Apollos deserves far more attention than we ever give him.  Even when we do notice him, we seem to notice less important things and miss the greater examples.

              Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, mighty in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John, Acts 18:24,25.

              So let’s get the obvious out of the way. Apollos was a great speaker.  This was in a day when rhetoric was an esteemed art studied in detail.  People came great distances to listen to gifted speakers, regardless the subject.  It was a high form of entertainment, like going to the opera or the symphony.  Great speakers were stars, the celebrities of the day.

              Luke also tells us he was from Alexandria, the seat of ancient learning.  Alexandria boasted both a university and a great library.  The Septuagint was translated in Alexandria by seventy great Jewish scholars.  There can be no question that Apollos was a highly educated man.  Yet this talented, educated man, who was probably well known, had an amazing humility.

              Just imagine approaching one of today’s celebrities.  You are, in his mind, a no one.  Why should he care what you think, especially if you told him you could teach him something about his craft?

              Aquila and Priscilla, a couple of blue collar workers of average education, dared to approach a highly educated man with great skill in a prestigious art, a virtuoso of sorts and celebrity of the day, and tell him he was not completely informed on the subject he spoke about.  What did Apollos do?  Did he shrug them off?  Did he puff out his chest in injured pride and say, “How dare you little peons think you can teach me anything?”  No, he listened.  Then he considered what they said.  And ultimately, he accepted it and changed his teaching.  Think of the humility it took for a man of his stature to act this way.

              Now add this to the mix:  In the Bible people are usually mentioned in order of importance.  That’s why you read “Shem, Ham, and Japheth,” even when one can prove that Shem was not Noah’s eldest son.  He was the most important one, though, the one through whom Christ came.  Notice the shift in the names in the following verses.
 
While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." Acts 13:2.
He was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence, who summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God. 13:7.
Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem, 13:13.
And after the meeting of the synagogue broke up, many Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed Paul and Barnabas…, 13:43.
And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, "It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. 13:46.
 
As Paul became more and more important, he took Barnabas’s place at the head of the line.  We are told Paul [they called] Hermes, because he was the chief speaker.  14:12.
 
              In Acts 18, we see:  but when Priscilla and Aquila heard [Apollos], they took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately, Acts 18:26.  Priscilla, in private and in the company of her husband, evidently took a far more active part in this teaching than simply sitting next to her husband nodding her head in agreement.  Her name is first.  Yet still, Apollos, a Jewish scholar, listened.  How could this man be so amenable to being told he was wrong, and by such unpretentious people, one of whom was a woman? 

              Luke also tells us Apollos was “fervent in spirit” and “mighty in the scriptures.”  Perhaps that is the key to humility.  Here was a man who understood due to his great knowledge of God’s word and his strong feelings about it that in God’s eyes he was no different than a lower class, less educated couple, and that saving his soul was far more important than saving face. 

              Maybe if we have trouble facing correction, our humility is lacking because of a weak spirit and poor scriptural knowledge.  Becoming angry with someone who approaches us, who dares to say we might be wrong about something or need further study on a topic, or simply refusing to listen because “there is no way that person can know more than I do,” might just tell tales about our spiritual situation.  Rather than putting the correctors “in their place,” it shows exactly how low our place is in God’s eyes.  He will only exalt the humble.
 
Whoever heeds instruction is on the path of life, but he who rejects reproof leads others astray, Prov 10:17.
 
Dene Ward

Croquet has a long and unsure history as a game.  The things we do know even seem to be in dispute.  Sometime in the early 1850s, a woman named Mary Workman-MacNaghten, whose father was a baronet in Ireland, went to a London toy maker named Isaac Spratt, and asked him to make a croquet set.  Her family had played the game long before she was born "by tradition," which means no written set of rules, using mallets made by local carpenters.  Her brother eventually wrote down the rules they used.  Spratt made some sets and printed out those rules.  He registered his creation with the Stationers' Company in 1856, but the copyright form gives the date as August 2, 1853, plenty of time for Lewis Carroll to make the game even more famous in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

              When our boys were in middle school we gave them a croquet set.  At first they seemed a little disappointed—croquet?  How boring.  Then we actually started playing and they discovered strategy, like whacking your opponent completely out of bounds with one of your free shots.  Now that was fun.

              We have settled down to annual games during the holidays whenever we get together.  It is the perfect way to let the turkey digest, and we usually wind up playing two or three times.  But that time of year means a less than clear playing field on what is already a rollercoaster lawn.  Our yard, you see, isn’t exactly a lawn.  It’s an old watermelon field, and though the rows have settled somewhat after thirty years, we still have low spots, gopher holes, ant hills, and armadillo mounds.  But in the fall we also have sycamore leaves the size of paper plates, pine cones, piles of Spanish moss, and cast off twigs from the windy fronts that come through every few days between October and March.  You cannot keep it cleaned up if you want to do something besides yard work with your life.  So when you swing your mallet, no matter how carefully you have aimed, you never really know where your ball will end up.  We call it “ultimate croquet.”  Anyone who is used to a tabletop green lawn would be easy pickings for one of us—even me, the perennial loser.

              All those “hazards” make for an interesting game of croquet, but let me tell you something.  I have learned the hard way that an interesting life is not that great.  I have dug ditches in a flooding rainstorm, cowered over my children during a tornado, prayed all night during a hurricane, climbed out of a totaled car, followed an ambulance all the way to the hospital, hugged a seizing baby in my lap as we drove ninety down country roads to the doctor’s office, bandaged bullet wounds, hauled drinking water and bath water for a month, signed my life away before experimental surgeries—well, you get the picture. Give me dull and routine any day. 

              Dull and routine is exactly what Paul told Timothy to pray for.  I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men; for kings and all that are in high place; that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and gravity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior; who would have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth, 1 Tim 2:1-5. 

              Did you catch that?  Pray that our leaders will do what is necessary for us to have a “tranquil and quiet life” so that all men can “come to a knowledge of the truth.”  God’s ministers cannot preach the gospel in a country where everyone is in hiding or running in terror from the enemy, where you never have enough security to sit down with a man and discuss something spiritual for an hour or so, where you wonder how you will feed your family that night, let alone the next day.  The Pax Romana was one of the reasons the gospel could spread—peace in the known world.  That along with the ease of travel because every country was part of the same empire and a worldwide language made the first century “the fullness of times” predicted in the prophets.

              I don’t have much sympathy for people who are easily bored, who seem to think that life must always be exciting or it isn’t worth living.  I am here to tell you that excitement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  And God gave us plenty to do during those dull, routine times.  It’s called serving others and spreading the Word.  If you want some excitement, try that.  It’s even better than Ultimate Croquet.
 
Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 1 Thes 4:9-11.
 
Dene Ward

I recently taught a class in which the various tenets of a major religious philosophy came up for discussion.  After a lengthy explanation of only one of those items, one of the class members said to me, “It must take a theologian to make something that is so simple so complicated.”  The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with her.  Just a little common sense makes them all sound ridiculous.

           Have you heard that we are all born in sin, totally depraved and unable to do anything good?  Yes, I can take some passages out of context and completely apart from the rest of the teaching of scriptures and make them say anything I want them to say too.  So?  Common sense makes it plain that this is a ploy to blame our sins on God.  After all, He is the one who made us, who created us the way He did.

            Now just exactly how did God create man?  He made us in his own image!  Now tell me I am completely and totally depraved and unable to do anything good.  That is not only ridiculous, but patently irreverent and probably sacrilegious as well, if I am indeed made in the image of God.

            But that doctrine does do this for me:  it takes the blame off of me when I sin.  It makes my sins completely and utterly God’s fault for making me that way.  Let me know if you are willing to be the one who stands before Him and tries out that excuse.

            The Bible teaches that there was a time when I was without sin, Rom 7:9.  What could that possibly be but childhood, before I was unable to recognize a consciousness of sin?  At that point, “Sin revived and I died [spiritually].”  So much for “born in sin.”

            Then there are passages galore that tell us that sinning is our choice.  “Let not sin reign in your mortal bodies,” Rom 6:12.  “God is faithful and will not allow you to be tempted beyond your ability but will with the temptation provide the way of escape,” 1 Cor 10:13.  “Resist the devil and he will flee from you,” James 4:7.  My class easily came up with a dozen more telling us that sin is not inevitable for the Christian, the one who now has the help of Christ, that he now has a choice.  That means we do not have to sin--the blame is ours, not God’s, not the church’s, not our parents’, not society’s—not even Adam’s.

            And it certainly makes wonderful and obvious sense that someone created in the image of God was not only created “very good,” Gen 1:31, but also has the power to choose between right and wrong.  The problem comes not because we have no choice, but when we make the wrong choice.  You have to work pretty hard to complicate that.
 
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, Gen 1:26.
Behold, this only have I found: that God made man upright, Eccl 7:29.
"'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, "'For we are indeed his offspring.'” Acts 17:28.
Put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, Eph 4:24.
 
Dene Ward