Acts 16:13 And on the sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down… I. THE CENTRAL FACULTY ON WHICH THE GREAT CHANGE IS WROUGHT. 1. The heart is the generic term in which we include the entire phenomena of the animal and spiritual man. Metaphysically it concentrates all that belongs to the physical, emotional, and intellectual nature. In its Scriptural import the heart is the normal status that conditions man's relations to God. What it is that the man is. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." 2. The heart, therefore, is the power in man that most needs to be changed. (1) Tendencies, idiosyncrasies, and even moral aberrations may be arrested and mastered by culture. The heart never outgrows its inherent depravity. The painted savage and the erudite sage are scions of the same stock. "Born in sin," we must be born again. (2) Then, further, under a momentary or selfish motive man will surrender to God his most costly possessions, while he withholds his heart. "Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples."(3) To change the heart, then, is not merely to amend the life; for the life, as in the case of the rich young ruler, may be superficially correct while the heart is utterly false. For the same reason it cannot be any mere intellectual change, such as a new mode of thinking about God, or His claims; nor yet in the quickened sensibility of the conscience in its outward reverence for truth; all of which are perfectly congruous with the alienation of the heart from God. 3. The new birth is the coming into life of that which previously did not exist. Redemption through Christ is, potentially, the recreation of the lost Divine order in the soul — the re-entrance of God into man, and His enthronement over the will and in the affections as the one supreme Lord. 4. All men need this change, and must experience it just because they are men. There is no difference in the sin which vitiates and condemns, and man must plead no exemption on the ground of birth or training, lest he shut himself out of the kingdom of God. II. THE METHOD OF THIS CHANGE. Note — 1. Its supernatural source. Regeneration is a work wrought by Divine power on the individual soul. It may be simulated, but it cannot be fabricated by any art of man. (1) There are two theories against which this doctrine is a dignified protest, viz. — (a) That man is an embryo saint to begin with. A germ of all goodness is folded up within us waiting only favouring circumstances to bloom into a godly life. (b) That religious life depends on education. There is in us all a capacity of becoming good, and the business of education is to cultivate that: the fruit-bearing tree may never produce fruit, but that is an accident; so a man may be virtually good, but never actually from defective training. (2) But these theories deal with ideal human nature and not with human nature as it is. (a) So far from having the germ of a holy nature, the Scriptures declare that we are born in sin, a declaration corroborated by consciousness. Any growth, therefore, is a growth in evil. Under the most benign parental influences this noxious weed has sprung up as if native to the soil. (b) Education is a grand power, but it cannot correlate with the forces of Omnipotence. All mere unfolding of latent faculties deals with the animal and the intellectual only; it creates neither faculty nor disposition. 2. Its various methods. The Lord "opened" the heart of Lydia. The work was done silently as the young spring bud is opened by the morning sun. In the case of the jailer the same work is done in tumult. To have dealt with his petrified sensibilities as with the sweet serenities of Lydia's womanly nature would have been to try at chiselling the marble with sunbeams. To the masculine mind the gospel will appeal successfully chiefly as it appeals to the intellect, and so works out its results through the logic. To the feminine and finer mind it will appeal successfully chiefly as it appeals to the sympathies, the moral susceptibilities, the delicate aesthetics of human nature. 3. Its immediate fruits. Lydia — (1) "Attended," etc. If listless, or only curious before, she is awake now. (2) Took upon herself and her home the profession of the Christian faith. A waste of power meets us here. Not a few estimable people decline to embody their belief in Christian fellowship. If Lydia had gone back to Thyatira resolved to keep the matter secret, trusting to the loyalty of conscience, and the integrity of her feelings, the chances are that she would have failed. We cannot stand alone in the perilous struggle of a religious career; and if we could, we cannot honour Christ if we decline to take up the Cross. And least of all can we help to sustain the burden God has laid on our fellow men as trustees for the world's salvation, if we withhold from them the sympathy and patronage of our professional support. The Church faints, not because bankrupt in her resources, but because men refuse to consecrate to her service that which is already her own. (J. Burton.) Parallel Verses KJV: And on the sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted thither. |
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