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Aquila and Priscilla: Discipling Side by Side
Acts 18:1-28; 19:1-7
Introduction:
A.
Background (Acts 18:1-2)
1. In the year 52 A.D. the
Roman emperor Claudius issued an edict expelling all Jews from the city of Rome.
a) It seems, from what the
Roman historian Suetonius says, that they were persecuting their Christian
neighbors and causing considerable disturbance in the city.
b) Claudius cared little
about the reason for the trouble, and even less about who the guilty parties
were.
c) He knew they were Jews,
and that was enough; so all Jews were uprooted from their homes and banished
from Rome,
the innocent along with the guilty.
2. That was when a Jew named
Aquila, who had migrated to Rome from the province of Pontus
on the Black Sea, packed his belongings, bid farewell to his friends, and
embarked for the city of Corinth.
a) By his side was his
faithful wife, Priscilla.
b) We do not know for
certain whether she was Jewish or Roman, nor are we sure whether or not they
were both Christians at the time.
c) But one thing we do know—they
were together.
d) In fact, they were always
together.
e) One’s name never occurs
without the other.
They Made Their Living Together (Acts 18:1-8)
God’s Timing (vv. 1-3)
“For by trade they were tent-makers” (Acts 18:3).
Every Jewish boy in New
Testament times was taught some kind of trade.
Since tents were such a
prominent part of Hebrew life, Aquila’s
parents chose to have their son learn this practical means of earning his
livelihood.
Their tents were made of
rough goat’s hair fabric which took great skill to cut and sew properly.
Aquila had acquired that skill
and later taught it to his wife, and she happily assisted him in his
business.
Not every husband and
wife can work together like this.
It takes a mature
relationship to work closely under the kind of pressure a job sometimes
generates.
But that is evidently the
kind of relationship Aquila and Priscilla
had.
They were not only mates;
they must have been good friends and companions.
They had to be willing to
give to each other more than they tried to take.
They had to be able to
accept suggestions as readily as they offered them.
They enjoyed being
together and working together.
They were inseparable.
The timing of their
arrival in Corinth
was obviously of God.
The Apostle Paul entered Corinth looking for work to sustain him as he ministered
and he came to the tent-making shop of Aquila
and Priscilla.
Every disciple making
relationship begins with a hello.
That day a deep and
lasting and productive relationship was born.
Paul came to work with
them in their shop, and even lived with them in their home during his stay in
Corinth.
The complete marriage (vv. 4-8)
v. 8 – “Many others in Corinth also became believers and were
baptized”
If they had not known
Christ before this, they certainly met him now!
Aquila and Priscilla lived
together, worked together, and suffered exile together, came to know and love
Jesus Christ together
It made their marriage
complete.
Now they were one in
Christ, and His love made a good marriage even better.
True oneness can only be
found in Christ.
They Grew in the Word Together (Acts 18:9-11; 18-26)
Their discipler taught them together (vv. 9-11)
From the day Aquila and Priscilla met the Savior,
they grew in the Word together.
They must have gone with
Paul to the synagogue each Sabbath day as he reasoned with the Jews and
Greeks (Acts 18:4).
Eighteen months of
intensive Bible study under the greatest Bible teacher in the early church.
How Aquila
and Priscilla must have grown!
And after the lessons
were over, the three of them probably went home together and sat up into the
early hours of the morning talking about the Lord and His Word.
Sharing the Word together
strengthened their love for each other and their spirit of togetherness.
This is exactly what many
Christian marriages lack.
Husbands and wives need
to open the Word together.
When I am preparing a
message, I often talk to my wife, Betty, about it and she shares with me what
she is learning from her Bible study.
If she is preparing a
lesson, she may come to get my help in understanding a particular verse, and
we find ourselves sharing the Word together.
They learned God’s Word thoroughly. (Acts 18:18-26)
The events that follow in
the account of the Acts reveal how thoroughly Aquila
and Priscilla learned God’s Word.
When Paul left Corinth for Ephesus, they
accompanied him, and he left them there when he left for his home church in Antioch (Acts
18:18-22).
The move was
providential, for while Paul was gone “a certain Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man, came
to Ephesus;
and he was mighty in the Scriptures.
This man had been
instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he was
speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being
acquainted only with the baptism of John; and he began to speak out boldly in
the synagogue” (Acts 18:24-26).
Verse 25 tells us “He had
been taught the way of the Lord and talked to others with great enthusiasm
and accuracy about Jesus. However, he knew only about John’s baptism.”
These words suggest a
very careful and well‑researched presentation of his message.
As far as his knowledge
went, he was an extremely effective communicator of the Old Testament
Scriptures.
However, his knowledge
had a fatal deficiency in it.
Verse 25 says that he “knew
only about the baptism of John”
Apollos was not a heretic - What
was the problem?
He was not improperly instructed, but he was inadequately instructed.
He does not know the
redeeming facts about Jesus ‑ His Death, Resurrection and Ascension.
And he does not know
about the coming of the Holy Spirit and His vital work in making and maturing
Christians.
He does not know about
the birth of the Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit, the sealing of the
Spirit, the filling of the Spirit, the anointing of the Spirit, etc.
Aquila and Priscilla went to
hear him and were deeply impressed by his sincerity, his love for God, his
knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures, and his brilliant oratorical
ability.
He could be mightily used
in the service of Jesus Christ, but his message was deficient.
“But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to
him the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26).
They lovingly and
patiently taught Apollos:
the life and ministry of
Jesus Christ on earth,
His sacrificial and substitutionary death on Calvary’s
cross for the sins of the world,
His victorious
resurrection from the tomb and glorious ascension into heaven,
the necessity for
personal salvation from sin by faith in His finished work,
the coming of the Holy
Spirit at Pentecost, and
the birth of the Body of
Christ, and
other great New Testament
doctrines.
It is very difficult to decide which one to admire the most
the teachers or the taught - the instructors or the instructed
Aquila and Priscilla modeled ready servanthood
and disciple‑making skills
Apollos modeled a receptive spirit and a delightful submission.
This is surely one of the
greatest examples of relational disciple making ever known.
Sometime later, Apollos “desired to cross into Achaia” (Acts 18:27).
In Achaia, he “helped
them much who had believed through grace: For he mightily convinced the Jews,
and that publicly, showing by the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ” (Acts
18:27‑28).
This is remarkable, because
this was exactly the same message Paul
had preached (Acts 17:3) ‑ but Apollos had not yet met Paul.
However, he had been
taught by Aquila and Priscilla, Paul’s
disciples!
What an example of the
fulfillment of the Great Commission by building world‑visionary, world‑impacting
reproducers of other disciples of the same kind.
Aquila and Priscilla may not
have been accomplished public speakers, but they were diligent students of
the Word, and they loved to share it with others.
They were even willing to
invest the time necessary to take one young man under their spiritual care
and pour into his life the things of Christ.
And as a result of this
encounter with Aquila and Priscilla, he
became an effective servant of God whom some of the Corinthians later placed
on a level with Peter and Paul (1 Cor. 1:12).
Some of us will never be
powerful preachers, but we can be faithful students of the Word, and our
homes can be open to people whose hearts are hungry to hear the Word.
We may have the joyous
privilege of nurturing a young Apollos who someday
will have a wide and powerful ministry for Jesus Christ.
They Served the Lord Together (1 Corinthians 16:19)
Their home was a church
When Paul left Antioch on his third missionary journey, he traveled
through Asia Minor by land and returned to Ephesus, where he remained teaching the
Word of God for approximately three years (cf. Acts
26:31).
During that period of
time, he wrote his first letter to the Corinthians and said, “The churches of
Asia greet you. Aquila
and Prisca greet you heartily in the Lord, with the
church that is in their house” (1 Corinthians 16:19).
Their home was a meeting
place for the Ephesian church.
And that would not be the
last time their home served that purpose.
When Paul left Ephesus for Greece,
they evidently believed God was directing them back to Rome.
Claudius was dead now and
Rome surely needed a gospel witness, so they
went back to Rome!
Paul wrote his epistle to
the Romans from Greece on
that third missionary journey, and he said, “3Greet Priscilla and Aquila. They have been co-workers in my ministry for
Christ Jesus. 4In fact, they risked their lives for me. I am not
the only one who is thankful to them; so are all the Gentile churches. 5Please
give my greetings to the church that meets in their home.” (Rom. 16:3-5).
While we have church
buildings, there is no substitute for the home as a center for evangelism and
spiritual nurture in the community.
Some Christians conduct
evangelistic dinners, where they invite unsaved friends to hear an
outstanding personal testimony.
Many dedicated women use
coffee cup evangelism, establishing close friendships with their neighbors
and sharing Christ with them over the kitchen table.
Home Bible classes can be
an effective tool for reaching the lost or getting believers growing in the
Word.
Young people have
profited greatly by adults who have opened their homes to youth groups. The
possibilities for using our homes to serve the Lord are unlimited.
They were and are still remembered (2 Timothy 4:19)
Aquila and Priscilla are
mentioned one more time in the New Testament, in the last chapter of the last
book the Apostle Paul wrote.
It had been sixteen years
since Paul first met them at Corinth,
and now he was in a Roman prison for the second time.
His death at the hands of
the emperor Nero was imminent, and he was writing the last paragraph of his
long and fruitful life.
“Greet Prisca and Aquila, and
the household of Onesiphorus” (2 Tim. 4:19).
Paul is thinking of his
dear friends who were then back in Ephesus
where Timothy was ministering, possibly having left Rome to escape Nero’s latest outburst of
persecution against Christians.
It was just a brief and
simple greeting, but Paul remembered to them in the last hours of his life.
They Were Great Disciple Makers Together (Acts 18:24-28;
19:1-7)
Disciple‑making is inevitable (Luke 6:40; 2 Timothy 3:10-11)
Man is a social creature.
He desires relationships
He wants fellowship
He influences each person
around him.
Everybody with any influence at all makes disciples.
Parents make disciples of
their children.
Children make disciples
of their parents.
Friends make disciples of
their friends.
If you ever learn
anything by intent or by incident or by accident from anyone else, that
person has discipled you.
A disciple is “one who
learns,” so in some measure, all human being are disciples of anyone who
teaches them anything.
Look at the Biblical
picture of Apollos: “This man was instructed in the
way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spoke and taught
accurately the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John.”
“You can no more tell
what you don’t know than you can come back from where you ain’t
been!”
Apollos had not “been there and
done that,” but he powerfully told what he did know ‑ and he made disciples!
When you disciple another
person, you give a part of yourself to that person.
2 Timothy
3:10‑11, and see this transfer occurring between Paul
and Timothy.
When you make a disciple,
you will leave that disciple
the way Jesus left the
Twelve,
the way Paul left
Timothy,
the way Apollos left his Ephesian disciples.
Jesus said, “When the
process is completed, the disciple will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40).
The product is predictable, the outcome
is inevitable.
A sober question: Is my
life worth copying?
“What kind of work would
Christ’s work be, If every other Christian were just like me??”
The implications of this
are staggering!
Those you disciple are
molded by Bible study, your prayer life (prayerfulness or prayerlessness),
your worship, and they emerge looking like you.
The Problem Of Disciple‑Making
(Acts 19:1-7)
All you can give is what you have experienced and practiced.
All Apollos
had was the piece of John the Baptist that had been planted
in him ‑ and it wasn’t enough!
He was an incomplete disciple ‑ and he
reproduced incomplete disciples.
How would you like it if ten generations from now large numbers
of people were just like you?
How extensive would God’s
work be?
How strategic would God’s
work be?
How relational would God’s
work be?
How obedient would those
people be?
God’s Provision In
Disciple‑Making
Take heart - God has made
provision to “fill in the blank spots” created by your failures.
The John the Baptist movement wasn’t intentional, and it wasn’t
heretical.
It was just an incomplete
understanding, but it still went on generation after generation.
People like Apollos were generated by John, and if they did not meet
somebody like Aquila and Priscilla, they
went on propagating spiritually what John gave to them to the next generation
and the next.
We have seen that you can’t
pass on to somebody what you aren’t yourself, and you will pass on to those
in your sphere of influence what you are.
Here is the great
provision God has made for our deficiencies in disciple‑making.
God sovereignly
stations His Aquilas and Priscillas
at strategic times and places in our lives to help us build the disciples God
has given to us
But we must be alert to
our own deficiencies, and aware that there are other fine followers of Christ
who can be used in the network of disciple‑building.
Do everything you can do
to expose your disciple to the best information, the best experience, the
best wisdom, the best study tools, the best
testimony, available.
How many people has God
used to disciple you?
The Product of Disciple‑Making Is
Predictable
Certain causes produce
certain effects. John the Baptist had directly or indirectly discipled Apollos, and Apollos had
discipled the Ephesian disciples.
But then God sent Aquila and Priscilla into the situation, and both the
process and the product were corrected.
Paul had discipled Aquila
and Priscilla; Aquila and Priscilla discipled Apollos;
and God mightily used Apollos in Corinth to make and build disciples there.
“Incomplete” believers in
Ephesus had
emerged from the ministry of Apollos.
They in turn were
completed by Paul.
Apollos emerged as a complete
Christian man with a complete Christian message from the ministries of Aquila
and Priscilla in Ephesus.
And both Ephesus and Corinth (Acts 19:1) were impacted mightily
for Christ.
Through a network of
devoted disciples, the Gospel penetrated unto the uttermost parts of the
earth.
One of the most renowned
names in the game of golf is that of Harvey Penick.
His name never appeared
on a winner’s trophy at a PGA golf tournament, but when Penick
died at the age of 90, the world of golf lost one of its greatest teachers.
Although his books have sold millions of copies (and the publication of them
almost never occurred, because of his modesty), he was remembered most for
his direct impact on people. An Associated
Press story related, “Penick refused to teach
methods or group lessons, instead applying his wisdom to the talents of
individual players.”
Tom Kite, the leading
money winner in PGA Tour history, was 13 when he began working with Penick.
Ben Crenshaw began
learning the game from Penick at the age of 6. Any
golf fan of today will have etched on his memory the picture of Crenshaw on
his knees on the eighteenth green of Augusta National Golf Course after
sinking the winning putt in the 1995 Masters Golf Tournament. Crenshaw was in
tears, and he stated that his week at the Masters was emotionally wrenching
to him, not merely because of the pressure of tournament competition, but
also because his lifelong teacher, Harvey Penick,
had died that week.
Penick, who could have spent
his life speaking to crowds, chose instead to invest himself in individual
persons ‑ many of them children ‑‑ one at a time.
In far more important
matters ‑ eternal matters ‑
Aquila and Priscilla did the same with
one man, Apollos.
One of the greatest
privileges in serving the Lord is getting to serve the Lord together with
your spouse.
Serving the Lord on your
own is a personal blessing, serving the Lord in unity with brothers and
sisters in the Lord is a church blessing, but serving the Lord with your
spouse is a family blessing.
Have you, as a couple,
stopped growing as a team, going as a team, and giving as a team?
Have you given selflessly
of yourself and sacrificially to the Lord?
God wants couples to
minister as a team. mature as a team and to disciple
as a team.
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