28 For he vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.
These early disciples saw the power of the Scriptures in the lives of the Jews. They knew the Jews of that day studied the Scriptures and valued them as God’s Word. The Scriptures were cherished. No greater authority existed for their lives and they knew it. So when Apollos goes to Achaia to share the Good News, he does so from the Scriptures. He uses the authority accepted by His audience to bring them the Truth of God. When Paul preached to the Gentile intellectuals he quoted their writings and demonstrated the inadequacy of their final authority. He drew conclusions about their worldview that showed them just how hollow and empty their solutions to real life issues were. Here Apollos shows the inadequacy of the Scriptures apart from their fulfillment in Jesus. The Old Testament Scriptures were never meant to bring salvation. They were meant to point people to Jesus, the Messiah. The Jews had made knowledge and practice of the letter of the Law the end rather than the means. They stopped short of knowing God personally. They had an outside shell, but no living tissue inside. Jesus talked about being filled with dead-men’s bones, empty, dry, and useless. In our post-Christian culture we need to be able to show the inadequacy of the value system of non-believers. We need to have them face the problem of evil and try to answer it from their worldview. They expect us to answer the question regarding the evil in the world, but never deal with the issue from their perspective. They must deal with the hard questions of life from their perspective and provide answers that line up with reality and satisfy the soul. Apollos’ audience valued the Scriptures, so he used the Scriptures to answer their deepest questions. Someone who does not yet value the Scriptures will rarely value the answers that the Scriptures provide. They often need to experience the emptiness of their own answer in order to be ready to hear the Answer provided in Christ.
The Arnold Journey 