Acts 18:24-28
Amen. This is the word of the
living God. There’s a wonderful picture in
the history of the ancient Near East, and it’s a picture of a
king going off to war. This king goes off to war and
he stays away many months on a campaign to defend his realm. to protect his realm or to add
more land, which he conquers to his kingdom, to his realm. And after months of being away,
perhaps even years at a time, this king will inevitably return
home. And as he returns home along
the roadway, his soldiers and his battle weary army clanking
and marching along the way back home, they will more than likely
lead a chain of prisoners along with them. Prisoners of war,
spoils of victory from other nations. And as they return near
their kingdom, the subjects of this king will often line the
roadways. They will prepare the way for
the coming of the king. And as he arrives back near his
palace, his fortification, his castle, they say things like
long live the king and they offer him gifts. gifts for protecting
their land, gifts for giving them a peaceful kingdom to live
in. Well, this picture of a king
returning from war is found in the scriptures. In particular,
Psalm 68 describes our God as a victorious king returning from
war. And Paul picks up in Ephesians
chapter four, On this picture of the ancient Near Eastern king,
also a description of God and Psalm 68. And Paul does what
he often does with the Old Testament under the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit. He takes an Old Testament passage
here in 68, Psalm 68, describing a victorious king returning and
he Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, add something to
it or changes it a little bit. Now, note I said under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, we know we’re not supposed to tamper with the
scripture, but God and his grace, God and his omnipotence, his
wisdom, his power, he has the right to to inscript rate, whatever he wishes.
And so Paul in Ephesians chapter four speaks of Jesus as this
King returning back to his palace. Thou who was rich beyond all
splendor for our sakes became poor. We sing Jesus left the
throne of heaven, the riches of glory. He left the wonderful
eternal fellowship that he had with God, the father, God, the
Holy spirit. He became a man made under the
law, suffered under the miseries of this life, obeyed God perfectly,
went to the cross as the lamb slain before the foundation of
the world. And as God’s wrath was poured
out upon him. As the nails were in his hands and his feet, the
spear in his side, the wrath of God poured out on him and
justice was satisfied. He went to his grave and there
he remained three days until he rose again. And 40 days later,
when Christ was ascended back to his palace, Paul says in Ephesians
chapter four, that he did not receive gifts. And this is where
Paul makes the change. It says he gave gifts. to the
church. And in his ascension, post death
and post resurrection, Paul says that he gave gifts to the church
and those gifts, those victory spoils of the cross include apostles
as Paul himself. It includes prophets as we read
were at Paul’s sending church back there in Antioch in Syria.
There are evangelists, those gifted with telling the good
news of the gospel. And now under the perpetual New
Testament age, we believe that God has given pastors and teachers. And Paul goes on in Ephesians
chapter four to say the role of the pastor, the role, the
job of the teacher is to equip the saints, to equip the saints,
build them up in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. The pastor teacher
is to take a body of people, A body of God’s people redeemed
in Christ, brought into fellowship with Christ through the Holy
Spirit and build them up in the unity of the faith to give them
a knowledge of the son of God, to bring them to mature manhood,
to bring them into the measure and the stature and the fullness
of Jesus Christ and to grow them up in every way and to Christ,
the head of his body, the church. so that the church has growth
and that the church has love. Now, the job of the pastor teacher
sounds rather enormous, but that’s why we preach, that’s why we
teach, that’s why we open the Bible, that’s why we work through
our confessions of faith in catechism. We want you to grow up into the
image of Jesus Christ, that image that was bent and broken back
at the fall of man in Adam. What we also want to avoid is
a people of God who are tossed around like a small ship on the
waves of the sea or carried about by every wind of doctrine, every
fad. We like to say of our congregation,
our church, we are a family of believers in the vein of the
historic Christian faith. We’re not gonna waver this way,
and we’re not gonna waver that way, or we’re not gonna try this
or try that. We want to stand on the shoulders
of the apostles, and to stand on the shoulders of the church
fathers, and to stand on the shoulders of those who’ve held
fast to the faith that was once and for all delivered to the
saints. And one of the things that we
have to see when we think of being victory spoils of the cross,
not just that God saves us, not just that God sends us pastors
and teachers to equip us to do the work of the ministry. But
the victory spoils of the cross that really hit the pews are
that as we sit under the word, as we learn our doctrine, it
helps us grow. It gives us muscles, but it makes
us effective not only in the church. but also in the home
and out in the world. And I want you to see today that
God uses all sorts of people. He uses all sorts of people equipped
in various ways, and he plugs you in to various niches and
needs in the life of the Christian community. He uses different
personalities, different education levels, different upbringings. different skills and abilities. You may be average. You may be
above average. You may be semi-pro, right? You may be pro. You begin to
get the picture. God uses all sorts. A couple of Wednesday
nights ago, we studied Moses’ upbringing. We don’t know a lot
about Moses’ first 40 years, but what we can probably figure
and guess is he had all the best of Egypt. He went to boarding
school. He went to prep school. He had
art lessons. He was a boy scout. He probably
went to sailing camp in the summer. You kind of get what I’m saying
is he had every privilege afforded to him. He was good at a little
bit of everything. And some scholars believe that
Moses was probably because he was Pharaoh’s son, a military
man, and Moses may perhaps have conquered several cities on behalf
of Egypt. And so when he gets out into
the wilderness and God prepares him the next 40 years because
he’s gonna be a shepherd of God’s people, he’s both a military
man and a shepherd. And we understand that when he
goes at age 80 to see Pharaoh and to redeem his people, he
would probably be thinking in his mind what we like to say,
this isn’t my first rodeo. And so today, today in the church,
today in the national or international church scene, sometimes we bump
into people who we call omni-competent. They’re really brilliant. They’re
brilliant theologians. They’re brilliant Bible scholars.
They know art. They know history. They know
something about everything. And their omni-competence is
a great and rare gift to the church. We might say of them
something like Queen Esther said of herself, I was born for such
a time as this. But one of the things I want
us to see before we dig through the life of Apollos is this,
you be you, you be confident in the way God has made you and
you be content with where he’s put you in the life of his body
of believers. Sometimes I’ll go to these preaching
conferences and they’ll put a big name person up on stage. And
somehow by God’s grace, I’ve learned you go with a pen and
a legal pad and you write down what they say that I can do in
my context. My job is not to go there and
try to imitate them. Their brain is bigger. Their
life is broader. Their abilities are vast. And so we have to be careful,
I think, not only as ministers, but people in the congregation,
to rejoice in other people’s gifts, but to be content with
our own. So I want us to think about Apollos,
four things about him. First, Apollos was prepared. Apollos, a Jew, verse 24 tells
us in chapter 18, Apollos, a Jew, was a native of Alexander. That
tells us all we need to know about his early life. And you’re
probably scratching your head and said, doesn’t really tell
us much at all. Well, he was a native of Alexandria. a great city, in fact, the second
greatest city in the Roman Empire, only to be rivaled by Rome. Alexandria was on the mouth of
the Nile in lower Egypt, which would have been on the Mediterranean
Sea. And for some centuries before
Apollos would have been living, there had been a large Jewish
population, several hundred thousand Jewish people lived there. They
had one of the greatest libraries in the world, 700,000 volumes. Philo, who would be one of the
greatest scholars of the era, greatest Jewish scholars of the
era, we rely on him for a lot in understanding the origins
of the Christian faith. He would have been there and
likely, perhaps taught Apollos. We don’t know for sure. But this
was a place of rich Jewish heritage, rich educational opportunities. The synagogue we’re told there
was one of the largest structures ever built in a synagogue away
from the city of Jerusalem. In fact, it was so big that when
the people of God gathered there and you can imagine one synagogue,
several hundred thousand people, it was so big that the temple
servants could not call out from a platform like this. and instructed
the congregation. It was so large, they raised
flags. And so the congregation knew with the symbol of the flag
what they were to do next in the order of the service. And
so you begin to see the preparation of Apollos for the ministry that
he will have at Corinth, refuting the Jews in mighty ways. And we’re gonna talk about his
gifts in a moment, but his preparation was to grow up Really a privileged
young man in one of the most well grounded societies for what
God would use him for in the years to come. Now, there’s a
problem we’re going to see. The disciples of John the Baptist
had come and told about repentance. Think about that picture of the
king returning from the war. People would clean up the streets.
They would say, prepare the way for the king is coming. And that’s
exactly what John the Baptist was to do for Jesus. Prepare
the roadway, prepare your hearts, Israel, prepare your rotten,
sinful hearts for Jesus is coming and he wants in. Well, John the
Baptist, baptism was for repentance. And while that’s great and wonderful,
since then Jesus was born and suffered and died and rose and
ascended and gave us the Holy Spirit. And that needed to be
preached at Alexandria, but it had not yet been. And so the
rich preparation of Apollos was to grow up in this wonderful
city with a wonderful Jewish and Greek education. He had the
best of the best. I would think of it this way.
You know, you turn on the news at night and you hear a political
pundit. Oh, they’re from Stanford. They’re from Harvard. They’re
from Duke. They’re from, you list the Ivy League school and
you immediately think in your head, oh, they’re smart. Oh,
they’re well-educated. You probably think other things
as well. But you begin to get the picture of the pedigree that
Apollos has. And at Ephesus, Ephesus, we’re
told his eloquence, His competency in the Old Testament scriptures
was amazing. And so Apollos, we’re told, was
a prepared man for the task God would have given. But the second
thing we want to think about is he was a gifted man. The risen and ascended Christ
gave victory spoils to his church. And Apollos is for sure one of
them just as I am and you are. But there are six really great
gifts that we read of in this passage about Apollos. He was
eloquent. He was competent. He was instructed. He was fervent. He was accurate. And he was bold. Each of these
six things tell us something about the mighty ability of Apollos
to do the work that God would give him to do. He was eloquent.
He had a command of the language. I was about to say the English,
English language, but that would be wrong. No doubt a command
of the Greek language. He could hold people spellbound. I remember some years back hearing
Sinclair Ferguson preach at our opening worship service for General
Synod. And Dr. Ferguson preached for
an hour and 15 minutes. And I only know because I looked
at my watch when he was done. I could have taken more. I think
of a time where I heard R.C. Sproul preach on Isaiah 6 live
in person, and he can hold you spellbound. You never look at
your watch. You never get out your phone
and check. You listen to every word. And to have an eloquent
orator like Apollos, what a wonderful thing. He’s competent. He knows
what he needs to know, and he knows how to mix it, blend it,
pull from it, synthesize it, and use it. Most of us, we know
about eight words and eight things, right? And we just talk about
it over and over, that’s me. Oh, not Apollos, eloquent, competent. He was instructed, that’s the
third phrase. gifting he gives. He was instructed
in the faith or it says the way of the Lord, the way of God.
We read that at the end of Deuteronomy, chapter five. He knew the faith
and the practice. Of the Jewish people begins to
sound like the Apostle Paul, doesn’t he? He’s able to take
the old covenant scriptures, blend it with the new covenant
truth of Jesus, the new redemptive realities of Jesus landing on
the scene and doing the work. being the Lamb of God slain before
the foundation of the world. He knew because he was instructed.
The fourth thing, he was fervent. We might would say in our culture,
he was on fire. He had, as Jeremiah the prophet
said, a fire in his belly and he could not wait to gain an
audience and to present Jesus Christ. And you add eloquence
and competence and instruction and fervency. And then you add
the fifth element accuracy. He could, he could. He could
speak of the whole breadth of redemptive history as revealed
to God’s people in the Bible. And he could say in his mind
and his heart, as we ought to say today, accurately about Jesus. He was crucified, he was dead,
he was buried, and he was raised. These six things that we find
that God gifted to Apollos, victory spoil of the cross, These six
things are amazing. Most of us have about two or
three gifts, right? Maybe one or two. Sometimes if
we’re doing all right and God has been good to us, we might
have four or five gifts, but six. And you think about modern
day gifts to the church, people who can read seven or eight books
a week, people who can recall everything they’ve ever read
and they can synthesize it. They can pull it together, pull
it apart. They can use it at the right
place, right time. Those are extremely rare. I wanna get a bumper sticker
for the back of my vehicle that says, support your local average
pastor. Because people like Apollos are
extraordinarily rare. I think of the job that he’ll
do when he gets to Corinth. Remember Paul kept running from
his life during that, Last missionary journey, when he started at Philippi
and he went down to Berea and he stopped off at Athens and
then he landed at Corinth for about a year and a half. In every
place, the Jews gave him trouble. And do you remember he was running
for his life from place to place to place? And remember they came
and they found him and they harassed him and he left. But thanks be
to God, because of that Roman proconsul gave him the freedom
to preach in Corinth. And so he stayed on there a year
and a half. And so the work that Apollos
will do when he goes to Achaia, that’s Corinth. He’s gonna be
like, you know, you ride by these Caterpillar dealerships, like
the one out there in Mebane on the highway, the big Caterpillar
equipment. You know, they got these jackhammers
that can just, boy, they can tear up rock. They can move earth. They can bulldoze. Just that
word sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Love to drive one of those
things. He’s not out there with a pickaxe,
is he? God, the risen savior. He sends the heavy equipment
in Apollos to do the work of evangelism among the hard-headed,
hard-hearted, rock-solid-hearted Jewish people who would not listen
to Paul. And so you begin to see how his
preparation in Alexandria, his gifts and the way God made him,
his abilities, his natural abilities. There’s a third thing, and I
think this is really the most important, he’s teachable. He’s
in the synagogue at Ephesus, and he’s, as we like to say about
the preacher, he’s shucking corn, right? He’s going at it. And
Priscilla and Aquila hear him and they say, you know, there’s
something missing from his preaching. There’s something missing from
his evangelism. There’s something missing. And
remember, he only knows of the baptism of John. He only knows
redemptive history up to the point of John the Baptist saying,
repent. for the Savior is coming. Prepare your hearts, open wide
your hearts for the coming of Messiah. They don’t yet know,
or he doesn’t yet know that Messiah has come, and Messiah, according
to the scriptures, has suffered, died, been buried, raised, and
now ascended. He doesn’t yet know that, but
he’s teachable. And he’s gonna be the new and
improved Apollos. As if you thought he couldn’t
get any better, He’s gonna have the missing ingredient, and that’s
the cross. He’s gonna be given the missing
ingredient, and that’s the history of Calvary. He’s gonna be given
the missing thing, and that’s preaching the whole Christ to
the whole man for a whole salvation. And so we are going to see that
Apollos was teachable. He gets plugged in and upgraded.
Right? He gets a new iOS, you know,
like we have to do with our phones. And we wake up in the morning
and it says, punch in your password. You’ve been upgraded. All the
bugs are gone, at least for now. And it is so wonderful to see
the example of Priscilla and Aquila. They hear the deficiency
in his message and they pull him aside privately. Probably
had him over to Sunday lunch. probably brought him over in
the privacy of the home, and the passage tells us they explained
to him more fully, more accurately, that since John the baptizer’s
ministry, Messiah had come and done things. And isn’t this a
wonderful example of how to correct someone? Isn’t this a splendid
lesson for us in how to correct someone in the things of the
faith? We love to do it on Facebook. We love to do it in public. And
there’s some lessons in how not to do it. Now, I was taught in
seminary by someone who was taught by R.C. Sproul. And they said
that in theology class, and I don’t believe this is apocryphal because
the person who told me wouldn’t make it up, but they said R.C.
Sproul would get out a Zippo lighter and he would flick it. And when he asked you a theological
question, it’s as if you were gonna be burnt at the stake if
you answered heretically. That’s probably not the way to
do it, though that was rather humorous. And you can get away
with that with theological students, but I think of, well, I can’t
help but think of an example in the life of our church. Don’t
worry, it’s none of you. I don’t know, about seven years
ago, I was down at the beach enjoying vacation. Sunday afternoon,
my phone rings, it’s one of the elders, and I knew something
was wrong. Well, the guest preacher got hollered at in public. Somebody in the church didn’t
like what he said or how he said it or whatever. And this person
takes it upon themselves to walk right up to the preacher and
holler at him in front of the whole congregation. And the men
of the church were pulling him back saying, no, you can’t do
this. This is the man of God. This is an elder. This is a minister.
You don’t do this sort of thing. Isn’t it wonderful to see the
example that we have of Priscilla and Aquila pulling him aside.
Now, remember what Priscilla and Aquila are. They’re blue collar people. They
are leather workers. They are tent makers. They’ve
got calluses on their hands. Their nails aren’t pristine because
they’ve never done a day’s worth of intellectual work as
Apollos has. And so this very learned man
is taken aside by these two folks taught by Paul. And in God’s
grace, because they submit one to another in the Lord, he learns
the way of Christ more accurately. And maybe we’re amazed at by
his preparation in Alexandria. Maybe we’re amazed at the gifts
he has, his ability to hold a crowd spellbound. But I think we should
be more amazed by God’s grace. His heart is teachable. His heart
is open to the iron, sharpening iron that comes from life and
the fellowship of God’s people. And can’t you imagine, he says
in his mind, And then with his ministry, it’s all for Christ. It’s all for his glory and the
good of neighbors. And that leads us to the final
thing we want to think of Apollos. Yes, he’s well-prepared. Yes,
he’s well-gifted. Yes, he is a teachable man. But
the fourth thing is he is useful. He wouldn’t be useful if he wasn’t
teachable. He wouldn’t be useful because
his heart would be hard. But the gospel does amazing things
for us. And the gospel requires different
pieces of equipment. for different parts of the world.
There are lots of ministers who couldn’t do my job here at First
ARP in Burlington. And there are plenty of pulpits
where I would not fit or succeed and do well. And we understand
that and we’re content with our lot that God has given us, but
we also understand that we need to bloom where we’re planted,
as we say, be useful, gospel useful in the places. where God
has chosen to use our endowments, our abilities, our gifts. And
for Apollos, it’s going to be in Corinth. He’s going to need jackhammers
and dynamites and earth movers to work in the hearts and the
lives of the people of God. Now, you know, a really important
phrase in the life of Paul. Paul writes a letter to Corinth
sometime after Apollos gets there, and some are following Paul,
some are following Apollos, some are following Chloe and other
different people, and Paul says, I sowed the seed, Apollos watered,
but it is God who gave the increase. And so Apollos, as he makes his
way to Corinth, using all his preparation, all his gifts, his
teachableness, He helps the church. That’s a really good verb, a
really good word to get in your head. Lord, make me a helper
to your people. Don’t make me the shining star.
Don’t make me the big man or the chief this or the number
one that, just let me help. And our passage goes on to say
of Apollos, he was able to powerfully refute powerfully debate the
Jews there at Corinth, but he helped those who, by the grace
of God, had received Jesus Christ. He’s showing and he’s telling
that Jesus is the Lord. Jesus is the master of hearts.
Jesus is the God of the gospel. You know, every one of us, by
God’s grace, is part of the body of Jesus Christ. And all of us
in some way, shape or form are of use to the King of glory. Every church has a need, every
community, every family has a need and a niche. where you, by God’s
grace, as you are equipped by the word, as you are shaped by
the Holy Spirit, you will be sent into various fields. And
it may be the quiet labor in your home with your family. It
could be the evangelism of a neighbor who’s never heard the gospel.
It could be your cheerful spirit and the places you go, the people
you meet. They can’t help but hear of Jesus
because you’re contagious. That sounded bad, didn’t it?
You know what I mean. Not sick, not COVID, but you bubble out
with the gospel and they say, whatever you’ve got, that’s what
I want. And so dear brothers and sisters,
think of your preparation. Think of your gifting. Think
of your teachability. Think of your usefulness to God
and his kingdom. Somebody will sow. Others will
water. God will give the increase, but
you, will be the means. And he says to us, the fields
are ripe for harvest. Let’s do pray together. Our great
and mighty God, we thank you that none of us are nobodies
in your kingdom, in your family, every one of us. have gifts and
graces, and by your word, by your spirit, you shape them and
hone them for use so that we can love neighbor, tell about
Jesus, and give glory to your name. Help us not to think lightly
of each of our little parts of the world. Whatever you have
put in our hands to do, to be stewards of, let us see it as
from you, and we long for the day when we will give an account
and you say, well, done good and faithful servant. Bless us
in our service. We pray in the name of Christ.
Amen.