For many it was some form of ministry for Christ and his kingdom. When we open the Gospel according to Luke, we immediately meet an elderly woman named Elizabeth, the wife of a Jewish priest, and a young girl named Mary, engaged to marry a carpenter. Barren Elizabeth is now six months pregnant in her old age and will later give birth to John the Baptist.
For both women their pregnancies were supernatural. This partnership required real work. There would be physical work in bearing and rearing these special boys, to be sure. But Mary and Elizabeth embraced the prospect of this work joyfully. Mary captured the significance God intended for her work in her song that we call the Magnificat:.
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant…He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
Luke Giving birth was not the only meaningful work Mary did in her lifetime. These women, healed in some way by Jesus, were part of that traveling band following the Lord around Galilee. Given the patriarchal society of first-century Palestine in which women were most often sequestered, have you ever wondered how these women could travel with Jesus and his followers without creating any hint of scandal? The fact that they had wealth made them benefactors with the freedom to come and go in public without being censured.
He included them in his teachings about a woman baking bread, Matthew ; or a woman hunting for a lost coin, Luke Contrary to custom, he spoke freely to women in public John and taught theology to them Luke He entrusted them with the message of the resurrection while the male disciples hid in fear of the Jewish authorities. In contrast to some of the disciples, no woman deserted him, betrayed him, or failed to believe his words. Because of their faith, their understanding, and their fidelity, women were often examples to the men.
But neither do we hear of all but two of the disciples in the rest of the New Testament. Yet we know the strong tradition that Thomas went to India as an evangelist and church-planter. We assume that all of them except the suicide Judas scattered in every direction, carrying the Gospel of Jesus to the ends of the known earth. The book of Acts carries, initially, the work of Peter as leader of the early church in Jerusalem with the baton soon passed to James, the brother of Jesus, not James the disciple.
Then the story picks up with the apostle Paul, working sometimes with Barnabas, sometimes with Silas. And it is here that we find the fascinating stories of women in a variety of professions who became followers of Jesus and ardent workers in the new churches scattered around the Roman Empire. This is the true story of five working women, whose original professions were totally diverse, but who ended up in the same surprising position.
Our authority for their stories is the apostle Paul. Our first story is about a woman in the northwest Turkish town of Thyatira, known for its guilds of craftsmen, especially the guild of the professionals knowledgeable in the production and sale of expensive purple dye. Lydia was a member of that guild. As a seller of rare and expensive purple dye, Lydia must have had enough wealth to buy into that franchise. We learn in Acts 16 that, while born and reared to believe in the gods and goddesses of Thyatira, Lydia did not worship the pantheon of gods venerated in her hometown.
Many God-fearers became Jewish proselytes. It was there that Paul and Silas met her and talked with her about Jesus, and there she became the first convert to Christianity in Greece. Convinced of the truth of the Christian gospel and believing that it was for everyone, she bore witness to her entire household and with her, they were all baptized.
The apostles stayed on with her for several weeks, instructing her and her household in what she needed as a new follower of Jesus. There in her large house she began the first Christian church on Greek soil, welcoming other new believers into the fellowship of faith. Lydia was successful both in her professional work and in her social or spiritual work nurturing the nascent Greek church.
Most likely the knowledge and connections she cultivated as a trader helped her in her church work, and vise versa. In Lydia we see a woman whose skill and interest is not confined to one limited area.
Indeed, we see that both her position in commerce and her knowledge of faith made her uniquely qualified to spearhead the church in Greece. As the apostle Paul continued his ministry in various Greek cities, he ended up one day in the unique city Athens, known for its university and its intellectual climate. In Acts 17 we watch him wandering through the city, astonished by all the idols and shrines to an endless list of gods and goddesses.
He also addressed whoever happened to be in the marketplace each day. Certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers engaged him in discussion. As he spoke of Jesus, some ridiculed him, but others believed. Among the believers was a woman named Damaris. In the culture of that city, women lived sequestered lives. The book of Matthew is the only place this interesting bit of information is told. Mark was much younger than the other writers. His mother was a prominent follower of Jesus Christ.
Acts tells us that her house in Jerusalem was used as a meeting place for other disciples. Mark was also a follower of Jesus Christ but would likely have been in his teens when the Lord was in Jerusalem. He may have seen and listened to the Savior on occasion. He then accompanied the Apostle Peter to Rome and stayed by him while he was in prison. As a fisherman from Galilee, Peter may not have spoken Greek fluently, so Mark interpreted for him. In his book, Mark wrote down the observations and memories of Peter, one of the original Apostles.
Luke is an interesting writer because he did not know Jesus Christ personally. Luke had been a physician, but he left that profession to travel with Paul. In the first few verses of his book, Luke says that he is going to write the things that eyewitnesses and other teachers of the gospel had to say about the Savior. Apparently he had the opportunity to talk to many who were present when the Savior taught or performed miracles.
One of the most amazing stories Luke wrote about was the birth of the Savior. Elder Bruce R. Who were the other people Luke interviewed about Jesus Christ? The list would have been long. Many of the people who knew the Savior would still have been alive and would have remembered such important times in their lives. Paul mentions that about people saw the Savior after His Resurrection and that most of them were still alive when he was writing to the Corinthians see 1 Corinthians John, or John the Beloved as he was known, served as one of the Apostles.
His book was probably written last, as John seems to have already read the other Gospels before he wrote his own book. Often, instead of telling his version of an event or parable the others had already written about, he writes about things the other writers did not include. It seems likely that he had some of the writings of John the Baptist.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants. For the Apostle Paul, there was nothing more important than preaching the gospel. When Paul uses this word, it always carries with it the sense of primary gospel announcement with the possible exception of Romans and he uses it in connection with himself, other apostles, and a recognised band of evangelists. Of the 68 occurrences of this word, only 20 are in the context of non-evangelists, and of these the vast bulk describe how the believers received the gospel through the proclamation of Paul and his co-workers.
John Dickson convincingly argues that the language describing apostolic evangelism is not used of other believers in the same way. He concludes:. And we do. It appears that this famous brother is someone recognised by the local churches as an evangelist. Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.
This also helps explain an earlier reference in this letter that at first glance might seem to suggest that formal, proclamatory evangelism is something to be undertaken by all believers:.
Dickson quotes E. So what we are suggesting - that there is a clear distinction between the work of evangelists and the work of evangelising by non-evangelists - seems to be borne out by the Biblical record. But it does beg the question: what were non-evangelists expected to do? How did Paul expect his converts to give themselves to the promotion of the gospel? And once again we have to say that the New Testament is not silent on this issue.
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