Unsaved Shipmates (Part B)

Quite remarkable. It helps us to step up in our faith and not be ashamed of Christ. Maybe it will help us if we understand that fear of what might happen can be confused with shame.

And if we can make a distinction between those two and say, okay, I'm not going to be ashamed of Christ, and I am afraid of what might happen, but I've made the choice that because I'm not ashamed, I'm going to take whatever happens. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Acts.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick continues his message called Unsaved Shipmates, as he teaches in Acts chapter 27. There's nothing boring about the ocean. Well, you can be stuck at sea or stuck off the coast of someplace just sitting there.

Yeah, that could be a drag. But the sea is exciting, and they're on the move for God. At least Paul and his friends are.

The other shipmates, of course, we don't know the details. They're en route. Paul is en route to give sermons. He's en route to save souls.

He is en route to write at least four more epistles that we have, the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. But it says here in verse four, because the winds were contrary. Ominous words. Shipwreck awaits them. It awaits them all. They don't know it yet.

They're just on this Turkish ship, and they're just thinking, okay, the winds are contrary. But it's setting the pace for what's coming. Even in the will of God, things will not go smoothly. It is surprising, but it's understandable sometimes when you find a Christian going through hardship and you're surprised. How could God let do this, and how could this happen? That's understandable. If you're in the hot seat, those are feelings that surge to the top.

But it doesn't mean we need to be enslaved by them or give in to them. These contrary winds will surge into violent winds. Paul knew the sea, and Luke as, again, vividly recalling these events, he indicates that Paul had bad feelings about all this, as the story goes. He's going to point out Paul had a sinking feeling about some of this. Verse five, and when we had sailed over the sea, which is off Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra, the city of Lycia. Now, Lycia and Myra, they were ports of the imperial Egyptian grain fleet. Egypt was the breadbasket for Rome.

They weren't the only ones, but they were the major ones. Coming from the Nile Delta, ships would come out with their grains to go to Rome, and those ships were under the authority of Rome, even if they were privately owned. Once you got on that contract, it was a Roman vessel.

Again, even in the will of God, things will not go smoothly. These contrary winds will insist on becoming the dominant force in their lives when they're on that vessel. So, verse six now, there the centurion found an Alexandrian ship sailing to Italy, and he put us on board. So they changed ships, and this is going to be the ship that's going to suffer the shipwreck, not the other one. Alexandria, an Alexandrian ship, that was that Egyptian port in the city of Alexandria in Egypt.

And again, here we have 276 souls on this ship, verse seven. When we had sailed slowly many days and arrived with difficulty off of Nindus, the winds not permitting us to proceed, we sailed under the shelter of Crete off Salome for boating indicators continued. Paul, he knows the sea. He knows the Mediterranean Sea. He has got to be getting sick feelings at this point.

He has seen this play before. The wind not permitting us to proceed. How metaphoric is that for life? Resistance in life, interrupting, getting in the way of us trying to reach our destination. Maybe it's a simple, basic Christian destination that you're going to be patient on the road today, and the winds will be contrary to you because the other drivers will be on the road also. So common is resistance in life that when there is no resistance, we're suspicious. What's going on here? Things have been going too well, too long.

Such is life, and God does not excuse us from this. He calls us to operate in the midst of these things. So they wanted to go northwest, but the winds were against them. And again, Luke writes as though it was yesterday because he kept that journal. Verse 8, passing it with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens near the city of Lycia. The menacing winds are worsening. The Fair Havens, they will come to wish they stayed there. Lycia is a small and boring village town, and the crew would not want to be there, and that will come up again. Verse 9, now when much time had been spent and sailing was now dangerous because of the fast, which was already over, Paul advised them.

We'll pause mid-sentence. This is a time stamp, the fast. This is Yom Kippur around the end of September. It's probably about the first of October at this point. This was not the best time to be in the open sea at that time in history. Mid-September to mid-November was highly risky to be out on the open waters.

By November, only fools would venture out into the deep. Paul, it says here, advised them, and this is remarkable, that he was respected enough to have his input offered. I mean, the cook's not going to come upstairs and say, hey, this is what I think we should do. Yet Paul gets to ring in. He's a prisoner of Rome. What does that say about him? What does that teach us about being a Christian around those who are unsaved? Some of them, various degrees.

Many times, of course. Many decent, unsaved people. Many of them can be far more likely than some Christians. They can be noble people in the world that want nothing to do with Christ.

That does not cause us to stand down and not want to give them the Gospel. Well, Paul advised them, which again is just remarkable that they would even listen. Verse 10, saying, men, I perceive that this voyage will end with disaster and much loss, not only of cargo and ship, but also our lives. Was Paul beginning to question the promise of God to get in front of Caesar? Was this great Christian man having second thoughts about what God put on his heart?

If so, he's just like us. The only one that would not have a second thought about the will of God, the Word of God, would have been Jesus Christ. Paul was a man like us, as gallant a servant as he was.

He was still prisoner of his own flesh that he had to fight every day. But he speaks up, knowing the mariners would risk going to sea because they wanted to get to Rome. You know, there's that part about people where you just got to push forward sometimes. Well, that can backfire, and it's going to backfire on them. Now, because they were not believers, Paul was without spiritual influence.

He lost some leverage. So, if these were all Christians, Paul said, I think we should stay here. There's a very good chance they would stay. But they're not Christians. They admire him, evidently, letting him in, but not enough.

They're going to learn to admire him a lot more by the time this is over. And his warning was not without reason, and it was not without experience. He brought those two factors together. They were not the only ones who knew the sea this time of year. He knew sailing, and he knew sinking, too. This would be his fourth shipwreck. One of the shipwrecks, he says, that he spent a night and a day in the sea. He was probably holding on, you know, the wooden ships back then. Wood floats, fortunately, for mariners overboard. And he'd probably be hanging onto a piece of wood or treading. He knows the sea.

Highly experienced in Mediterranean travel. And, you know, when you go through something, it can have its various levels of trauma that are involved. You know, blows to the mind that stick with you. And he would have remembered that, you know, I've been in this spot before.

And I remember the last time we did something like this, I got wet in the middle of the sea. And so he would later, as I mentioned earlier, use shipwreck as a metaphor for destroyed travel with Christ. A ruined walk.

I don't mean a stumble and a, you know, a backslide. I mean apostasy. First Timothy, chapter 1, verse 19, having faith and a good conscience which some, having rejected concerning the faith, have suffered shipwreck. Well, he could use that statement with a little bit more authority than most of us.

It is not a bad idea to listen to the man who listens to God. And here Paul was telling them this is not going to go good for all of us, verse 11. Nevertheless, the centurion was more persuaded by the helmsman and the owner of the ship than by the things spoken by Paul. These, here in verse 11, are the unsaved shipmates and this is their decision. As I mentioned, the ship being part of the imperial grain fleet, therefore Julius, the centurion, not the helmsman, who was the pilot slash captain, and not the owner of the ship, were ranking officials.

The Roman centurion is the ranking official. It's his final call. So he listens to the captain, he listens to the owner, and he's persuaded by them. And he doesn't listen to Paul. Doesn't mean he didn't like Paul. He's a man of decision, clearly.

We'll see that again. But experts and majorities are not automatically right. And the Bible teaches, you know, if majorities were right, then they would have been on the ark and not Noah. But when the spies go into the promised land, first off, they were to spy out the land. They weren't to give their opinion. When Joshua sends, 40 years later, when he sends spies into the land, he doesn't ask their opinion.

He's not going to let that happen again. But there, the 10 spies were wrong and only two were correct. You know, we say to ourselves, after all, how could so many people be wrong at the same time?

Well, very easily. They could be wrong at the same time. Imperial Japan was wrong at the same time.

Nazi Germany was wrong at the same time. And just look at the culture we're in now. This Jesus-hating culture. Whether they verbalize that or not, the culture is most certainly anti-Christ. And to say that I can, again, live like a devil and still be treated like a saint is from hell. It is not God teaching that.

It's Satan teaching that. His masterpiece. He's going to develop this masterpiece so that by the time anti-Christ steps into the picture, he'll have a world waiting for him with open arms. He'll have all the military, the politicians, the businesses. He'll have everything.

Everything an anti-Christ wanted to have and more. Well, here the majority is wrong. It does us well to remember that. Even in Christian circles, the majority can be wrong. Look at the Dark Ages and what the Roman Catholic Church did to Europe. Then by the things spoken by Paul.

Let me put that back in context. Nevertheless, the centurion was more persuaded by the helmsman and the owner of the ship than by the things spoken by Paul. You have a choice. You can listen to Darwin or you can listen to Moses. That's what we have here.

You can listen to the godly man who has experience also and reason or you can go with those who have other interests. And their interest is to get that. If not get to Rome, get to some city somewhere where they can unload their cargo. Well, they're going to unload their cargo in the deep blue sea. It won't go according to plan. And I think it's good for we Christians, especially if you go to the universities or the workplace. You're going to either listen to Darwin, who was a nut, incidentally, or you're going to listen to Moses.

And we now know that Darwinism, known as evolution, not even possible, scientifically speaking. They won't abandon it because the alternative to them is God. And so, as I've been mentioning the last few times up here, they're looking to other areas. Don't worry, Antichrist will have something for everybody, except Christians, except the Jews. Anyway, good, as far as good goes.

He'll have evil for them. The helmsman knew sailing, but he didn't know the future. And Paul had enough to be able to say the future is not going to be good for us, as I mentioned that sinking feeling.

About five years earlier, he had sent a letter to the Christians at Corinth, his second letter. And he said, three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I've spent in the deep.

That could be a fourth time, but it's probably related to the three. In journeys, often. In perils of waters, he brings up water again. The three shipwrecks, the night and the sea, in perils of water, in perils of robbers. Incidentally, there are parts of that world, especially the Aegean seaside, where there were pirates, a lot of them. Many of the people on the coast moved inland to get away from the pirates. Well, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea.

That might be the pirates there. In perils amongst false brethren. Danger, we could say, if you want to swap out the word terror, we don't use that word.

You know, I'm afraid there's going to be a perilous line at the store. You know, we use the word danger. And so, again, he's saying in danger of waters, danger of robbers, danger in the sea, danger amongst false brethren, which are worse than unbelievers. Men do not suffer like this man suffered for fiction. He suffered these things because he met Jesus Christ face to face.

He tells us about that. Had he not met Jesus Christ face to face, he would have made that clear, and he would not have lived this type of life. Now, you can meet Christ eye to eye, face to face, or you can meet him face to face in the spiritual way, which is, believers have done over the centuries.

By faith, we know the Lord Christ. We haven't seen Jesus face to face, but we will, which is so amazing when Peter, for example, made his way through the ancient world, Roman Empire. He started rubbing elbows with Christians who were ready to die for Christ.

The difference is that Peter lived and walked with Christ for almost three years. He knew Christ face to face. He knew him according to the flesh. He knew him in his glorified body. But the people that Peter was now rubbing elbows with, they didn't know Jesus that way, and yet their love was just as strong as his.

How'd that happen? Well, a God who can create the universe can create a relationship with me, with anybody, but it's got to be on his terms. I think it's very remarkable that when Peter would go to a church, he'd find Christians singing to an unseen invisible Lord that to Peter was once visible with equal enthusiasm.

Quite remarkable. Helps us to step up in our faith and not be ashamed of Christ. Maybe it will help us if we understand that fear of what might happen can be confused with shame.

And if we can make the distinction between those two and say, okay, I'm not going to be ashamed of Christ, and I am afraid of what might happen, but I've made the choice that because I'm not ashamed, I'm going to take whatever happens. In this case, probably the only two people that we know about on this ship that could have stayed at Sidon or at any of these places was Luke and Aristarchus. They weren't prisoners of Rome. They could just say, you know what, Paul, it's been fun, but that ship is doomed. That's not what they did.

They didn't care what was going to happen to the ship as long as they were with Paul. That was their ministry. These are the first Christians. We should admire them. These are the lessons.

These stories are here for us, for our edification. So when we get petty, which we can do very quickly, when we get our feelings hurt, which happens often, Christ stands there and says, what are you going to do now? Are you going to flee? Are you going to run?

Are you going to take your licks because you know where I have you? That's true for a congregant or for a pastor. A pastor could say, you know, I'm done.

I'm not going to put up with this and so can a person. That's not Christ. What does the Lord say?

We are supposed to, you know, the word, the name Israel, it means to be governed by God. God is the controlling influence in your life. Well, for us, God comes further into view in Christ.

We have a better view of how Christ wants us to be like him, Christ's likeness. Those two men, Luke and Aristarchus, they got it. They can get it.

We can get it too. These things are not given to us to say, look, David can drop a giant with a stone, but you can't. That's not what Christ says. Well, coming back to verse 12 now, and because the harbor was not suitable to winter in, the majority advised to set sail from there also, if by any means they could reach Phoenix, a harbor of Crete, opening toward the southwest and northwest and winter there. So they wanted to get to Phoenix, but it's not going to work. They did not, again, want to stay at the fair havens because there's no saloon there, no night life with nothing to do.

Well, that's not, you know, that is understandable, not something to dismiss. What do you do with 276 people for, you know, three or four months? You got to watch the prisoners still.

You can't let them get away. So, of course, there would not be incentive to stay, but it would prove to be, had Paul not been on this ship, they all would have died. Now, isn't that something to think about? Here you are on a ship of life with unsaved shipmates. Some of them will go to hell without you, hopefully that we have a role in the salvation of other souls in some way, even if it's vicarious, even if, well, the church is strengthening Christians and other Christians are getting them saved because of the benefits of belonging to a good body in Christ. Well, you share in that, if you share in the labor of that ministry. When Paul was making converts, Aristarchus and Luke shared in that. They were his helpmates. Well, they wanted to get out of there and they did. It says the majority advised to set sail from there also. And we talked about the majority not automatically being right.

They put it up to a vote and the minority was the correct party. Remember that in the workplace, in the university, in the neighborhood, wherever you find yourself, everybody's against Christ, but you, you're the minority. Stand tough. Elisha the prophet asked that God would open the eyes of his servants so that the servant could see that there were more with them than there were against them. You have legions of angels around you, not so that you can get the, you know, the house that you want and the car you want and they're not there to make you rich. You'll have to go to Joel Osteen to be blessed like that. They're there to help you as a minister of Christ do the will of God and it may involve shipwreck. Many times, Christians go down with the ships, but the will of the Lord is done because God has a better place for us. If by any means they could reach Phoenix, a harbor of Crete opening toward the southwest, northwest, and winter there.

Just 45 miles away. That's all it was. Seemed to make perfect sense. But Paul said, may I stay here?

The sea is a beast and he knew it. And so the invitation of Christ to come to him, to his church, it's not an invitation to a funeral. Some people kind of think it that way. They may not articulate it, but they're thinking, man, if I become a Christian, when am I going to have to give up? What about what you're going to get? What Christ has is better than anything this world has to offer. Paul and company, as I mentioned earlier, would be looking to witness throughout their time on this ship and give this invitation, again, not to a funeral, to a banquet. That's the invitation, to a supper, to a feast, maker of all the universe. That's why we come to church and we can sing songs to an unseen Christ as though he's right there with us and we love to do it. That's why, again, I encourage you younger Christians, and if you older ones are not schooled in this, look at some of the hymns. There's so much doctrine packed into those hymns. What's the one we did sing?

Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, Let Me High. They're just an incredible song that has survived over 200 years. There's so much doctrine in that. Nothing in my hands I bring simply to the cross I cling. Salvation is not a work of man.

It is a gift of God. So I close with this verse from Revelation 19, verse 9. John, this is John the Apostle. He's pretty much seen what's going to happen in the great tribulation period that is still on the calendar.

It's still future for humanity and we are ramping up to it at an accelerated pace. And so the angel is showing John how things are going to end. Then he said to me, write, blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

And he said to me, these are the true sayings of God. The invitation to Christ is not an invitation to a funeral, though it is the old flesh dying. Yes, that part of it is correct, but it is an invitation to a banquet in heaven. No one should miss it.

Many are called, few are chosen and they're not chosen because they will not receive the invitation. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply visit crossreferenceradio.com. That's crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at crossreferenceradio.com or simply search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Acts right here on Cross Reference Radio.