April 8, 2018 “Grow Deeper” – Acts 18:18-28

Acts 18:18-28
“Grow Deeper”
April 8, 2018 – Second Sunday of Easter

We planted our blueberry bushes. Then my wife said, “Now we have to remember to pull off all the flowers next spring. We don’t get any fruit the first year.” I thought, “That’s lame. All this work and we don’t get any berries for two years!” But Beth was right. Blueberries do better if you don’t let them bear fruit that first year. It forces the plants to push their roots deeper and get better established. Something like that is also necessary for Christians. We need to grow deeper.

We are returning to our study of Acts, picking up here in the middle of chapter 18. The first few verses today tells us about the end of Paul’s second missionary journey and the beginning of his third. If you blink, you might miss the transition in verses 22 and 23, but Paul went back to Jerusalem and then Antioch, but was soon back off west again into Asia Minor in the region of Galatia and Phrygia. It was a quick turnaround.

A bird’s eye overview of Acts will give you the impression that quick transitions are what Paul is all about. He often seems impatient to move on, to plant churches in new places. Even before his conversion, he wasn’t content to persecute Christians in Jerusalem, but headed off for Damascus to pursue them there. In his first two missionary journeys, he kept moving, going as far as he possibly could to spread the Gospel, to Asia Minor in the first journey, then on to Greece in the second. As his second journey comes to an end, it seems that push is continuing.

Paul had been in Corinth a long while, “a considerable time,” we’re told in verse 18. It seems to have made him a little stir crazy, because once he got going he moved fast. He stopped briefly at Cenchreae, the port near Corinth and got a haircut because “he was under a vow.” It may have been the conclusion of a Nazirite vow like we read about in Numbers 6 earlier this year. But once it was done, Paul took Priscilla and Aquila along and got on a boat headed east back toward Syria.

The next stop in verse 19 was Ephesus, just across the Aegean Sea. Earlier, Paul had wanted to go there before, but the Spirit prevented him. Now he went to the synagogue in Ephesus, his usual MO in every town. He was well received. They wanted him to stay and teach them more, it says in verse 20. It should have been a place to stay awhile and see some fruit grow. But Paul moved on. He promised to come back, but left quickly.

Even Luke’s narrative moves quickly now. He covers miles and miles in just a few words between verses 21 and 22. “…he set sail from Ephesus. When he landed had at Caesarea….” That was about 800 miles, a lengthy sea voyage for those times. Despite what your translation might say, verse 22 does not say explicitly that he went to Jerusalem, just that he “went up and greeted the church.” Caesarea was the port close to Jerusalem. Up on the mountain there was where the church had begun. He then went down to Antioch to the north. Up and down was not north and south, like we draw maps. It was literal geography. You went up to the holy city on a hill. When you left it, even going north, you went down.

Paul went back to where it had all started. He fulfilled a Jewish vow, greeted the original apostles, and made sure he stayed connected, stayed rooted to where the Christian faith had begun.

Wanting to help France rebuild after World War II, the Christian writer Simone Weil wrote a book called The Need for Roots. It’s title says it all. People need a sense of rootedness, of connection with their environment and with their past. They are uprooted when their basic needs, especially the need for truth, are not met. She also talked about being great. True greatness is not world domination. True greatness is spiritual. It comes when people are rooted and inspired to goodness by the good lives of their leaders and by the good ways in which those leaders go about their work. Patriotism should not be based on grand displays of power, but on tender feelings of compassion. Then a nation will be rooted in what really matters.

That kind of rootedness is what we as Christians have to offer the world. We follow a Lord who did not make Himself or His people great by showing off His power and His ability to command. He humbled Himself on a Cross and died for the people He loved. That story is the truth which Paul went back to Jerusalem to connect with, to root himself in. It’s the story in which you and I need to be rooted.

That’s why we keep telling the same story over and over. It’s why every spring we walk to the Cross with Jesus through Lent, remembering His humility and suffering. It’s why we remember every Sunday that Christ is risen from the dead, demonstrating that sacrifice and death are the way to glory, not achievement and power.

Like Thomas who just had to see for himself those scars in Jesus’ hands and on His side, we keep reminding ourselves that our Savior gave His life for us. We hang crosses in our sanctuaries and in our homes and around our necks to help us stay rooted in the truth at the heart of our faith.

As Simone Weil realized for France, we wither when we get cut off from those roots. My wife loves clematis plants. They grow long vines that can stretch for yards putting out beautiful flowers. But those vines all connect back to one spot in the ground, one set of roots. Let one of those long beautiful stalks get cut from the root and it turns brown, the flowers fade. It all dies. Like Paul, you and I must keep going back to the source, back to the fact that Jesus died and rose for us.

That’s what Paul was about at the beginning of his third missionary journey that starts here. He did not try to push the branches out any farther. Instead, he went from city to city in old territory, “strengthening the disciples.” His mission was to cultivate what was already planted, to help it grow stronger, deeper roots in Jesus. Later in Acts, Paul will push on again to plant in new places, but right here he is deepening the roots.

That need for roots appears again in the second half of our text. Paul didn’t stay long in Ephesus, but God was at work there. In verse 24 we catch our first glimpse of a new missionary, Apollos of Alexandria in Egypt, a city of scholars and deep learning. We don’t know for sure how, but at the same time Paul was bringing the Gospel to Turkey and Greece, someone brought it to Egypt. Alexandria was at the heart of it. There Apollos became eloquent and “well-versed in the Scriptures.” Verse 25 says “he had been instructed in the Way of the Lord,” the message about Jesus, “and he spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus.”

Apollos had knowledge of Scripture, eloquence, correct doctrine and enthusiasm. What more could you want? If a church were looking for a pastor or a missionary board were interviewing a candidate it seems like Apollos would be a shoe-in. But the end of verse 25 tells us Apollos had one small deficiency, “he knew only the baptism of John.”

We’re not sure exactly what Apollos didn’t know or what was missing from his message. There are some clues at the beginning of chapter 19 where Paul meets others who only have John’s baptism. They didn’t know about the Holy Spirit, evidently hadn’t heard about the day of Pentecost and how Jesus had given the Spirit to Christians. He clearly hadn’t been baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit as Jesus commanded.

So in verse 26 Paul’s new partners, Priscilla and Aquila, took Apollos aside “and explained the way of God more accurately.” Eloquence and enthusiasm are great, but Apollos needed deeper roots. Paul needed deeper roots. You and I need deeper roots.

Both Priscilla and Aquila participated in Apollos’ instruction. They are named in just that order, the woman first. That’s unusual. It almost surely meant that she was taking the lead in that instruction. That could really only happen in the Christian church, the one community where women in the first century learned they were as important in God’s eyes as men were. Right at the beginning of Christianity a woman teaches a man, even a man as strong and knowledgeable as Apollos. Maybe because women, like my wife, often grasp the need for roots.

One way, but not the only way, some women grasp the need for roots is by maternity. Giving birth is exciting and draining. When you are pregnant that experience is the center of your life. But bringing a baby into the world is only the beginning of being a mother. All the rest of it is helping that child grow up, grow healthy and deeper in character.

So mothers don’t have new babies forever. They give their days (and their nights) to nurturing and instructing the children God has already blessed them with. Every once in a while you may spot fuzzy little head of a newborn and sigh for the experience of a new life. Then you realize it is plenty just to feed and clothe and teach the children you have. Your calling is not endless new babies, but to raise up the ones you’ve got; to teach them how to wipe their noses and say thank you. Even more you want to teach them faith in Jesus Christ. You aren’t always branching out. Most of the time you are simply cultivating the branches God has already given you to tend.

When we do that, when we push down roots and tend the branches, the result is often new growth. Priscilla and Aquila instructed Apollos, rooted him firmly in the whole faith. Then we read how he was inspired to carry his work someplace new. In verse 27 the brothers and sisters in Ephesus blessed him to sail over to Achaia, to Corinth. We read, “On his arrival, he greatly helped those who through grace had become believers.”

Remember Paul had trouble in Corinth. The synagogue totally rejected him. But now Apollos, carefully rooted and instructed by Priscilla and Aquila, came to speak there. Verse 28 says he was successful. He “powerfully refuted,” those synagogue leaders in public
“showing by the Scriptures that the Messiah was Jesus.” Apollos grew deeper in his own understanding of the faith. That made him ready both to deepen those who already believed and to win over new believers.

So let’s grow deeper. We have done and will do great new things for Jesus. I am praying with all my heart that all sorts of new ministry will grow up here out of what we’ve done in the past. I pray that many new people both old and young will hear about Christ and accept Him as Savior. I pray for our fellowship and ministry to grow larger. Yet I also believe that will not happen unless we are also growing deeper, cultivating the faith and the community God has already given us.

Grow deeper. Join or form a small group for Bible study and prayer. Join in our Immerse Bible reading again in the fall. Form or strengthen relationships in your family or in your church. Explore a new kind of ministry or get some training for ministry you already do. I don’t know where the depths are for you. I just know they are there. They are there for me.

The older I get, the more I realize how shallow I am in so many ways. It’s hard to think about changing, to even consider trying to grow in any way but another inch around my middle and more hair in my ears. But I read about church leaders like Paul and Apollos and Priscilla and I know God still has ways for me to grow. I need to grow deeper so that I can grow outward from strong roots.

Thomas grew deep in faith when he connected with Jesus, when he saw Him risen from the dead and committed himself saying, “My Lord and my God.” Let us do that. Let us connect to Jesus together, growing deeper and deeper all the time in Him. Let us be firmly rooted in Christ our Lord. Then as He promised, He will be here in us.

Amen.