Untitled Sermon (19)

Study 3. Building Up the People of God. Acts 18:18–28

Purpose: To discover how daily work and church ministry can both be service to God and neighbor.

Question 1

Paul’s missionary journeys can be traced on a good map of the Mediterranean. His first journey took him from Antioch to Cyprus, then to ancient Asia Minor (modern Turkey) to Perga, Lystra and Pisidian Antioch and back. The second, leaving from Caesarea to Galatia (northern Turkey) then went into Europe—Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth—and then back through Asia Minor by way of Ephesus. The third missionary journey starts in Antioch, goes through Galatia, returning to the new churches in Europe and then back through the Greek Islands, Ephesus and on to Jerusalem. This account is largely from the second and third missionary journeys.

We do not know what the nature of the vow Paul made in Cenchrae (v. 18). But his cutting off his hair on this and on a later occasion (Acts 21:22–24) makes it apparent that Paul functions as a Jew among Jews and a Gentile among Gentiles without compromising his faith. Most likely this was a short-term Nazirite vow (Numbers 6:1–21) by which one would cut his hair for the period and burn the hair along with other sacrifices as a symbol of self-offering to God. Paul may have had in mind his desire to conciliate the Jewish Christian leaders in Jerusalem, where he was going (John R. W. Stott, The Spirit, the Church and the World: The Message of Acts [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990], pp. 300–301).

Question 2

The places in the New Testament where Aquila and Priscilla are named are Acts 18:2, 18, 26; Romans 16:3; 1 Corinthians 16:19; and 2 Timothy 4:19. Their trade was sewing tents from rough cloth woven from goat’s hair or leather, a very portable trade enabling them to sell their wares in almost any marketplace. The apostle Paul worked alongside this couple supporting his own apostolic ministry by a trade, as was common with all rabbis, though from time to time he received financial support and patronage from distant churches (2 Corinthians 11:9; Philippians 4:10–20). Tentmaking is a pattern of relating work and ministry so that both are for God’s glory. The tentmaker thus has a second major arena of service in addition to the workplace. The great danger of this arrangement is that someone will regard his or her work as merely the means of making a livelihood rather than an arena of co-creativity, mission and caretaking of God’s world (Genesis 2:15). Tents (or some modern equivalent) should be made not only to gain access to a closed society but also for God’s glory and people’s use. So the true tentmaker witnesses in his or her work, not just working in order to be positioned to witness.

Question 3

The teaching that some activities for Christians, such as daily work, is “secular” and other activities, such as teaching Sunday school, is sacred, is the most pervasive and destructive heresy in the worldwide church. For the New Testament Christian all of life is sacred (Romans 12:1–2) and all aspects of everyday life are presented to God as a living sacrifice. Tragically this sacred-secular divide (dualism) is institutionalized in much of the church with the clergy-laity distinction, a hierarchy of holiness that was eliminated by Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit on the church (see R. Paul Stevens, Liberating the Laity [Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1969]; and R. Paul Stevens, The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work and Ministry in Biblical Perspective [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999]).

Question 4

Tentmakers are determined not to be a burden to the people they serve. Undoubtedly Paul’s daily work was arduous. It was not peripheral but central to his daily life. Tentmakers set an example. Paul undertook a tentmaking lifestyle as an example to others of priorities and balance in ministry. In Ephesus his working from early dawn to mid-evening demonstrated his generosity: “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ ” (Acts 20:35). Like Jesus, Christian leaders come not to be ministered to but to serve, not to receive but to give. Paul believed that his tentmaking approach helped the weak in faith, who frequently imagine that their next step in discipleship is to be supported financially by other Christians.

Question 5

In Romans 16:3–5 Paul asks the Roman Christians to greet Priscilla and Aquila and “the church that meets in their house.” Most churches in the first 250 years were house churches, gatherings of 12–50 in the atrium of a larger home and composed of people who dispersed to work and serve in the world. Of the latter is the example of the biblical character Erastus, the director of the city’s public works (Romans 16:23) to be considered later. Often when they gathered, there was a shared meal and the Eucharist/Communion would have been part of a real meal, not a wafer and a sip of wine (Acts 2:42–47). Ministry was not vested in one person but shared in the community with people bringing a hymn, a Scripture, a lesson or story, a prayer and an exhortation or prophecy. First Corinthians 12–14 gives us some of the dimensions of that shared life, as well as problems that can emerge. Some will note that house churches were very similar to the contemporary experience of small groups or Bible studies in homes, except for the lack of the Lord’s Supper and a sermon or prophecy. By and large, contemporary churches reserve worship for Sunday services, something which New Testament Christians would have found strange in that their whole life was worship. They gathered for edification, building one another up in faith and life. Bruce Winter notes that “ ‘Edification’ was a unique term which Paul coined for the Christian faith which reflects the responsibility individuals should assume for the welfare of others as a matter of ‘religious’ obligation” (Bruce W. Winter, Seek the Welfare of the City: Christians as Benefactors and Citizens [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994], p. 175). To facilitate this in the present situation is something the group may wish to discuss.

Question 6

This question is quite personal and possibly even a little dangerous. Many people have a desire for certain kinds of ministry, often the ones given most accolades in the church, such as preaching or music leadership, when their real gift for ministry lies in another direction. Some groups have found it helpful to reserve part of an evening or even a whole evening to affirming the service of its members. This is best done not by trying to designate someone’s “gift,” which could put someone in a box, but by finishing the sentence, “In our group God seems to work through you in …” Two or three people could respond to each member. Sometimes people speak of “spiritual gifts” as something quite unrelated to the capacities that God built into a person in creation. To this G. Campbell Morgan says, “The Spirit always bestows His special gift upon a man already gifted by nature to receive it” (G. Campbell Morgan, The Acts of the Apostles [Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1924], p. 438). Such a person was Apollos, who knew “only the baptism and teaching of John the Baptist.” Morgan says, “One of the most beautiful touches about Apollos is the revelation of the fact that he was willing to let two members of the congregation who listened to him, and who knew more than he did, teach him. They took him, this persuasive, eloquent, burning soul; and opened to him the truth, with the result he passed on from Ephesus to Corinth” (ibid., p. 440). The effect of this is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 3:6.

Question 7

It is possible that Priscilla was the natural leader of the Aquila and Priscilla team. The New Testament does witness to women taking leadership in churches, notably Lydia, the textile merchant who hosted a church in her home (Acts 16:11–15, 40). There is no point in strong women pretending they are weak in the church when the church can benefit from their strength.

Question 8

Members of the study group can be encouraged to share a situation in which they were personally corrected, as Apollos was in this story, by another believer. Have them share what medium was used: email, text, letter or face to face, and how they felt about this challenge. Was it public or private? A helpful guideline that someone has proposed is this: email and texting only for the transmission of information, telephone when decisions have to be made (when you can respond and hear the tone of voice), but discipline should only be undertaken face to face. The relative anonymity of the Internet allows people to say things in a way they never would face to face and often with devastating effect. F. F. Bruce notes, “How much better it is to give such private help to a preacher whose ministry is defective than to correct or denounce him publicly!” (F. F. Bruce, quoted in Stott, The Spirit, the Church and the World, p. 302).

Questions 9–10

It is often missed in the Gospels that Jesus did not preach the gospel of soul salvation but the gospel of the kingdom of God, God’s life-giving rule brought into the world and into the whole of people’s lives. Kingdom work creates new wealth, improves human life, brings God’s shalom into the world and invites people to bring their personal lives under the lordship of Jesus. Leland Ryken says “Any job that serves humanity and in which one can glorify God is a Kingdom job” (Leland Ryken, Work and Leisure in Christian Perspective [Eugene OR: Wipf & Stock, 1987], p. 136). The English reformer William Tyndale said, “There is no work better than another to please God; to pour water, to wash dishes, to be a souter (cobbler), or an apostle, all are one, as touching the deed, to please God” (William Tyndale, “A Parable of the Wicked Mammon,” in Doctinal Treatises and Portions of Holy Scripture [Cambridge: Parker Society, l848], pp. 98, 104).

Some have said that if Christians said nothing for a year but did their daily work for God (Colossians 3:22–4:1) that perhaps more people would become Christians, attracted by the witness of their work. So, as something to discuss, should we eliminate reserving the term full-time for supported Christian workers and keep the term for all believers? Along the same line, as we learned in the first study, everyone doing good work is doing “the Lord’s work.” Easily said. The reality of it, as Luther once said about justification by faith through grace, is something we have to beat into our heads every day.