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It takes more than great programs to build a great church…we have a
great program going on here, but it’s not enough.
It takes more than hard workers and sacrificial servants to build a
great church…we have that and last week it saved the church over $20k on the
new roof!
It takes more than big offerings…we have been blessed for our size to do
as well as we do in tithes-for the local ministry, in missions-for around
the world, and in special offerings we receive.
It takes more than a super staff working with the pastor, more than
talented teachers, and more than dedicated deacons to build a great church.
It takes more than a great looking Pastor to build a great church…but
you could always pray that someday you’ll have one! J
It takes great people, great families, and great homes, to really make a
great church. We ARE building a church here, but hopefully we are building
it by building people, building families, and building our homes…if we do
that, then together we will be building a great church as a by-product, and
all to the glory of God!
We have a great example of this here in our text in the form of this
couple, Aquila and Priscilla. I
believe that God intended for the Christian
life to be a familyaffair. The Bible teaches that
it’s ideal for entire families to love and serve God together.
Examples:
Philippian Jailer in Acts 16:31
And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be
saved, and thy house.
[next few verses say that indeed happened!]
Family of John the Baptist
Luke 1:15
For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord…and he shall be
filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb.
Luke 1:41
And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of
Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy
Ghost:
Luke 1:67
And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and
prophesied…
There you have it: father, mother, and son. Now it doesn’t happen
automatically…God has no “grandchildren” as it were, only children…but the
Bible is clear on the fact that God intends for it to be a family affair.
Paul’s protégé Timothy came from a Godly mother, who was raised by a
Godly mother herself. My wife and I were both raised in a Godly heritage,
and we want to pass it along to our children. It’s our job to train up
children in “the way they SHOULD go.”
And in our text we see a married couple, worshipping and serving God
together.
3 ingredients of a great
family:
1. It must be a
saved family
Allow me to reconstruct this story for you…this couple was living in
Rome, Italy. The name Priscilla is a
Roman name, and secular history tells us she was from a prominent family of
nobility living in Rome. Aquila is a Jewish name. So we can see that a
young Roman girl has married a young Jewish boy, and that was not acceptable
in those days…a huge wave of anti-Semitism had swept that land in those
days, and the Romans hated the Jews. The Emperor Claudius had just issued
an edict expelling all Jews from Rome.
vv. 1-2
Aquila and Priscilla were a family under pressure.
It’s always hard to have to pick up and move, especially when it’s moving
away from the place where you have grown up. But this couple wasn’t
choosing to move, they were being forced to leave!
And they are an illustration for the 21st C. family of
today…also under incredible pressure from without, and from within. Stress
and tension are a huge part of the
home today with the pressures of work, time, and finances we choose
to live under.
And children enter the picture and the stress goes up, and more and more
the older they get.
Ill.—here’s an eye-opener for all of us today: if you have a child or
grandchild that is 14 today and beginning as a freshman in high school,
here’s some things to expect by the time they graduate—
·2/3rd’s of their
class will have used drugs
·1 in 5 will be an alcoholic
·2 in 5 will have consumed 5 or
more drinks at 1 sitting
·20% will use tobacco daily
·46% of babies born out of
wedlock will be to kids their age
·1/3rd of all
abortions will be performed on girls their age
·½ will be sexually active
·2nd leading cause of
death of kids their age at graduation will be suicide
We need a revival in the home…we need
a revival of families that starts w/ moms and dads getting serious about
serving God—families with a healthy
fear of Satan having his way and thus
a hearty fervency for drawing close to God and to one another.
I don’t know how anyone can raise a family today without the Lord and
without the help of a good church family.
Aquila and Priscilla were
a family under pressure, but they were also a
family under providence. God was working out their problems
behind the scenes…for their good and for His glory! God is in the process
of bringing something quite wonderful into their lives.
You see, as they were being kicked out of Rome, and were traveling east toward Corinth,
the Apostle Paul was leaving Athens and traveling west to the same place,
and when they met face to face, it was the beginning of something wonderful
that would last the rest of their lives.
Remember what Paul’s trade was? A tentmaker.
v. 3 I imagine they were working together…and what do people do
when they are sitting down working? They talk! And what would Paul have
talked about? It wasn’t the St. Louis
Cardinals…he would have talked about Jesus Christ. He would have shared the
wonderful story of the gospel…of Jesus’ birth, His life and ministry, His
death and resurrection, and this couple would have been mesmerized at
hearing the sweetest story they had ever heard…sounds for sore ears they
were, and I believe they were gloriously saved because of it!
That’s how our God is…if
we get right with him and follow His will He
will cross our paths with others who need Him…at just the right
time…in the just the right way.
Ill.—one night a preacher stopped to help man on motorcycle broken
down/rejected/drove off/started to rain/went back again/helped him put it in
his truck and get it to a shop, put him up for the night, witnessed to him,
fed him, led him to the Lord!/his family got saved.
Aquila and Priscilla had a
similar experience…not and accident, not coincidence, but providence! They
became a great family against all odds.
And to be a great family it must be a
saved family…
2. It must be a
serving family
Everything else we read about this couple from then on is about them
serving God together. Years later Paul writes back to the church at Rome…
Romans 16:3-4
Greet Priscilla and Aquila my
helpers in Christ Jesus: [4] Who have for my life laid down their own necks:
unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles.
Back to Acts 18…
v. 18 Do you know what’s happening to this couple? The same
thing that ought to happen to each and every one of us after we get
saved…regardless of our occupation, our
main business ought to be God’s business! Worshipping and
serving Him, teaching and helping others, winning souls and seeing people
get saved!
We have many here who own or run businesses…but their main business is
God’s business. We have several in some area of service or customer
service…but their main business is serving God!
Ill.—1858, Edward Kimball was a businessman
in Boston [volunteer come to stage], he was also a s.s. teacher of
older teen boys…and in his class was a kid named Dwight/one Saturday he
decided to visit each boy in the class to see if they were saved/he visited
Dwight at the store where he was working and Dwight got saved/by 1879 Dwight
was an evangelist who was going out doing crusades/one of the men at one
crusade was named Frederick [Brotherton Meyer] who was pastoring a small
church…not doing too much, but hearing Dwight the Evangelist list a fire
under him and he became a world-renown preacher. His travels brought him to
America, and preaching on a college campus a student walked the aisle and
got saved one day…his name was Wilbur, and he got saved and went into the
ministry. He hired a guy named Billy to help him. Billy preached a crusade
in Charlotte, NC that was so successful that the local businessman’s assoc.
decided to have another big crusade. Billy couldn’t do it, so they hired a
preacher named Hamm. At the crusade a young man came forward and got
saved…another Billy…know his last name? Graham! Millions have been saved
under his ministry, and millions more thru ones like Mordecai Hamm, and the
other Billy [who liked baseball] before him [Billy Sunday], and J. Wilbur
Chapman, and F. B. Meyer, and Dwight L. Moody…and all because of a
businessman named Ed who said, my main business is God’s business!
[volunteers be seated]
A heritage is passed down from each of these to their families, and to
all those they reach…and just think of how many have been saved at Billy
Graham’s rallies, and they are now witnessing and preaching and reaching
many others.
Great names like Oliver B. Greene have followed, under which my
father in law was saved, and he passed on a Godly heritage to my wife and to
others who can tell others…and even “no-names” who aren’t famous, like the
preacher who stopped to help the motorcyclist broken down on the highway…by
the way, that biker was my dad, & I was in my mother’s womb at the time, and
shortly before I was born my dad was born again, and most of my family has
followed and gotten saved, and my destiny was changed, as are the destinies
of all those dad has won, and I have won, and all those that they go on to
win!
I’m so thankful that Aquila and
Priscilla understood that tho’ they were tentmakers by trade, their main
business was serving God!
A great family is a saved family...a
serving family…
3. It must be a
sanctified family
That means “set apart”…separated
from the world.
Romans 16:5
Likewise greet the church that is in their house.
Did you know it was the 3rd C. AD before the church ever had
such a thing as it’s own building? The church is a body of believers, and
for more than 200 years the church met in homes of people like this couple.
This reminds me of the simplicity of what is “the church.” They
didn’t have any of the things that we today think we HAVE to have in order
to have church. They didn’t have a building or padded chairs, no PA system
or projector and screen, no AC, no advertising, literature, website, etc.
They did so much with so little…and we seem to do so little w/ so much! You
can feel the spirit move if you’re knee deep in carpet or sitting in
sawdust!
This couple had a great home, and it led to a great church…so how about
the church that is YOUR home?! Our
highestcalling is our own children, our own marriage, our own
home.
I hope everyone here can have a saved family, a serving family, a
sanctified family…set apart for the Master’s use!
