I just need to warn you, we got a long service today. Ladies asked when they should have lunch ready. I said sometime between 2.30 and 3 should be about good. Because somebody said, maybe you need to cut your sermon short, John. I went, ha, ha, ha. Actually, for those of you that are visiting, thank you. You're welcome to join us afterwards. But you're probably wondering what these things are. These are the stoles that we award the people who have graduated from Apollos. So most of the people that have graduated have their stoles today. We all forget them from time to time, like I did. I had to filch one off somebody. That's what this is about, and you'll understand more of that as we move along. I want to tell you what Apollos is about. It was 2004. I was technically an intern. We were in trouble. Our pastor was down for the count under medical supervision for an extended period of time. The elders and I, they graciously allowed me into the elder meetings, and we were all trying to figure out what to do. And we kind of came up with the idea is that, well, the first thing we need is we need to know who our leaders are. And the second thing we need is we need to do a way that we can all kind of come together and be one. So the first idea we came up with was Hawaiian Shirt Day, the infamous Hawaiian Shirt Day. And so our first Hawaiian Shirt Day, it was really spectacular because nearly everybody showed up in Hawaiian shirt. We didn't have to turn the lights on or anything. It was amazing. But the other thing that we came up with, and this is an in-house curriculum we've developed as a way of trying to identify who our leaders were and who our teachers might be, was we took our Statement of Faith. There are 10 articles in the Statement of Faith. Back then there were 12, but we've been through a couple of changes since then. And we gathered a set of resources, study resources and tools, commentaries and concordances and that sort of thing. And we had our class write a paper on each article in the Statement of Faith using those tools while they worked through a personal passage that was assigned at random. By the end of the course in that first That first class was 20 weeks long. We've trimmed it down to 10, which is a bit more manageable. But during the class, the people who attended the class got to know exactly who we were. We had a lot of long talks about what the Statement of Faith meant and how that applied to our life and that sort of thing. But in their working through their personal passage, they also learned how to read the Bible on their own. And, you know, that's one of our foundational elements. You should be able to read the Bible on your own. When we all stand before our Lord and Savior, you're not going to have the opportunity to go, well, John told me this over here, so that's what I believe. You are responsible for what you learn just as much as I am responsible for what I teach. So I love that balance there. So by the end, we knew who could formulate a class or a study based on that passage of scripture. They knew who we were, we knew who they were, and that became our leadership pipeline. All of our elders, our deacons, all of the teachers you see in the Sunday school, small group leaders, have graduated from Apollo. And today, we are graduating Apollo 17, 17 years. Skipped a few years during the lockdown. Thank you. I think we're coming up on 300 people graduated from Apollo. So with all that, I'm going to ask you to turn to Hebrews chapter 4. We're going to be in verses 12 and 13. I'm not going to take a lot of time in this because we want to get to Dan Bolin, who's going to be sharing with us. And then we're going to move on to our first baptism since 2019. We've been excited about this one. It's the first one ever on the premises here at Warrenton Bible Fellowship. So these two verses say, for the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account." Right. I want to tell you something. The Word of God is the most powerful force in all creation. Nothing is more powerful than the Word of God. And I know everybody's saying, oh, what about atomic bombs? Okay, follow me on this. The Word of God spoke all this into creation, including the atoms they split with the atomic bomb. So the book of Hebrews kind of focuses in on this. It's about the supremacy of Christ in all things, but also places a very high value on the word of God. And the first four chapters of Hebrews kind of set us up for this passage right here. Sets up the meaning and the power of God's word in our lives. And they do this, and this is so important to the writer, And he actually explains himself in Hebrews 4.12, because it is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and so on and so forth with the passage. It's a beautiful verse. It really reveals a lot about our Bible, about the Word of God. And it tells us why it's so important that we know it, that we're familiar with it, that we understand it, at least the parts that we can understand. There are some mysteries in there. We're not going to understand everything. And some of the mysteries should drive us to our knees in awe before an all-wise, all-seeing, all-present Father. But it's important to understand this. And we kind of see that in the first phrase. We find out that it's living. Let me ask you something. You have a favorite passage? Anybody have a favorite passage? One person does. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you. OK. Talk to me afterward. There'll be a prize for you. So maybe you've got a favorite passage, maybe you've got a favorite chapter, maybe you've got a favorite book or something like that. Have you ever been reading along in that after you're so familiar with it that you could almost recite it by memory? And you look down and you go, oh, I've never seen that before. I mean, no other book does this. No other book reaches into your heart and gives it a little twist every now and then. You go, did you notice this? The Word of God is living. It's alive. It's a living word. There's something so unique about the scriptures. They're dynamic. They're breathing. And they're spoken by the voice of God. Now, you know how we feel about the doctrine of inspiration. That's a theological word for how we got the Bible. He didn't dictate it. But these words are spoken into the hearts, and they emerge from the minds of the authors that God chose to convey this word to us. I don't know how that happened. I don't get it. But I love it, because it can speak to me from 6,000 years ago, from 4,000 years ago, from 2,000 years ago. Now all this is an echo of Psalm 95. which tells us to sing for joy in the Lord, to the Lord, to come before his presence with thanksgiving. And because he's a great God, a king above all kings, who holds in his hand the depths and the heights of the earth, the peaks of the mountains, the depths of the seas, and everything that's in it, and including the dry land and the wet, and he formed everything. The psalmist tells us to worship and bow down, to kneel before the Lord God, our maker. We sing that song. Why? Because he's our God. And we are the people of his pasture. I love that image because we're the people out there being fed on what belongs to him. And we belong to him. And then he says this in verse seven, listen to this, Psalm 95, starting with verse seven. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah. Look that up later on, see what he's talking about. as in the day of Massah in the wilderness. When your fathers tested me, they tried me, God says, though they have seen my work. For 40 years, I loathed that generation. Boy, that's a tough one to deal with, isn't it? And said, there are people who err in their heart, and they do not know my ways. Therefore, I swore in my anger, truly they shall not enter into my rest. Now, we can get all tied up in what it means when God was angry at them. And we could miss the point of this. And the point is that there's rest in God's word. And these people missed it because they refused to heed the word. See, our writers in Hebrews saw this. They saw that the thing that we're all looking for in life, and we can assign different labels to this, maybe we're thinking material things, but the thing that we're really looking for in life is rest, some peace. The thing we need is found in surrendering ourselves to the voice of God. Those things are found in God's word. We can find peace and rest in his word. See, that's what salvation's all about. That's what we're celebrating today. Salvation. Rest in him. Rest from the world and everything that's going on around us. Rest from the battles that we encounter day by day. Rest from the battle that we have within ourselves, which is probably the biggest battle of all if we understand how all this works. Rest from our own sin can be found in God's word. Pretty incredible. Neglecting it and refusing to heed it can be disastrous. Just ask those folks at Meribah. This is what the reader in Hebrews is trying to tell us. His word is powerful, it's living, it is active. It can dynamically bring us into his rest. Look how powerful it is. It is able to cut. It's not just alive, it's sharp, sharper than any sword and able to pierce into our souls and our spirits. No sword can do that. Able to, what the author's saying here, it is able to cut out the things that keep us from God's rest. It's able to excise the parts of us that are diseased. It is able to amputate them from our souls and cleanse our hearts. Make us presentable before the Father. And there's no creature, nothing on earth, you know, my unsaved friends tell me, well, not my God. Yes, he is. And my prayer for you, my friend, is that you realize that before it's too late. Because it says right here, there's no creature, nothing on earth. The words of God. That's not subject to belief or unbelief. There's nothing that is not under God's sight, that's under his judgment. All things are exposed to his scrutiny. I've told you before, there's no such thing as privacy. Whether we like it or not, whether we believe that or not, one day every one of us is going to stand before Him and answer for the things that we've done. What do we do with that? What do we do about that? We will all stand before the Maker of the universe and answer for all of our sins. That's going to be an ugly day for some. And we need to pray for those that don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. But for a lot of us, it's going to be a glorious day. If we haven't listened to the word of God, it's going to be eternally painful. But if we have, it's going to be the moment that we stand in glory and realize we're going to be there forever. See, this is the beauty of God's Word. We find this in here. Listen to me. God's Word can save us. That's why it's important to know it. Hebrews 1.1, God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and in the prophets in many portions, in many ways, in these last days, he has spoken to us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the world. See, the Bible is not just the self-revelation of God. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ, who is the fullest, most perfect expression of God's love towards us, towards His children. The revelation of His only Son and salvation in Him and Him alone. God loves us so much. He gave His only begotten Son to pay for our sins and give us eternal life. Then, In God's grace, he gave us his book. He said, okay, we're gonna write it down because I want everyone to know. He gave us a book so we could learn about it. It's a beautiful story. It's a love story. It's a love story to end all love stories. It's a story of majesty. It's a story of exaltation. It's a story of glory, a story of nobility, a story of sacrifice, a story of purity and holiness. And it is a story to end all stories. Because, as we see in Hebrews 1 again, He, God, is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature and upholds all things by the word of his power. Nothing, nothing is more powerful than the word of God. Nothing can save souls. Nothing. can change eternity for that one lost person that needs Jesus Christ. This is why we made the Word of God the focus of Apollo. This is why we're gathering here today to celebrate our graduating class. And so as we move on, I'm going to ask one of our graduates, Dan Bolin, to come forward. Well, the first meeting. We passed around a hat, we all drew a passage out, and I ended up with Ephesians 6, 10 through 18. So this morning, John asked if I would share some of the things that I gleaned through this study. We were to immerse ourselves in the passage. We were to read it and study it. John gave us tools to dissect as we began to dive into the passage. And so I want to share just a few minutes here 1230? Great. Some of the things that came out of my study. First of all, looking at the city of Ephesus. This is a major city. It's on the west coast of Turkey today, right about on the same latitude of Athens on the east coast of Greece. So there's this incredible exchange. It's a cosmopolitan city. It's a wealthy city. It is a powerful wonderful city and it's also a very religious city. It has a wonderful temple to Artemis, the goddess that they worship. They love this goddess because it was a big attraction. Pilgrims would come to see this and it was a central part of their culture. Paul spent almost three years, two and a half to three years in this city. And he preaches and he teaches, he sees incredible miracles take place, he sees a transformation take place in the lives of the individuals and in the culture. And because it starts to influence the culture, he starts to get pushback. He gets tremendous pushback. There are riots that break out, there is violence, there's threats, there's lies, there's rejection, there's all kinds of difficulties that come his way because the impact that the gospel is having in the city of Ephesus. Paul leaves, and two or three years later, he finds himself in a prison cell. There's not much he can do. He just interacts with the guards as they come by. He's isolated. He has his memories of the ministry that he's had in different places, and he thinks back to his friends in Ephesus. He says, I need to help them. So he starts to write, and he writes a book. The first three chapters of Ephesus are theology. He wants to make sure that all of the errors are ironed out, and then he moves into the Christian life, and he begins to explain how this theology needs to move out of the text and into their lives, and how it's going to influence their marriage relationships, and their parenting, and their families, and their work, and all of the ways that the Christian life is lived, not in the text of theology, but in the day-to-day life as we apply the truth into the realities of life. And there, Paul is thinking through, he said, I got the theology down, we got the application down, anything else? Then he begins to think about the things that went on, and all the pushback, and the riots that took place, and the demonic activity that he faced, and all of the rejection, and the lies, and the threats, is these guys need to be strengthened in the Lord. And that's the central theme of this little passage in Ephesians 10. How are we to be strengthened in the Lord? And not to go Bible nerd too much on you, but the NIV and the ESV miss the translation just a little bit here. They say, be strong in the Lord, and we should be strong in the Lord, but in reality, this is a passive verb. This is a verb that is not something we do, but something that's done to us and through us. We are to be strengthened in the Lord. We don't have to go out and scrooge up enough power and get all of our energy together and to be strong in the Lord. We have to relax and say, Lord, I can't do this. The threats, the lies, the violence, the demonic activity, all these things around me, I can't handle it, Lord. I need to be dependent upon you. Strengthen me to face these difficulties. And so, he takes this concept of being strengthened in the Lord, and he begins to play it out. What these people need to be strengthened in the Lord, they need truth. They need righteousness. They need peace. Goodness. Patience. They need faith. And then he has this aha moment. He says, I can't do that. None of these people have been through the Apollos class. How in the world are they going to know what any of these words mean? They haven't written all the definitions. What I need to do is give them some little handholds, something to grab onto to remember these things. What can I do? Soldier walks by and he goes, aha. Maybe I can use some of the imagery of the soldier who has to be strong and depend upon the weapons and the equipment that are provided by Rome to strengthen them to provide an image and a picture, a metaphor of what's going on in their lives. And so he begins to reflect and he says, what these people need to be strengthened in the Lord Well, first of all, he says, I need to remind them of who the enemy is. And he takes them through real quickly. Let me just read the passage. And the first couple of verses are about the enemy, and then it's our strength that the Lord provides for us. He says, finally, be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against authorities, against cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly place. So he reminds them. We have an enemy that is strategic, that is evil and unseen, that is working around us. And then the second half of this passage, the next five verses deal with the equipment and the resources that God provides. It says, put on the whole armor of God. It says, therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand, therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. So, let's run through these seven things real quickly. I think this and the baptism are the only things between us and the potluck, so we'll try to crush it down as best we can. So, first of all is the belt of truth. Belt was what held everything together. He says, truth is fundamental. We have to know accurately the theological premises, the biblical foundations upon which we build this. is only one aspect of truth. The other part of truth is how we live our lives. We have to live in a truthful way, our integrity. It's both what we know and how we live. It's the first three chapters of Ephesians, and it's the second three chapters of Ephesians, knowing the right things and applying those things in our lives. The breastplate of righteousness. Again, is this the imputed righteousness that we have from God, or is this our daily choices to make good and godly decisions in the way that we live our life? And yes, we need to do both. Then he says, our feet should be shod with the gospel of peace. The shoes that the Roman soldiers wore were not Nikes. They were not for speed or comfort, they were for stability and strength. The shoes that they wore were to provide a solid footing in their battles. He says it's the gospel of peace that provides the foundation that we need. So what does he mean by gospel? Well, if you look in Corinthians, the book of 1 Corinthians, it gives us a little clue. We have to remember that while Paul was in Ephesus, he wrote the book of 1 Corinthians. So something in 1 Corinthians might give us a clue about what this gospel of peace really is. And in 1 Corinthians 15, it talks about the gospel. Very simply, what we are to cling to is that Christ died for our sins. The proof of that is that He was buried. He rose victoriously from the grave, and the proof of that is that He was seen by over 500 witnesses. That gives me peace, to know that we're on the winning side, that Jesus died for my sins, that took the burden of my... pain and the burden of my sin and my guilt and my shame, took that on the cross and defeated sin and death and rose victoriously, that allows me to have some peace in the battle. The shield of faith, we're going to get attacked. When we start to make an impact, there is a pushback. And the shield of faith takes those darts, flaming darts of the enemy, extinguishes them, deflects them. and provides us with the protection we need. It's a shield of faith because we don't always have the answers. We don't always know why these things are coming at us, why these difficulties are coming our way. The shield of faith deflects it and says, I don't know for sure, but I trust my commanding officer and I will take the attacks on faith that God knows what he's doing and he has put me where he wanted. And then we have the helmet of salvation. Helmet of salvation, what a great, again, a great strength. that we can face these challenges, the lies, the threats, the intimidation, all of the riots that go on around us and say, you know, this is going to last for a season, but eventually we are going to enjoy the benefits of our salvation, we're going to spend eternity with the Lord. Even if we lose this battle, even if in the ultimate sense we have to give our lives for the gospel, we're going to spend eternity with the Lord. the strength that comes from the helmet of salvation. And then we are strengthened in the Lord through the word of God, the sword of the spirit, the word of God. The promises that we cling to, the commands we obey, the praises that we echo, the theology that we believe, truth that encourages us along the way. things of God's word we need to apply to the day-to-day moments of our experience in this battle that we call life. And then he moves away from the imagery of the soldiers and he moves to the catalyst of prayer, the thing that we need to use to invite God to provide the strength that we need. He says, at all times, for all believers, in all perseverance to continue to pray, pray, pray for the, that God would provide what we need to face the battle. So we have all these resources that are out there. We have an enemy that would love to destroy us. We have resources that God wants to provide. It doesn't always feel like we're all that victorious. There are tough times in the battle. How do we respond when the battle doesn't seem to be going our way? We say in Bible study, sometimes the key's in the back door, sometimes in the front door. In this case, the key is in the first chapter. We look back to the theological underpinnings, we see that Paul writes, he's talking about Christ who is seated in the heavenly places, far above the rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name. Our commander is victorious. He is the one who has the high ground. I'm not out of military background, but I know enough to know you want the high ground, and there's no one who has a higher ground than our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So the theme, be strengthened in the Lord, the resources that he provides for us to be strengthened, truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, the Word of God, and prayer. So with that being said, let's have a word of prayer. I'll give it back to John. Father, thank you for being victorious. Father, thank you for the resources that you have provided for us. Thank you that we can trust you to be strategic even when we don't understand some of the things that are swirling around us in this battle of life. Help us to obey your orders. Help us to have no divisions within our ranks. Father, help us to not have distractions from the duties that you call us to as we fight this good fight in the days ahead. In your son's name we pray, amen. Okay, so I'm going to present the graduating class here. As I call your name, you can come forward. Then we're all going to gather down here. We have a presentation. We're going to ask the elders to come up here. Jimmy, can you give me a hand? Bill? Kay Boland. You have to come up and get it. Dan Boland. If you've ever taught a class, there's always a point you come to when you're wondering whether you're teaching them or they're teaching you. And that was the case to have Kay and Dan in class with me. I learned a lot from them. Jillian Foley. All right. Jillian. What a joy to have you in class, sister. Thank you. Peggy Franklin. Last minute addition, Philip Hunter. And Jeff Jordan. These people worked hard and their papers to a T were fantastic. If you ever want to see them, I'm sure they would be happy to show them to you. But there was a lot of work that went into this. We appreciate it so much. Thank you, thank you so much. Will you pray for us please? Body one, how good you are that you would give us your word. Everybody's welcome to join us downstairs for lunch. Seek these folks out, shake their hand, give them a hug, get to know them. We are going to move to the baptism. I'm going to pray before we do that. So those people who are being baptized, you can be excused right now to get changed. There's a bathroom right over here in this office. Another one over here. There are two downstairs and a back room in the townhouse. We will meet you once you're changed down in the parking lot behind the church. Everybody's welcome to join us there. There are no chairs out there. You can grab one from Fellowship Hall if you'd like to sit down. It's going to be relatively short service. If you're unable to join us in the parking lot, you're welcome to have a seat right there in Fellowship Hall and wait for us to have lunch. We'll be in shortly. Let's pray. Father, we give you thanks. We give you thanks for people that are committed to your word. We give you thanks for the ministry that you've laid on this congregation, Father, and the reach that you've given us. Lord, we give you praise that we are, as Jimmy says, small but mighty. And now, Father, we pray that you would bless these proceedings. Lord, that you would hover over the baptisms. Lord, honor those who are making this profession of faith. We pray that your Holy Spirit would touch them, draw them even closer to you. Bless them for their obedience, Father. Bless us who are witnesses to that. Bless those who have prepared lunch for us, Father, the hard work that's gone into that. Bless our fellowship. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Okay, we will convene as a group outside in the back, then we'll come in and have lunch. Hi, Pastor John here. Thanks for joining us. If you were blessed by the service, let me ask you to do us a favor. Would you click on the like button below, the little thumbs up? If you're listening on Sermon Audio, perhaps you can comment or even share the sermon with someone else. We'd love to hear from you. We're on Facebook and YouTube at WBFVA and on the World Wide Web at WBFVA.org. Let us know if you'd like us to pray for you. We'd love the opportunity. If you'd like to support us financially or to make a donation to our building preservation fund, You can do that through our website at wbfva.org and by clicking on give it. Of course, you can send a check to Warrington Bible Fellowship, 46 Winchester Street, Warrington, Virginia, 20186. You'll receive a tax-deductible receipt either way at the end of the year. If you'd like to contact me personally, you can email me at kavakas, that's K-U-V-A-K-A-S, at gmail.com. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram under John Kavakas. Either way, we'd love to hear from you, or even if you have the opportunity to visit us in person one Sunday, we'd love to see you. We meet at 46 Winchester Street in downtown Warrington at 11 a.m. every Sunday morning. And now may God bless you richly until we gather again.