The Ministry of Helps

The Ministry of Helps

I. Their Situation and Occupation

The apostle Paul speaks of Aquila and Priscilla; this couple often appears in his letters as “my helpers in Christ Jesus.” Their lives and work will furnish a profitable study. They were working people. They both had the same trade as Paul himself. They had formerly lived in Rome but had recently been banished by a decree of Claudius Cæsar. Acts 18:2. Fugitives from their home, they had to come to Corinth, and it was there that Paul first met them. They were thrown together in the common workshop with such a meeting as takes place every day between fellow-workmen. But out of it came momentous issues for life and eternity.

You who complain about your calling or fret about the changes and trials of life, do you not know that these very changes are the divine methods by which God’s purposes of blessing and usefulness concerning you shall be fulfilled. Had Aquila not been compelled to leave Rome and break up his home and business, he would probably have never met with Paul and been called to the knowledge and service of Christ through this providential meeting. Had he not been a working man and pursuing his ordinary vocation he would not have been brought into contact with the apostle. It was in the line of their calling, their common duties, and the providential changes of their life, that God called them. And so, He meets us. Do not murmur at your business but consecrate it. Do not try too hard to run away from it, but, as the apostle has so finely put it, “Let every man in the calling wherein he is called therein abide with God.” Make the-most of your incidental opportunities. Look at every fellow-workman you meet as a possible Paul, Aquila, or Apollos. Recognize the hand of God in the people with whom you are thrown. Accept your ups and downs in life as turns in the great wheel of Providence, and seek chiefly to understand God’s purpose in them and how you can use them for Him. So you will find that every part of life may be sacred and divine, and the meanest toil become glorious service for Him.

II. Their Conversion

The details of it are not given, but only the results—we find them gloriously at work for Christ. Paul had a wonderful way of getting his companions converted. A sinner could not long be in his company without coming to his Saviour. Put him in a Philippian prison, and lo, the jailer is heard crying: “What must I do to be saved?” Bring him before Agrippa as a spectacle of curiosity, and lo, the very king exclaims: “You almost persuade me to be a Christian.” Put him on a shipwrecked ship on the Mediterranean, and lo, God gives him all that sail with him. Bind him between two soldiers in the Praetorium at Rome, and soon all the barracks are ringing with the praises of God. Let him enter Aquila’s shop as a tentmaker, and lo, the master is himself at work and preaching the same gospel. God grant us all the blessed art of so impressing people for God that they cannot be in our company without giving their hearts to God.’ Aquila’s conversion came through showing kindness and hospitality to Paul. They (Aquila and Priscilla) perhaps gave Paul a few days’ work, or a room in their house, but they received in return all the wealth of his Master’s love.

III. Their First Service

Their first Christian work was no doubt with Paul in Corinth. There a very glorious revival broke out soon after Paul’s arrival, and many of the Jews and Greeks believed. So useful did they become to the apostle, and so dear that, when he left Corinth after labouring there a year and a half, he took them with him as far as Ephesus. It was here they met Apollos and where they were led into their first distinct personal work for Christ. Listening to him one day in the Jewish synagogue, (Acts 18:24-28) they were deeply impressed with his learning and eloquence, and also with his imperfect knowledge of the truth. They did not, however, criticise or oppose but gently took him to their house and opened up to him the deeper and more spiritual light which they had received. Soon after this we hear how used by God Apollos was, that Paul referred to him in the scriptures with: “I have planted, Apollos watered, God gave the increase.” And in other places how he was the most useful of the apostles.

We have here a kind of service most glorious. Aquila and Priscilla did not become great teachers themselves, but they lead Apollos into the light. How many distinguished ministers of the Lord owe their deepest experiences to the influence of some modest Aquila, or even of some consecrated Priscilla. Here is a ministry for everyone. What are you doing, in your house, in your correspondence, in your friendship for the people you can lead nearer to Christ? Are there not some for whom you could pray and lead into a work for God that you can never do?

IV. Their Kindness to Paul

This was the service which seemed to linger most tenderly in the apostle’s memory. “My helpers in Christ Jesus,” “who have for my life laid down their own necks.” “Unto whom not only I give thanks, but likewise all the churches of the Gentiles.” It is great to be able to be a good co-worker and be willing to bear one another’s burdens and enter into the labours of others, happy just to be able to help, even though no one will ever know about it. In the apostle’s list of offices in the church “helps” are mentioned before “governments.” By the ministry of prayer, by giving, and by the ministry of encouragement, and by the countless other ways in which we can help, we can all find the footprints of Aquila and Priscilla, if we want to follow them. It takes great grace to rejoice in another’s work and pour out our lives, like affluent rivers, into great streams. But God knows whence every drop has come, and in the great day of recompense many of the helps shall have the chief reward. Dear friend, are you helping? And when the harvest comes, shall he that sows and he that reaps rejoice together?

V. Their Service to the Church

“He that humbles himself shall be exalted.” The service of Aquila and Priscilla was enlarged and exalted until their home became the very sanctuary of the early church and the starting point of the greatest movements of primitive Christianity. It was there, as we have seen, that the early church in Corinth was nurtured and cherished. It was there that Apollos was led into the light. They were there afterwards when the Church in Ephesus began, for Paul left them there no doubt to prepare the way for his subsequent return and glorious ministry in that place.

Dear friend, what is your house in the Church of Christ? How often have His people found a welcome there for His sake? How many souls have found their birthplace in your house while angels have sung over the Sinner that repented? The house was the churches’ only home for many centuries. Perhaps if there were fewer church edifices today, there would be more churches in the house. The church in the house suggests a thought concerning the true spirit of the Christian assembly. It should be a family and a home far more than they often are, characterised by the unity and love of a true household. It is often more like a club or a cemetery. The first Christians made their convocations joyful home gatherings, serving the Lord with gladness, and breaking bread from house to house.

There is one congregation we can all have in the church within the house, and that is our own family. How is it, beloved, with your little flock? Is the alter fire steadily burning and the sweet incense filling all the chambers? Is the priest in the sanctuary, the lights in the golden lamp, and the spirit of sacrifice and love ministering at every altar? God sanctify our home life and make every house a little church, and every family a type of heaven.

Lessons

1) How instructively this example shows us the use we may make of common and secular things; how much God is able to make of our business and our associations in the daily course of life. May the Lord consecrate our callings and our companionships so they cannot touch us in the business of life without being brought nearer to God.

2) Providential changes in our life are divine opportunities for service. Aquila and Priscilla regarded the trying changes of their life as occasions for testimony and work for the Lord. In every place they lived, they left a church behind them, in which their house had been a birthplace. God grant us grace to represent Him wherever we go and to recognise every situation in which He places us as a door of service. The Master told His disciples that when they were brought before kings and councils, “it should turn to them for a testimony.” Walking with Him we shall find all places and all times sacred, and all things but the framework of His plan for us all.

3) What a fine example of personal work. Perhaps they never preached a sermon, but they had three churches at least, and they led to Christ one who may have come to thousands of churches. God help us to be faithful in our personal ministry and to do what He gives us to do with men as we meet them, one by one.

4) The ministry of the home. They may have had a very humble home; often it was broken up. Perhaps it was only an upper room in a foreign city, but it was the Lord own house, it was open for His work and for His children.

5) The ministry of women. The ministry of Pricilla must not be forgotten. It was all womanly. It was never apart from her husband. She is always mentioned with him, but she was no mere cipher. Indeed, we can almost infer from the way the apostle speaks of this beautiful pair that she became, at last, the stronger nature of the two. In the first references to them it is Aquila and Priscilla, but toward the last it is Pricilla and Aquila; and the devoted and faithful woman “of the fruit of her hands and, let her own works praise her in the gates.”

Let no man hinder the ministry of the woman within its true limitations. God has ever honoured it and will do so yet more and more: “Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman that fears the Lord she shall be praised.”