Shipwrecked But Not Wrecked

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Don Filcek; Acts 27 Shipwrecked But Not Wrecked

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I like to introduce the topic for the morning and kind of read through the text and walk through what we're going to be looking at from God's Word.
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I do that most every Sunday. And we are in the second to the last chapter of the book of Acts this morning,
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Acts chapter 27. If you want to turn there you can. But that is actually on page 801 in the
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Bible that's in the seat back in front of you, 801. So if you grab that Bible out of that seat back. If you don't own an
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English Standard Version of the Bible, which is the one I preach from, you can take that. That's a free gift from us to you. Or if you don't own a
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Bible, we want everybody in our community to own a Bible. And so there's a box full of those in the back room to replenish those.
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But we are in the second to the last chapter of Acts. It's been a long series. Basically since we started
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Recast, I started Acts 1, our very first Sunday. We've skipped around a little bit here and there and taken some breaks from it.
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But we're going to be wrapping it up in the next couple of weeks. Awesome. Hopefully you've grown as we've studied through the book of Acts.
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And you've grown in your understanding of who God is, this God who has started his church through the gospel of Jesus Christ and through the people that he called.
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And we've gotten to know in the last couple of months really the life of Paul. Does anybody here who's been through this series feel like you've got a handle on Paul better than when you started?
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I hope so. I know that I have. Just in my study, I feel like I know the guy. And a lot of bad things happen to Paul.
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I've begun to kind of see him as kind of the Job of the New Testament. There's like a laundry list of difficulties that he went through.
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And actually, although I'm preaching on Acts 27, I want to read another portion of Scripture. This portion of Scripture where Paul literally lists out some of the hardships that he faced for the cause of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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And if you're taking notes, you can jot this down. 2 Corinthians 11, 23 -28. Again, let me just set the context for this.
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There are some people who have moved into Corinth and have basically tried to discredit Paul and said,
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Paul is just nobody and we're the real apostles. And so Paul is writing to the church in Corinth in response and kind of bragging about his ministry, basically verifying or validating that he genuinely is an apostle, that he's struggled for the cause of Christ.
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And so this is where he starts, 2 Corinthians 11, 23. Speaking of these others who are calling themselves apostles,
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I'm a better one. Now I'm talking like a madman, says Paul. Danger from my own people, danger from the
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Gentiles, danger in the city, lots of danger here, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure, and apart from all other things, there is the daily pressure on me of the anxiety for all of the churches.
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Like Job. Did Paul go through some hardships? Like how many of us have a laundry list like that from our lives?
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For the cause of Christ, for the gospel, these are the things that he endured. Anybody overwhelmed by that list? You look at that and it's like, whoa, the dude endured.
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A lot. And so that's who we're talking about today. And so what we're going to look at is, he identifies, by the way, that passage was written five years prior to the text we're going to look at today.
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He penned that. He sat down with a pen in hand and wrote that five years before. So how many shipwrecks is he going to endure?
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At least four, because we're going to see another one in our text. That's what we're going to be looking at. We're going to be looking at a shipwreck here.
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And a recurring theme in the book of Acts is the sovereign hand of God, watching him move behind the scenes to get his church planted.
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He's in control, and yet in our text we're going to see that storms still happen. Can any of you testify to that in your life?
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That although God is sovereign, although he sits on the throne, there are still storms that hit us, and we have to account for those somehow, right?
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Why do bad things happen to us? You can be plugging along just thinking that your life is going well, and all of a sudden you get that news from a doctor or car wreck or whatever it might be, and things can go bad pretty quick.
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He is guiding and directing Paul in our text. And yet the ship still gets wrecked.
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Sometimes the best thing for us, I would say, is the shipwreck. Does it feel that way?
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When you're in the storms of life, are you like, yeah, thanks God, this is awesome, bring it on? Probably not.
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Now, you might have that attitude before it hits, and then all of a sudden it hits, and you're like, oh, maybe just dial this back just a little bit.
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But he never ceases to be God, despite our circumstances. And the fact of the matter is, he is always good.
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And we can trust that what he is doing will, in the end, prove to be exactly what we needed to reflect more of Jesus Christ, to be more
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Christ -like. And he brings those storms and those hard things into our lives for the sharpening of us, that we might be more useful to him.
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So, is everybody to Acts 27? I'm going to read this. It is a longer passage, but I think a bit of a riveting account just in understanding this whole ship travel, this wreck that happens.
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So follow along as I read Acts chapter 27, and take this in. And when it was decided that we should sail for Italy, they delivered
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Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion of the Augustan cohort named Julius. And embarking in a ship of Adramitium, which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of Asia, we put to sea, accompanied by Aristarchus, a
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Macedonian from Thessalonica. The next day we put in at Sidon, and Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him leave to go to his friends and be cared for.
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And putting out to sea from there, we sailed under the lee of Cyprus, because the winds were against us. And when we had sailed across the open sea along the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra and Lycia.
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There, the centurion found a ship of Alexandria, sailing for Italy, and put us on board. We sailed slowly for a number of days and arrived with difficulty off Canidus.
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And as the wind did not allow us to go farther, we sailed under the lee of Crete, off Salmone. Coasting along with difficulty, we came to a place called
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Fairhavens, which was near the city of Lycia. Since much time had passed and the voyage was now dangerous, because even the fast was already over,
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Paul advised them, saying, Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives.
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But the centurion paid more attention to the pilot and to the owner of the ship than to what Paul said, which makes sense.
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And because the harbor was not suitable to spend the winter in, the majority decided to put out to sea from there, on the chance that somehow they could reach
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Phoenix, a harbor of Crete, facing both southwest and northwest, and spend the winter there. Now, when the south wind blew gently, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor and sailed along Crete, close to the shore.
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But soon a tempestuous wind, called the northeaster, struck down from the land. And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along, running under the lee of a small island called
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Kata. We managed, with difficulty, to secure the ship's boat, and after hoisting it up, they used supports to undergird the ship.
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Then, fearing that they would run aground on the surtis, they lowered the gear, and thus they were driven along.
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Since we were violently storm -tossed, and they began the next day to jettison the cargo. And on the third day they threw the ship's tackle overboard with their own hands.
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When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, all our hope of being saved was lost.
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All our hope of being saved was at last abandoned. Since they had been without food for a long time,
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Paul stood up among them and said, Men, you should have listened to me, I told you so, and not have set sail from Crete and incurred this injury and loss.
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Yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For this very night there stood before me an angel of God, to whom
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I belong and whom I worship. And he said, Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand before Caesar, and behold,
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God has granted you all of those who sail with you. So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told.
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But we must run aground on some island. When the fourteenth night had come, as they were being driven across the
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Adriatic Sea, about midnight the sailors suspected that they were nearing land. So they took a sounding and found twenty fathoms.
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A little further on they took a sounding again and found fifteen fathoms. And fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come.
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And as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship and had lowered the ship's boat into the sea under pretense of laying out anchors from the bow,
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Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved. Then the soldier cut away the ropes of the ship's boat and let it go.
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As day was about to dawn, Paul urged them all to take food, saying, Today is the fourteenth day that you have continued in suspense and without food, having taken nothing.
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Therefore I urge you to take some food, for it will give you strength, for not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you.
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And when he had said these things, he took bread, and giving thanks to God in the presence of all, he broke it and began to eat.
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Then they were encouraged and ate some food themselves. We were in all 276 persons in the ship, and when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, throwing out the wheat into the sea.
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Now when it was day, they did not recognize the land, but they noticed a bay with a beach on which they planned, if possible, to run the ship ashore.
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So they cast off the anchors and left them in the sea, at the same time loosening the ropes that tied the rudders.
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Then hoisting the foresail to the wind, they made for the beach, but striking a reef, they ran the vessel aground. The bow stuck and remained immovable, and the stern was being broken up by the surf.
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Now the soldier's plan was to kill the prisoners, lest any should swim away and escape. But the centurion, wishing to save Paul, kept them from carrying out their plan.
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He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and make for land, and the rest on planks or on pieces of the ship.
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And so it was that all were brought safely to land. Let's pray.
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Father, we hear this account, and sometimes it can be a little bit, you know, like a historical account about a ship.
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But Father, this is your word to us this morning, and as we've marched through the book of Acts, we've recognized that you have something to say to us at each section and each way, each path along the way, and we recognize that this storm came up, and Paul was your servant, and Paul was serving you diligently, and yet the storm comes, and we know that for the apostles, you stilled the storm on the
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Sea of Galilee, and you had the power to do so in this case, but you chose to bring Paul through this, ultimately for some other glory, for some other purpose.
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And so, Father, as we come to you this morning, and some are coming from storms of life, either storms they have faced in the past that haunt them, storms they are in now, or storms that are yet to come,
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Father, I ask that you would teach us that your sovereign hand and your goodness go hand in hand. Father, that you are in control, and you are working your plan for our betterment, and sometimes, even as we sing this song, if we lost it all, would we still raise our hands in worship before you because of who you are, not because of what you give us, not because of what you do for us, not like you're some magic genie who's gonna fix everything for us, but because you carry us through the storms of life.
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So I pray that as we come before you in worship, that you, and then you can be seated. Big thanks to the band for leading us.
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Some mornings, it just feels like the spirit is moving, and I just love that. I love to hear people clapping and getting into it and engaged, and that's awesome.
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I'm gonna set the stage a little bit, just kind of context. I introduced the topic primarily, just kind of read the text, and so you've got some of that, but setting the stage for those of you who weren't here,
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Paul has been brought into protective custody by the Romans. They haven't figured out what he's done wrong, but the
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Jews were gonna kill him, literally ready to slaughter him in the temple grounds when one of the
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Roman leaders brought down a bunch of soldiers and rescued Paul. Still, the Romans don't know what he's done wrong, but Paul had appealed to Caesar.
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In the middle of a trial, he's like, this isn't gonna go fair. I'm gonna end up getting killed in this process. They're gonna hand me over to the Jews. So he appeals to Caesar, and so he is bound for Rome, and that's where we pick up our text, and so we start off with these words, and when it was decided that we should sail for Italy.
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So for whatever reason, the timing is right on the mind of the governor of Judea to send
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Paul to Rome, and that's where we're gonna get all this shipwreck business going on, and there's gonna be a lot of history and a lot of different things that we need to understand about the culture and the times in this text in order to tease out what
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God wants for us here in 2012 in this text. But for whatever reason, the timing is right, so the governor gives
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Paul over to the custody of this Roman centurion named Julius, and he's part of a cohort, that is a group of about 1 ,000 troops, so he's one leader of 100 of 1 ,000, and he's part of that cohort that we actually know was stationed in Syria from historical documents.
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Now, you can actually find, by name of cohort, you can actually look back in historical documents and tell where they were stationed, what they did, what their primary function was.
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This is an auxiliary group. Many of the soldiers who might have been retired but are still able to be called up in force and things like that, and they actually, historically, we know that this particular cohort put down a rebellion about 20 years after this text in Syria during the entire
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Jewish revolt and all of that in the city of Damascus, so this group that he was a part of is actually well -known in history.
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I want you to notice, too, that as you look down through the text, you see the use of the pronoun we and us frequently.
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That means that the author, Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, is engaged and involved in these events, and so, therefore, did you notice as I was reading how detailed the account is?
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Did you notice that as I was reading it? There's a lot of detail that's given, and it's really cool to kind of see how, because Luke was an eyewitness to these events,
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I believe that he writes with more clarity, with that way of actually seeing. He's not hearing from somebody that these things happened.
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He lived it. How many of you know, if you live through a shipwreck, you might be able to recall that fairly well, like actually see it in your mind a little bit, and that's what's going on in the text, so we have a very detailed account of this entire journey that begins in Caesarea and is gonna end on the island of Malta, and eventually we'll pick up the text next week and find that he does eventually get to Rome, but for our text purposes, we're gonna end up on the island of Malta by the end of the text.
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The ship that they board comes from Adromitium, so I'm gonna have some slides here for you. Mediterranean Sea there.
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Everybody kind of get the gist of where we're at on that map, kind of a little bit. Adromitium, so that's where the ship is from, and the ships were designated according to their port of origin.
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That's where it started, but that's not where they're gonna pick the ship up. They're gonna pick up at Caesarea down here in the south, and their first layover, first stop is gonna be up here in Sidon.
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So Adromitium is on the west side of the modern day country of Turkey. Paul is not only accompanied by Luke, but he's also, the text tells us, accompanied by a friend named
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Aristarchus. Now we've seen Aristarchus a couple of times in the book of Acts. He's a friend from Macedonia, probably likely from the town of Philippi.
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He went to Jerusalem with Paul to carry gifts, and now he is going back, likely, probably gonna end up, hoping to end up in Macedonia, but could potentially accompany
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Paul all the way to Rome. We don't know for sure. Paul has friends who are willing to go along with him.
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I think that that's kind of a key. If you think about that, okay, he's been imprisoned, and he's on his way to trial, and he has friends who accompany him.
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How many of you think you would have friends that would follow you to jail? Okay, I don't think
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I have friends that would, okay, a couple of people, one or two of us have friends who would follow us to jail, but I think very few would in reality.
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So he has these friends, and they're willing to go along, and how many of you might be kind of confused, like, okay, he's a prisoner, and why is
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Rome gonna allow friends to go with him? Like, what's the deal there? And then we're gonna see Paul get kind of some special treatment along the way, and it could be confusing, but the reality is
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Paul is a Roman citizen. That is a big deal in this era, okay? So the fact that he has citizenship, not every sailor that is on board this ship has
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Roman citizenship. Not every soldier on that ship. People are envious of Paul's Roman citizenship.
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Now Julius the Centurion has Roman citizenship, and that's shown by his first name. If the first name represents a
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Caesar, is the name of an emperor, then that designates that that person received citizenship under that emperor.
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It was such a big deal, when you became a Roman citizen, you changed your first name. Is that a big deal?
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Your first name was known as the emperor who basically gave you your freedom and gave you your citizenship.
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And so we saw Claudius earlier, now Julius. Paul is obviously a
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Roman citizen, and he actually had, most likely, a given name to him for his citizenship.
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And some people debate back and forth what his first name was known as in Roman circles.
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But that's the way that it went. So Paul gets special treatment because of his citizenship, and then also, we're gonna see the
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Centurion actually likes him. And so they have a layover in Sidon on the first day, and Julius the
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Centurion treats Paul kindly and literally lets him leave the port, leave the ship, and go visit friends.
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Does that seem strange? As a prisoner, that seems a little bit strange. I think you have to have in your mind that it's quite likely that Paul was accompanied by a soldier or two, in that you might just have in your mind that he was just free to go, just go wherever you want.
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I think he was accompanied. But the implication is that he goes and visits some friends, and would you imagine that that's probably a church in Sidon that's been established?
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And he goes and he visits them, they encourage him, probably even provide him with some supplies for the journey, because he would be responsible for that.
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There wasn't a free lunch in the Roman Empire. And even prisoners were responsible for providing their own provisions.
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Pretty big deal. So it's likely that the church there in Sidon helped him. Now verse four, they're gonna take off from there, and we get the first indication that there's gonna be some problems.
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If you can just advance that slide for me. This thing works about 50 % of the time. So you can see that they're gonna, it says in the text that they are gonna sail to under the
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Lee of Cyprus. Now is anybody as confused as me when you read the word Lee in that text? Maybe, nobody?
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Everybody knows what the Lee is? Okay, about seven of us didn't know what that meant. It means to sail on the wind -protected side of something.
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You can have the Lee of a mountain, you can have the Lee of an island, and it means that you sail on the side that the wind is not coming from.
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So you're using the land mass as a buffer between you and the wind so that you can sail more easily.
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Because the wind is coming at you, and it's coming from the west in this case. So they sail on the east and the north of Cyprus to basically allow them to fill the sails the direction that they wanna go, and they're protected in that way.
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So that's what's going on when you talk about sailing to the Lee. We see that a couple of times here. But we see indications that the weather is kinda not so great right now.
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And I haven't done much sailing. Have any of you here done some sailing before? A handful of you?
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I don't like the idea of being at the mercy of the wind in this situation. Now if you think about it, you had some pretty common trade routes here and some common shipping lanes, but you're not guaranteed to make it in that shipping lane.
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Do you see what I'm saying? Here in modern times when you've got engines and motors and huge impellers and things like that, you can pretty much designate your course.
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You got GPS, you got all kinds of things. You know where you're at at all times and such. This right here is scary to me.
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The thought of being, and I'm saying something about myself, but the thought of being out of control out on the ocean and not really knowing how you're gonna get to where you're gonna get in the weather.
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You're just at the mercy of the wind and you might just end up floating a few days not knowing where you're going.
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If the wind dies down, you're just gonna have a slow trip. You don't know when you're gonna get to your port and you don't even know how.
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You don't know necessarily the direction you set up, plot a course. You might end up making it. You might not. Anybody else think that's a little bit scary, the idea of control?
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Tacking into the wind can be really hard too. It's hard work. You got the ship. It's got 276 people we're gonna see later in the text.
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It's a large ship. You have to adjust the sails, bring sails up, bring sails down in order to tack.
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If I wanna go from point A to point B, I might have to go zigzag this way, zigzag that way, zigzag this way just to get there.
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Does that make sense? Every time that you change, the zig or the zag is pulling down all kinds of sails, readjusting the rudders and putting up different sails and all that.
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It's a lot of work. They're working to try to get from Sidon to Myra and eventually they make it and safely arrive there.
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Once they're there, they connect with a grain ship from Alexandria, Egypt, which is just directly south of there.
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That's where the port of call is for this next ship that they're gonna join in Myra. It's likely that that's a grain ship and it's interesting to note, we see that the last thing that they throw out of the ship is what?
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Anybody remember from the text? The wheat. Okay, so one third, it's amazing how accurate the
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Bible is on things like this, that they would be on a wheat ship from Alexandria to Rome is amazing because one third of all grain supply to the
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Roman Empire came from Alexandria. So Egypt was a primary provider for grain and that would be very common.
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And not only that, but the intensity with which they're willing to travel at bad times when the weather is bad shows, because there was a famine going on during this time, everything just lines up to why the sailors would make the decisions that they make and the historical accounts seem to be pretty watertight in what was going on here.
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It's kind of amazing how scripture and history come together to show us an accurate picture of what was going on during that time.
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It almost appears as though an eyewitness that lived during this time wrote this. You know what
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I'm getting at here? Like maybe Luke actually was the real guy who wrote this and he was there historically and when we're looking at the
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Bible, we're looking at an accurate reflection of what history was. So they board the ship from Alexandria.
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They set off again and with much difficulty, the text tells us, they make it to Canidas. Anybody like, you know, just that you can put a
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C and an N at the beginning of a Greek word and call that a word? But they did in that time.
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And so Canidas, they arrive there and it's not very far.
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It takes them a long time to travel that little distance and it's hard work and that's where they end up. So look at Myra to Canidas and they're like, westward travel is not working very well for us right now.
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And so they decide they can't head westerly anymore and so they head south for the refuge of the island of Crete and end up at this place called
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Fair Havens, which is not a great haven for wintering. They're looking for a place to kind of settle down for the winter.
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It actually says that they arrived after the fast, which is the Jewish day of atonement. The one day in Jewish history where the high priest would enter into the center of the temple, the
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Holy of Holies, and make sacrifices for the entire nation of Israel. And we have very well documented, we can point this down to within five days in history when
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Paul landed in Fair Havens. It's kind of amazing how accurate we can get with looking at when was
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Festus governor over Judea, who was the emperor during the time, all of these different things.
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King Agrippa was still in reign. When you put together the book of Acts, you can get a very good pinpointing of history with some of these events.
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And sometime between October 10th and October 15th of AD 59,
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Paul landed in Fair Havens. We can pinpoint it to the month within a five day span, because we know when the day of atonement fell in 59, we know that it was that year because of the transfer between Festus and Agrippa.
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I mean, Felix and Festus. So Paul, who's already been shipwrecked three times, in a like once bitten twice shy kind of thing, he's been shipwrecked three times, and he's got some advice for the sailors.
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Now remember, what is his role on the ship? Prisoner. But it's not like Paul to keep his mouth shut, is it?
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So Paul's gonna share his opinion and his thoughts here in verse 10. He suggests that things might not go so well if they press on.
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I'm kind of thinking the weather's not great, and so I'm thinking things aren't gonna go very well. We're talking loss of income, loss of property, loss of life.
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This is not going to go well. Now a point of fact is that travel was very dangerous on the Mediterranean between September and October.
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Those were considered dangerous months to be traveling. But after November 11th, the shipping lanes closed.
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Only the most crazy, I mean you'd be on a suicide mission to travel, try to travel from the east to the west in the
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Mediterranean from the month of November on. And so November 11th, it's just like all over in Roman documents and histories, whatever,
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I don't know, I guess you gotta pick a date, right? November 11th was the day they shut everything down. So Paul's predicting bad stuff happening.
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Now I say predicting, because he hasn't received some revelation. It's not like the spirit came down on him and said, everybody's gonna die or everything, because we're gonna see him change his tune here in a minute.
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So where he says, people are gonna die if we keep going, you're gonna lose the ship, you're gonna lose all this, what's gonna happen later?
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He's gonna say, no, everybody's gonna survive. Don't worry about it. Okay, so something's gonna change and we'll see what changes when we get to that part of the text.
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The centurion consults, by the way, the centurion is the lead. Notice that it's not the captain of the ship anymore.
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This ship has been commandeered by the Roman military. So now they're in charge, because they've got prisoners on board.
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The way that travel happened during this era in time, there weren't passenger ships, there weren't cruise liners, there weren't ferries.
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It was all about cargo ships and you would just pay a fee to jump on a cargo ship and hey, as long as there's one bound for the direction
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I'm going, I'll jump on that, piece together or cobble together a trip and eventually you'd get to your destination, but you might end up going out of the way to get there.
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And so even the Roman military would commandeer ships like this. So the centurion has the final call, but he consults the pilot, who's the captain of the ship, and the owner, who likely, by the text, may or may not have been the owner.
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Owner might have been the representative of the owner. Most ships had the representative on board. Either way, if it's the owner himself, it kind of seems unlikely, but he consults with these two and he takes their advice over Paul's, which
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I said makes sense, right? Are you going to listen to the prisoner or are you going to listen to the captain, the owner?
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And so they take their advice and they say, Fairhavens is not a good wintering port. It's too exposed to the elements and too exposed to the wind and so we're going to try to make for a better port that's about 40 miles west on the same island.
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So it's not like they're trying to get to Rome tomorrow or something. They're trying to take off a small chunk to say let's get to a better port and we're going to head for Phoenix, not
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Arizona, but Phoenix, Crete, and just basically hunker down there for the winter and make it through the winter and then we'll carry on to Rome.
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Do you ever notice who's in charge of the weather? If you think about that. They're making plans to go 40 miles.
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It doesn't seem like much to take on, does it? Considering the journey that they've done so far, they're just going to cover a little bit of that island, but I kind of have the impression that somebody else is in control of what's going to happen here.
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Somebody else is kind of driving this thing. They get a favorable gentle wind out of the south, the text tells us, so they take off hoping to just kind of hug the coast, just stay in as close as they can to Crete, not do anything wild or crazy or try to make good time.
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They're just out there. They're like, okay, we're going to go. Kind of like when we've got icy roads here, but you still need to go get something from the store.
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You're like, okay, I'll just go slow and I'll go to Wagner's. I'm not going to make a run to Meyers.
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I'm not going to try to get to Walmart. I'm just going to go local, right? I'm just going to go slow and take my time and that's what they've got.
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That's what they're trying to do here. But within that 40 miles, a hurricane force wind begins to blow down.
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Now, it's coming from the south and they're like, oh, that's good because that'll keep us hugged up against the coast so we can make it that 40 miles.
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But all of a sudden, the wind shifts out of the northeast and comes down from the mountains and in verse 14, if you look at that, the word tempestuous there is in Greek, typhoon.
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It is like a typhoon or a hurricane force wind that comes down out of the central mountains of Crete and drives the ship.
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If it's coming out of the northeast, where's it going to drive the ship? Out into open sea and that's where they're headed.
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Out of control. They have no recourse but to go with the wind. They're a sailboat. They're out of control and like I said,
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I don't like the thought of being out of control out in the middle of the sea with a hurricane force wind coming down.
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They get a moment of respite because there's a little island like right by the bottom of that star there called
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Cauda. It's a very small island but as they come on the lee side of that so they cut to the east, the wind takes them to the east and they've got just a moment where the wind dies down so they can begin to make preparations for the storm because this is a storm coming on.
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They reel in the boat that they've been towing. Now, I kind of like to call it a lifeboat and I might accidentally call it a lifeboat throughout but please forgive me.
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It's really a boat used for shuttling people. This is a big enough ship with a long enough keel that went down far enough because it's a sailboat, it has to have a big keel on it.
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They can't get in too close to shore so this is the kind of boat that you picture like the Spanish galleon or something that sits out in the harbor and people have to shuttle back and forth to land.
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So they have this other boat that's attached to it that maybe holds 12 to 15 people and they take that back and forth.
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Are you picturing what I'm talking about? Picture a pirate movie or something. You get where I'm coming from. But this was not, now don't picture that attached to the side like you picture a cruise liner in your mind and it's got the lifeboats attached to the side, you know what
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I'm talking about, hanging off the side. That's not the way they did it back then. This would have been literally towed from behind. Well, if you've got, in a storm, you've got another boat attached by rope to the back of your boat, that's not going to go too well if those two meet each other.
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So they're going to pull that in and while they're on there, they pull that in and take that on. And apparently even
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Luke says, we with much effort did this, we. He uses that word meaning that even the medical doctor on board was taking part in this.
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I mean, they're making preparations. Everybody is working hard to get this thing ready. They also use a process called frapping.
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I learned more about sailing this week than I cared to know. But frapping is running ropes under the ship to pull the sides in tightly to keep it from breaking apart so they would actually run.
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Now, I was like, does somebody jump in, dive in, and run the rope on it? It's actually a lot more simple process.
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All you have to do is have enough slack in the rope to loop it around the front of the ship and then it just kind of goes under, you see.
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So I'm thinking, are you going to dive in and go under? Is anybody else who's an engineer already on that and was like, oh yeah, of course, that just makes sense.
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You could do it that way. I'm like, I'll be swimming. So yeah,
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I'm not real good at fixing stuff around the house and things like that. It just shows right there. So they have this process and it's a really common process.
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People still do that today when they're sailing to shore up the bottom in heavy waves, run these and then cinch them tight so that you've got these ropes running under or cables running under.
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Does that make any sense? So that's what they do. All kinds of preparations that they make.
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They're fearing that they might head into a place called the Sirtis. You see it right there at the bottom. That's just off the coast of Libya.
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Still to this day, a graveyard of ships. Modern ships run aground on the Sirtis. You want to avoid that at all costs.
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It's a no -fly zone for ships because it's sandbars and shoals and shallows that go way out into the middle of the ocean.
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So you can be 50, 100 miles offshore there and still run aground.
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So it was legendary. People thought that sea monsters lived there and everything was horrible in that time because it was like mythical proportions.
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The Sirtis was this horrible thing. And notice how close they are to that. So they're out of control and now it's running through their mind.
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We're going to end up getting wrecked up on this sandbar off of the coast of Libya and we're all going to die.
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Of course, they're thinking they're going to die at any turn here anyways. So they lower the sails. In a storm, sails only serve to drive you faster and quicker towards danger.
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You want to go as slowly as possible when you're not in control of where you're going. A good illustration for us here in Michigan is when the roads are icy, would you rather be sliding out of control at 15 miles per hour or at 75 miles per hour?
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Which feels more comfortable? Okay, when you fishtail, anybody here ever fishtail on I -94? Woo! You're like,
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I mean, your heart's just thumping and it's like, that just happened. I'm going a lot slower all of a sudden. You fishtail doing 15 and I'm like, woo, let's play this a little bit.
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You know what I'm saying? You're kind of like trying to just play into it a little bit, slide around the corner or whatever. Anybody else drive like that a little bit?
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Okay. You like to kind of just test your skills at resetting that thing. But yeah, 75, don't try to retest those skills.
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So you get what I'm saying. I mean, you don't want to be going fast. As a matter of fact, the ideal for these sailors is that they could just sit in one spot and wait out the storm.
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Just ride those waves because what don't they want to have happen? You don't want to get up against any landmass or anything that's going to break your keel off or anything like that.
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I mean, you'd rather just ride it out in the middle and hold on tight. So that's what's going on there.
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Let me point out that nothing in the remainder of this text moving forward, I even tried to read it that way when
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I was reading earlier, none of it should seem calm to you. Okay, like we can tend to sit down and read our
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Bible. You know, if you're reading through the Bible in a year, maybe it's in the morning, you sit down in your cup of coffee, nice quiet place, and you're reading it and you're just kind of taking this in.
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And God, what do you have to teach me from this storm? This is crazy. Okay, nothing in this text from that point forward should be read without the howl of the wind in your ears, without blinding sheets of rain, cold.
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This is in October, between October and November on the Mediterranean Sea. It's cold there.
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Okay, this is not comfortable and it's miserable moving forward. As a matter of fact, we're going to see later in the text that 14 days and they haven't eaten anything.
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Okay, and then Paul's going to get up and speak and we tend to think, okay, he hushed the crowd and then he spoke.
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He's got to shout over the wind and the waves to get this point across. So we can tend to see it like as a simple, just quiet, calm discussion that he has on the deck of the ship.
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No, you've got to put yourself in the context and actually realize what's going on and what is going on.
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Has anybody here ever been seasick? Okay, a handful. We went whale watching in Maine this past August.
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I am not prone to motion sickness. I've never been motion sick in my life. We were on a pretty small boat.
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It was foggy, a little bit cold, and a lady about ten feet from me on the deck just lost it all.
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And it took me about two minutes to sympathize with her. Okay, I'm one of those guys that has that kind of sympathy.
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You know what I mean? I just felt bad for her and I didn't want her to be alone in that. And so, and I am, anybody else here relate to that?
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Like I see somebody else throw up and I'm gone. The irony is, okay, I wrote this sermon on Wednesday.
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Just yesterday I watched a little girl blow, oh, sorry, my wife's like, stop it, stop it.
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Just yesterday I almost lost it again because this little girl was sick at a swim meet.
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Awesome. Okay, 22 whales later and five barf bags later,
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I was grateful to set my feet on solid ground. Okay, so if you've ever been seasick, you know that, I mean, there's nothing but land that's going to solve that, right?
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That's just it. You're done. And it was one of the highlights of my summer.
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My kids loved it. We really did. We got to see 22 whales. It was just amazing. But also a lot of ginger ale.
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By the time we get down to verse 21, Paul says that they haven't eaten in a long time and that's why.
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It wasn't lack of food. They're carrying wheat, like tons of wheat. They got plenty to eat if they need to.
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That's not the issue. Not only that, but preparation of food in a storm, not too easy either.
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So if you think about all of that, it's not easy and not their focus. Their focus is survival, not their stomachs.
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They do begin to jettison the cargo and this is an attempt to lighten the ship so it rides higher.
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Anybody think that would be your natural logical conclusion? You're going to just lighten it, throw stuff overboard? These guys are sailors.
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They're professionals. They know what they're doing. You want to get the ship up higher so that as it rocks back and forth, boy, you get to really rocking if you get it light.
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But you're not going to dip down as low to the water level. Does that make sense? So the waves aren't going to ride up over and down into the cargo hold and stuff.
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So they're lightening the ship. They also don't want it to strike anything on the bottom. So they're trying to get it to ride higher in the water.
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They even free some of the sailing equipment. That's what the word tackle is. We really only use the word tackle primarily as fishing equipment.
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That's not what the word tackle is in the text. It's actually extra equipment that they don't need. Many think they threw out the main yard, which is a huge beam that they use to attach the main sails to, almost the length of the entire ship.
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And they probably threw that overboard along with the main sail. No need for those big sails. All that they're concerned with is survival at this point.
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Verse 20 points out that they have no clue where they are. There's no sun or stars. What do they need for direction?
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They didn't pull out their garment. They are totally dependent upon the sun and the stars for direction.
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They have no clue where they're at. So they're lost at sea and they've really lost hope of rescue, the text tells us.
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So Paul, being human just like us, means that he could be a jerk just like us. So you're going to see that here in verse 21.
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He's just going to say something that's just kind of funny. He gives them an I told you so speech. Right, do you see that in the text?
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Like you should have paid attention to me when I said that things weren't going to go well if we take off. And I just want to state this just outright.
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The phrase really, when we use the phrase I told you so, it generally speaking makes people want to punch us in the face.
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Okay, just saying that. So we ought to be judicious in our use of that word.
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Like we ought to think before we say it. Anybody ever use that word, that phrase effectively?
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Like it worked and it actually won them over? Like I told you so, oh you are so right and you are so awesome.
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I love you man, you're always right. I've never had that work that way for me. So just a word of caution about using that and employing that.
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But I really do think, I don't think Paul's honestly just trying to be a jerk here. I think in reality he's trying to gain credibility.
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What I said was right, now are you willing to listen to what I have to say further? And I think in context that's really where he's going because he demonstrates that he cares for them and wants to encourage them.
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It's not just, I told you, you should have followed me, now we're all going to die, thanks. You know, it's not just a big downer, but it's
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I wish you would listen to me but take encouragement because I've received some revelation here. I've got something better for us and God has revealed that.
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You see he predicted before that there would be loss of life and now he's saying in verse 10 there is, I mean in this verse he's gonna say in 21, there is going to be no loss of life and the change has been that he has received revelation.
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An angel has actually appeared to him, a messenger of God and shared with him some specific things.
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And that's the only reason he can say this with any confidence. For him to, we can sometimes be guilty of sharing false hope with people.
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Everything's gonna work out, it's gonna be just fine. Have you ever had that tendency, that pull in your heart to just tell somebody it's gonna be okay, it's gonna be okay when you don't know if it's going to be okay.
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When you be cautious about just doling out encouragement. The only reason Paul gives a strong statement, it's going to work out and everybody's going to be saved is because God told him that through an angel.
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Very specific revelation, it's going to be okay and so he follows through with that and lets them know. The angel tells him specifically that he will stand before Caesar.
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He's gonna make it to Rome, he's gonna be on trial and not only that but Paul has been granted the lives of all who sail with him.
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Now that's pretty key because we're gonna get to some guys who are gonna try to sneak off the ship and he's gonna say, you know what, if they stop sailing with me, then we're no longer safe.
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So there is like an exception clause that the angel gives to him. If they sail with you,
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I'm giving you everyone who sails with you. Are you seeing that? Because it can be kind of important later because as you see, you might kind of go, well did
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God go back on that? Like he said, everybody's gonna be saved so why is Paul threatening that it's not gonna work out all right?
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Well there was an exception to that. Does that make any, anybody else's mind kind of turn to that kind of thing when you see it? You're like, is that contradictory or what?
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But it's not, it actually works. Notice how Paul speaks to these unbelievers about his
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God. He identifies that he belongs to this God and that he worships this God. These are the two things that he identifies.
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He says, I belong to that God and I worship him. And my challenge for all of us is to think through this.
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Do we consider ourselves as belonging to God? I think it would be good for us to consider that maybe even from another angle.
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Do we live our lives like we belong to God? Or could we be accused of living our lives like God belongs to us?
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I think that's a problem for many Christians. I think often we think of God as our servant and he does good things for me and he's my
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God and I own him and he's on my team. You know what I'm talking about?
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Have you ever found that tendency in your own heart to own God versus letting God own you? So the question is when our desires come up against his will, who wins?
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And I think it's a moment by moment, decision by decision battle for us, isn't it? It's a reality. It's a reality in my life that I have to struggle through and work through.
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When God does things like put us in the middle of a storm at sea, do we consider that we are his to do with as he pleases?
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It might not even be a comfortable statement for some of us, but I think our tendency is to talk to God and ask him to get back on our agenda, right?
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Like could you get back to the part where you're like giving me stuff and taking care of me? Do you know what
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I'm saying? Anybody else relating to that and feeling that a little bit? That's where I live my life is this constant attempt and work to say,
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God, I am your servant and I do what I do for you and for you alone and you know what?
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Come what may, I will serve you because you are worthy of the honor and the glory in all of my life and even in the hard things and even in the difficult things
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I will serve you and I will keep my hands lifted like we were just saying earlier. Even if you take it all away, it's still yours.
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I belong to you, God. This isn't my life. This is yours. And I tell you what,
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I'm not saying don't plan, don't make some plans with your life and don't work it, but make sure
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God has got the freedom and the right to change your plans. He'll take those chances from time to time and He'll change our lives and He'll change the direction that we thought things were going to go.
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How many of you have a way you'd like to see your life go? Really? Some of you don't?
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Let's try that again. How many of you have a way that you would like to see your life go? I kind of thought it was going to be more than that.
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Yeah, that makes more sense to me. That we would actually have a direction, but giving that agenda over to God and saying, your will,
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I'll still serve you. God has given encouragement to Paul in the storm. He didn't take him out of the storm.
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And Paul seeks to encourage the rest of the travelers telling them to take heart and expressing his own faith in God. There's a song called
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Sometimes He Calms the Storm and the lyrics just say, sometimes he calms the storm and other times he calms his child.
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Do you see the difference? He could take the storm away any time he wants, but instead he's choosing to use
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Paul as an instrument of encouragement and peace in the midst of a difficult time. And he's using a calm
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Paul in the midst of a storm. It's interesting to note, and I mentioned it in my prayer earlier, but there was another storm that rose up on the
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Sea of Galilee and the 12 disciples were in the boat and Jesus is doing what? Sleeping, snoozing.
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I guess maybe something about the rocking of the waves kind of put him to sleep or something. So he's asleep in the boat and they're like, these are seasoned sailors and they're shouting, we're going to die.
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If you have the sailors thinking they're going to die, I'm just jumping overboard and I don't know, what are we going to do?
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It's over, it's over. And Jesus wakes up and what does he do? Come on, where's you guys' faith?
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You think I'm going to die in a storm in a boat? I'm the Messiah, right? You guys believe that, right? Peace, be still, and what happens?
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The sea turns calm and he commands the storm and they're like, whoa, who is this man that he commands even the wind and the waves?
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So could God do that for Paul? Yeah, he could, but he chooses not to.
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And that's reality in our lives sometimes too. Can he heal every infirmity? Yes.
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How does that match up with the fact that we know all of us are going to die? Do you see what
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I'm saying? He can, but he's not always going to. And we've got to trust him that he's good even when he doesn't, even when he doesn't do things according to our agenda the way that we would like him to do it.
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And that's hard. By the way, what I'm preaching is hard for me to own, so I recognize that you could be sitting out there going, well, yeah, that's easier said than done.
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I agree. I agree that's easier said than done. But Paul then adds at the end of this, he says, oh, by the way, we're all going to be saved.
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Everybody's going to be okay. Nobody's going to die in this. But we are going to be shipwrecked.
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I'm kind of like, oh boy, we get to go through a shipwreck. We're going to survive.
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And not only that, but if I'm on the ship and I hear this, so you're all going to survive, you're all going to live, but you are going to be shipwrecked.
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I'm thinking, great. I'm going to survive this thing. I'm going to get thrown overboard. I'm going to end up in the ocean.
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A shark's going to eat my arm, but I'll live the rest of my life without my arm. Dr. Luke is going to be there sewing me up.
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I'm going to survive, but anybody else a little bit cynical like that? There's always a cynic. Notice how
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God is placing Paul in a place of leadership, and that's kind of key in the text, too. Steadily, Paul's influence has been growing in this text.
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He's a prisoner. He gains the favor of the centurion. He's allowed to go into Sidon. He weighs in on the decision to move forward.
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They don't follow his advice, but he weighs in, and now he's providing encouragement for the entire crew and all the travelers.
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Do you see how his sphere of influence is growing under God's leadership in the way that God is working?
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It's been 14 nights with no control, and the sailors begin to hear signs of land. Now, they're trained sailors. They've been at this for a while, so they're either hearing crashes of breakers up against rocks, or maybe they saw a bird out on the wind or heard the cries of some gulls or something, and so they're like, oh, we're getting close to land.
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So they take a sounding, and they get to the depth. Let me advance that.
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So there's a nice little storm graphic for you there to kind of clarify that. And then where they're coming up to is Malta there.
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So they hear the breakers crashing, and they're like, we're getting close to land, so they take a sounding. They drop a rock down and see how much rope actually plays out before it stops playing out, and they get to 120 feet.
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Okay, so that's the measurement that we're looking at there in Fathoms. And the next sounding, some people say half an hour later.
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It's hard to tell from the text, but the next sounding is 90 feet. So what does that imply to you?
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If you're 120 the first time, then you wait a little while, then you're at 90, the ocean's getting more shallow.
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You're moving up towards land, and that's what they see. Now, how many of you, like if you're in this situation, you've been sick for a while, and the waves, and you haven't eaten and stuff, how many of you are thinking land sounds good?
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Okay, land sounds pretty good, unless you're a sailor. If you're a sailor, land does not sound good at all, because you recognize that when you talk about a ship coming into the land out of control, it's very much like an airplane coming into a landing without control and no airstrip.
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Okay, does that sound good to anybody? You're in an airplane, and we're going to be landing shortly, we have no control, and there's no airport in sight.
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Say your last prayers, you're going home. Okay, and that's the way the sailors are looking at this. They're like, we come into land rapidly without any control, and this is not going to go well.
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And so they're fearing that they might be dashed on the rocks, so they let down four anchors, the text tells us, from the stern, which by the waves would keep them pointed towards land.
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They're knowledgeable about this kind of stuff. And I think it's kind of ironic, it says that the sailors then prayed for, look at the text, tell me what did they pray for?
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Daylight. I would dare say that that's a safe prayer, that the last time
51:13
I checked, that in the early hours of the morning, if I pray for daylight, I would say that for centuries, maybe millennia, it's been pretty consistent that there's been daylight that's followed night, right?
51:25
So it's kind of a little bit of a funny prayer. Obviously they want daylight soon, that's what they're asking for. But they're praying for daylight.
51:32
In verse 30 through 32, the sailors, knowing what happens when ships hit rocks, they hatch a plan to lower the boat, acting like they're going to attach anchors to the bow, but intending to actually make off with the ship.
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So the centurion cuts the lifeboat free, and I'm not sure that was the best solution. How many of you would like it that the lifeboat's gone now?
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But it's gone. And so they've got no way to shuttle back and forth to land. By this point,
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Paul is significantly leading. He encourages everyone to eat, reminding them that not a hair on their head.
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He takes the lead and actually eats himself, and then they do too. It says in the text that they were actually encouraged.
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You might be thinking, did they believe him that they're going to be saved? But they are, and they actually are encouraged by what they hear.
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276 passengers and crew get their fill of wheat, probably eating some bread or some kind of flatbread or something, and they finally give up all hope of profit and throw the wheat into the sea.
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Daylight comes. They notice a beach. They don't know where they're at, but they're going to go ahead and try to beach this baby.
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So they make some preparations. They hoist the foresail so they've got some semblance of control, and they are trying to get full steam ahead to make it to this beach.
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But before they get to the beach, they strike a sandbar. When a ship moving at reasonable speed strikes a sandbar, this would be a pretty big shutter.
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Probably chaos really ensues at this point, and they don't make it to the beach. They're on a sandbar, and the back of the ship, the stern, begins to break up in the waves.
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The ship has already taken a battering, and planks are coming off, and they're probably listing, and things are looking ugly.
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When the soldiers move in, I picture them with hands on swords ready to kill the prisoners. The centurion gets in between them, and because he wanted to save Paul, he lets all the prisoners go free.
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It shows the relationship that Paul had developed with the centurion over a very short period of time He's trusted, and the centurion actually cares for him and wants his life preserved.
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He steps in the middle and says, everybody into the ocean. That's the way he breaks it up. He says, everybody who can swim, jump in.
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Those of you who can't swim, grab some boards and hang ten. I think that the birth of modern surfing happened here.
53:45
It says that they took the planks, and they headed into the, I don't know, that was dumb. God's promise to Paul is kept.
53:54
Everyone makes it to shore safely. Really kind of the concluding point here. So we read about a shipwreck here, and what's that supposed to do with us, like in 2012?
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Like kind of an interesting story, shipwreck, Paul, he makes it out alive, God reveals this to him.
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But I believe that this is included in the text by God to point out a couple of applications. And first is
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God's sovereign hand. He has a sovereign will, and that fact that he sometimes provides peace in the storms of life, and sometimes he calms the storms of life.
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But God's will for Paul was not always easy, and his will for us is not always easy.
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I can't help but think that some of us, or some of those aboard the ship came to believe in Jesus Christ, that they actually began to follow him through Paul.
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Although it's not stated, the clarity of Paul's relationship with God was lived out in front of these sailors and the soldiers and the passengers.
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And lastly is the role of God's people in leadership. Although you may not have an official title of leadership, we are all leaders in some way.
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The fact is, someone is looking to you. Are you a parent? Are you the head of a household?
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Are you an employee? Are you an employer? Do you have a teaching role in any capacity in your life?
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God gave Paul a position of leadership, and gave him the tools needed to remain calm in the storm and to be able to lead in that.
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I can imagine that he was a calming influence, pointing to his faith and trusting in God in the midst of very dire circumstances where everybody thought they were going to die.
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And my question to all of us is in what capacities has God called you to lead others to be a calming, encouraging,
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God -honoring influence in their lives? All of us are called to various levels of leadership, but all of us share one thing in common if we are in Christ, and that is the call to lead others to the cross.
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And if you can do nothing more in leadership than that, you have done well to lead others to the cross.
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And so we come to Communion this morning to reflect on the cross. That's the point. That's why we take
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Communion every week is to focus things back to the cross and back to an understanding of what he has done for us.
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Jesus gave up his body for us, and we remember that sacrifice by the cracker that we eat. On the cross,
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Jesus' body was spilled for us, and we remember the sacrifice by the juice that we drink. And this morning, we're going to do something different, so those of you who have been here a while, kind of hold on tight because we're going to actually pass
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Communion this morning. We've just had this bottleneck going on and tried to keep doing it that way, and so we're actually going to pass
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Communion. If you're still trying to figure out who Jesus is, my encouragement to you is just pass that plate on by.
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Take in the song that Dave's going to play and listen to it and think about it. Nobody's keeping track of who takes
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Communion and who doesn't, but I encourage you to consider that if you are here and you are not in Christ and you have not chosen to follow him for whatever reason,
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I encourage you to consider why. Why would you not follow Jesus? Now, it's kind of funny to paint it this way, but God doesn't promise to protect you from all the storms.
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He doesn't promise you a rose garden or that everything's going to go fine for the rest of your life, but he does promise to keep you and to hold you and carry you through the storms of life, to be there and to be present with you and to give you purpose and understanding of the things that are coming your way to sharpen you and to strengthen you.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you that you are sovereign and that as I look at my life and I see the difficulties that you've led me through, that you have been there present with me through all of them.
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Father, I ask that you would help as we contemplate and consider the sacrifice of your son, that it is only in him that we have salvation and at the cross that he paid the penalty for our sins so that we can be forgiven and made right for you in awesome exchange, our sin and our crud for his righteousness and his glory.
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And so, Father, I pray that you would help us as we take communion to reflect on these things, to rejoice that salvation is ours in Jesus.