Well, God has promised to Paul that he's going to Rome, he's going to Italy, so today he steps on the boat. He's going on a Mediterranean cruise. Who wouldn't want to do that? Oh, it's just gonna be wonderful. Blue skies, soft breezes.
It'll be great. Uh, well, maybe not. Yeah. Brace yourselves, we're going to see what happens today. On More Than Ink.
Well, ahoy, mateies. This is Jim. And this is Dorothy. And you've found more than ink, and I use that welcome because we're hitting the water today. Yeah, shipwreck today.
Yeah, yeah.
So we're reading through the book of Acts, and we're coming near the end of it. And the last couple chapters are all about Paul trying to make his way to Rome.
So why is he going to Rome? What happened just before this? It was a hard journey ahead of him. But he's going to Rome because, remember, he had appealed to Caesar. And then there were three or four consultations among various Roman officials as to whether, yeah, governors and kings to whether to send him.
And where we left off last week was he had made this very eloquent defense before King Agrippa. And Agrippa, at the end of the discussion, had said, you know, if he hadn't appealed to Caesar, we probably could have let him go. But since he did, we got to send him to Caesar. They decide to let him go from the land of Israel and send him off to Italy.
Well, and he had been there imprisoned in Caesarea for a couple of years.
So, yeah, so the adventure is about to pick up again as he heads off toward Rome. That's right. Under Roman guard, still. Under Roman guard, and well, let's just. See how that wonderful voyage works out.
Well, and just before we start reading, I just want to remind you all listeners that Acts is written by Luke. And Luke apparently has been with Paul for quite some time because he was with him when he came to Jerusalem, with him when he got arrested. But here we really hear him in the first person when he says, We, we, we, we, we, all the way through this account.
So, um, Luke is a very careful historian, and he has very carefully recorded for us all the places and events that take place from here on out.
So, all right, so you'll find uh, these narratives coming up right now sound very first-hand people. They probably do, they are because he was there, because he was with Paul.
So, let's get on the boat with everybody and see how things go. We're in chapter 27 of Acts, if you want to follow with us, but verse 1. But, let's find out what happens. And when it was decided that we should sail for Italy, they delivered Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion of the Augustan cohort named Julius. And embarking in a ship of a Dramidium, which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of Asia, we put to sea, accompanied by Aristarchus, a Macedonia from Thessalonica.
Okay, so Aristarchus has also been with Paul for quite some time. That's right. Because he was there on that previous missionary journey and he was from Macedonia and probably was a representative carrying the offering that had been gathered for that Paul brought to Jerusalem. Yeah, I could remember exactly where I'd seen him. I knew he'd shown up several times.
He was at the Ephesian riots in Acts 19. Right. Remember that? And, you know, that's where they looked it up. It's nice to revisit these because we didn't look at these too long ago.
So the city was filled with confusion and they rushed together into the theater, dragging them with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul's companions in travel.
So they were guys that were traveling with him on this third and final journey that we know about that ended in Jerusalem and where Paul's being shipped from right now. And another one I'd forgotten about this is: remember when he was getting ready to come back home at the end of the third missionary journey, and they found out that there was a plot to kill him that was probably going to happen on a boat. Right. So, Paul decides not to sail on the boat and instead to walk by foot north up into Macedonia from Greece. And so, and so there, there's where it shows up: it's in Acts 20, wasn't too long ago.
And it says he decided to return through Macedonia by foot, and Sopeter the Berean, son of Pyrrhus, accompanied him. And of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus and Gaius of Derby and Timothy. And the Asians, Tychicus, and Trophimus.
So, yeah, there was a plot against Paul's life. It looks like it was going to be a maritime assassination.
So, don't step foot in a boat, walk on the land. And Aristarchus is one of the guys that walked with him. And another place, and this one surprised me, is in Colossians. He's mentioned in Colossians and Colossians 4. He calls him Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner.
But what's interesting is that Colossians is written from prison. Right. And the only prison we know about is in Rome. Right. And that is still to come up in our narrative story in Acts.
So Aristarchus makes it all the way through. The current travels on the sea, up into Rome, and he's in prison with Paul. And Paul writes back to the Colossian church. And there he says, Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you. How about that?
That's really interesting. But at this point, Aristarchus or Luke either are not prisoners. No. They are just accompanying Paul. And Julius seems to have regarded Paul with not in a threatening way at all, as we're going to read in a minute.
And it's interesting that we have the captain of this cohort named. Yeah, it just gives us a little personal touch. Makes you wonder if he came to the Lord later.
Well, that's always good. It does, because they had some major adventures together. Yeah. So, okay, so they've taken off from the boat, a boat, an Adramidian boat. Right.
And they're leaving the beach town. Yeah, they're leaving from Caesarea, so they're going to head straight north along the coast. Right. You always hug the coast when you're going places. You just don't head into the middle of the ocean.
Right. Well, and this was probably a smaller boat at this point because it was not one that was worthy to go out in the big deep sea.
Well, it says travels along the coast. He was about to sail to the ports along the coast of Asia.
So that's all the ports of call on the southern coast of Turkey today. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
So they take off from Caesarea, and it says in verse 3: 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. Oh, so this is not a real severe imprisonment. No, but you know, partially because he hasn't been condemned to death or anything like that. And so there are other prisoners that are on board, and they might have already been condemned, might have been going to their deaths.
But Paul's just, you know, under. you know, a court guard because he's got to go see Caesar. They spent some time in Sidon, and verse four And putting out to sea from there, we sailed under the lee of Cyprus because the winds were against us. And when we'd sailed across the open sea along the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra in Lycia. 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 I don't know how you say this, Canidas? I I'll go for that. And as the wind did not allow us to go farther, we sailed under the lee of Crete off Salmone. Coasting along it with difficulty, we came to a place called Fairhavens, which was the city which was the city of La Si or La Silla.
So that's really interesting because all of these places are mostly Still clearly identifiable. Oh, they're easily identified. You can look at a map. And so I would encourage you to do this in your Bible listeners. You probably have maps and turn all the way to the back to this last journey of Paul, and it will show you all these places.
Yeah, it's worth seeing this on a map. You got to see it because what he does is he goes up and hugs the southern coast of Turkey, goes over as far left on Turkey as he can go, pretty much, and then jumps across and comes down to Crete, which is the island that's down at the bottom of Greece, between Greece kind of and Turkey, and then finds his way to Fairhavens, which is on the southern coast of the island of Crete.
So go find a map because that's actually a pretty good journey. And it's not a little thing to mention that he does pick up a much bigger boat in this process.
So there's actually a maritime, probably shipping boat that they speculate carried grain from like Egypt and parts over there up toward Greece and Italy.
So this is this. Was a big, you know, in our thinking today, it's a big container ship.
Well, we find out later that there were 276 people on board, so it's not a small, it's not a rowboat. This is a big ship, yeah. Oh, yeah, ship of Alexandria. Remember, that's in Egypt, and they're they're probably carrying it's a grain freighter, is what it is. But look how many times Luke has already mentioned that they're having trouble with the weather, the difficulty with the weather, they hug the coast because of the wind, uh, they sail under the protection of the islands, right?
Coasting along with difficulty.
So, you know, it's getting late in the season, as we're going to find out in verse 9. Since much time had passed and the voyage was now dangerous because even the fast was already over.
Okay, so that's a reference to the Day of Atonement in the fall, which was the only feast that associated a. A fast. Right, which in our calendars usually happens around October. October, yeah.
So you have to realize on the Mediterranean, you know, you never, you never sailed on the Mediterranean in the wintertime. But somewhere between the middle of September and the middle of November was the dangerous time, is where it changes. Yeah. So after about the second week of November, you just never even took a boat out on the water, just didn't do it. But this window here from mid-September to mid-November.
Pretty dangerous, pretty shaky whether you're going to make it through. And he tells us we're here during the Feast of Atonement, Day of Atonement, and that's October.
So we're right. It's late. We're smacked up in the middle of the danger. It's the storm season. Right.
So most anyone who knows who knows the water says, you know, this is not a great time to be on the water.
Well, it's possible that this was the last ship of the year going this direction, right? If it was a big ship, but they had just been moving slowly and time kept passing. But you know, you know what? I also looked up about the danger of the water. Remember, in 2 Corinthians, Paul writes about being shipwrecked three times.
Yeah, three times.
Well, he writes 2 Corinthians once I think he gets to Rome. I think that's why it goes.
So that's even. No, that's not right. When does he write 2 Corinthians? You know, I didn't look that up.
Well, anyway. Listeners can look that up. Oh, I think. No, he writes it in his third missionary journey.
So he would have already written it. When he's up in Macedonia, he writes down to it. Yeah, so he had already written this on his third missionary journey.
So we don't have any account of those shipwrecks.
So before he gets back to Jerusalem and Starts this voyage, he's already had three shipwrecks. And he says, In that same verse, I was floating around in the deep for a day and a half. Yeah, yeah.
And I had a scholar looked up and tried to figure out how many sea miles he's put on at this point from those three voyages, and it comes out to like 3,000 plus miles.
So he's got experience on the water. All of that lends credence to what Paul's going to say to them because he knows it's the time of year. He's been on this ocean before. He's been shipwrecked before out here three times. Yeah, he's seen a lot of sea miles.
Okay.
He knows what he's talking about.
So Luke tells us this time is already dangerous because it's getting so late in the season.
So pick it up at the end of verse 9. And Paul was saying, 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. but the centurion paid more attention to the pilot and to the owner of the ship than to what Paul said, 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 Phoenix, a harbor of Crete, facing both southwest and northwest, and spend the winter there.
So Paul has great concerns about this trip. Yeah, and you know, they're just aiming to go to Phoenix, which is on the western tip of Greece, and they're on the southern side of Crete, the western side of Crete. And where they are in Fairhavens is on the southern coast of Crete. They've come a long ways already, and we're just talking about a 40 or 50 mile hop to the end of the island. Getting to a better harbor where they can spend more time.
Because they knew Fairhavens and they said not a great place to spend the winter.
So if we just do a 40-mile hop over to the west a little bit, stay on the island, don't cross any big open water. We'll be safe.
So, yeah, this is pretty interesting.
So, Paul has expressed concern about injury to people, about the loss of the cargo, and maybe loss of the whole ship and possibly even our lives. Yeah. So, he's really concerned about this, but the centurion, who's in charge of everything, Is listening more to the pilot and who maybe also was the owner.
Well, you know, he's got a lot to lose.
So maybe the owner's more rational about this than Paul is.
Well, or he's concerned about his losses. Could be. He's like, well, we've got to deliver this stuff. At any rate, he disregards what Paul has said. Right.
Who's a seasoned sea traveler?
Well, you would think that the captain of the ship was also seasoned. He's weighing the risks.
Okay, so in verse 13, now when the south wind blew gently, supposing that they'd obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor and sailed along Crete close to the shore. That's just by way of saying the wind makes it look like this is do it while we get a chance.
Okay.
But soon a tempestuous wind called a northeastern 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 Kada, we managed with difficulty to secure the ship's boat.
Okay, the ship's boat is this small boat that was probably hanging on the side. The little dinghy that they used to get back and forth to shore.
Okay, so it's flapping all around and they're trying to hold on to it. After 17, after hoisting it up, they used supports to undergird the ship. Then, fearing that they would run aground on the surtis, they lowered the gear and thus were driven along. Anything you want to say about all that?
Well,. It's a lot of detail. They are totally out of control. Totally out of control. We're going to see that in a minute.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, so they intended to hug the southern coast of Crete for just 40 or 50 miles. Just a little ways. But just as they lent out and the wind looked like it was pretty good, the wind betrayed them and blew them instead of directly west, blew them almost directly south.
So much so that they were afraid. You see, it says the run aground on the Sirtis. That's a well-known, treacherous boat wreck area in North Africa.
So, you know, we talk about Simon of Cyrene. Right. It's near Cyrene.
So they're afraid that they're going to be blown so far south, they're going to wreck on a very famous sandy shore that's ungrateful. North African boat wrecks. Yeah, North Africa.
So that's really blown really far afield.
So they're violently storm-tossed and afraid they're going to end up a wreck on North Africa. That's what they're looking at.
So, you know, if you look at your map and you can see that they were blown south.
South below Crete. And then, if you look at where they eventually end up, they wind up being driven by the wind. It looks to me like maybe four or five hundred miles from where they intended to be. At this point, they are really casting into the middle of the most horrible part of that.
So, let's read the account. They were driven along, verse 18. Since we were violently storm-tossed, 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, when neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned. Yeah, yeah.
That's a pretty scary situation. The first thing they do is they start throwing overboard the cargo.
Well, that's what you're carrying that you hope to gain a profit from. Yeah, that's right.
So, like, okay, we ditch this stuff because we want to just survive this.
However, we'll find out in the rest of the chapter, they don't ditch it all. They don't ditch it all. Right. Because they do ditch some more wheat later on. Right.
But this is desperate. And if you've never been in a boat before, when you're storm tossed, you know, the waves are big enough that they lap over the gunnel. They lap into the boat. And the only way you can keep that from happening is to actually have the boat ride higher in the water.
So you're riding higher than the size of the wave.
So the only thing you can do is get rid of weight.
So you throw stuff out.
So the first thing you throw out is stuff that's not as badly lost, you know, if you throw it out. But by the time they get to the third day, they're getting rid of the ship's tackle. They're talking about important stuff it takes to run the water.
Well, yeah, what would you describe as the ship's tackle?
Well, anything it ta you know, like the the um What it takes to run the ship. It could really include all the ropes as well as the attachments to the sail. It could be the sail itself because the sail is tremendously heavy, especially when it's wet. I mean, a lot of stuff it would just take to run the boat.
So that's desperate.
So on the third day, they're desperate. But what we're going to find out when we go into the rest of this chapter next time is that three days is nothing compared to what they got in France. Right, right. They got a couple of weeks ahead of them.
So this is really going to be bad. The other thing that's worth noting in verse 20, it says they didn't see the sun or the stars for many days.
Well, you know, you navigate the sun and stars, especially the sun during the daytime and the stars at night.
So they're completely blind. They had no idea where they were. They have no clue what part of the Mediterranean they're in. They don't know if they're a day or so away from shipwrecking on North Africa. I mean, they know nothing about where they are.
Can't see the sun, can't see the stars. I mean, as far as they're concerned, they might even be being pushed back toward the east, toward, you know, down to Egypt. But the wind wouldn't tell you that. The wind is so severe, it looks like it's going to push them west, but they don't know where. They have no clue where they are.
So they're blind, they're driven, they're out of control. They've lost enough ships' tackle that they probably really can't get it under control if they wanted to. I mean, they are just.
Well, like Luke says, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned. They finally gave up. They gave up completely and they just hold on, boys, we're just going to ride this. Until we bust up. Yeah, exactly.
That's exactly what Paul had been afraid of, right? He said there's going to be injury, there's going to be loss of the cargo, there's going to be loss of the ship, and maybe even our own lives. I perceive the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo, but Our lives, yeah.
So, so that's interesting because, all while that doesn't say that Paul was acting in a prophetic way, uh, that proves to be prophetic, which might be part of the reason why they listened to him later.
So, that's yeah, that's kind of interesting. This is a this is a tough place to stop because we're leaving them hopeless and being driven by the wind, and they don't know where they are or where they're going to wind up, yeah, yeah, hopeless.
However, there is something that should be playing in Paul's mind that gives him hope, and that's the fact that Jesus came to him and said very clearly, right, you're going to Rome. Going to Rome.
Now, even at this point, we don't know whether Paul's thinking, well, I'm going to Rome, but I wonder if my buddy's, you know, my buddies are coming with me. I don't know about Aristarchus, I don't know about my buddy Luke. I mean, maybe everyone else is going to die, and I'm going to make it to Rome, but I know I'm going to Rome.
So, but that should be some consolation, you would think, in the midst of all this stuff, which also raises another. Interesting conundrum, which is it's really applicable to us, is that you know we come across really tough times, unexpected tough times like this, maybe not quite as life-threatening, but in those moments, the assurance you have about where God's leading you and his sovereignty and his power to lead you and to care for you and direct you-you get to these points that no matter how much you know in your head, it really tests what your heart embraces about the sovereignty of God in the moment, especially when you're in a pitching boat, out of control, lost, and sure that you're all going to die. You know, that makes me think. If you, I was thinking about how many mentions the sea gets in the Psalms, and so I would encourage you listeners to take your concordance and look up sea, particularly in the Psalms, because you'll find a lot of references to it. But in the Psalms, very often it's in reference to the power of the sea, but the Lord reigns.
Yes, yes. And then, if you remember, In the Gospels, Jesus is clearly in control of the sea. He's the one who calms the storm, he's the one who walks on the water. Yes, yes. So it really is a contrast of power right here.
Yeah. Because when you see, if you've ever been out on a raging stormy sea, which I haven't, but I've been deep sea fishing for a while. Yeah, well, that was unpleasant enough. Big, big swell, big swells, but beautiful, clear, blue, sun, sun, shiny day. But I mean, big swells.
I didn't feel good for most of that drive. No. But, you know, if you're out on the ocean like that and you see those big swells, you realize this is much bigger than me. This is a power that I cannot control. I can just barely maneuver my way through.
I'm really at its mercy. And by this time, they were out of the view of land. Oh, by far. No idea where they were.
Well, they couldn't even see the sun, let alone where the land is. And we went that far in that deep sea fishing trip. We went far enough away from San Francisco that you couldn't see the land anymore. And suddenly it dawned to you: you know, it'd be good to have a good reference point about it. Just to know where the land is if we're going to go someplace.
Yeah. Because everywhere looks the same. Everything looks like the horizon of the ocean.
So it's just horrible. There are lots of times in life when you feel that. A wash. Yeah. Right.
And you just are not in control of your circumstances, and you're just being pressed along by the winds. Yeah. And the threats are palpable. I mean, and your imagination doesn't have to work very hard to think about how bad this could end. Threats are real.
Yeah. And so you don't know what your end is going to be. It's really where it takes you down to: I am out of control, but is God out of control? Right. And that's what's interesting.
Even if I don't have my bearings, even if I don't know where I am, is God in control? You know, I can't see the sun, I can't see the stars. And they, in the story here, they had done absolutely everything they could do to make things better for themselves. And they are brought to the point of total. Bankruptcy in their ability to save themselves.
So that actually is kind of a great place to start. Yeah, it is. It is because it's so applicable to us. If your navigation has gone blank, if you don't know where you are, if you don't know where you're going, if you know you're out of control, I mean, there's nothing you can do to regain control, and if everything looks hopeless, There's really only one port in the storm when you're that hopeless, and that's God Himself.
So you embrace who God is. You embrace the fact that this voyage that Paul's on and the voyage that we're in life is not random. It's not accidental. I could wish for the fact that this voyage would be a little less dramatic, but God doesn't promise us necessarily a peaceful voyage. It can be full of a lot of problems like this.
Well, and they had actually gone so far as throwing overboard their. everything they were carrying. Right. Right. Every effort to save.
It's an interesting metaphor by itself. It's very interesting, and I will talk about it a little bit next week, I hope. But, you know, Paul writes in Philippians about everything that he considered gain, he counted as loss for the sake of knowing Christ and cast himself completely on the righteousness of Christ, not on anything that he was carrying. Indeed, he says, you know, pitch it over because it'll drag you to the bottom if you try and hang on to that stuff. That is true.
And we're in big problems like that. It's the things that you inappropriately hang on to thinking they'll save you. Can actually drag you to the bottom. Right. Yeah.
Right. I'll add one more thing from a Jewish perspective. The Jewish people, the sons of Israel, were not really a seagoing people. I mean, they're very much not a seagoing people. That was the Phoenicians.
That's what they're known for. But the Jews, not. And so many times when you think about total oblivion being lost to the bottom of the sea, that's a place where you can drop something and you will. Will never see it ever again. We had stuff true today.
The heart, you know, you got scuba gear. You can, we think we can go after it. But for them, it's like if you're on the edge of a boat and you drop something in the water, it's just gone. It's just gone. And so it makes just a wonderful metaphor in the picture of that abyss that things go to that's inevitable because of gravity.
The fact that God says, I've taken your sins and I've dropped them in the ocean. They've gone to a place where they cannot be retrieved. They're just gone, gone, and gone.
So the tremendous power and the mind-blowing expanse of the ocean that we see right here in the Mediterranean, it's like the fact that God takes our sins and puts them in a place that even you can't retrieve them. They're just gone.
So that's just a great metaphor.
So yeah, the Jews were not really great people when it came to water.
So that's some big thoughts to carry into as we prepare to read the finish of this story next week. Thinking about what are you carrying that's dragging you down? Yeah, yeah.
That can keep you from being saved. And why is it that you do not have hope? Because your circumstances, frankly, look bigger than God himself. Right. And you need to change your thinking.
Wow. Anyway, we'll come back and see if they regain some hope. Oh, yeah. I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy.
And you're listening to More Than Inc. And I hope you weren't seasick too much with us today. But we're getting back on the boat next week here on More Than Inc. 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.
So, Paul was on this voyage that was ordained by God. He's on a mission from God, but look how it turns out.
Well, the storm gets so bad they abandon all hope of being saved. What's wrong with that picture? Abandon all hope. Let's come back next time and see how that might turn around. Hmm.
Bye. Bye. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
