Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives: Acts 18:1-3, etc.: Aquila and Priscilla

We honor the heroes of our faith—people like Mary, our Lord’s mother, and Peter and John and Paul—people who play great roles in the gospel stories. But these people wouldn’t have been the heroes they were if it hadn’t been for many ordinary people who worked with them—mostly in obscurity—to help make them the great leaders they were.

ACTS 18:1-3, 18, & 24-26, 1 CORINTHIANS 16:19, & ROMANS 16:3: AQUILA AND PRISCILLA

INTRODUCTION

My great-grandfather—my granny’s father--came from England, and not long after he arrived he started a tent and awning business. His factory in Kansas City made covers for covered wagons, awnings, and tents of all kinds—tents for circuses, tents for the army, tents for evangelists, and tents for dwellings because in those days some people who couldn’t afford houses even lived in tents.

Did you know that the great apostle Paul was also a tentmaker?
Among the Jews, for a teacher to work with his hands and supported himself was considered an honorable thing to do.
If he worked he didn’t need to charge his students for his teaching.
Paul continued to support himself with his own labor even when he became a Christian and a missionary.
Some rabbis were potters, some were carpenters, some were basket makers, and Paul made tents.
Leather was much cheaper than cloth in those days, so Paul probably made his tents of skins.
Cutting and sewing leather was hard work and in Acts 20 where we read Paul’s speech to the Ephesian elders, we read how he held up his calloused, work-worn hands and reminded them that he had not asked them for any support but said, “You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me.”

We read that when Paul arrived at Corinth, on his second missionary journey he met a couple named Aquila and Priscilla, who were Jews and Christian believers, who took him into their own tent business as a partner.
The house of Priscilla and Aquila became a home-away-from-home for Paul and they became valued helpers in Paul’s ministry.

I. Acts 18:1-3: After this he [Paul] left Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, lately come form Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had commanded all Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them; and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and they worked, for by trade they were tentmakers”

A. Aquila and Priscilla had been living in Rome, but, because of some riots among the Jews, the Roman Emperor Claudius had commanded that Jews were to leave Rome. Aquila and Priscilla had left and had set up their tent-making business in the Greek city of Corinth.

And that is why they were in Corinth when Paul needed their help.

They took Paul into the business and into their home and for a year and six months Aquila and Priscilla worked together with Paul.

Paul would have spent much more time with Aquila and Priscilla making tents than he spent preaching in the marketplace or teaching in the synagogues. So they got to know each other very well.
And what is more important, Paul would have had time to teach them, conversationally, all he knew about Jesus and salvation.

It must have been wonderful to have heard the stories of his adventures.
It must have been wonderful to be able to ask him every question that was on their minds about the difficulties of living for God.

B. And we read later on in that chapter that when Paul left Corinth to go to Ephesus, Aquila and Priscilla packed up their business and went along with him.

They had become his partners, not only in the tent-making business but also in the gospel.

II. The next thing we read about Priscilla and Aquila is later in that same chapter (vv24-26):

A. “Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, well versed in the scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue; but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him and expounded to him the way of God more accurately.”

Apollos came from Alexandria, a great center of learning, and Apollos was a learned man and great speaker.
He was like one of those great preachers who tell you things you never dreamed of and hold your attention with stories and wise sayings.
So people loved to listen to Apollos, and many were convinced by what he said.

B. But Priscilla and Aquila had a problem.

The more they listened to this brilliant preacher, the more they were concerned that there were things he didn’t know that he needed to know.
Apollos knew that Jesus was the Savior and that he died for our sins.
He knew that he rose from the dead to assure us of eternal life.

But there was evidently something about Christian baptism Apollos didn’t understand.
Something they understood very well because they had heard Paul explain it to them.
They wanted to help Apollos, but, you know, it’s awkward to try to set a preacher straight.

Aquila and Priscilla didn’t disparage Apollos behind his back.
They didn’t tell their friends about his inadequacies.
They went to Apollos. We read, “They took him and expounded to him the way of God more accurately.”

I believe that means that they invited him over for dinner.
And I think they began by thanking him for his fine teaching—for all they had learned from him.

They commended him for his enthusiasm and for his love for the Lord.
And then—very humbly and respectfully—they began to fill him in on some of the things he needed to know—things Paul had taught them during that year-and-a-half when they had worked together making tents back in Corinth.

I don’t know who to admire more—Priscilla and Aquila, for their gentleness and tact, or Apollos for his humility in being willing to learn from people so far beneath him in education.

And evidently Apollos just drank it in and thanked them.
And he became an even better preacher and teacher.
So that when Paul wrote back to the Corinthians he could say, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

C. One thing that strikes everyone when they read about this godly couple is how they worked together.

Evidently Priscilla was as good a teacher as her husband Aquila.
They worked as a team.
That Priscilla was an equal partner is seen by the fact that in the later references Priscilla’s name is listed first.
Maybe she was the most knowledgeable. Maybe she was the better teacher.

III. The next thing I want to call your attention to is that Priscilla and Aquila had a church in their home.

A. They had a churches in their homes in Corinth, and in Ephesus, and later in Rome.

Paul, writing from Ephesus to the Corinthians writes, “The churches of Asia send greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 16:19)

(She’s called Prisca here. Prisca was the more formal form of her name and Priscilla the diminutive—like James and Jim.

In the early days of Christianity the believers met in homes. They didn’t have church buildings. The house churches were small and they were scattered around the cities.

In the last chapter of his letter to the Romans, Paul sends greetings to believers in at least 5 house churches. A scholar estimates that these little churches probably had from 5 to 30 members.

B. In this last chapter of his letter to the Romans Paul writes something else interesting about Priscilla and Aquila: “The churches of Asia send greetings. Aquila and Prisca, my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I but also all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks; greet also the church in their house” (Romans 16:3-5).

I wonder how Aquila and Priscilla risked their necks to save Paul’s life?
Probably after their little church had gathered and read Paul's letter, Priscilla and Aquila's friends asked them: “How did you risk your necks to same Paul’s life?”

As we read Acts we read of many times when Paul’s life was in danger from enemies of the gospel.
Probably it was during a time Paul’s enemies were closing in on him—during one of these times of great danger—that Aquila and Priscilla hid him in their home or in some other way stood between him and his enemies—even though, in doing so, they risked their lives.

CONCLUSION

Priscilla and Aquila weren’t famous. They are just minor characters in the Bible story.
But the work they did was of great importance.
They gave Paul shelter when he needed a home away from home.
They brought him into their workshop and helped him support himself and his friends.
They listened and learned and passed what they learned on to others.
They stood by Paul in a time of great danger.
And they nurtured a church in their home.

A wise Christian lady said, “We can’t do anything great for God, but we can do something small with great love.”

As the old children’s chorus has it:

“There’s a work for Jesus, ready at your hand,
‘Tis a task the Master just for you has planned.
Haste to do his bidding, yield him service true;
There’s a work for Jesus none but you can do.”

Or as we sing in the famous spiritual “There Is a Balm in Gilead”:

“If you cannot preach like Peter,
if you cannot pray like Paul,
you can tell the love of Jesus
and say, ‘He died for all.’”

And that’s why I brought you this little message about Priscilla and Aquila, to remind you that whatever you have done for God in time past, or whatever you are doing for God even now, and whatever you are able to do for God in the future is important—more important than you can know until you get to glory and you hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Living for Jesus: John 15:5: The Vine and Its Branches

We ask: “How can my life enrich the lives of other people?” Jesus tells us how in his parable of the vine and its branches.

JOHN 15:5: THE VINE AND ITS BRANCHES

INTRODUCTION

A friend of mine at the University of Kansas was working his way through graduate school. He and his wife supported themselves by serving as live-in companions for an elderly retired botany professor.

The professor was an unhappy man because he kept asking himself and others whether his life had been worthwhile.
He wanted to believe that all the work he had done had benefited others besides himself and his family, but he wasn’t sure, and that made him think that maybe his life had been wasted.

As we come near the end of life, we all wonder what our life has counted for.
We wonder what we have done to make life better or happier for the people around us.
If we are believers we hope that our lives have blessed others.
We hope that some good we have tried to do will live on in the lives of others when we are gone.

Read John 15:1-11. In this passage Jesus tells his disciples the secret of how my life and your life may enrich other people. Let’s consider today, just verse 5:

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him,
he it is who bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

I. Just as the branch depends on the parent vine for its life, so we depend on Christ.

A. cut off from the parent vine, the branch soon withers and dies.

Severed from Christ, we die—not physically, but spiritually
We die to all that’s good.
We die to eternal life, because eternal life in only in union with Jesus Christ.
United with Christ, we live and thrive.

C. This is what it means to abide in Christ—or, as some translations put it, to remain in Christ.

To abide in Christ is to live in constant dependence on him. That is faith.
To abide in Christ is to make it our aim to please him. That is obedience.
To abide in Christ is to desire Christ above all others. That is love.

To abide in Christ means to live constantly in Christ’ presence.

In Lloyd C. Douglas’ novel The Robe, Marcellus asks Justus, “Where do you think Jesus went?”

Justus replied, “I don’t know, my friend, I only know that he is alive. And I am always expecting to see him. Sometimes I feel aware of him, as if he were close by.”

Justus smiled faintly, his eyes wet with tears. “It keeps you honest,” he went on. “You have no temptation to cheat anyone, or lie to anyone, or hurt anyone—when, for all you know, Jesus is standing beside you.”

I’m afraid I should feel very uncomfortable,” remarked Marcellus, “being perpetually watched by some invisible presence.”

“Not if that presence helped you defend yourself against yourself, Marcellus. It is a great satisfaction to have someone standing by—to keep you at your best.”

An alcoholic patient was placed in a room with three other patients who did nothing but scream. When night came, he prayed to be able to sleep, but the screams continued.

Then suddenly he changed his approach. He began to pray for his three roommates.
“May God give you peace,” he said quietly over and over.

Finally the screams stopped. “Not only that,” the alcoholic reported later, “it was as if something broke in me. Praying for them released my own tension. I was free.”

A short time later he was well enough to go home.

To abide in Christ, learn his ways and listen to his voice.
We learn his ways and listen to his voice by reading our Bible and by going to church.

To abide in Christ we need to seek fellowship with other believers, and when we are with other believers to converse about the things of God.
We need each other. If we separate ourselves from other Christian believers we soon fall out of fellowship with Jesus.
We are like branches cut off from the vine.

A minister was calling on a member of his church who was seldom present for worship. The man said he really didn’t feel the need of going to church and didn’t feel that it helped him much.

The minister went over to the hearth where a fire was blazing brightly. With the tongs he picked out a coal and set it aside away from the fire. As he watched the coal grow quickly dull and coal, the man realized as no words could have why he need to fellowship with other Christians.

II. The point of the parable is that if we abide in Christ we bear fruit.

A. “Fruit” means to the good qualities that come into our lives from God.

When we abide in Christ, when we dwell with him and he with us, we produce in our lives, what the Bible calls the “fruit of the Spirit” or the “harvest of the Spirit”—in other words, God changes us into Christlikeness.
The Bible says that the fruit of the Spirit is—
love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness (or generosity),
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

B. “Fruit” also means usefulness.

Solitary Christians do no one any good.
God uses his people to convey his love to others.
Goodness that reaches out to serve others in service spreads God’s love to other people.
Our work as Christian believers is to spread God’s love around us wherever we are, wherever we go.

CONCLUSION

It is told of St. Catherine of Sienna that she was admired for her raptures and spiritual ecstasies, but St. Francis de Sales, who writes about her, says that what most impressed him about St. Catherine is that as she worked in her father’s kitchen—turning the spit, looking after the fire, cooking the meals, kneading the bread, and carrying out the most menial chores—is that she did everything with a heart full of burning love for God.

He writes that Catherine used to imagine, while cooking her father’s meals, that she was another Martha doing it for her Lord. She saw Our Lady in her mother and the twelve apostles in her brothers as she served them.
With thoughts like these, Francis says, she encouraged herself to serve in spirit the heavenly court and to carry out her lowly tasks with great delight, seeing them as the will of God.

A nursing school graduate took a job in a long-term care facility.

One of her first patients was a woman named Eileen. Eileen’s major health problem was that she had had an aneurysm burst in her brain, leaving her totally unconscious as far as anyone could see, and apparently unaware of anything that was going on around her. It was necessary to turn Eileen every hour to prevent bedsores, and she had to be fed through her stomach tube twice a day. Eileen never had visitors--there was apparently no one who cared about her.

One of the other nurses said, "When it's this bad you have to detach yourself emotionally from the whole situation…." As a result, more and more Eileen came to be treated as a thing, with people just going in and doing their work and then leaving again as quickly as they could.

But this young nurse decided that she, in living out her Christian faith, would treat this woman differently. She talked to Eileen, sang to her, said encouraging things to her, and even brought her little gifts.

On Thanksgiving Day, however, the young nurse came to work reluctantly, wanting to be home on the holiday. As she entered Eileen's room, she knew she would be doing the normal tasks with no thanks whatsoever. So she decided to talk to Eileen and said, "I was in a cruddy mood this morning, Eileen, because it was supposed to be a day off. But now that I'm here, I'm glad. I wouldn't have wanted to miss seeing you on Thanksgiving Day. Do you know that this is Thanksgiving Day?”
Just then the telephone rang and the nurse turned away from the bed to answer it. As she was talking, she turned to look back at Eileen.

“Suddenly,” she said, “Eileen was looking at me, crying. Big damp circles stained her pillow and she was shaking all over.”

That was the only emotion that Eileen ever showed, but it was enough to change the attitude of the entire staff toward her. Not much later she died.

The young nurse closed her story this way: "I keep thinking about her….It occurred to me that I owe her an awful lot. Except for Eileen, I might never have known what it's like to give myself to someone who can't give back.

That young nurse had learned the secret of abiding in Christ and her life was bearing fruit for God.