I want to be able to handle suffering. I want to be able to handle abuse like that. I've never seen people with such integrity. Why didn't you get your freedom at the expense of my death? And the answer is, we already have our freedom at the expense of another one's death who gave his life voluntarily. Let me tell you about him. And his life was changed.

Conclusion, what did we learn from these three cases? Three things, kind of quick. Number one, the gospel's for everyone. Let me put it negatively. There is no religious type. If you are a person sitting in this room saying, well, I'm just not the born-again type, I'm not the religious type, as you can see, the gospel is for religious types, but not only for religious types. Religious types really need it badly because they're kind of screwed up.

This, what Luke is trying to say is there is no type of person that the gospel is more natural to. For example, there's no racial type. You know, these are three different races, at least. Lydia would have been, was from Thyatira. She was probably Middle Eastern. She would have, to our eyes, would have looked Middle Eastern or Indian. The slave girl was probably, could have been anybody, you know, because she was a slave. She could have been from anywhere. The

The jailer was a Roman. He would have been European. But here we have all the different races. And Christianity is the only religion, friends, listen carefully, that has never been dominated by one part of the world. Islam's demographic and geographic center has always been the Middle East and Arabia. Hinduism's demographic and geographic center has always been India. Confucianism, China. Buddhism, Asia.

But Christianity started as a Middle Eastern religion, that was its center, Jerusalem, the Jews. Then it migrated and its demographic and geographic center was the Mediterranean Hellenistic world. Then it migrated to Northern Europe was the center of it. Then the North America now, as we know, I hope, is that there are more African Christians, there are more Latin American, Asian Christians, Korean and Chinese Christians, for example.

than there are in all of Western Europe and North America put together, even if you count the people who just say they're Christians, even the ones that are just nominal Christians. Why? Because Christianity is one religion. There is no type. There is no culture that it's native to. There is no type of person. There's no personality. It's not for the rich. It's not for the poor. It's not for men. It's not for women. It's not for wimps. It's not for the ambitious. It's not for the moral types. It's not for the immoral types. And because it's not based on any one human factor, it mustn't be based on a human factor.

So that means, on the one hand, if there's anybody here saying, I'm just not that type. I'm not the Christian type. You may not get out from under your responsibility to consider this like that. And if you are a Christian who looks at anyone else around you, in your family, in your neighborhood, or anyone else around you and says, that kind of person would never become a Christian. Oh, and you are. So you're wonderful raw material. We're so happy that you're with us. If you lose hope for anybody...

Or if you show contempt for anybody, you don't really know you're a sinner saved by grace. You're more religious than you are a Christian. The gospel is for everybody. Secondly, there is no greater unifying factor on the face of the earth than this. I'm not saying that Christians have made use of this like they should. I'm not saying there hasn't been segregation. I'm not saying there hasn't been all kinds of tragedies. But let me show you what the gospel can do if we draw on it. There was, we know this about Paul, there is an ancient prophecy.

prayer that Jewish men prayed in the morning. It's a very controversial prayer. You can go on the websites and see all the different debates about it. I'm not here to defend it or criticize it either. But we do know that Paul would have used it. It's a very famous prayer that Jewish men often prayed first thing in the morning. Oh Lord God, I thank thee that you did not make me, what, a woman, a slave, or a Gentile. Which means here is Paul

who as a Pharisee would have gotten up for days and days and years and years and gotten up every morning saying, Oh Lord, I'm so grateful I'm not like those women. I'm like those slaves. I'm not like those Gentiles. And the first three conversions of his new church in Philippi is a woman, a slave, and a Gentile. And now they're his family. What changed Paul? What power could bring people like that together? I am not...

in any way trying to mitigate all the ways in which Christians have failed to draw on the power of the gospel to unify people across these cultural barriers. But I tell you this, as bad as we are, if you've been a Christian for even five years, you've got several really close friends already because of Christ across barriers that if you weren't Christians, you would never have known that person, you would never have wanted to know that person, you wouldn't have even given the time of day and you know it.

Anybody I know, practically, who's been a Christian for even five years, there are some people that have come into your life, or your brother or sister, if it wasn't for Christ, you wouldn't even have anything to do with a person like that. Because apart from Christ, you disdain somebody. If your identity is based on being liberal, you don't want to know conservatives, and vice versa. If your identity is based on your ethnic pride, you don't want to know their ethnic group, especially not the ones that have been mean to you.

You know, if your identity is based on your class or whatever, but if your identity is based on Christ, you don't have to stay in anybody because you're a sinner saved by grace. There is no more powerful unifying factor I know in the world than the gospel. And lastly, so the gospel is for everybody. The gospel is a unifying factor. One more thing. The gospel can't be canned. Now what I mean by that is, I'm not saying you can't take a summary of the gospel and learn it and use it with people. That's fine. But I'm talking about the approach. Look at these three approaches.

They're utterly different. I'm reminded of Jesus. Jesus moves into, remember John chapter 11, he goes to the funeral of Lazarus. The first woman that comes up is Martha. And she says, Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. Jesus says, resurrection. Yes, I know, resurrection. I am the resurrection, he says. Then he moves to Mary. And Mary comes up and says, Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died.

And Jesus just weeps. Now, wait a minute here. Two sisters, same situation. Their brothers died. Same situation, same funeral, same words. They both come up to him and say the same words. And Jesus' response to them is utterly different. Why? He's smart. He knows what they need. Listen.

He challenges you and he adapts to you. He challenges your condition and he adapts to your condition. If he only adapted to your condition, you'd never be changed. We need people to tell us the truth. But if he only challenges you and doesn't adapt to your condition, you would turn him off. You wouldn't hear him. Jesus is always the one who perfectly challenges you and adapts to you. He knows just how much to challenge, just how much to adapt. He knows just what you need. He knows the process. Let's be like him in the way in which we talk to people. Jesus was powerful enough.

For the slave girl, he was beautiful enough for Lydia. He was practical enough for the jailer. He's whatever you need. He'll challenge you, but he'll be whatever you need. Go to him. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for these three case studies. Help us to unlock in our own lives the power of the things that we see there. We pray that you would enable us to hear the gospel in the depths of our being like the slave girl did.

We pray that you would help us to understand the gospel and have it transform our thinking like Lydia did. We pray that you would help us to embody the gospel in our lives so we can have that utter change in character that the jailer saw. We ask that you would help us to realize these things in our own lives and through us that others would realize it too. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thank you for joining us today. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, please rate and review it so more people can discover the Gospel and Life podcast. This month's sermons were recorded in 2003. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.