6 Unlikely People | Bible Trivia Quiz | Digging Deeper

Question 1. Which book of the Bible records letters to seven churches in Asia, and can you name where they were located?

Answer: Revelation, chapters 2–3. The churches are first listed together in Revelation 1:11, then addressed one by one: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

Context & Exhortation: Each letter follows the same basic pattern.

Christ describes Himself, using an image from the vision in Revelation 1. He praises the church where it deserves praise. He gives a specific warning where one is needed, and He ends with a promise "to him that overcometh."

What stands out to me is how different each church actually was.

Ephesus had sound doctrine, but had "left thy first love" (2:4).

Smyrna was poor and persecuted — no rebuke, only a call to stay faithful unto death (2:9–10).

Sardis had a good reputation, but Christ said, "thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead" (3:1).

Laodicea was wealthy and comfortable — called "lukewarm," to be "spued out" (3:16).

Pergamos held fast to Christ's name even in a place he called, “where Satan's seat is" (2:13), but was rebuked for tolerating the doctrine of Balaam and the Nicolaitans (2:14–15) — false teaching, not persecution, was their problem.

Thyatira was praised for works, love, faith, and patience "more than the first" (2:19), yet condemned for tolerating "that woman Jezebel," who led believers into immorality and idolatry (2:20).

Philadelphia, like Smyrna, got no rebuke — only praise for keeping His word, an "open door" no man could shut (3:8), and a promise to be kept from "the hour of temptation" (3:10).

Seven churches. Seven different conditions. Some were suffering but faithful. Some looked fine but were dead inside.

It's worth doing an honest check of our churches, ministries, and indeed ourselves today, Family. Which of these seven sounds most like our own walk with God, right now?

Christ knew exactly where each church stood, underneath its reputation. And He loved each one enough to say so plainly, and call it to repent. Today, if we hear His Voice, let us not harden our hearts. He who has ears to hear, let them hear, and do what the Spirit of the Lord says.

Question 2. How many men were originally chosen to serve tables in the early Jerusalem church, and why?

Answer: Seven. They were chosen in Acts 6:1–6 to settle a dispute over food being handed out daily to widows, and to free the apostles to focus on prayer and preaching.

Context & Exhortation: "There arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration" (Acts 6:1).

This is the first recorded conflict inside the early church. It wasn't a fight over doctrine. It was a practical complaint, with real ethnic tension behind it, about widows not getting a fair share of food.

Notice how the apostles handled it. They didn't try to fix it themselves. They called the whole church together and said plainly, "it is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables" (6:2).

Then they asked the church to choose seven men — men "of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom" (6:3), to take on this job. That freed the apostles to focus on "prayer, and the ministry of the word" (6:4).

Notice also what this tells us: serving tables was never treated as a small job for lesser people. It required men full of the Spirit and wisdom, the same qualities we’d want in any spiritual leader.

Look at what happened next. "The word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly" (6:7). And one of the seven, Stephen, became the church's first martyr — a man "full of faith and power," who "did great wonders and miracles" (6:8).

An unglamorous problem, handled wisely, with the right people in the right roles, opened the door to real growth. So, let’s not assume the boring, practical need in our own church or ministry is beneath serious attention.

Question 3. Which of the four Gospel writers was, by profession, a physician?

Answer: Luke. Paul identifies him this way in Colossians 4:14, calling him "the beloved physician."

Context & Exhortation: Luke never mentions himself by name in his own Gospel. We only know he was a doctor because Paul mentions it in passing, in a different letter. But once you know it, it's hard to miss how it shaped his writing.

Luke pays closer attention to sickness and healing than any of the other three Gospel writers combined.

He tells us about the woman with the issue of blood, who "had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any" (8:43). This is a detail a doctor might handle with quiet professional tact, noting the futility of her treatment without saying, as Mark does, that it left her worse.

Luke also gives a detailed account of a man with dropsy, healed on the Sabbath (14:1–4). And only Luke records that in Gethsemane, Jesus sweat "as it were great drops of blood" (22:44), a detail some doctors connect to a real, rare medical response to extreme stress.

Luke is also the only Gentile author in the entire New Testament. And he's the only Gospel writer who tells us directly that he did careful research, so he could write things out "in order," having "perfect understanding of all things from the very first" (Luke 1:3).

A physician's habit of paying close attention, aimed at the life of Christ, gave us the most carefully documented of the four Gospels.

God didn't set aside Luke's training when He called him to write Scripture. He used it. Whatever skill or training we carry isn’t separate from how God might use us.

Question 4. Which apostle worked as a tax collector before Jesus called him to follow?

Answer: Matthew, called from his tax booth in Matthew 9:9. He's also called Levi, in Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27.

Context & Exhortation: "Jesus saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him" (Matthew 9:9).

Tax collectors in that time and place were hated. They were Jewish men working for Rome, the occupying power. Many grew rich by collecting more than they were owed. Because of this, the Gospels group them together with "sinners" or people the religious establishment looked down on (see Matthew 9:11, where the Pharisees ask why Jesus eats "with publicans and sinners").

Jesus doesn't wait for Matthew to clean up his life first. He doesn't wait for a moment of conversion. He calls him right there, mid-transaction, at the tax booth, and Matthew responds immediately: he gets up and follows. Then he throws a dinner party at his own house, and invites "many publicans and sinners" to come meet Jesus (9:10).

The same man who spent his career carefully recording numbers for Rome went on to write the Gospel best known for its careful structure: genealogies, fulfilled prophecy, organized teaching. His old skill set, precision and record-keeping, became exactly what was needed to write one of the four accounts of Jesus's life.

Jesus doesn't wait for people to become respectable before He calls them. He called a man from a career everyone despised and used the very skills that profession had built in him. Will we allow God to use us in our jobs today?

Question 5. Which minor prophet described himself as a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees, rather than a professional prophet?

Answer: Amos, in Amos 7:14.

Context & Exhortation: Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, tries to run Amos out of the northern kingdom because his prophecies against Israel are too harsh.

Amos answers him plainly: "I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit: and the LORD took me as I followed the flock, and the LORD said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel" (7:14–15).

Amos had no formal training. No connection to the schools of prophets that existed at the time. He was a shepherd and fruit farmer from Tekoa, in the southern kingdom of Judah.

God sent him north, into a wealthy and comfortable kingdom, carrying some of the sharpest words in the Old Testament: "they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes" (2:6). "Let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream" (5:24).

An outsider, with no credentials the religious leaders recognized, walked into the middle of a wealthy nation's worship system. He told them plainly that their worship meant nothing because they mistreated the poor (5:21–24).

God doesn't require religious credentials to use someone. He just requires availability. Amos was out following his flock when the call came. He didn't argue that he wasn't qualified. He just went.

So what’s the message here today: Don't assume your lack of formal training rules you out from a message God has genuinely given you.

Question 6. Which businesswoman, described as a seller of purple cloth, became one of Paul's first converts in Europe?

Answer: Lydia, in Acts 16:14–15.

Context & Exhortation: "A certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul" (Acts 16:14).

A few details here matter more than they first appear. Purple dye was extremely expensive in the ancient world. It came in tiny amounts from sea snails, and purple cloth signaled royalty and wealth. Lydia was almost certainly a woman with real money and standing, which was unusual for a named, independent businesswoman in that culture.

Paul and his companions had sailed to Philippi expecting to find a synagogue. Instead, they found a small group of women praying by a riverside (16:13). Lydia was one of them.

So the entire European mission of the gospel, as far as Acts tells it, begins not in a synagogue, but at a wealthy businesswoman's prayer meeting by a river. After she believes, she immediately opens her home to Paul's whole team. That home becomes the base for the church in Philippi (Acts 16:15, 16:40). This is the church Paul later writes one of his warmest letters to.

Family, the gospel's entry point into an entire continent ran through one woman's willingness to listen carefully, then open her home generously. Never underestimate what God might do through your ordinary hospitality toward someone carrying His message.

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