One Lord - One Life

Tentmakers

(Acts 18:1-3, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, December 2, 2012)

[18:1] After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.

We need to take a moment to recap Paul's current missionary journey and to set the stage for where we are headed. Remember that Paul had visited some of the churches that were started during his earlier missionary journey with Barnabas. Now with Silas, he was traveling westward with the hope of going into the region to the south, called Asia. God would not allow it. His next plan was to go north toward the Black Sea. Again the Lord prohibited. He kept heading west until he reached the sea. Then the Lord called him over to Macedonia through a dream. There he had the adventures we have been considering for many weeks in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea, facing persecution from Jews who rejected Jesus as the Messiah and the whole notion that the Old Testament Scriptures required the coming of a suffering servant Messiah.

When his persecutors followed him even to the comparatively insignificant town of Berea, the disciples in the newly formed church there sent Paul south, out of Macedonia, and into a region that was then known as Achaia. Most recently we have been following what happened when Paul was left alone in Athens, and especially how the Lord led Him to speak at Mars Hill. There Paul gave a message to people who had figured out a way to worship a god that they did not know. He introduced to the people of that great idolatrous and intellectual city Jesus Christ, a Savior they could know as opposed to one they thought probably existed but did not know. Christ, the historic man that no reasonable person should claim to be mythological, clearly had taught his disciples that he would suffer, die, and rise again on the third day. As C. S. Lewis famously said, this Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. There are no other possibilities.

The only way to make up your mind on that question would be to hear the message that has been given to us of His life from those who were eyewitnesses. The Gospel according to Mark, the shortest of the gospels, gives any person today an opportunity to learn about this Jesus. But that account, which was not yet written in 50 AD when Paul was in Athens, takes some time to teach publicly. (What we call “Mark” was being communicated orally by Peter at this time, and was reduced to writing in the next ten to fifteen years.) Learning from Mark also requires a group of people who actually want to know the identity of the God they may have already experienced through creation, life, and tragedy, but whom they do not presently know. But what if people would prefer to call out to an unknown god in a time of panic or even in a time of joy, and yet keep him conveniently unknown, so that they can approach him on their own terms? That God need not be liar, lunatic, or lord. Just an unknown idol. There were a few people who responded to Paul's message in Athens. But after calling Athens to repent regarding agnostic idolatry, Paul went on to the city of Corinth. The progress of the Christian message in this important city and in the Asian city of Ephesus will be the story before us as we go into the new year, taking us through Acts 18, 19, and 20. After that, the remainder of Acts is filled with Paul's arrest in Jerusalem that eventually leads us to his arrival in Rome. Though other places are mentioned in passing, it may help us to keep in mind that the rest of this book has much to do with what the Lord was doing in the cities of Corinth and Ephesus, and then finally about what took place in two capitals, Jerusalem and Rome, the capital of the empire. For now, on to Corinth.

[2] And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, [3] and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade.

When Paul came to Athens in the prior chapter the focus of God's Word was on Athens and the idolatry there. There was much that could have been said about Corinth as he entered that city, but that was not where the Lord took us in Luke's account. He introduced us instead to an important Christian couple who were living in Corinth at that time, Aquila and Priscilla.

Aquila and Priscilla were Jewish followers of Jesus Christ who had only recently come to Corinth from Rome. Along with many other Jews, they were forced out of Rome by the emperor's edict in A.D. 49. The reason for the edict seems to be that there were disturbances in the synagogues, probably over the Christian message. It was now about 17 years since the day of Pentecost when Peter preached the message that Jesus was the Messiah to visiting Jews from as far away as Rome. Many believed and stayed in Jerusalem for some time. Eventually they and other Christian Jews would have made their way to the capital of the empire, bringing back to the synagogues word about Jesus. See Acts 2:5-11 and 28:21-22. Jews in Rome did not know about Paul yet, but they did hear about Jesus, and there must have been first a trickle, then a stream, soon a river, and eventually a flood of people bringing to the leading city of the empire the good news that the Messiah of the Jews was the Savior of the world. As in every gathering of Jews where that message was communicated, it created violent division. Aquila and Priscilla saw all this firsthand, and because of the emperor's command, they ended up in Corinth.

Aquila was not from Rome, but Pontus, which was on the southeastern shores of the Black Sea. The name Pontus appears in Acts 2 as a location from which some Jews traveled to Jerusalem for the Jewish festivals. Aquila could have heard about Christ as the Messiah in Jerusalem, in Pontus, in Rome, or in many other places where he may have journeyed with his wife. In the providence of God, Paul found this couple in Corinth. They would be important in the church in at least Corinth, Ephesus, and Rome. See Romans 16:3-4 to see how Paul felt about them. They were his fellow workers in Christ Jesus. They risked their necks for Paul. They suffered greatly for Jesus in daily toil and in facing loss. Let me just say this: Jesus was worth all their troubles.

Paul went to see them in Corinth and began there a relationship that would bear much fruit for many years. One of the reasons that he stayed with them is that they were tentmakers. People in the ancient world were taught a trade at home. Jesus had one. So did Paul. That was their work. They had families like we do. Aquila had a wife, Priscilla. She was very important to everything that he was doing, and he was important to her. They were practicing Jews, so they also had a synagogue life where they gathered together with a community a faith. What they did not have was an equal share with their neighbors of what people count as the good life. They did not have all their family nearby. They did not have a history of everyone in their faith community living together in peace. They did not have the stability of living their lives in one place. They did not know where they would be next year.

What did they have? They had one life, and not three. They did not have a work life, a family life and a church life, all separate from each other, and in danger of a messy collision if they ever came together. The reason they had one life was that the person who was Lord of their work, family, and church, was One. They lived for the God who came to earth to make a tent where He would dwell. Somewhere in their travels, Aquila and Priscilla became followers of a historical person, Jesus. They heard the claims that He taught His disciples, that He would suffer, die, and rise again on the third day. They knew that He was not a liar or a lunatic, but the Lord of all, and that He had died for them, so they determined to live their whole life for Him.

1. What do we know about Paul's ministry in and to Corinth?

2. What do we know about the ministry and lives of Aquila and Priscilla?

3. How did this couple end up in Corinth?

4. How did Paul and this couple end up spending so much time together?

OT Passage: Exodus 26:1-6