Acts 18:24-28--Apollos Speaks Boldly in Ephesus

Acts 18:24-28
English Standard Version
​
Apollos Speaks Boldly in Ephesus
24 Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. 25 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. 26 He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. 27 And when he wished to cross to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, 28 for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus.

---

We pick up now at the beginning of Paul's Third Missionary Journey.  We get straight to where we left off in his return to come back to Ephesus, though we know that he followed the same route he took during the Second Missionary Journey to get here.

Now they meat a man of God named Apollos who knew the gospel only as John the Baptist preached it--that John was preparing the way for the Messiah to come, but he did not know of Jesus being the promised Messiah or of the crucifixion or resurrection of Jesus--he knew only of the baptism of John for repentance.  Priscilla and Aquilla who we met at the end of the Second Missionary, heard Apollos and they took him aside and explained to him the gospel more completely and fully--they did not publicly rebuke him.

Apollos becomes a great evangelist for Jesus and he desires to cross over into Achaia (the southern part of what we would call Greece where we would find cities like Athens and Corinth--where Paul was at the end of the Second Missionary Journey, and where Aquilla and Priscilla were from), they encouraged him to do so, and they wrote to the disciples in the churches there to welcome him.

Paul was forced to leave many of these cities in haste and never got the opportunity to disciple them, but God is going to send Apollos to them to keep preaching the gospel message to those who are lost, to encourage the brothers in these areas hostile to the gospel and to preach and teach the Word of God to them.  He also was a Jew who knew the Law well and he was able to stand up to and debate the Judaizes and could refute them (tell them how they were wrong) based on the authority of the Scriptures.  This is no small thing because as we've seen the Judaizers got shut down by the apostles in Jerusalem and most of the churches between Jerusalem and Syrian Antioch knew better as did most of the churches from Paul's First Missionary Journey as he carried letters from the Jerusalem Council to them during his Second Missionary Journey, but these new churches in Macedonia and Greece were far away from Jerusalem and so the Judaizers are up to their old tricks assuming they pull a fast one on these new Gentile believers.  Not so....God has just the right man for the job to be there and to earnestly contend for the faith and to show them from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ (the Messiah).