Acts 16:5-16 “Right Place, Right Time”
Our scripture this morning mentions a lady who was a dealer of purple cloth by the name of Lydia. Paul meets her in Philippi down by the river on the Sabbath day as she is there worshipping God. The Bible tells us that Paul had wanted to go to various cities in Asia Minor to preach, but the Holy Spirit stopped him over and over again. Paul then has a vision of a man calling him to Macedonia. He decides to go to Philippi, and the rest is history.
Now, what is most interesting about Paul’s going to Philippi in Macedonia is that he seems directed there by the Holy Spirit to meet up with Lydia and her household to share the Good News with her. But, Lydia is from where? She is herself from Thyatira! The town of Thyatira is back in Asia Minor where Paul has just come from! Why didn’t the Holy Spirit direct Paul to find Lydia back in Thyatira? Why did both of them have to travel to Macedonia, to Philippi, in order to meet? The simple answer is that it was the right place and time for them. Philippi on that Sabbath day was the right place and time according to the Spirit!
This was not just the case with Paul and Lydia. Within our text for this morning is another person who seems to be in just the right place and at the right time. You really have to search the text to figure this guy out. But, you will note that as we read about Paul being stopped by the Spirit from going to various towns in Asia, you see that he is allowed to go into Troas. Once he is there, you can see that the text changes its voice. No longer do we read “Paul, he, they.” Now we read “we.” This is because Paul meets the writer of Acts in Troas on his way to Macedonia. His name is of course Luke.
We do not have the story of how they actually met. All we have is this change of voice to “we” indicating that Luke is now part of the early mission. We do know that he must have been in the right place at the right time to have met Paul and to have committed his life to the ministry. Luke spends the next nineteen years of his life as part of Paul’s mission team. Luke goes on to write a Gospel and the Book of Acts.
Being in the right place at the right time is a gift from God! As you know, my wife and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary this last week. Since she is preaching today down at Hanapepe UCC, I can talk about this. When I look back at the chances of Helen and I meeting together and getting married and having children, I just have to thank God for putting us together in the right place and at the right time.
We actually met over breakfast one morning at the seminary where she and I were both studying. I was having a very mean attack of arthritis. I could hardly move at all. I told her that I was going to go down to the Kaiser Urgent Care in Oakland to get some medication. I had never been there before. She said right away, “I have a map of Oakland. Can I go with you?”
So, we drove together down to Kaiser Hospital in Oakland and got to know one another while sitting on the floor in the Urgent Care waiting room—as there were no more seats left. I finally got in to see a doctor and got a prescription about noon. By that time we had missed the lunch at the seminary’s commissary in Berkeley, so we went out to a Mexican restaurant called “Celia’s,” where Helen had her very first Mexican food. I guess that was our first date—the floor of the waiting room at Kaiser and cheap Mexican food. Twenty years and two kids later. . . . .
I am still amazed how God brought us together. How did it happen that a girl from Ipoh, Malaysia, should meet up with a fellow from Los Angeles over breakfast in Berkeley? The Holy Spirit was certainly leading us to be together. There can be no other explanation.
I believe the precursors to being in the right place at the right time are patience, obedience, and trust. When we reflect on the Scripture about Paul being called to Macedonia, we must realize that he is blocked time and again by the Holy Spirit. He patiently goes on. When he receives the vision, he obeys. All the time he is trusting in the Lord, and only thereafter does he find himself amazingly in the right place and time to meet up with Lydia.
Jesus himself is faced with this dilemma of having to show patience, if you recall, when he is still a young boy and is attending a marriage feast in the town of Cana. The wine has run out already. Jesus’ mother asks him to make up some more wine. His response is “My hour has not yet come.” You can read this in John 2 if you like. Luckily for the wedding, he decides then to perform the miracle of turning the water into wine.
I think about when it was finally Jesus’ hour, that is his resurrection from the tomb, the women who showed patience, obedience and trust were in the right place at the right time. Even Christ’s own Disciples missed the best part! They did not have the level of trust that was needed. They learned it afterwards.
So many people today are impatient, disobedient, and untrusting. And, when they always seem to be in the wrong places and the wrong times, they don’t get the connection! They don’t understand that unless they have patience, obedience and trust, the right place/right time scenario just will not happen.
This is a true story about an inner-city church in Los Angeles that meets in a bar, and it begins in all places China before the communist take over, that is before the missionaries were kicked out. In a small village in the South, a very young girl received a small Chinese bible from a missionary when he had come to her village to share the good news. The young girl had never owned a book before, and she cherished it. As the missionaries were kicked out of China and religion was outlawed, she hid the small Bible and would try to read it by candlelight late at night when she could. This gave her great comfort in her life.
Eventually she married and had son by the marriage. The son eventually grew up to me a man and a successful business entrepreneur. He was able to sneak out of Communist China to the US and applied for asylum here. After many years, he was able to bring his mother out of China as well. Unfortunately, his father had since passed away. His mother came to the US with only the few meager possessions she had accumulated over a desperate lifetime of poverty. However, with her came that Bible she had gotten as a young girl from the missionary.
The son had become very successful here and owned a popular nightclub in Hollywood. One day, two men came into the nightclub and asked to speak to him. The men were Christians. They had been looking for a place where they could hold worship services in the heart of Hollywood and had been unsuccessful. In a moment of desperation, they had entered the nightclub thinking that the club would not be open on Sunday mornings and that it was a useable space.
At first the club owner balked at the idea; however, the Christians were adamant out of their desperation. Finally the club owner told the Christian men that he would have to consult with his mother, that as a dutiful Chinese son he would need to discuss the idea with the matriarch of the family. The Christian men thought then that there might be a glimmer of hope and asked to meet her.
Arrangements were made the next day for the mother to come into meet the Christian men. As she was helped down the stairs by her son, the Christians could see that she was clutching next to her heart a small book. Through the help of her son’s interpretation, the old woman told how a missionary from America had come all the way to China to give her that book and that it had given her hope all through her years to know that a God in heaven cared about her. She now wanted to pay back that kindness to the Christians and with her word, the night club became a church on Sunday mornings!
We talked about the precursors of being in the right time and place as being patience, obedience and trust. Now, I want to talk about the post-cursor, if there is such a word. In our Bible story about Paul being led to Troas and then to Philippi to meet Lydia and her household there, there is the line that says: “The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul” (verse 14).
Lydia and Paul could have been patient, obedient and trusting in God. The Spirit could have put them in the right place at the right time. But, if their hearts were to remain closed to one another, then the love of Christ would not have flowed out from Paul to Lydia.
What if my wife and I had been in Berkeley, eaten breakfast together, taken a drive together, and then nothing?! If our hearts had not been opened by the Lord, everything else would not have mattered. We would have remained strangers.
Lydia prevails upon Paul and his company to come and stay with them. She opens her heart and her home—to a stranger no less! This is the Lord’s doing.
Consider
your own lives if you will. Be patient, obedient, trusting that God will bring
you the right place and time. Then, let the Lord open your heart and be
accepting of the love that he wants to give you. Amen.