Be Fervent in Spirit, Be Like Apollos
Passion, Urgency, and the Culture of Our Church • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Welcome back to our New Year series Passion, Urgency, and the Culture of our Church. If you haven’t been with us for the past couple of weeks guess what we’ve been talking about? We’ve been talking about Passion, Urgency, and the Culture of our Church. And I think this subject is something that individual churches need to talk about from time to time. Why? Because it extremely easy to slip into a complacent and lukewarm approach to our faith.
What does a lukewarm approach to faith look like? It looks exactly like the attitude of the Laodicean church, which is one of the churches Jesus writes a letter to in the book of Revelation. Laodicea was a wealthy, successful, and extremely prosperous city. And over time, the believers apparently absorbed the culture around them. Their comfort became their confidence. Their prosperity became their security. And I’m sure this didn’t happen overnight, but slowly and gradually their spiritual temperature dropped. In other words the Laodicean church became lukewarm, and the Lord captures the spirit of the church in a single verse. He says,
17 Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked—
And the real kicker in this verse is the statement “I have need of nothing”. As we talked about last week, if we have the attitude that we “have enough of God” then we need to realize that we are in a poor spiritual condition. No one should ever think they have enough of God. We should be hungering and thirsting for more of God. And when we passionately and urgently seek God, guess what, we find Him! The reward of seeking God is finding Him and being in fellowship with Him.
And this is exactly what Jesus tells the Laodicean church. Listen to what the Lord say in verse 20. He says,
20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.
Now, unfortunately for most of our lives we’ve heard this verse pulled out of context and used to evangelize people. In other words, this is is commonly taken to refer to unbelievers who need to invite Jesus into their heart. But here is the thing, this verse is not written to unbelievers. This verse is written to the Church at Laodicea. But that is not the only proof that this verse is written to believers. Look at verse 19 with me.
19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent.
Notice first Jesus says, “As many as I love”. The word love here is the Greek word phileo which is a word that is often used of family relationships as well as those who are followers of Jesus. So, Jesus says as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. The Greek word for rebuke means to convict and the word for chasten means something like “child training”.
The point is God doesn’t use terms like this to describe unbelievers. No father would attempt to “child-train” one that isn’t his child. In short, God is calling on those to belong to Him, HIs Children, to repent. And then we get to verse 20.
19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. 20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.
Then Jesus says, if anyone hears My voice and opens the door. Now, here is the question we have to answer. How does a person open the door? Well, if you keep this verse in its context and go back to verse 19 we find out how to open the door. A person opens the door by repenting of their sin. You see, Jesus is telling His church that their spiritual fire had gone out. They had gotten complacent and become like the world around them. And the result is that they were no longer in fellowship with God. Notice Jesus is standing outside of the church. And Jesus command is be zealous (passionate) and repent or turn from their sin. And if they listened to Him and turned from their sin or if they opened the door, then fellowship with Him would be restored. So, to open the door in verse 20 is to follow the instruction in verse 19. In short, to open the door and restore fellowship they needed to be zealous and repent. Pretty simple, right. Remember, context, context, context.
Jesus says, if you hear me and do what I say then, “I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me”. You see, sharing a meal with someone is a picture of close, intimate fellowship. That is what Jesus is saying. He wants His church to turn back to Him so they can restore fellowship with Him.
Here is a snippet from a commentary that makes it easy to understand.
The Grace New Testament Commentary, Revised Edition 7. Laodicea: Christ Counsels an Indifferent Church (3:14–22)
Christ’s invitation here is not for lost sinners to believe in Him for the free gift of eternal life, but for His disobedient children to get close to Him once again.
And here is why this matters for us. This matters for us because we are facing very similar circumstances to the Laodicean church. We live in the most prosperous country in the world, and it is so easy to get sucked into the same mindset as the Laodiceans. Its the I’ve got everything I need mindset. It’s the let me just sprinkle a little Jesus in once or twice a month, and I’ll spend the rest of my days eating, and drinking, and being merry.
Here’s another important detail about the Laodicean church. Many theologians see Laodicea as a prophetic profile of the church in the last days. In this view, the Laodicean church was not only a real first‑century congregation—it also serves as a prophetic picture of what the church will look like as the return of Christ draws near. And when we look at the condition of the church today, especially in America, we can’t help but see the parallels: a church that is comfortable, complacent, and spiritually lukewarm.
Here is the point. The Laodicean church very well may represent the church age we are living in. And this means that the same problems that the church of Laodicea had in the first century are the same problems we have in the church today. Let me share a slide used last week.
According to Barna Group’s national church attendance studies, the average Christian in America attends church:
The Average Christian in America attends church:
About 1.6 Sundays per month
(Two Sundays every five weeks.)
2 or of 5 Sundays comes out to 40%. Legacy, if you treat your Sundays like the average Christian you are wasting 60% of your Sundays. Simple math. If you’ve got 1000 Sundays and you make it to Church 40% of the time you wasted 600 of the 1000 Sundays. Legacy that is the very definition of being lukewarm. That is being complacent. We cannot operate like that.
You see, I desperately want every believer in here to understand something. There is so much more to our faith than 2 out of every 5 Sundays. There is something so indescribable about being in close fellowship with Jesus. And Jesus wants close, personal, and intimate fellowship with His church. You see, we push Him into the margins of our life with everything else, and He is standing at the door knocking and waiting for you to turn from all of that so that He can come in and dine with you. Dear, christian, church, hear me on this. “Don’t crowd Jesus out of your life with the temporary things of the world.” Make this the year that you passionately seek after Him, and if you do, He will change your life.
Here is the point Legacy. We cannot allow ourselves to be a lukewarm church. We cannot let our culture to be defined by complacency and getting to church 40% of the time. No, we have to listen to the words of the Lord Himself. We need to be zealous and repent so that He will come in and dine with us! We need to burn with passion and urgency so that the Holy Spirit works through us. Especially as we see the return of the King drawing near. I promise you, if we do this we will never regret it. I have never heard a believer say, “William I just went too overboard on the Jesus thing. I got so engrossed in the word of God that is ruined my life.”
But I have had many believers tell me that when they passionately sought the Lord that He delivered them from sin and that He transformed their lives. I have seen families reunited, and chains of addiction broken. I have seen the weary and heavy-laden become mighty servants of the Lord. And never once have they told me they regretted it. Never once. And the reason is simple, you will never regret more time with God, never.
But I’ll tell you this, and this is something we all know first hand. All of us in the room at some point have said, “I wish I had spend those past years seeking after God instead of getting entangled in sin and the world. All of us can look back and say, “yeah, I wasted that time, and it had terrible consequences for my family, my health, physical and spiritual, and I deeply regret it.
So, this year we are going to turn the page on the past, and we are going to open the door for the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is standing at the door knocking… So, as a church we are going to be passionate, and we are going to turn from that lukewarm state, and we are going to boil with fervent spiritual heat for the Lord.
In fact, that is the title for today’s lesson.
Be Fervent in spirit, Be like Apollos
Be Fervent in spirit, Be like Apollos
Now, some of you might be thinking, “Apollos? Who in the world is that? I don’t remember him from Sunday school.” And that’s fair—he’s not one of the big, well‑known names like Paul or Peter. But he’s an important guy, and we’re going to get to know him today.
We first meet Apollos in the book of Acts when he shows up in the church at Ephesus. And even though the Bible doesn’t give us a ton of detail about him, the few verses we do have speak very highly of him. Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, gives him a glowing recommendation. In fact, all of us should strive to be described the way the Bible describes Apollos. And one the things Luke says about Apollos is that he was “fervent in spirit”. Now seeing as “Be fervent in spirit” is part of today’s title let me quickly touch on the word fervent before we jump into the text.
What does the word fervent mean? Well, the word in the Greek simply means something like “be enthusiastic; be excited. But it can literally mean to boil. Here is one of the definitions I found:
to be inflamed (boil) — to be or become emotionally inflamed, conceived of as water boiling.
Another definition I found gave the literal meaning as boil or seethe. What does it mean to seethe? Well to seethe means to be filled with intense, boiling emotion that’s just below the surface. Think of a pot that’s not quite boiling over, but you can see the bubbles forming and the lid rattling. That’s what is means to seethe emotionally.
And what I want us to understand is there is a difference between being lukewarm and being fervent. We never want to be lukewarm spiritually. We want to be fervent in spirit. We want to be at the boiling point spiritually. We want to be fired up and emotionally inflamed when it comes to our walk of faith. Simply put, this year we are turning up the heat. We want to be at the boiling point. We want to have a spiritual glow and fire about us. And apparently, Apollos had the characteristic about him.
Ok with all that being said we are ready to jump into our text in Acts, but let’s go the the Lord in prayer first. Let’s pray.
24 Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus.
So, right out of the gate we find out quite a few things about Apollos. We find out that He was a Jew born in the city of Alexandria, and this verse also says that “He was an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures”.
Let’s talk about this word eloquent for a second. We should all strive to be eloquent when comes to communicating the word of God. And here is a definition for the Greek word translated eloquent.
λόγιος (logios) learned; eloquent —
So, here is what we know about Apollos. He speech was characterized by precision and elegance. And we hear speakers described this way today. “So and so is a very elegant speaker. But pay attention to the last part of the definition. It says, characterized by speaking with precision and elegance, especially as the result of study. This is what we as people of faith should stive for. We should seek to communicate the Word of God with precision and elegance, especially as the result of study.
24 Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus.
But not only was Apollos an eloquent man, he was also “mighty in the Scriptures”. Now the word mighty here, can mean capable and in this context it could also be translated “well versed. So, Apollos was an eloquent speaker as the result of His study and He was well versed in the scriptures. In other words, Apollos knew the Word of God. He was mighty in the Scriptures. He was well versed in the Scriptures. Apollos was a man of the word of God.
But before we move on let me point something out. When we see the word “scriptures “ in this verse. Remember we are talked about the OT. You see, Apollos was a Jew who had recently converted to Christianity as so when it says He was mighty in the Scriptures it means He knew His OT. Which becomes clear in the next couple of verses. Let’s move on to verse 25.
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.
At the beginning of his verse, it says, “this man had been instructed in the way of the Lord”. Now, I think it is a pretty safe bet to say that this means Apollos had been evangelized and became a Christian. In other words, he had been taught that Jesus was the coming Messiah, and Apollos believed in Him for eternal life. Simply put, Apollos became a Christian. And notice the next thing verse 25 says, “and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord”.
Man I love Apollos. Here is a man who obviously is a recent convert, but he is so fired up that He cannot help but to preach and teach the word of God. It says, he spoke and taught. But don’t miss this next point. It says he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord.
Here what I want us to realize. Apollos had passion. He was at the boiling point spiritually. He was fired up for the Lord Jesus Christ. But Apollos had more than that. This verse teaches us that He taught accurately the things of the Lord. And here is the take away. Sadly, the world is full of pastors, teachers, and preachers who are fervent in spirit. There are plenty of passionate, emotionally fired up preachers out there that are amazing speakers, but they are not men of the Word like Apollos. They are not teaching the scriptures accurately. In others words, they got the passion, but don’t devote themselves to the Scriptures.
So, my advice to you is whatever teachers or preachers you are listening to, make sure they are teaching the Bible. Take note of how many stories they tell vs. how much they teach the word of God. My recommendation is find teachers that teach the word of God verse-by-verse. Find the guys that are Bible teachers not just passionate story tellers. Find guys like Apollos who are fervent in spirit and teach the word of God accurately. And is does go the other way too. There are guys out their that teach accurately, but lack that fervent heat.
Let’s go back to verse 25 for a second.
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.
There is one more amazing detail in this verse I want to talk about. So Apollos is fervent in spirit, he is emotional enflamed, he on fire for the Lord and is at a spiritual boiling point. But he is also accurately teaching the things of the Lord, and now listen to the last part of this verse. “Though he knew only the baptism of John”.
Do you know what that means? Apollos wasn’t even baptized yet. He had undergone the baptism of John which is different than a believer’s baptism. I won’t get into that here, but Apollos hadn’t been baptized yet, which let’s us know this guy is a recent convert. So watch what happens next.
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.
Let’s talk quickly about Aquila and Priscilla. Aquila and Priscilla were a Jewish Christian husband‑and‑wife team who worked closely with the apostle Paul. They were tentmakers by trade and teachers by calling. They met Paul in Corinth, partnered with him in ministry, and eventually traveled with him to Ephesus. Simply put, this husband and wife were disciples of Paul. They had more training than Apollos did. And I love what happens. They hear Apollos and I’m assuming they were impressed by His teaching, so look what they do. It says, “they took Him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.”
Legacy, this is what the church is designed to do, disciple one another. And this husband and wife didn’t do this publicly, they took Him aside privately and discipled Him. I absolutely love it. And do you know what I love most? I love the fact that Apollos was teachable. And this might be the most important trait that we talk about today. All of us, me, the elders, deacons, staff, all of us must be teachable. And apparently Apollos willing accepts the discipling given by this husband and wife duo. There are a whole lot of preachers out there that would let a husband and wife disciple them. But, Apollos does. You see, Apollos in addition to everything else He had going for Him was teachable, and you know what that means. That means He was humble.
Ok, I’m not going to have time to get through all of the verses I want to, so we will finish our study of Apollos next week. But before I start working to close let’s review what we’ve learned about Apollos
Eloquent man — spoke with precision and elegance (v24)
Mighty in the Scriptures — well versed (v24)
Fervent in spirit — emotional inflamed, think of boiling water (v25)
Taught accurately the things of the Lord (v25)
Teachable (v26)
When you look at that list, you can’t help but see the portrait of a mighty servant of the Lord. And honestly, I don’t think there’s a person in this room who wouldn’t want to be remembered this way. I know for me personally—these are exactly the qualities I pray would mark my life and my ministry. Which is why I chose this title:
Be Fervent in Spirit, Be Like Apollos
Be Fervent in Spirit, Be Like Apollos
In closing this morning I want to finish up talking about being fervent in spirit. And the question I’m always asking as I teach these subjects is how. How do I become fervent in spirit? I mean I can’t just whip up some fervency. I mean if I am not feeling fired up then where does that come from? And we see other Christians that are on fire, and we think, “man where do I get some of that”. I’m not feeling the same fire that person is experiencing. So, how do we get that?
Since we are talking about fire, let me give you an analogy. If you’ve ever done any camping, hiking, or hunting trips in the back country, fire is an essential tool. I mean you cook with it. You warm yourselves with it. It is a must. And the most valuable part of your fire is what? It’s the coals. Right, coals burn hot, they burn evenly, and most importantly they last. Coals burn for a long, long time. In fact, you can keep a fire burning for days if you have a bed of coals under it. I mean you can wake up in the morning, stoke the coals and left over wood, and before you know it a flame appears, and you can get your coffee going or boil your water or whatever.
Here is where I’m going with this. I’ve seen a lot of people of the years “catch fire for the Lord”. Maybe that are new converts, or maybe they were believers that came to a place of repentance, and they are just on fire for Jesus. Unfortunately, I’ve seen very few of these fires last, very few. It is almost like watching someone pour gasoline all over a big log and light it up. Boy, it creates an impressive flame for a while, until all that gas burns off and then the flame just burns out to nothing. Well, what was the problem? There is no coal to sustain the fire. Everybody knows that to build a fire you start small. You start with little, tiny twigs, and you progress to larger and larger pieces of wood, and then when you have a healthy bed of coals underneath the fire you can start throwing on the big logs.
Here's the point. In today’s culture, we always want the big, massive, instantaneous flame, but real fires don’t work that way, and neither does the Christian life. To sustain “being fervent in spirit” you have to start small, and you have to build up a healthy bed of coals. It might not always look as impressive as the gasoline fire, but it burns hot, it burns evenly, and it lasts. It perseveres.
This leads us to another question. How? How do we properly build the fire? I sustain my fire, my bed of coals, by daily maintenance. What is the daily maintenance? It is the word of God. The word of God is the agent that sustains the fire. The world wants to kill that zeal (fervent heat) and distract us so that we get so focused on the fleshly things that we let the fire burn out.
Listen to me. Life is extremely difficult and an emotional fire that is based on the new experience of being a Christian, it will burn out. It will burn out just like gas poured on a giant log. That fire won’t last. For your Christian life to burn with a sustained fervent heat you have to build a bed of coals, and you need to tend that bed of coals with the word of God.
And we need to understand being passionate about the word of God doesn't mean that we want to study the word of God 24/7. Rarely do I go hopping, skipping, and jumping to go study the Bible. Most of the time I’d rather be doing something else, but everyday when I do it, it just energizes the fire. Right. I mean when I meditate on Jesus’ return and read about all the privileges and rewards for those who remain faithful; it gets me fired up. It slowly pulls my focus off the distractions that this life throws at us, and it keeps those coals burning.
So if you’re here this morning and you feel like your fire is low, don’t be discouraged. Don’t compare yourself to someone else’s blaze. Just start tending the coals. Open the Word. Meditate on Christ. Fix your eyes on His return. Feed the fire with truth, and watch what God does.
Because a believer who tends the coals—day after day, quietly, faithfully—will burn hotter, brighter, and longer than any flash‑in‑the‑pan flame. This is how we become fervent in spirit fervent in spirit. We spend time with God daily through prayer and the Word. And once we start to experience God and His goodness we will just want more and more and more. And eventually if we keep this up we will become mighty in the scriptures, we will speak the things of the Lord accurately and the fervent heat, that spiritual glow will be seen by everyone around us. Amen. Let’s pray.
