Oh man, shipwrecked! Yeah, Paul and everyone on board has been shipwrecked and thrown onto some beach somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean. And their ship is in splinters. Right, and now they're on some unknown, on some unknown desert isle. This sounds like Gilligan's Island.
Yeah, except now it's wintertime and it's cold and it's raining.
So let's see what happens next here. None more than eight. Land ho! We have found land after being shipwrecked for so long. And I'm Jim.
And I'm Jordan. And this is more than Incuve found us. And I say that because previously, as we were reading through the book of Acts, it was a pretty, pretty nasty storm that Paul got caught up in as he was taking a boat on his way to Rome. And they found shore, but they don't know where they are yet.
Well, and the ship was broken up on a reef, if you recall, after they had thrown all the cargo overboard and even parts of the ship in order to try and keep it from being destroyed by the storm. And the front of the ship got stuck on rocks while the back of the ship was being munched up by the waves. And then those who could swim swam to shore, and those who couldn't swim floated to shore on pieces of the boat. Yeah, but God had promised Paul that everyone, every life on board the boat would be safe. Would be saved.
And that's exactly what happened according to God's promise, right? God has said, you're going to testify at Rome and I. Everybody who's with you on this ship will be saved. Even though at the last minute the Roman guards thought they should kill the people that were in charge so they wouldn't be killed. But that got reversed.
So everyone's okay. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, that the centurions stopped them from killing Paul. Yeah. Because they didn't want to have to give account for how they've lost their prisoner.
That's what that was about.
So over 200 people survived, every single one of them. And even the prisoners were not killed by the Roman guards. I mean, everyone's on shore, but where are we?
Well, that's the interesting thing that after two weeks of being tossed around by a storm, suddenly they find themselves cast adrift and washed up on the shores of Malta, which interestingly enough was actually on the normal. Shipping route toward Rome.
So providentially, God made sure they washed up on a beach on their route. Yeah, yeah. Although, because there's some initial confusion about where they were, the sailors should have known.
So there's speculation that they ended up on the wrong side of the island from where the normal port is. We don't know. But We didn't know from last time where we were, but in verse 1 today. No, no.
So let's pick up today. If you want to follow with us, we're in the last chapter of Acts, chapter 28, and we're starting on verse 1. We've found ground, and now what do we do? Yeah, it's lovely because remember, Luke is the writer here, and he had finished just at the last chapter saying, and so it was that all were brought safely to land.
So here at the beginning of chapter 28, after we were brought safely through, he's just emphasized that safety twice in two sentences. After we were brought safely through, we then learned that the island was called Malta. The native people showed us an unusual kindness, for they kindled a fire and welcomed us all because it had begun to rain and it was cold. When Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, no doubt this man is a murderer.
Though he has escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live. He, however, shook a creature off into the fire and suffered no harm. They were waiting for him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But when they'd waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god. Never mind, he's a god.
There's lots here to talk about. Oh, there's tons to talk about here. You know, out of curiosity, I never looked this up before. You know what Malta means in Phoenician? There's some different language.
In Phoenician, it means refuge.
So here's their refuge. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. And then right after that, in verse 2, the native people, that's also a very curious phrase.
So I looked that up. And it's a word you'll recognize this, barbarose or barbarian. And it literally doesn't mean they're barbaric. It just means they don't speak Greek.
So here are people on Malta who don't speak any Greek at all, which is unusual for the time, actually.
So they're barbarians, quote unquote. But that's why it says the native barbarians showed us unusual kindness because they're not cultured people like all the Greek-speaking people. You know, it's interesting because Paul's mission, God had made clear to him, was, you know, you're going to go to the other most parts of the earth. You're take the gospel, excuse me, to the Gentiles. And here he is, washed up on shore with the very foreign people.
Very foreign. And, you know, this could be Luke's kind of, you know, well-bred sort of opinion coming up. You know, believe it or not, they showed unusual kindness. We didn't expect that.
So they kindled a fire, which was Welcome, he says, because it started to rain and it was cold. If you've ever been on a beach and it's cold and it's blowing and it's raining, and remember, it's wintertime, which is why they were caught in the storm in the first place. They should not have been on the water. But so they build a fire, very, very, very nice. And so, Paul, you know, we have a couple hundred people on the shore here.
So, Paul, being the kind of servant that he is, gets up and decides to collect sticks, like with everyone else, to kind of fuel the fire. And in gathering up the bones of the sticks, he picks up a snake in his bundle of sticks. And sure enough, just as he's getting ready to put on the fire, this thing jumps out of the sticks because of the heat. You know, it realizes this is not good, and it clamps onto the nearest fleshy thing, and that's Paul's hand holding the sticks. Yikes.
It's pretty interesting because the local people then jump to this conclusion that he must be a guilty murderer because even though he escaped from the sea, justice hasn't allowed him to live.
So that may easily be a reference to the goddess who dispenses justice. Yeah. It's probably in their mind, right?
So this is a quick conclusion based on their superstition or their pagan religion.
Well, and they probably were aware of the fact that the Roman soldiers are taking prisoners to Rome. Right.
So they're thinking these guys all deserve to die, probably, and that's probably Paul too. And it's a miracle that anyone survived. But now justice has tracked down Paul and he's going to die with a viper, even though justice missed him when he should have died on the ship. It's sure interesting that this happens in the presence of all these pagan people who attached this meaning to the snake bite. Right.
And then when nothing happens to Paul, they change their minds. Again, a quick conclusion based on their pagan religion.
Well, that didn't work.
So he must be a god because he must be. Be a bigger God than justice. Right.
So it's really interesting when Paul had been identified as a god before, back in Lystra, if you remember. Way back here. He made a whole big deal about denying it and talking to the people about, you know, I am not God. It falls down to me. But there's no record of that here.
No. Probably because there's no reference to them worshiping him. I think that's what it is. They just mentally changed their opinion and they got kind of nicer to him, probably. And Luke noticed that.
Yeah, maybe. Yeah. But, you know, they're waiting for him to swell up, which, you know, if you get, if you get bitten by a rattlesnake, people, you know, you have some time, but you're going to swell up. You're going to swell up. There's going to be a lot of flesh damage.
I mean, it's just going to be a bad deal. But it says they waited it out. They waited a long time. Longer than it normally would take for somebody to die of snake bites. Watching this guy, waiting for him to swell up and die.
And it just never happened.
So they had to go, well, shrug your shoulders. I guess he's not a criminal. I guess he's a god.
Well, okay, whatever. Whatever. But, you know, what strikes me is that those are really quick conclusions based on faulty information. Very little evidence. They don't know the God who has already predetermined that Paul is going to Rome.
Yeah, right, right, right. And, you know, we'll emphasize this again. Back in chapter 23, Jesus told Paul he's going to go to Rome and testify there.
So if he gets a deadly viper attached to his hand, he's just going, eh, shrug your shoulders, shake off the snake. I'm going to be just fine. Yeah. So he can have the confidence. I mean, it sounds very casual in terms of how this is.
He just shook it off into the fire.
So that was convenient because there's a fire right there.
So you just shake it off into the fire. Yeah, Paul doesn't seem to be concerned about it. Doesn't seem to be rattled at all.
Well, you know, look what he's just been through. Yeah. Right.
And he is, God has just demonstrated, you know, I'm taking you to Rome. That doesn't mean there aren't going to be some lumps along the way. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. And he could go, he could be taken to Rome suffering under the, you know, the symptoms of the snake bite. But it doesn't seem to be the case. No.
It's quite a testimony to the people that are there, to the barbarose, the barbarians that are there. Yeah. And I've always wondered how that kind of worked into their belief, maybe much later in time. When someone talked about Paul and said, Yeah, it's that guy who came off the boat and he got bit by a snake and he didn't die.
Well, you know, that's interesting because Jesus had told the disciples at the end of the Gospel of Mark that those who are baptized and believed in my name, they'll cast out demons, they'll speak with new tongues. This is Mark 16, 17, and 18. They'll pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it shall not hurt them. They'll lay hands on the sick and they will recover.
Well, he. Here's some of those things actually playing out. There you go. In the view of pagan people who have yet to be introduced to the God who even is in control of snake venom. You're right.
Yeah, right, right, right, right, right. It's funny this should be a chapter near the end of this whole voyage. It's just fascinating.
So I think that the testimony to the people there in Malta must have been a big deal. It would be interesting in the history of the church to find out if it was, but that's clearly what's going on.
Well, let's see what goes on after that.
So no one's going to die from a snake bite this time.
Okay.
So here in the neighborhood they are, in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the chief man of the island named Publius, who received us and entertained us hospitably for three days. How nice. It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery. And Paul visited him and prayed, and putting his hands on him, healed him. And when this had taken place, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured.
They also honored us greatly. And when we were about to sail, they put on board whatever we needed. Wow, what a nice reception. They were there long enough to build a relationship with those people. We find out in the next verse that they actually were there three months through the winter.
We haven't read that part yet. Right, right, right. But I found it interesting, too. I was on a word search this time. I don't know why, but when it says belonging to the chief man of the island, you know, that's a very specific term that's used in Rome about people who are in charge of regions.
And so a lot of historians look at that phrase and say, look, this is one of the historical evidences that this was written at the time by someone who understood the language of authority in Rome.
So it had to be someone contemporaneous because this phrase has not survived into modern use, but it's all over ancient texts. That's pretty interesting.
So they say, you know, some guy who had to be there contemporaneously understood. That this was this guy's office, not just a subtle description of how nice he was, a Roman description.
So anything that happens in Malta would be answerable to Rome through this man. He was like a mini-governor of Malta, and it was a term that the Romans gave him.
Okay, so you said you were on a word search this week. That makes me think that this is a passage where it's really good to practice this primary study technique of observation, right? Where are we? How did we get there? How are the people behaving?
Who's doing what? Because there's been a lot of action, right? They've washed up on the beach, they've been welcomed. Paul didn't die of snake bite.
So it's interesting to pay attention to all those things and then pay attention to the people, how they're described, as you just said, Publius, who he is and what his situation is, and what people's very human responses are. Again, that's a historical evidence of the veracity of what we're reading because it's very real. It rings true. Yeah. I read a study done by some guy.
I wish I'd looked this up. Who had he wondered about the historical references that are made in Acts by Luke, you know, historical references. And those historical references were not known even 50 years to 100 years after this time contemporaneously.
So if someone wanted to make up this account, there's certain, there were 80 terms in Acts that they would not know about if they had written it sometime later. Because like this one, this one is a title from Rome that you would know if you lived at the time. But if you just gave it 100 years, the term's gone.
So there are 80 actual comment proofs by terms that Luke uses that show that he's historically writing down what only someone who lived contemporaneous to the account could know. That's interesting. Isn't that interesting? I think that's a good question. Remember, Luke was a highly educated man.
He was a physician. He was a careful documentarian. He recorded. A lot of details that other gospel writers do not. Yeah, he's meticulous that way.
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, well, what do you make of Paul healing Publius's father? I was struck by the order here. It says he was sick with fever and dysentery. But in verse 8, Paul visited him.
And prayed and putting his hands on him, healed him. Right, right.
So that seems to me a really interesting sequence that Paul went. To get to know him, to care for him, to see how sick he was, prayed over him. And it would appear that during that time, Paul became aware that, you know, this, you, God will give you the power to heal this guy. This is not Paul saying, well, I'll just come and heal him. Right.
Right.
Paul came to care for him. Right.
And then through their relationship, visited, prayed, laid hands on him. And he was healed. Yeah. No, I really like it. In fact, the personal visitation sounds a lot like Jesus visiting people that he healed.
Well, that's exactly how it's described in the Gospels. When after Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law early in his ministry, the word gets out. People go, oh, and then everybody in the surrounding region comes to heal. Jairus's daughter, the same way. Right.
So, I mean, he's just doing what Jesus would have done. And in the praying, he also is glorifying God for what's going to happen next. Right.
And that's just a really big deal. Remember, he's praying to the God who is stronger than the snake bite. Stronger than the snake bite. Right, right, right. Whichever.
Everybody knew about it. They had all witnessed it. And of course, when this happened, then people all over the island came. Yeah. And he didn't turn them away.
He healed diseases through the power of Jesus. Jesus healed them, and there you go.
So, what an incredible impact on the island of Malta that was really not planned by anybody. And it took a shipwreck to get them there. And look at all the relationships that were built. Yes. Because how did they send them off?
Yeah. It says when we were about to sail, they put on board whatever we needed. Isn't that amazing?
Well, prisoners being transported to Rome would have had to be providing for their own meals. Nobody was going to feed them. Right.
If they died on the way, that was their problem. This is incredibly generous on their part.
So, what, I mean, what a warm tale at the end of just a grotesque, you know, storm-tossed sea. And then you get to Malta, and everybody's nice, and they make friends with the chief guy there, and they heal people, and they send them away with all the provisions they need to get back on board. I mean, it's amazing. This is really interesting to me. If you think of the 200 guys who were on the the ship with Paul, who all are kind of part of this.
They've drawn into this story. They're watching all the people. They're watching everything. They know they've been saved from a shipwreck. And if that was not enough, then they've seen Paul delivered from a snake bite.
Then they've seen him begin to engage in this ministry of healing during the winter months when they're stranded there on Malta. It's just a really interesting thing.
So, again, those are the conclusions that you can kind of think your way through as you put together what you have observed in the way the story is told.
So, those 200 people have now a sudden and an intensely personal insight into the gospel and the kingdom of God and into Paul. And Paul's the guy who said, Don't sail on the sea, and he was right, you know, against all the soldiers and the sailors. I mean, Paul has made himself quite a reputation as being a spokesman for God in all this and demonstrated it through these miracles. And he's a prisoner. And he's a prisoner.
Yeah. I mean, what an incredible effect he's had in this crazy story.
So, well, let's get him to Rome. What do you say?
Okay.
Verse 11. Verse 11. After three. Months we set sail in a ship that had wintered in the island, a ship of Alexandria, with the twin gods as a figurehead.
Okay, we're gonna stop there because this is hilarious. I think this is a tongue-in-cheek little irony that Luke has inserted because those twin gods were probably Castor and Pollux, yes, sons of Zeus, who supposedly were guardians of people who go seafaring. They're the patrons of sailors. Isn't that hilarious? They're the patrons of sailors.
These guys have just survived a shipwreck only by the grace of God. Right.
Clearly by the grace of God. Set out on a ship with the twin gods who utterly failed them. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. That is so funny.
It's Luke's kind of between the lines humor. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, from my Boy Scout days, I recognized this Castor and Pollux. I'd forgotten about them in Greek legends, but they are the two Greek figures that figure in Gemini. You know, Gemini, the constellation.
That's right. There's two very bright stars in the constellation Gemini. One of them is called Castor, and the other's called Paul. And they were twin sons, were they not? Yes, yes, yes.
So that's the Gemini thing.
So, yeah, that's a little Greek mythology for you. There you go. Mythology 101. Yeah. Okay, verse 12.
Let's press on.
So, putting in at Syracuse, we stayed there for three days. And from there, we made a circuit and arrived at Regium. And after one day, a south wind sprang up, and on the second day, we came to Puteoli. And there we found brothers and were invited to stay with them for seven days. And so we came to Rome.
And the brothers there, when they heard about us, came as far as from the Forum of Appias and three taverns to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage. And when we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself with the soldier who guarded him. Oh. And so they come to Rome.
Another kind of warm reception. Yeah. So their first stop after Malta is the bigger island of Sicily, which is right at the toe of Italy, and its capital city is Syracuse.
So, uh, big shipping port. Big shipping port. Big shipping port. Yeah. Yeah.
Stayed there three days. And then the other places it lists are stops up the coast of Italy, going north to get up to where Rome is. These places are still there. They are still there. I mean, if you use Google Earth, I typed them in, they're still there.
So, again, and we can't press this enough: get yourself a map. Yeah, get a map. Get a map and trace this journey because it's always encouraging to see the names on the map of things that are recorded in the Bible. Yeah, yeah. So fascinatingly, when they get to Putioli or Putioli or however you say that, I don't know that there were brothers there.
There were believers in Jesus there, which is just fascinating. And they invited us to stay with them for a week for seven days. Again, very warm welcome and people who were followers of Jesus already there. Which is interesting.
Now, Paul had written his letter to the Romans about three years earlier. Right.
And he already knew people. in Rome.
So no wonder he's encouraged that he's not only greeted by the handful of friends he knows, but as he's approaching the city, like the Forum of the Appias is like 40 miles from Rome. Yeah, it is. It is. And the Three Taverns is maybe 10 or 12 miles closer to Rome than that.
So this is all along the approach to Rome. There are believers. They came ahead to greet him before he came to him. Isn't that amazing?
No wonder he was encouraged. Yeah. And you know, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise about there being believers in Rome because when we go all the way back to the beginning of Acts at Pentecost, and it names all the people that were in town at the time, it says visitors from Rome. Isn't that amazing?
It's right there in Acts 2. I had to go back. I thought it was, and I went, yeah, there it is.
Now, it doesn't mean they were believers at the time, but those visitors from Rome heard and saw Pentecost. And they heard the gospel. They heard Peter's sermon. And it's very likely they took that word back to Rome and a small Christian community built up. And that was decades ago here.
So it's a while.
So this Roman community has been building. Paul really wanted to go to Rome, I think, because he heard about this community that was there.
So it shouldn't be too much of a surprise. But what a wonderful welcome to have these people walk ahead, like in some cases, almost two days, and then greet Paul even before he gets to Rome. How did they know? Paul's coming. Paul's coming.
Paul's coming. The internet.
Well, you know, Roman roads are famous, right? There was a lot of traveling, a lot of back and forth. And so word somehow passed: Paul's coming, Paul's coming. And they greeted him on the little stops, the little port stops coming up to Rome. And it's just really, it's very warm.
It's very encouraging for him. And that's why it says Paul thanked God and took courage. That's encouragement. He took courage from that. And then they came into Rome.
And it says at the very end of this, and we'll pick up this story next time, is that he was allowed to stay by himself with a soldier who guarded him.
So basically, he's been put into kind of an open custody. And he has to pay his own way. He's basically renting an apartment. Waiting for his hearing before Caesar. But he's lightly chained at the wrist to a Roman guard.
And I looked this up too. The Roman guards in this situation, it's a very light guarding, rotate about every four hours.
So about every four hours, 24-7. Can't you imagine? There's another guy that shows up, you know, six different guys every day. And they show up, and Paul continues the conversation he left off with last time. I can't even imagine what that must have been like for those men to find themselves chained to the Apostle Paul.
Right, right.
Repeatedly. And not only, you know, listening and talking to Paul, but Paul's getting a lot of visitors. Right.
And so it's the entire, they're going to hear all these conversations.
Well, if you read, look back at Romans. At chapter 16, you'll find name after name after name called out of people Paul knew in Rome.
So it's very likely that some of those people are among these visitors. It could very well be. It could very well be. And this is the furthest west that the gospel has gone, at least in Paul's care, that we know of. He spent so much time on the first three missionary journeys, doing a lot of present-day Turkey, Asia Minor, and then extending across over into Greece and Macedonia.
But this is as far over as it's gone. And to his encouragement, he finds the Holy Spirit has gone ahead of him and there are believers there. There are many believers there. It's just a really goes without saying that they were going to be praying for him once they find out the whole story. Yeah.
Yeah. And then they take it on themselves to go ahead and greet him before he makes it into the big port in Rome.
Well, and provide for him, right? Those brothers in Putioli said, hey, we're stay for a whole week. Yeah. And presumably that was with the permission of his Roman guards, or for some reason they were waiting there for the next ship. I don't know.
Yeah. Oh. No, I guess it was an overland journey from there. Right, right.
We don't know why. Right.
We don't know why. Unless all those guards had become believers and they were glad to be there, too.
Well, it's kind of pushes belief that they don't inch some way towards Jesus and watching this. I mean, especially the guys on the ship, they saw these healings, they saw so much stuff. I mean, and I. Yeah, and even the people, even the barbaross, the barbarians on Malta see this whole snake thing and say, oh, we changed our mind. He must be a God.
So they clearly.
Some of them were healed. Yeah. Yeah. So they see divine stuff going down. I don't know how the Roman soldiers could miss it.
They probably had one of the best up-close and personal views of the grace of God working through the Apostle Paul. They got to be scratching their head saying, and this guy's going to be taken to Caesar? I mean, what's going on? And they might have also heard the fact that Paul and his previous kind of judicial confrontations in Palestine, you know, they kept saying that he's not worthy of any death sentence or anything. Right.
He hasn't done anything worthy of death.
So, I mean, in a real sense, he's kind of like in the position Jesus was, where people said, how can Jesus be put up on trial? He's never done anything wrong. I've never seen the man sin. And clearly he's done nothing wrong, and yet they crucify him. But there's clearly, clearly divine evidence that this guy is from God.
Well, They're going, these Roman guys are going through the same thing right now.
So, I encourage you to read ahead because we're so close to the end of the book. And actually, Luke, I think, is going to insert in his writing right at the end of the chapter some things that are very like Jesus' experience and Paul's experience.
So, read ahead and we're going to finish up Acts next week. Yeah, I'm kind of sad because Acts is just a great reading. It's been great. But, like I always say, when you get to something like this and you're already feeling kind of homesick, you know, because it's stuck, you can go back to chapter one and start over again.
Well, that's what I was going to say. And I would encourage you to do that because now you know Acts so well, you can read it again, and the depth of what you'll pick up from the Holy Spirit is even more than you thought before. Yeah, yeah, so I encourage you to do that. You can read ahead, but also when we get done, go back to the beginning and start over again. Read it.
Just, yeah, just read it. And you can go back to the first account there in chapter one, where Jesus shows up to them and says, You'll be my witnesses in Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. And we are at the uttermost parts of the earth.
So I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And you've been listening to More Than Inc. And next week, next week, we'll finish out Acts. We'll see you then.
Bye-bye. Bye. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you are there, take a moment to drop us a note.
Well, I sure like where this story has gone to. Yeah, whoever would have expected this? They started with splinters on the beach, and now they're in Rome among friends. Warm and welcome. Yeah, Shipwreck to Friends.
This is just a great story. We'll hear the end of it next time here on More Than Inc. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
