We come tonight to the next to last chapter in the book of Acts, Acts chapter 27. It’s on page 936 in the Bibles located in the pew in front of you. Acts chapter 27. Sometimes I wonder what Google thinks I am. Over the past few weeks I’ve searched for things like, “Tomnolen, Mississippi,” “Nero,” “Johnny Cash,” “Yosef ben Mattityahu,” and “How long can a cat survive without food or water?” I tend to be a little all over the place! Well this week it was “sailing terms” and “weather patterns on the Mediterranean Sea” because that is a lot of what Acts chapter 27 is all about. This is about Paul’s journey from Caesarea to the island of Malta and about the difficulties and the dangers that he faced getting there. This is a long chapter; we’re going to read the whole thing, so I want to get right to it, but I want us to see three things from this passage. I would like us to see a great story, the great sea, and the great commission. The great story, the great sea and the great commission. Before we read, let me pray and ask God’s blessing.
Father, we give You thanks for Your Word and for this account that we have before us tonight. And we pray that You would grip our hearts by it and that You would help us to see the mission of Christ going forward through dangers and trials and Your providence in bringing it all to pass, for Your glory. And so we pray that You would, by Your providence, work through Your Word in our own hearts tonight that we would see Jesus and the good news of the Gospel of forgiveness and life in His name. We pray for Your Spirit to guide us and open our minds and hearts. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Acts chapter 27:
“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 Adramyttium, which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of Asia, we put to sea, accompanied by Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica. The next day we put in at Sidon. And Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him leave to go to his friends and be cared for. And putting out to sea from there we sailed under the lee of Cyprus, because the winds were against us. And when we had sailed across the open sea along the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra 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 Cnidus, 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 Fair Havens, near which was the city of Lasea.
Since much time had passed, and the voyage was now dangerous because even the Fast was already over, 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.
Now when the south wind blew gently, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor and sailed along Crete, close to the shore. But soon a tempestuous wind, called the northeaster, struck down from the land. And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along. Running under the lee of a small island called Cauda, we managed with difficulty to secure the ship’s boat. After hoisting it up, they used supports to undergird the ship. Then, fearing that they would run aground on the Syrtis, they lowered the gear, and thus they were driven along. 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.
Since they had been without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, ‘Men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and incurred this injury and loss. Yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before Caesar. And behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.’ So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told. But we must run aground on some island.’
When the fourteenth night had come, as we were being driven across the Adriatic Sea, about midnight the sailors suspected that they were nearing land. So they took a sounding and found twenty fathoms. A little farther on they took a sounding again and found fifteen fathoms. And fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come. And as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship, and had lowered the ship’s boat into the sea under pretense of laying out anchors from the bow, Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, ‘Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.’ Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the ship’s boat and let it go.
As day was about to dawn, Paul urged them all to take some food, saying, ‘Today is the fourteenth day that you have continued in suspense and without food, having taken nothing. Therefore I urge you to take some food. For it will give you strength, for not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you.’ And when he had said these things, he took bread, and giving thanks to God in the presence of all he broke it and began to eat. Then they all were encouraged and ate some food themselves. (We were in all 276 persons in the ship.) And when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, throwing out the wheat into the sea.
Now when it was day, they did not recognize the land, but they noticed a bay with a beach, on which they planned if possible to run the ship ashore. So they cast off the anchors and left them in the sea, at the same time loosening the ropes that tied the rudders. Then hoisting the foresail to the wind they made for the beach. But striking a reef, they ran the vessel aground. The bow stuck and remained immovable, and the stern was being broken up by the surf. The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners, lest any should swim away and escape. But the centurion, wishing to save Paul, kept them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and make for the land, and the rest on planks or on pieces of the ship. And so it was that all were brought safely to land.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
First, a great story. I mean how can you not love this story? Can we just take a step back and appreciate the drama of Scripture? Now listen, I get it, we all know that you can just about ruin a good story by dissecting it and taking it apart and overanalyzing, but this chapter has all of the makings of a great story. There’s structure and pace and emotion, there are near death experiences and an improbable ending, all within the space of a page or two. It’s all right here. We recently got a new TV for our living room, and of course I had big ideas about watching football on the bigger screen, but I’m also outnumbered at our house right now, and I found myself last Friday night watching a Lifetime Original holiday movie with the girls! And it was bad! But almost as soon as it started, we realized that it was almost over. It was just a short, and there really wasn’t much to it. There was no conflict, no tension to resolve; there really wasn’t much of a plot to speak of anyway. I don’t even know why they made it!
But that’s not the case with Acts 27. In fact, most of us can remember, we’ve learned somewhere along the way those five main parts of a story’s plot. The main structure of a narrative art. There are things like exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. And they’re all here in this story because first it begins with the decision to set sail for Italy, but it doesn’t take long for the tension to build as the winds and the waves start to beat against this ship. In fact, it gets so bad that the passengers really don’t think that they’re going to make it. Verse 20 says, “All hope of our being saved was at last abandoned.” But it’s right there that the turning point comes and Paul stands up and he says in verse 25, “Take heart. It’s going to be okay. God has told me not to fear but that all of us will survive.” And then from that point on, it’s all about how this ship runs aground and is broken up by the surf, about how the passengers either swim to shore or float to safety on the pieces of the ship until finally we get the resolution in the last verse, in verse 44, “All were brought safely to land.” This chapter has everything it needs to stand on its own as a complete story.
And something about that matters. In fact, there are people who say that we are hardwired for story, that story is the way that we make sense of the world around us; it’s the way that we best communicate a message or convey information or present an argument. It’s by telling a story. I’ve told you before about the little first grader in my wife’s first grade Bible class, about what he said to her one day. He said to her, “Mrs. Lowry, when you tell the stories, I just imagine it.” It captured his imagination. That’s what it’s supposed to do. These stories make things stick. And the Bible is full of stories. Haddon Robinson, the old preaching professor at Gordon Conwell Seminary, he says that, “Anyone who loves the Bible must value a story. For whatever else the Bible is, it is a book of stories.” In fact, we could say that the Bible is itself one big story. It is one story about one main character of how God is saving His people through Jesus.
And you know what? Because the Bible is a book of stories, then whatever else we might say about the Bible, you have to recognize that the Bible is not boring. No, it’s fascinating, it’s surprising, it’s challenging. The Bible is engaging, it’s profound, and at the very least it is interesting. It’s not boring. And that’s one of the things that I have loved about studying through the book of Acts with all of you is that we get to talk about all of these things that are relevant to our lives, relevant to the deepest concerns of our souls. Things like forgiveness and conscience, courage, freedom, ministry, contentment, hope, love for Christ, and on and on and on. And we can talk about all of it within the context of a story. God has packaged it for us in a way that engages our hearts, our minds, our imagination. And in this case, this story comes from the life of the apostle Paul, this life that has been transformed by the resurrection of Jesus.
I was listening to an interview with the Bible teacher, Nancy Guthrie, the other day. And she talked about an experience from her own life that resonated with me because it was similar in a way to something I had experienced years ago. And she said, she said, “I minored in Bible in college. I got a job in Christian publishing right out of school. I was into theology, I was involved in church events, I was involved in serving my church.” Bible was a big part of her life. And she said it struck her about thirty-one years ago, she thought to herself, “I would say that the Bible is the most important book in my life, but I’m not really reading it.” And that was the thought that I had had years ago as a young adult. Maybe it’s true for some of you as well. And to think that God has given us this book, this great story, these great stories, the great story and He’s given it to us for us to read. He’s given it to us to be transformed by it. Don’t leave it on the bookshelf. Don’t leave it on your nightstand. Take it up and read, enjoy it, thank God for how He speaks to us. He speaks to us in a variety of ways, including these stories that capture our imagination.
Now what is it that God has to teach us in this story? Well, this starts with danger at sea, danger on the Great Sea. The Great Sea. The Great Sea is the name in the Bible for the Mediterranean Sea – “ haYam haGadol.” The Great Sea. And Ralph Davis, he mentions at one point in one of his commentaries that we seldom, if ever, think of the horror and the pain that the Lord’s servants endured in order to be the vehicles through whom His Word was passed on to us in the Scriptures. And he says that oftentimes we sit comfortably at our desk or our tables with a mug of coffee and we read the prophets and we scarcely think about how Daniel was physically and emotionally wiped out, or how Ezekiel was put into a mental state of anguish and anger. We don’t think much about how much it cost them to be the vehicles through which we have God’s Word.
Well that’s true for Luke and for Paul in this story that we read in Acts chapter 27, isn’t it? Because after all, this is, you notice, one of the “we” or “us” passages in the book of Acts. Verse 1 says, “It was decided that we should set sail for Italy.” Luke was there. He was there with Paul as they were about to set sail for Rome. He was there when the winds whipped up against them. He was there as they went along with difficulty and as the voyage turned dangerous and even life-threatening. Luke was speaking from experience when he writes in verse 20, “All hope of our being saved was at last abandoned.” They had hit their lowest point and there was no way that they thought they could survive. How could they?
They had gotten caught in the open sea in possibly hurricane force winds. Verse 14 says, “It was a tempestuous wind called the northeaster.” The word for “tempestuous” is the same word from which we get our word “typhoon.” And the word for “northeaster” is the Greek word “euroculon,” or “´euroclydon.” It’s called sometimes today “a Gregale.” Now a quick internet search of the word “Gregale” will tell you one of those things. It will tell you, one, that Gregale is a couch from Ashley Furniture! It’s “a sleeper sofa that flawlessly blends handsome, rugged, good looks with soft and inviting comfort.” But secondly, a Gregale is also the name of a notorious wind of the western Mediterranean that is strong and cold. It is most pronounced around the island of Malta that sometimes reaches hurricane force winds, over 80mph, and it’s a danger to both shipping and to travel. In fact, one recent storm in Malta, knocked a hole in a historic watchtower, it collapsed walls, and it washed out parts of a building into the sea. And that’s just on land. Chapter 27 is taking place out in the open sea for over two weeks. They’re out of control. They’re throwing things overboard. They are dropping the anchors. They are doing whatever they can not to run up against the rocks. They had not eaten anything.
And can you imagine how sick they would have been? I have been out on the open sea for like ten minutes in good weather and I had to go lay down! And that was with Dramamine! And they were in this condition for two weeks on the open sea in this violent storm. Can you imagine how terrifying this would have been? And before it’s all over, they strike a reef, they run the ship aground, some of them jump overboards, others try to float to safety on planks and pieces of the ship. This was a rough time on the sea. And you have two men who are responsible for over half the New Testament, Luke and Paul, and they’re right there enduring these extreme conditions. They were, it seems, at the whim of nature. And to think, just to think of all that Paul had already endured – angry mobs, imprisonment, being stretched out for a beating. He had a plot against his life. Years he spent languishing in custody and then this – more suffering, more pain, more fear. And it’s as if, you know, the crowds, the authorities, the mob, they didn’t get him, but the sea would. And Paul, he had no speech, no speech could get him out of this. None of his legal rights as a Roman citizen could save him now. This was it, it seemed. “All hope of our being saved was at last abandoned.”
There’s a place in Calvin’s Institutes about the providence of God. And Calvin says, he makes this statement, he says, “Without certainty about God’s providence, life would be unbearable.” And he talks about how wherever you turn, all things around you not only are hardly to be trusted but almost openly menace and seem to threaten immediate death. Embark a ship, mount a horse, walk through the streets, and you’re one step away from death. But he says it’s no better if you try to take safety within the confines of your home. “If you try to shut yourself up in a walled garden, seemingly delightful, there a serpent sometimes lies hidden. Your house, continually in danger of fire, threatens in the daytime to impoverish you, at night even to collapse upon you.” He says that’s not even considering things like disease and poison and robbery and violence. And then catch this statement from Calvin – “Amid these tribulations, must not man be most miserable since but half alive in life he weakly draws his anxious and languid breath as if he had a sword perpetually hanging over his neck.”
We could probably say something about the drama of Calvin’s Institutes, but that’s why we need certainty about God’s providence. And what Calvin says is that when that light of divine providence has once shown upon a godly man, he is then relieved and set free, not only from the extreme anxiety and fear that were pressing him before, but from every care. And not just set free from those things, but set free even to have and to enjoy a joyous trust in the Lord God in our hearts. And you see, the Great Sea, it was a great danger to Paul and to Luke as well, but what these verses are showing to us is that it was also, it was also the instrument in God’s promise for fulfilling His purposes for them and for others as well. And that should be a comfort to us as well.
And what we see in God’s providence – that He is fulfilling His plan, He is carrying out His plan in order to fulfill the great commission. And that’s the last thing we see in these verses. Not only a great story and a great sea, but the great commission. And this chapter is the fulfillment of what Jesus had told His disciples before He ascended into heaven. You remember what He said. At the very beginning of Acts, He said, “You will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and to the end of the earth.” He said at the end of Luke, “Repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed to all nations.” And you’re familiar with the great commission in Matthew 28, “Go and make disciples of all nations, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.”
And you know, we often times think of Paul as being bold and courageous. And it’s true, he stood before the religious authorities, he stood up to the powers of Rome. He was ready to die for the name of the Lord Jesus. And even here, we see Paul as being one who has strength under pressure. He’s warning the sailors, he’s commanding the centurion, he’s urging everyone to take food. He seems confident and secure. But that’s not the whole picture. Several times throughout Paul’s journeys we find him in need, he’s in desperate need of encouragement. In Corinth, in chapter 18, the Lord came to him and said, “Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid, but go on speaking, for I am with you.” And when Paul is in the barracks in Jerusalem in custody in Acts chapter 23, the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage.” And then here on this ship in the middle of the storm, chapter 27, “Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand before Caesar, and behold, God has granted you all those who sailed with you.”
Maybe you’ve heard it before that the most repeated command in the Bible is right there. More than anything else, what we find over and over throughout the Bible, “Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid.” Paul needed that. And maybe you need to hear that as well. It may be, in fact, that the thing you most needed tonight was to come here just to hear those words read that we find in this chapter. “Take heart. Do not be afraid. Take heart, men, for I have faith in God.” Because sometimes we find ourselves in situations like this. Maybe it’s too metaphorical to talk about the storms of life and the shipwrecks that we all find ourselves in, but we do live in a fallen creation and we find ourselves in circumstances that are beyond our control. We may even have come to the point of saying something like what we find in verse 20, “All hope of our being saved has been abandoned.” And God says to us, “Do not be afraid.” Because God works in ways that we could never imagine to keep His people and to accomplish His purposes and to bring glory to His name. And in this case, what we find with Paul is that Paul uses this opportunity to tell people about God, to tell people about the God to whom he belongs, the God whom he worships. He gives thanks to God in the middle of the storm, and in the end, all were brought safely to land. All 276 people, some of whom could not even swim, but they all made it safely to land just as God had said that it would happen so that the Gospel could continue, so that God’s name would continue to be glorified among all these people.
Last night we were invited to a hymn sing at a friend’s house. And as we were singing, I was thinking about some of the new hymns, or really they are old hymns to new tunes that many of us are familiar with, like, “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand,” “From Depths of Woe,” “Isaiah 43.” And as I started thinking about those hymns, I realized I’ve been singing those hymns for thirty years. Those are hymns that I learned here in the youth house thirty years ago and still singing them, and now my own kids learned them and sung them in the youth house and continue to sing them there at RUF. And it brought me to tears. Thirty years. Thirty years of singing words like, from Isaiah 43, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and the waves will not overcome you. Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are Mine. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” Don’t think that hasn’t had a transformative effect on my life and on my family’s.
And what those words are saying is the same thing that we find here in these verses as Paul makes his way across the Mediterranean Sea. He’s a part of a bigger story. He’s a part of this bigger story about the spread of the message of Jesus’ resurrection, the good news of life and salvation in Christ Jesus. This same Jesus who Himself calmed the storm and stilled the waves, the one of whom people said, “Who is this? Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him?” He didn’t just overcome storms and winds, but Jesus overcame death itself by His resurrection and He gives hope to everyone, even in the most desperate of desperate situations. Jesus, whose name is Emmanuel, “God with us.” And so if you trust in Christ, then you can say with Paul, “This, this is the God to whom I belong. This is the God whom I worship.” Therefore, take heart. Do not be afraid. This is a great story, on the great sea, about God accomplishing the great commission through His people. “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Let’s pray.
Our Father, we give You thanks for Your faithfulness and for Your goodness, for Your presence and nearness to us in trials and in difficulties. We thank You for the witness and testimony of Luke and Paul, testifying of Your goodness and carrying out Your plan through them. And so we pray that You would give us eyes to see, and in our own lives and in our own trials, the bigger story of Your providence at work, working all things together for good for those who love You and are called according to Your purpose. We don’t understand it sometimes, we can’t see it in the moment sometimes, but help us to step back and to see Your story at work and to be able to bring honor and glory to Christ in whatever we go through. We pray all of this in Christ’s name, amen.