 All right, let's dive into the Word of God together. Turn with me in your Bibles to Acts chapter 18. We're going to learn about an individual that I think that is necessary for us to talk about. Acts chapter 18, we're going to be looking at verses 24 to 28. And Father, we pray that, Lord, you would awaken our hearts and minds to the truths that are in your Word. Lord, thank you for these men. Thank you for this great church and this great pastor. And Lord, those who are serving all over this campus. Lord, we pray your blessings upon them and upon us as we sit at your feet and learn from you. Lord, these are your men that you're raising up. You're equipping. Oh God, I pray that you would equip us today by the power of your spirit through the Word of God in Jesus' name. Amen. Acts chapter 18, looking at verses 24 to 28, the title of this message is, where is Apollo's today? Where is Apollo's today? Now, in order to answer this question, this very important question, we must first know who he is. What is it about this individual that Luke, the author of Acts, will take a pause and he will take time to introduce us to this great man? What was it about him? There are some qualities and characteristics about this man that we need to know, that we need to emulate, we need to have in our own lives. And we will see those characteristics about him. And one in particular that will show how such a man is needed today. Now, by way of background, Paul left the city of Ephesus and told the people in verse 21 that he must keep the coming feasts in Jerusalem. He landed in Caesarea and went to the city of Antioch and greeted the church that he came from in verse 22. And after he spent some time with them, he went over to the areas of Galatia and Perigia in order to strengthen all of the disciples to end of verse 23 says. And now we pick it up in verse 24. Let me just say this before I even get started. Many of you who know me and know how I teach, this would just be review. I'm a words person. Words mean things to me. For one thing, the English language is somewhat limited. I love our language that we speak, but it's somewhat limited. Let me give you an example. We only have one word for love, one word. But the love I have for my wife is different from the love I have for my children. And the love I have for cheesecake is different from both of them, you know? So, but we only have one word for love. The Greeks have five words to describe love. So for me, I bring out certain words in order to expand your understandings to try to get you to the nearest thing of what the author intentions were when he wrote what he wrote to the churches of Galatia, to Corinth, what Paul meant when he said certain things. So I'm trying to expand your understanding. It helps me to understand the author's original intent. So I'm a words person and I love to bring that out because I love to see the beauty of the body of Christ, how you will have various speakers with various ways by which they do things and God uses everybody. And it shows you that God can use you as well. And looking at the various speakers that's been speaking this weekend, it's just a beautiful variety of how God does things. And so I just had to say that so you can understand how I am. You have to understand the community I came out of. Teaching is something that's not done that much. There's a lot of preaching. And God said, you need to turn and God will heal you. There's a lot of that. And I didn't get anything out of it. That's why in the bio I would go to church on Sundays but Monday through Saturday we lived like the devil. It was just what we did. It was this thing we did. But when I first started hearing the teaching of the word of God was when I first got back from Okinawa, Japan. And I was stationed at Pendleton and I was looking for a Christian radio station and dialed in to K-Wave. And I heard pastors like Pastor David Rosales and others, Pastor Chuck. And I said, what in the world is this? I said, I never heard stuff like this. I love telling Pastor Greg Laurie how one time I was coming back from the Marine Corps I was coming back from Camp Pendleton where I was on Camp Pendleton. And I was at San Mateo. It was right near Christian Needles Road right before you get into San Clemente. And all of a sudden I was coming back home and I lived in Oceanside at the time. So I had a good little drive. And I was listening to K-Wave and I was listening to Pastor Greg teach James chapter three on the tongue. And I was like, what in the world? And I pulled over off the five. I said, I gotta take some notes here. I never heard stuff like this. What in the world is this? He went from one verse to the other and to the other. I said, what in the world is this? I'm used to somebody get one verse, go off on a message, never get back to that verse. So I'm like, what is this? blew me away, blew me away, blew me away. So this is why I teach the way I teach because I know many people who came out of communities very similar to minds. They know nothing about the teaching of the word of God. Nothing, nothing at all. So I want to teach them what does say of the Lord, because it doesn't matter what I say. I gotta teach them and give them what does say of the Lord. And that's why it's such an incredible thing for you to be in a church that's gonna teach you the word of God. Y'all take it for granted. Y'all out here in California, God bless y'all. Y'all got this weather and y'all got this, these palm trees and all this stuff. Y'all got this good teaching. Many of y'all just flip-flop from church to church and just got teaching all over the place. Y'all just, you know what I mean, I'm from Virginia. I'm gonna keep it straight with you. Y'all just flip-flop around, go to this church, that church and got all this good teaching out here. Hey, let's get somewhere and sit down. Get some good teaching. It's not like that. When I lived out here, there were 10 Calvary chapels and a five mile radius. And so when I went to Virginia, there was a Calvary in Virginia Beach, there was not another Calvary until you get to almost DC. That's like two and a half, three hours away. In three hours, how many Calvary chapels you got in three hours around here? A zillion. So I said all that to say, this is why I teach the way I teach. Now, look, we're gonna pick it up in verse 24, look what it says there. Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandra, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures came to Ephesus. Now as Luke the author shifts to sing back to the city of Ephesus, he pauses to introduce us to a man named Apollos. It is believed that his whole name was Apollonius and Apollos is a contraction of that proper name. Then Luke tells us where he was from. He was born at Alexandra, which was the second most important city in the Roman Empire. It was located in Egypt near the mouth of the Nile River. It was a center for education and philosophy. The city was founded and named after, as you can tell, Alexander the Great. It boasted of a university with a library of over 700,000 volumes. The city of Alexandra had a population of 600,000 people, which consisted of Egyptians and Romans and Greeks and Jews. At least 25% of the population was Jewish and this community was very, very affluent. And so this is the environment that Apollos was raised in. Luke also tells us that Apollos was an eloquent man. The Greek word for eloquent is logios and it only appears here this word in the entire New Testament. It means a man of words or man of ideas, which I believe Apollos was both. This means that he was highly cultured and trained in philosophy and rhetoric. And one of the main characteristics that Luke tells us about Apollos is that he was, and here it is, mighty in the scriptures. It is this characteristic that calls me to pause and ask where is Apollos today? The Greek word for mighty is dunatos and it means divine power or capabilities. And as you can see, it closely is related to the Greek word dunamis and it is where we get our English word dynamite or dynamic from. So his learning and eloquence coupled with his incredible grasp of the Old Testament made Apollos an incredible debater. He was a dynamic speaker. And did you know that no one else in the Bible was given this title of being mighty in the scriptures? Oh, the closest thing we get to it is Ezra. In Ezra seven, verse six is said to be an expert scribe in the law of Moses. And oh, how the church today needs more men like Apollos, men dedicated to being mighty in the scriptures. Oh, I say this because I look at Christians today and how little they know about the Bible and the things of God. I heard a story. I was just speaking in South Carolina at a men's conference, matter of fact, last weekend. And one of the pastors was talking about a young man in his church. A man who came up, you know, young man, he was in their academy. He was the worst kid in the academy. Kid was terrible. He used to terrorize the teachers there. But God got ahold of him. And this kid just began to devour the word of God. He read the Bible through five times in nine months and just, and just devoured the word of God. Oh, you know, I'm so reminded of what Spurgeon always said, you know, he wanna believe, he won't have so much of the Bible, he wanna believe biblene. I heard someone else say, hey, I wanna be so full of the Bible that when a mosquito bites me, he goes away singing, nothing but the blood. This is what it means to be mighty in the scriptures. Most Christians know more about psychology and self-help authors than what the eternal word says. And my prayer and my desire, and I'm sure your pastor is as well, is that we are to feed you the word of God from Genesis to Revelation chapter by chapter, verse by verse, book by book. So your relatives, your coworkers and friends can look at you and spend time with you and say, wow, you are mighty in the scriptures. And what I think about Apollos is is that he was a man mighty in the scriptures. And this is the title that was given to him. So this is the background of this great man. This is the environment that he was raised in. Look what he says there in verse 25. He says, 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 only knew the baptism of John. Now Luke tells us that Apollos had been instructed in the way of the Lord. The Greek word for instructed is catecheo. And it means to inform, to instruct or to teach. And it's where we get our English word catechize or for those of you with a Roman Catholic background, you remember catechism. And this means that Apollos had personal form or training. In other words, there's nothing wrong with going to Bible colleges or seminary if it is committed to the central doctrine of the Christian faith. And it's sad that we have to say that today. If it is committed to the historic Christian doctrines and the Christian faith, because so often today, many of them are not. And it's sad to even be able to say that. But yes, I know that many of you are probably thinking, well doesn't 1 Corinthians 1.26 says that God didn't call many wise? Well, yes, it does say this, but it doesn't say that God didn't call any wise. Just not many. Why? Because God doesn't want us to trust our education or our great intellect. He wants us to give the glory to him. He wants us to trust in his power and watch this and not the power of the intellect which comes from man. However, Apollos had both. We see that he was both a very eloquent and powerful speaker. Notice how Luke tells us that Apollos was fervent in spirit. The Greek word for fervent is zeal and it means boiling of liquids. And it means to be kept at the boiling point, meaning that Apollos didn't allow for his spirit to sag. He didn't allow for his walk with God to simmer down or to get low. He didn't allow his walk with the Lord to stop boiling. He stayed hot for the Lord unlike some of the believers in the church of Laodicea according to Revelation 3 and verse 16, they had become lukewarm in their walk with the Lord. Oh, we have to pause right here and I have to ask you, where's your walk with the Lord? If we were to stick a thermometer into your spiritual mouth, what would it say? Are you hot, cold, or are you lukewarm? Are you like Apollos who kept his walk at the boiling point? Have you allowed the blessings and prosperity of life cause your walk to simmer down a bit and now you're lukewarm, neither hot nor cold? As you can tell lukewarm is the compromise between hot and cold. Have you been compromising lately in your walk with the Lord in a few areas and now you look at your life and spiritually you're not where you used to be. You're not where you once were and now you're no longer on fire for the Lord, not Apollos, not Apollos, no, no, no, no, no. He was notice, he was fervent in spirit. He kept his walk at the boiling point and because he was mighty in the scriptures and had been instructed in the way of the Lord, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord. I want you to notice something. Notice it said that he spoke and taught the things of the Lord in an accurate way. Notice that. He spoke it outside of the church and he taught it inside the church or in this context out of the synagogue and in the synagogue. Maybe you're hearing your servant, maybe you're teaching some Sunday school class or maybe you are teaching something within the church. But do you speak it outside the church? See, I've seen enough on fire Christians in the church or you can talk a good game in the church. How you doing, brother? Yeah, all right, I'm doing good. Too blessed to be stressed, you know? Ha, ha, ha, ha, you know what they say. But we see you outside the church. See, Apollos was one who spoke and taught. And even though he taught accurately the things of the Lord, now I want you to notice he had one flaw. He knew only the baptism of John, which is a reference to John the Baptist. John the Baptist being the forerunner for Jesus came on the scene preaching a baptism of repentance according to Mark 1.4. His message was simple, repent and believe in the gospel according to Mark 1 in verse 15. John the Baptist had focused on repentance from sin and on water baptism as an outward sign of your inward commitment. His baptism was to prepare the people's hearts for Jesus Christ and his kingdom. Apollos was probably urging people in a more eloquent fashion to do the same. And even though Apollos had an inaccurate, should I say an incomplete message, I want you to notice that it wasn't inaccurate nor insincere, it was just incomplete. Notice how it didn't stop him from sharing what he did know. Now my point is this, don't allow your limited knowledge of Jesus Christ in the Bible keep you from sharing what you know. The blind man in John chapter nine in verse 25 says, one thing I know that I was blind, but now I see. If this is all you can tell people, then tell them the one thing. I was once blinded by my sin and Jesus came and opened my eyes to it and I repented and accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. If that's the one thing you can tell people, you tell them that one thing. Man's greatest need is to be forgiven. And we have the greatest message that the world could ever, ever hear that Jesus paid it all and all to him we owe. And we have that great message. It's just, it's no different than we have the cure to the most deadly disease and we're keeping it to ourselves. We have a moral obligation to give people the cure to their disease and there's a disease called sin that is eaten up and killing the world. They're killing the world and we have the only message that can save them. Why do you think Satan is doing all he can to shut us up? Everybody can say what the Muslims got more rights in America than we have. You already know gay and lesbian, they have, they rule the country. You say one thing against them, your livelihood, your career, everything is gone. You say anything against a woman. Women have more rights than Christians because the idea is to shut us up because we have the greatest message because we have the message that can set people free from sin. This is why it's designed to shut us up. Men, we are mandated. What Wes is seeing in Sudan on a physical level of warfare, we have here on a spiritual level. It's time for men to take up their weapons. The Bible said the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but they're mighty in God for bringing down strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. We're not fighting with weapons as they're doing over in Sudan. They have a dual thing over in Sudan. They fighting both spiritually and physically. It hadn't quite got physical here yet. But we have a war that's going on, war for our masculinity. I'm telling you, I say this around the world I'm not afraid to say it. Let me tell you something. America would not be happy until there's a bunch of Amazon women running the nation and all the men are gone. And it's just a bunch of Amazon women. And all men, just limp wrists, weak, weeny men that are left. I'm telling you, I'm not one of them. I mean, there ain't gonna be one of them. I'm just, there's a few men happy to be men over here. You know, just like, you know, just like a Wonder Woman, the island of Amazon women, they won't be happy until that's what America looks like. And anytime a man, I'm a man, they will beat you down. No, don't you say that. They're trying to do all they can to emasculate us. We're to be men, men of God, men of our homes, men, godly men on the job. I was raised by, I was raised by a strong man. I'm thankful that I was raised in a two-parent home, which is totally not seen today. Totally not seen. We have what we call the father void today because of how men are not in homes and the women are. We are seeing a void in our generation like never before. And we need to not just be men that's gonna bring home the bacon. We need to bring home the Bible too. And many of you need to start sharpening, picking up that Bible, and need to know what thus saith the Lord and become a mighty man of scriptures, mighty in the scriptures like we see here. So all you know is I was blind, but now I see, you need to tell it because there is someone working next to you, live next to you or around you that's blind just like you were. And they need to know that there is someone who can touch them and they can be, they can be a person that is free. They can be a person that can see just like you are seeing today. Your eyes are wide open. When you come to Christ, your eyes are just wide open. You're like, whoa. And if all you know is that one thing, you share that one thing, you know. The Bible said they overcame by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony and right around Revelation 12, 10. No one can deny your testimony. No one can say, that didn't happen to you. Well, yes it did. No one can say that. No one can take away your testimony. Do you have one? This is a testimony. This was my life before Christ. Christ came in it. This is my life now. That's a testimony. It's a three-part testimony. Can you say that? Not this is my life before Christ. They're not doing a little church every now and then. No, no, no, no. This was my life before Christ. I repented of my sin and accepted Christ into my life. Now this is my life. If any man being Christ, he's a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things become new. All things new in your life. Oh, sure things are new in here. Let me talk to your wives. Let me talk to your coworkers. If I would go to your job and say, hey, is your boy over there? Is he a new creation? Which one? Him? Yeah, yeah, him right over there. Is that what your coworkers will say? Or if I go to the job and say, hey, you know who's the Christian around here? Oh, let me take you to Bob and then walk over to you. See, that's what it comes down to. If any man being Christ, he's a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things become new. All things new in your life. Or you just the same old you with a little Jesus thrown in. It says, all things become new. Are you still doing the old things? Still going to the bar? Are you still clubbing? Still drinking? Still, are all things new? Oh, we know there's a process that we call sanctification that is the process of setting you apart from the world and you becoming more like Christ. But is something new? I've said it many times before the Bible said out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The first place that everyone should know that you are new in Christ Jesus is this, the way you talk. Because the Bible says if Christ, that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. This Christ is in your heart and out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The first place that people should know Jesus is in your life is here. Maybe you're still using profanity, calling your wives and girls, bees and all kind of cursing out. Christ is not in your heart. I'm gonna tell you that now. I'm not afraid to tell you. Christ is not in your life if that's going on. He's not. This should be the first place that is sanctified. I had the most foul, wicked mouth, a severe potty mouth. I was in the Marine Corps and I, you know, I just, I wasn't a Christian. I was just going for it. My girlfriend used to say, hey, you have such a filthy mouth. Well, she's now my wife of almost 35 years now, but she was like, yes, such a filthy mouth. And I did. The first place Christ cleaned up when I repented of my sins and accepted Him in my Lord and saved what's in my mouth. Within one week, boom. And then when I was around the boys, we were in Okinawa, I was around the boys and a curse word slipped out and I was like, and I had to repent. Not only to the Lord, but to them. Because I wasn't speaking French. Oh, excuse my French. That's not French, that's some bad English. No. But when I put the word of God in my heart, then the word of God started coming out of my mouth. This is Apollos here. This is why he spoke and taught the things of God accurately because he had the word of God in his life. Look at verse 26. He said, 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. Now, we know from verse 24 that Apollos left Alexandria and came to the city of Ephesus. Now, why? We don't know, we're not told. And we see that his gift of speaking made room for him. It reminds me of Proverbs 18 and verse 16 that says, your gift to make room for you. You don't have to, see, in the kingdom of God, you don't have to put yourself forward. You don't have to try to advertise yourself. You don't have to, well, you know, I just came from so-and-so church. Just wanna know if you guys could use someone like me. Now, you don't have to come here doing that. Come and puffing up on who you are. The Bible says your gift to make room for yourself. When I first started going to Calvary Chapos, I had been a assistant pastor in the Black Pentecostal Church for four years. And I sat in the back of the church because during those days before all the technology and stuff, when we had little kids, when you had little kids, you had to sit in the back. Why? Just in case little Johnny, little Sally needs you, they just give you the tap on the shoulder and say, go get that little kid. And so we sat in the back. So for two years, I sat in the back, took notes and kept my mouth closed. I didn't go around saying, well, you guys just don't know. I was an assistant pastor at the church for four years. Surely y'all can use someone like me. No, I sat in the back. And then pretty soon, your gift to make room for yourself. Hey, pastor Tony, guess what? You know, I'm not gonna be able to teach this new believer's class. Can you cover that for me? Yeah, okay, I got it. Hey, I'm not gonna be able to be at this home fellowship. I'm supposed to teach it, but I got something going on. Can you teach? Yeah, yeah, I got that. Then pretty soon, hey, can you be available to pray for people after service? Yeah, okay, I got that. And then next year, I was asked to come on staff. Your gift to make room for yourself. It's still true. The greatest ability is availability. Are you available? In order to make your gift, in order to make room for your gift, you have to be available. Are you available? Man, are you available? Are you too busy fooling around out with the boys, doing whatever? Hey, are you available? Because when you're available, God will make room for your gift. He will. There should never be an advertisement. Well, you know, we need some help over in this ministry. Can someone sign up for that? It should never be, man, we should be Johnny on the spot. Yeah, hey, I just heard the announcement. Okay, I got you, I got you, I got you. We should lead the way, not the women. You look at all the ministry that filled with women. Most, the majority of them. One thing that most people love about our church is that we have godly men all over the church. Now because of the craziness of our society and the nuttiness of people nowadays, you know, we have a security team and all the guys on the security team are my size and larger. And so I have guys, you know, with me just in case somebody needs some hands laid on them and I'm not talking about some prayer. We pray for you afterwards. But you don't get these hands in the beginning now. I'm just letting you know. Now, of course me being a former Marine, I can handle myself. But the thing is, because we, and we got godly men just posted all over the place. And of course, you know, the single women love that. But women love it period because they feel safe when men are around. Godly men, not men with purses. Don't let me see y'all with a purse. Closest I'm getting is a backpack. And I'm making sure it's on my back so y'all don't mistake in it for anything else. And it's something about godly, godly men. And we stand and we stand confident because Christ is in the women of God. We're gonna stand, we're gonna make folks feel safe. We're gonna serve out in the parking lot and the women coming up and we get their little diaper bags and help with them. And umbrellas when it's raining, I know y'all, it barely raining out here. But we do that because we wanna serve these people here. That's what men do. We take care of families. We take care of the church. We take care of things. And this is Apollo. This man was a tremendous man of God and his gift made room for him. Why he came to Ephesus and from Alexander, we don't know. But the thing about it is that when Aquila and Priscilla heard him, because they stayed back in Ephesus. When Paul said he had to go to Jerusalem to keep the coming feasts, they stayed back in Ephesus and the Church of Ephesus originally started out in their house. So when they heard this guy speaking this eloquent preacher with this tremendous Old Testament knowledge, they said, whoa, who is this? I said, come here, bro. You good, but there's some, let me tell you the rest of the story. You know, that said a lot about Apollo stone, that he will receive instructions from this godly couple. He didn't allow his knowledge to puff him up. First Corinthians day one, knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. He did not allow his tremendous knowledge of the scripture to puff him up saying, who are y'all talking to? Maybe y'all need to sit down for me to talk to you. No, that wasn't him. This lets me know that he was humble and he was also teachable. Don't come in here with that cockiness and that arrogance. Don't come in here like that. You come humble, you come teachable. Your pastor's humble. Your pastor will teach you the word of God. You don't come in with some air. That's the quickest turn off for us to do this to you. Talk to the hand. Because soon somebody come around us puffing up and all that kind of stuff. We said, yeah, we're gonna sit you down for a minute. And we're gonna see if you can sit. You need to be humbled a little bit. He was humble. He was very teachable. And when we love those qualities about him that he allowed for them to teach him. Look at verses 27 and 28. And when he desired to cross Acadia, the brethren wrote exhorting the disciples to receive them. And when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace. For he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly showing from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ. Now, Apollos was so excited to have the whole story about Jesus Christ because all he knew was the baptism of John, which was a baptism of repentance. He didn't know about his atoning death on the cross and his burial for three days and his glorious resurrection. He didn't know about those things. But when he got taught about it, oh, he said, oh, I gotta get this word out. So he wanted to go to Acadia, the capital, which is Corinth. And he went to the city of Corinth. And so they wrote a letter to the believers in Corinth to receive this mighty man of God, verse 26 says. He was such a great help to the believers in Corinth that notice he vigorously refuted the Jews with his mastery of the Old Testament and his skill as a debater. The Greek word for refuted is a intense double compound word. And it means that he totally crushed his opponents, totally disproven them at every point. And notice, watch this, showing from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ at the end of verse 28 says. Not showing from his own opinions or his own thoughts. Notice how he showed them. He showed them from the scriptures. Why? Because he was a mighty man of the scriptures. He showed them from the scripture that Jesus is the Christ. Because of the internet and the myriad of things on the internet. It used to be back 30, 35 years ago. It used to be where people said, well, you know, there are contradictions in the Bible. And then we were clever enough to say, well, how about showing us? Well, I can't show you, but I know they're in there because my friend's brother's cousin told me. No longer can we say that because of the internet. They say, hey, well, this verse says this and this verse says this and they give you because they're sites and stuff out there. Can you vigorously refute them from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ? Are you able to do that? The Bible said, sanctify the Lord God in your heart and always be ready to give every man an answer the reason of the hope that lies within you. Can you do that? Can you defend Jesus Christ from Muslims? They said that Jesus is just a prophet. Yes, we offer, for us, we offer classes at the School of Apologetics and giving the defense of the Christian faith and other foundation classes that we offer to try to give people foundation in the faith to not only know what you believe, but why you believe that. There are a lot of people out there that have a whole lot to say against Christianity. And can you, like Apollos, vigorously refute them? Or can you just say, well, you know, just come to church and hear my pastor. Now that's great because he's gonna give you the word. But God wants to use you. He wants to use you as men. Then you're gonna take up the challenge. Or you may not take up a weapon in Sudan, but you can take up the weapon of the word of God. It's the sword of the spirit, the only offensive weapon we have. And take it up and commit to being mighty in the scriptures. That young man, me hearing that young man read the Bible five times in nine months, do you know what it would take? I guarantee he didn't have butts in his ears and beeps. And he wasn't watching all kind of mess and filth on his phone and on TV. And so he didn't have time for that because he was in the scriptures. And I guarantee you, as a matter of fact, I met the young man. They were on their way out. As we were about to leave too. There's a humble kid. He was in his 20s, you know, just a humble kid. But I guarantee you, talking with him, you'd know. He's been with the Lord. The Bible makes it very clear that God wants us to be men of God and men of the scriptures. The Bible says meditate on these things. Give yourself entirely to them. Watch this, that your progress may be evident to all. You want your progress in spiritual things to be evident to everyone you come in contact with. You want them to leave you saying he's mighty in the scriptures. You don't want to leave and all of a sudden say, do you think I'm mighty in the scriptures? Because they'd say no, I don't think so. And they'd be right to tell you that. But the Lord wants to use us to be man mighty in the scriptures. Let me conclude with this. Where is Apollos today? I pray in this room, I pray in this room. Man being instructed in the way of the Lord at church, fervent in spirit, staying at the boiling point in your walk with the Lord, speaking boldly for Jesus Christ, even if you only can say I was once blind in my sin but now I can see because of Jesus Christ. You're humble and teachable because you realize that you don't know it all. I remember one young man asked me a question. I think it was, I was speaking at a pastor's conference somewhere. And he looked, he came, okay, I got a question for you. I said, what, what? He said, how do you stay humble? You know, because I just, I'm learning some things and I'm struggling with pride and how do you stay humble? You know how Jesus, when the guy came up to him, the rich young ruler, he said, Jesus looked at him and loved him. I just looked at him and loved him and I looked him square in the eyes and I said, what do you have to be prideful over? It's not our word, we didn't die for anybody. I tell them, I don't have a heaven no hell to put people in. I said, what do you have to be prideful over? Pastor Chuck used to always teach us first Corinthians four and said, what do you have that you have not received? And if you have indeed received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? What, I said, what do you have to be prideful about? The way you stay humble is standing God's presence through prayer, because everyone who had an encounter with God saw their own sinfulness. You stay in God's presence. Peter, oh, depart from me, I'm a sinful man. Isaiah, oh, woe is me for I'm undone. Daniel, we have sinned against you. Standing God's presence, keep you and I, keeps us humble. Show me a person that's cocky and arrogant. I'll show you a person that spends little time in the presence of God. That's how you stay humble. You stay teachable. You don't know it all. God will send some unbeliever your way that will chew you up one side down the other and leave you running like the seven sons of Sceva. Have you run and naked wound it down the street? You don't know it all. Stay humble, stay humble. And so let us commit to being like apostles today. Men mighty in the scriptures. This area would never be the same. This church would never be the same. If we all say, you know what? I'm gonna commit to being mighty in the scriptures. It takes some diligence. There's some things you have, there's a little bit of TV you gotta turn off. There's a little bit of whatever it is you listen to in your car because you know the traffic out here is just, I won't even comment about that. You spend most of your time either sleep or in traffic, you know, at work and if we just commit to being men, we're gonna be like apostles. We're gonna be mighty in the scriptures. The Lord can do a work that will blow our minds. Let me tell you, I tell people what I see when I look out. What I see when I look out, I see men, yes, but I see empty seats. There's a man that you know that could have, should have been here. But it's not too late because God wants to use you to go reach them. You know who they are. Just put them on your mind. But you're gonna have to be a man worth following. I pray, always pray one day, I said, Lord, I pray that I can say one day like Paul did, follow me as I follow Christ. Or like 1 Corinthians 4, 16, I urge you to imitate me. I pray one day I can say that. I can't say that right now. I pray one day I can, but if we become like Jesus Christ as men, not to become sissies, but become as Jesus was the most manly man who ever lived, manly man, meek, meek is power under control. Could have blasted. He said, don't you know I could have called 12 legions of angels, had my father called. One angel on one night killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night. He said, I can call 12 legions. The one legion is 6,000, 12 times six for you mathematicians would have killed everybody in the world. He said, but don't you know the scriptures must happen like this. And this is our time. If we're not serious about the Lord, it's time to get serious. If you have not repented of your sin and accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, today is the day of salvation for you. And if you strayed, maybe you strayed, maybe your walk right now is a little lukewarm. You're not on fire like you once were. We're gonna have some men to my left that's gonna be willing to take you and just spend some time with you. So let's close in prayer. Father, thank you for this great time.