Bible Teaching
There is a visitor to the home of Priscilla and Aquila who becomes famous. His name is Apollos and he is an orator. This means that he is great public speaker and this skill was greatly admired in Corinth. Paul was nothing to look at and his talks were boring. But this guy was great to listen to. But - he is not quite accurate in his Bible knowledge. He has still much to learn and needs to be corrected in some very important points. And P and A do just that. To be faithful without being hurtful is difficult. It is not easy to tell someone with a gift like Apollos that he has got things wrong. This tells me three things about P and A.
They were well versed in the truth of God. They knew the Scriptures and they had learned so much from their time with the apostle Paul. I am indebted to so many people who helped me in my early days as a Christian and gave me a grounding in Bible knowledge.
They were able to handle people with sensitivity. This is a rare quality. People have feelings and they can be easily hurt. Priscilla and Aquila were able to correct this very clever, gifted man without causing offence. I was probably only in my late teens when I was encouraged to lead a Bible Study at Bethany Hall, Stevenston. The chapter I was given was Hebrews 1 and I came out with one or two errors. But there were older Christian brothers who corrected me without causing offence. I have never forgotten this. I will thank them when I meet them in heaven.
Priscilla and Aquila were both together in this. It was not left to Aquila to do the Bible teaching and Priscilla was left with making the supper and washing the dishes afterwards. They both talked it through with Apollos and together they challenged his wrong teaching.
It is lovely to see this couple in the New Testament. I don't want you to take out of these blogs on A and P that God can only use couples in his service. God can use us as individuals and Paul himself speaks of situations where the wife is a believer and the husband is not. He gives advice on how to deal with situations like this. So we don't need to be married to serve the Lord. Paul himself was a single man and he served the Lord on his own without a partner. But it is powerful when a couple are united in their love for the Lord and in their service for Him. Conversely it is so sad when a couple are pulling different directions and are constantly arguing and disagreeing with each other.
We need to pray for married couples because Satan does not want Christian families to be united. He wants disunity and disharmony. He wants conflict in the home. We need to pray that our married couples will be like Priscilla and Aquila. They demonstrated true Christian love in action. They demonstrated sacrificial service. They were together in the good times and bad times.
Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.
[Acts 18: 24-26 NIV]
Picture by Karren McPherson - permission kindly granted.
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