Unsung Heroes of the Faith
Acts 18: 24 Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. 25 This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John. 26 So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. 27 And when he desired to cross to Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him; and when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace; 28 for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ.
The Bible is full of unsung heroes of the faith.
“The ultimate judge of a person’s character is their ability to exceed expectations with little recognition from others or when praise is not given. The Bible is filled with unsung heroes of the faith whose names may be obscure to us but to God they are His heroes of the faith.”
I wanted to illustrate what I meant by unsung heroes in the Bible, and so I did an internet search for Bible names. I came across a site for Baby names, and a list specifically from the Bible. This list is choke full of unsung heroes of the Bible. I mean, I don’t know how many couples would want to name their new baby girl Shiphrah or Puah, but those are the names of the two Hebrew midwives who refused to obey the Pharaoh in the order to kill all the male newborns in the book of Exodus. They are unsung heroes. They lived ordinary lives before God, and in a brief moment, they showed their righteous character enough to be recognized, then they fade from our memory.
Here’s a real unsung hero of the Bible. We don’t even know her name. She was Naaman’s wife’s servant girl. If you remember this story. Naaman was a high-ranking officer in the Syrian army. Syria was Israel’s enemy. They had warred against Israel and taken captives. One little girl became a slave to Naaman’s wife. The twist comes because Naaman was afflicted with leprosy. And this little girl, in her faith, told Naaman’s wife that the prophet Elisha, in Israel, could bring about the healing of Naaman. And he did. We remember Elisha, we remember Naaman. The little girl remains nameless.
And there are so many more. People who just live ordinary lives, serving God, not seeking recognition. We have many of those among us. It is fitting that I came to this sermon on the Sunday after Ben Holcomb’s passing. That man just quietly worked behind the scenes at this church. He knew he wasn’t a saint. But he wanted to do what he knew how to do to serve this church, and people. He kept the grass mowed, the weeds sprayed, many of our vehicles running. He helped friends and strangers alike.
Unsung heroes not desiring praise. The Bible says in
Proverbs 27:2 “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; someone else, and not your own lips.”
The church is full of unsung heroes. Our church is full of unsung heroes.
Sunday School teachers, Nursery workers, custodians, secretaries, cooks, seamstresses, mechanics, mothers and fathers who faithfully bring children and grandchildren, those who do acts of charity, secretly, not wanting recognition, witnesses to neighbors…
And even people who in their day had a measure of glory, but their contribution and memory pass on. But their lives are woven into the fabric of this church, and this building. They are the tile colored “blue” or “red” in the mosaic of this assembly. Seemingly insignificant, but they contributed to the whole.
We are going to look at three such people today, and probably into next week. We are going to celebrate the unsung. My hope is that it is an encouragement to your heart when you are unsung.
I. Apollos
24 Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. 25 This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John. 26 So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue.
We are going to start with Apollos because he seems like he doesn’t fit the definition of an unsung hero. He finds his place into the annals of Scripture as a great preacher. But think about him a minute. He is like so many other preachers and teachers of the word. We don’t have record of a single sermon he preached. In fact, we don’t have a record of a single word he said. This little blurb in the book of Acts is all the record we have of his life. He meets Aquila and Priscilla, is converted, and goes on boldly preaching the word.
Yet, at the writing of this chapter, he is compared to the apostle Paul himself in his abilities. But yet Paul’s words make up 23% of the New Testament, exceeded only by Luke, at 27%, we have none of the words of Apollos.
Let’s take a look at this great unsung hero.
Remember that Paul left Ephesus to get back to Jerusalem for the feast, and to finish his Nazarite vow. So, he left Ephesus. But he left two people there; Priscilla and Aquila.
So, this week’s narrative picks up back in Ephesus. What was happening in Ephesus while Paul is traveling to Jerusalem? A new character enters the story.
24 Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria,
Apollos. What do we learn about him from this first phrase? Well, he was Jewish and he was born in Alexandria. Now Alexandria was not a city in Israel. Alexandria was a major city in Egypt. It was named after Alexander the Great, the Greek world conqueror. But more important for our story is that it had a huge Jewish population; 1 million Jewish people lived in Alexandria at the time of this writing. As I said, it is a huge city. 1 million is just the number of the Jewish people.
So, Apollos is Jewish and he was raised among Jewish people. He lived in this huge city. But that wouldn’t have made him worldly. Wherever the Jews settled, they created their own little communities and areas, somewhat isolated from the Gentiles. One thing we should note about the Jewish people throughout history, is that they established communities within communities in many places that they settled in the world. They may not have been in Israel, but they brought Israel and Judaism to the cities in which they dwelt.
You could walk into the Jewish quarter of many towns in history and you would think you had entered a different world. The dress was different. The relationships were different. Their houses were different. Their food was different. And they raised their children to be different. Every Jewish settlement, if they had at least 25 boys or 125 families, they would appoint a schoolmaster and start a school and teach the Torah. Someone said at the destruction of Jerusalem, there were between 400 and 500 such schools teaching children these basic things repetitiously. So, in a Jewish settlement of 1 million, the child Apollos would have found himself in one of the many Torah schools.
So, Apollos was as Jewish as he would have been if he had grown up in rural Judea.
Well what else can we learn about this man.
an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus.
First, he came to Ephesus. We don’t know why he came to Ephesus. Maybe his family, or he himself moved for business purposes, we don’t know. But he is in Ephesus. And Ephesus also has a Jewish population, and synagogues.
We are told that Apollos was eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures. Now, the words used here to describe Apollos ability have to do with both his knowledge, and his ability to communicate that knowledge. He was not only great in his understanding of the Scripture, he could communicate that knowledge to others, and he was convincing and compelling in his presentation. The word for “mighty” in the Scriptures here is dunamos. We get our word dynamite from it. He was explosive in his presentation of the Word. He had the whole package.
Get this, he was probably a better speaker than Paul. Paul said,
1 Corinthians 2: And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.[a]
Paul was criticized for his preaching.
2 Corinthians 10:10 For some say, “His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing.”
Remember that later Apollos goes out as a missionary, like Paul, taking the gospel to cities throughout the world. One of those cities was Corinth. And a division arises in the church of Corinth. Paul writes to correct it in 1st Corinthians. The people of the church in Corinth was choosing teams. “I am of Paul.” “I am of Apollos.” “I am of Christ.” Apollos was ranked in that church with Paul and Christ.
I would compare it to a doctor. Many of you have experienced doctors who really knew their stuff. They really knew their branch of medicine. But they couldn’t communicate it worth a hoot. Their over there talking jargon and medical words and mumbo-jumbo, and your just saying, “could you dumb it down about 1000% please.” But they can’t.
And then, even worse, you can have a doctor who knows their stuff, but can’t communicate, and their bedside manner is awful. They don’t connect with people. It’s great if you have a doctor who has all 3 abilities, the knowledge, the communication, and the charisma.
That was Apollos, in terms of the Scripture. He knew the Scripture backwards and forwards. He could call relevant passages to mind in a heartbeat. And he could communicate the sense, the meaning of Scripture extremely well, and he connected with people. After speaking with, or hearing from him, they left convinced.
What else can we learn about this unsung hero?
25 This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John.
Hold on a minute? What does this mean? “instructed in the way of the Lord” “he knew only the baptism of John”
John who? John the Baptist. Remember John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ. Before Jesus ever presented Himself to the public, John the Baptist was out in the wilderness of Judea, saying “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” And John was baptizing people with a baptism of repentance. But here’s what’s key. John’s baptism was not the same as our baptism. John baptized people who wanted to outwardly repent of their sins, to prepare themselves for the imminent coming of the Messiah. We are baptized as a testimony of our faith in the crucified, buried and risen Messiah.
So, it would seem from this description, that Apollos had had some encounter either with John the Baptist himself, or maybe with some of John’s disciples. The key is that he didn’t know the complete story. John was preaching about the Messiah who would come after him, and that when He came, the Kingdom of Heaven would begin.
So, what are you saying? That Apollos knew about a coming Messiah, but He didn’t know that Jesus was that Messiah? Yes. He didn’t know that Jesus was called the “Lamb of God” by John. That He was crucified as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world, and that He rose the third day? Yes, Apollos didn’t know that. You say, how could he not know? Well remember where we meet Apollos. We meet him in Ephesus. Ephesus is over 600 miles away from Jerusalem by air, where Jesus was crucified and rose, and it is about double that distance by land. In the first century, that’s a world away.
Which is amazing about Apollos, considering what he was doing.
26 So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue.
Think about this. This story is happening around 52 AD. It is almost 20 years after Jesus’ ascension, and more than that from the time of John the Baptist. But here is this man who is boldly preaching John the Baptist message, “Repent, and be baptized, the Messiah is coming” and he is opening up the Old Testament Scriptures to demonstrate the truth of his message. And he is preaching this message over 1000 miles away from Jerusalem, where John the Baptist preached. Think about this, the gospel had barely gotten to Ephesus, and John the Baptist preaching was already there.
I want you to jump to the next chapter a minute.
19 While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2 and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when[a] you believed?”
They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
3 So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?”
“John’s baptism,” they replied.
4 Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.”
Isn’t that amazing? And maybe the reason that these people in Acts 19 had been baptized with John’s baptism was because you had this fiery preacher named Apollos preaching it in that area of the world.
He is truly an unsung hero. Let me tell you the mark of an unsung hero. He took what little truth that he had, and he acted on it…with a passion. My friends, I often hear from Christian people, “I don’t know enough Bible to be a witness.” “I can’t tell other people about Jesus, because I won’t be able to answer all their questions.” Not everyone is a scholar. No one has all the answers. But if you want to count for the Kingdom in your time, you take the knowledge you have, and proclaim it with a passion.
That was Apollos.
Christian people will say, “I don’t matter,” “I don’t know what I’m here for.” I hear that about Christian people who are dying. We will say, “Why are they still here?” “Why doesn’t God take them?” Let me say this, whether you are an unsung Christian hero, or a celebrated one, your whole purpose for being here is to bring glory to God. And by bringing glory to God, you bear witness to your world that they need to repent and turn to God.
Now, there are all kinds of things happening in our world, aren’t there? There are wonderful things, and awful things. People in this world experience joy, temptation, horror, and suffering. Do you know what your job is in this world? To show the world how one of God’s people glorifies God, in times of joy, temptation, horror, and suffering.
Let me say this. If Christians were kept from all suffering, the world would say what Satan said to God about Job; “God, of course Job serves you, you’ve put a hedge about him, you’ve protected him from all harm. But if you take away that protection, he will curse you to your face.”
To be an unsung hero of the faith, is to take the little you are given; knowledge, relationships, moments of joy, and moments of pain, and live them for the glory of God.”
II. Aquila and Priscilla
When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. 27 And when he desired to cross to Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him; and when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace; 28 for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ.
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