Acts 27:39-28:16 - Part A

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That's connectwithskip.com. Now let's get into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. So they didn't do a whole lot of translating from that. That's what it was called. It was this crazy nor'easter wind that was not uncommon in Mediterranean Sea in the sailing of the Mediterranean Sea between autumn and winter.

It didn't always come, but when it came, it stirred things up. So it is like a typhoon force wind, a gale that rendered the ship inoperative in terms of control. Paul was on this ship.

276 people are aboard. He is overseen by a guy named Julius, a Roman centurion. There's the maritime captain aboard this vessel. But he and all of his crew were unable to control this ship because of the storm. Now I can't prove it, but I'm guessing this was the same kind of storm that a prophet named Jonah experienced several books earlier in the Old Testament. It doesn't say that word. The word Eurokleudon or Eurokleudon as mentioned in our English text only appears once in all of Scripture.

It's a Greek word. But it says in the book of Jonah that he experienced and all those aboard the ship that Jonah was on experienced a mighty tempest. And then Jonah was thrown overboard and that tempest ceased.

God was in control of that storm like he is in control of this storm that Paul is a part of. Now if you remember, when they were aboard this ship, they couldn't see the stars for weeks. They couldn't read the skies. And navigation was done not by compass, not by radar, not by sonar, not by computer, not by your phone or GPS. It was done by looking at the stars, plotting the course. So they were unable to know where they were and where they were going.

They had no point of reference at all. That's the storm that Paul was a part of. And while they were taking this journey and that wind took them from one place to the other, their biggest fear was that they would be beached on the sands, the shoals of North Africa.

They came close. But they were afraid that the wind was going to take him right there to North Africa and there was an area that was famous for these sandy shoals where ships would often get stuck. But as God would have it, he has a plan for another place and that's the place that they end up. So in the storm, they start throwing things overboard. They throw the tackle overboard. They throw the grain aboard the grain ship that was sailing from Alexandria, Egypt to Rome.

So all of its cargo was thrown over and eventually, finally, the boat shipwrecked. Now Paul, as I said, and as we have probably repeated almost weekly, always wanted to go to Rome, but he probably didn't picture this. We saw last week how difficult it was. Verse after verse after verse, sailing into the wind, doing it with difficulty, getting pushback along the way, still he is in the will of God and he knows it. He believes it.

And it's confirmed even during this storm. But it's not what he anticipated. How many times have you made plans and God changed your plans? So you even get to a point where like, you know, should I even make plans? Well, you should, but you should always say, James counsels us, if the Lord wills.

That's a good caveat. Well, I'll be there tomorrow if the Lord wills. James said that that's how we ought to live our lives and so I have friends who will always say that.

You can count on it if the Lord wills. In Isaiah 55, God through the prophet in verse eight and nine of that chapter said, My thoughts are not your thoughts, says the Lord, neither are my ways your ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. I don't know why this storm happened like this and it took Paul so long to get to Rome with such difficulty.

I know partly why and part is revealed in the text that we read last week and the text that we read this week. All I know is God is good at changing our plans. I didn't plan on being a pastor. I would have been upset if somebody would have prophesied over me, you're going to be a pastor. Get out of here.

You're in that case. I wanted to be a photographer. I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to be in medicine. But God put this on my radar screen.

And even when I was planning to go to medical school, my friend, my roommate, who is a medical doctor, said, Don't do it. I told you his story. And so the Lord had different plans. The Lord had different plans for this apostle in this storm. Also, he has great calm in the midst of this storm and he has great calm when he gets to land. As you're going to see, some amazing things will happen to Paul and the two hundred and seventy five other passengers.

And Paul is calm throughout all of it. And that's partly because not only did he know he was in God's will, but he knew that he would be safe. And all those aboard the ship would be safe because the Lord gave him a vision one night in verse twenty three of chapter twenty seven.

I'm going back just a little bit for reference. Paul said to the men aboard the ship, For there stood by me this night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve, saying, Do not be afraid, Paul. You must be brought before Caesar. Well, if you're going to be brought before Caesar, you're going to go to Rome, because that's where Caesar lives. So if the angel of the Lord said, You're going to talk to Caesar, that means Paul knows he's going to Rome. So now it's confirmed in a vision that he's going to appear before Caesar. And God is granted, this messenger says, You all, those who sail with you, therefore take heart, Paul says, for I believe God that it will be just as he told me. So it's difficult, but he knows the end game. He can see the horizon. He knows this road that he is on will end in Rome.

The road ends in Rome. Paul's long road to Rome. We did a series on that a few years back. I've quoted before to you Corrie Ten Boom.

I did it just a few Sundays ago on a Sunday morning. Corrie Ten Boom was Dutch, lived in the Netherlands. Her father was a watchmaker.

I visited his shop and the old home that the Ten Booms were in and where they hid the special places in the wall and in the home where they hid Jews during World War II from the Nazis. The family was captured, incarcerated. Corrie and her sister were sent to concentration camps.

They survived two of them. And Corrie Ten Boom had a perspective on life and God's will and suffering so clear that it rivals any other treatise on suffering and the will of God. And she had a lot of great sayings, and one of her sayings was that if God sends you on stony paths, he provides strong shoes.

And she went on a stony path, finding herself in a Nazi concentration camp and being persecuted and being hurt. Even though you're a believer in God, you're wondering, God, why would you let this happen to me? She saw how God provided strong shoes. When God sends you on rocky paths, he will also send strong shoes. We might also say, given this narrative, when God sends you into a storm at sea, he sends lifeboats. He provides a way of escape, and they will escape. Also, just to make mention of this, though Paul did not go to Rome the way he thought he was going to go to Rome, he probably thought he was going to take a fourth missionary journey. He had three.

He thought he was going to take a fourth. But I think you realize that to take a boat around the world and travel to all the places Paul traveled, that's expensive. That takes an enormous amount of finance. And we know from the New Testament that Paul was financed by the generosity of churches. But the Lord allowed Paul to get to Rome with all expenses paid by the Roman government. Now, what that shows me, among other things, is that not only is God, as my friend Murray here says, working a trick with the people on Malta, but God is interested in economy.

If you can get a good deal, if you can get a better deal, get it. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we return to Skip's teaching, we want to tell you about this month's resource titled The Holy Spirit Then and Now, which comes with two books by Chuck Smith. The Book of Acts commentary will help you understand how the Holy Spirit worked in the early church, and Power, a biblical balance on the person and work of the Holy Spirit, will help you see how he works in you. You'll be inspired as you discover that the same spirit who worked in Paul, Peter, and the early church is active and involved in your life today. We'll send you the Holy Spirit then and now as our thanks for your gift of $50 or more to reach people with God's love through Connect with Skip Heitzig.

Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give. Now, let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. I remember when I was young and I didn't have a car and my father wouldn't buy me a car. My father said, get a bicycle, go get a job. When you get enough money, buy a motorcycle. When you get enough money after that, buy a car.

That's my advice. It's free. That's all I'll give you.

Any extra I'll charge you for, but that's free. So I wanted a car and I was a believer. I prayed for a car. Well, I ended up buying my brother's 67 Plymouth.

Now, today it would be a classic. It would be a collector's item, but probably not his. They normally would be, but probably not his because the car was all dinged up and filled with Bondo and it was not a good Bondo job. So it was like half pink Bondo and half primer gray, the entire car. It also lacked second gear. Second gear had busted. It was burned out. So I had reversed first and third gear in this car.

Cost me $37 for my brother. I rejoiced for a day. Every day after that, I thought, Lord, this is not what I had in mind. But then I read this passage and I thought, God is interested in economy.

And so mine was the 67 Plymouth Bondo Gray. Paul's was a Roman ship, an Alexandrian Egypt ship on the way to Rome with grain as a prisoner. But he makes it. Now, if you remember back in verse 21, there was a change in this storm. Can I just refresh your memory? Do you remember that Paul gave counsel and said, Don't go. And the centurion listened to Paul because he liked Paul. But then the captain of the ship said, Don't listen to Paul. He's a prisoner. What does he know?

I'm a captain. Let's go. Well, they went and they got into trouble. And when they got into trouble, Paul in verse 21 said, Men, you should have listened to me and not have sailed from Crete and incurred this disaster and loss. And then he encouraged them.

After saying, You should have listened to me, he gave them encouragement and gave them a promise that the Lord sent an angel to appear to me. You're going to be safe. We're going to make it. Everybody on board, if you stay on the ship, is going to make it fine. But what we see is that Paul goes from captive on the ship to captain of the ship. He sort of takes charge and now everyone wants to listen to Paul. So much so that when Paul says, You guys haven't eaten for two weeks, eat breakfast. They all ate.

And he prayed publicly and he thanked God. Now some of the men thought that we'll take the skiff, that's the little ship, the dinghy aboard the big ship, lower it into the sea and we'll escape at night. Paul said, No, you don't. You bring that skiff back on board. Unless you stay in this boat, you're going to die. God will get you to land, but you have to stay in the boat.

Stay on the ship. And I didn't have time last week to just say, You know, that's good counsel for us. Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. One of our hardest things to do in life is to wait on the Lord.

You know it's true. We hate to wait for the Lord or to wait on the Lord. But let me encourage you to do that. When things don't go our way, we want to jump ship. The marriage isn't going our way, I'm going to jump ship. The job isn't going our way, I'm going to jump ship. Stay put a while.

If you don't have a clear green light from the Lord, then see it as a red light for you now or at least a yellow light. Slow down. Slow your horses. Stop.

Wait. And then when it turns green and the Lord shows you, this is where I want you to go, then go. I have learned that lesson painfully on so many different occasions. Don't jump ship. Stay aboard. So now to verse 39 of chapter 27.

We'll just sort of take this last part of the journey to Rome all in one swoop. When it was day, they did not recognize the land, but they observed a bay with the beach unto which they planned to run the ship if possible. And they let go the anchors and left them in the sea. Meanwhile, loosing the rudder ropes, and they hoisted the mainsail for the wind and made foreshore. But striking a place where two seas met, they ran the ship aground, and the prow stuck fast and remained immovable. But the stern was being broken up by the violence of the waves, and the soldiers' plan was to kill the prisoners, lest any of them should swim away and escape.

But the centurion, remember Julius, liked Paul the Apostle. The centurion, wanting to save Paul, kept them from their purpose and commanded that those who could swim should jump overboard first and get to land. And the rest, some on boards and some on parts of the ship, so it was that they all escaped to the land. Now, they're going to a land that they have no idea its identity. They don't know which land it is. Paul said, we're going to run aground on a certain island. They don't know what island this is.

Now, they will discover, and we will discover what they discovered in the very next verse, chapter 28, verse 1. It's the island of Malta. And Malta is an archipelago. It is a series of little islands between Sicily and North Africa. And the biggest island, which is considered the island of Malta in that archipelago, is a small island.

It's only 17 miles long by 10 miles wide. Now, they would have recognized, had they gone to the main port of that island, the main port being Valletta, they would have recognized, oh, I know where I'm at. This is Malta.

I recognize the port. We've been here many times. The crew members of the boat would have recognized what island this was, but because they were run aground where two seas meet and it was a violent storm, it's raining. They have no idea where they're at. But they are in Malta. They're going to end up spending their winter there.

The next three months will be spent on this island of Malta, and you're going to see that God has a plan for this island. Now, by now, it's early to mid-November. And in that part of the world, that's when the rains start, sort of a California style of weather pattern, where the rains, the winter rains, the early rains can start in November. And when you have a storm and you have rain and it's a torrential downpour, those raindrops feel like darts, like bullets. So it's cold, they're in the sea, they're in the rain, full exposure to the elements, and they go now to the shore.

And they'll be there for three months. Now, I can't resist this. I'm going to read to you.

If you don't want to turn there, you don't have to. But I'm going to read a little portion out of Psalm 107, where the psalmist says this in Psalm 107, and I'm beginning to read it, verse 23. Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do business on great waters. This is one of those ships.

It is a cargo boat. They see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep, for He commands and raises the stormy wind, which lifts up the waves of the sea. They mount up to the heavens, they go down to the depths. If you've ever been in a storm on the sea, you know this reality.

It's up high and down low, and you think with each one it's going to break the boat and capsize. Their soul melts because of trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits end. Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble, and He brings them out of their distress as He calms the storm so that the waves are still.

Then they are glad because they are quiet. And so He guides them to their desired haven. Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness. Now, God is in this storm of Acts 27 and 28. At the very least, what He is doing is getting the attention of the 276 passengers on board, or 275 other ones, to at least now listen to Paul and respect him because he was right the first time and right the second time, and now they're going to at least listen to this crazy preacher, this man of God. God has their attention.

God is in this storm. So back to our text in chapter 27 of Acts, I want you to just notice what we read just a little bit. Notice it says in verse 40 that they let go the anchors and left them in the sea.

Do you see where it reads that? Now, go back a few verses to something we read last week, verse 28. And they took soundings and they found it to be 20 fathoms, and when they had gone a little farther, they took soundings again and found it to be 15 fathoms. And then fearing lest we should run aground on the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for a day to come. So they took soundings, that is they put a weight on a rope, the rope was marked, they threw it overboard when it hit the bottom, they could read the rope, they knew how far from the bottom they were, so they were 120 feet, then they were 90 feet, and they put the anchors down at 90 feet. In the next section, they just let the anchors go, they just cut the anchors, the boat was being disintegrated, and they came to the land. If you were to go to the city or the island of Malta today, there's a couple of famous churches built in homage of the shipwreck of Paul. One is called Shipwreck Cathedral.

It's in the main port of Valletta, but there's another smaller one in what's called St. Paul's Bay, which most people believe to be the area where the ship ran aground. In the 1960s, an old sailor and an old diver along with the team was diving off the coast of Malta, and they found from the Roman era four anchors. Now, who knows what they are, but it's interesting because somebody was snooping around Malta and asking about the biblical account, and this guy Ray Ciancio, I think was his name, said, oh, I was part of the team that found those four anchors, or at least found four anchors, and he said he described the place as a place where two seas meet, where there is a sandy beach, and at the precise depth of 90 feet. And then he showed them, they dove down to show them where they found the anchors. Now, the anchors have been exhumed, and they are presently the ones that are found, the four Roman anchors, very basic anchors, probably would fit the description being off of an Alexandrian grain ship. They're currently in the National Maritime Museum in Malta with no special sign on them, just sort of in the corner, and the sign reads four Roman anchors.

Now, we don't know if those are the four anchors, but it's interesting that people day after day in this museum walk past these four anchors completely oblivious to the tale that those four anchors might have told. We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you The Holy Spirit Then and Now, featuring two books by Chuck Smith to help you understand how God's Spirit worked in the early church and how he's active in you today. To request your copy, call 800-922-1888.

That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. For more from Skip, be sure to download the Connect with Skip Heitzig app where you can access messages and more content right at your fingertips. Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection Make a connection At the foot of the cross Cast your burdens on his word Make a connection Connection Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.