Acts 28:1-16 | The Outworking of God's Purpose

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

God's Purpose.

There are many, many ways we could characterize and talk about God's purpose.

But one of the ways that we need to think about God's purpose is that it is personal.

Many, many passages of scripture identify this.

One of them is Psalm 138, verse 8, where the psalmist says that the Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.

Psalms 138:8

An individual writing that, understanding that God has an intent, God has a purpose, God will do it personally for the individual.

Sometimes, though, we can get so focused on the individual that we neglect to think about how all-encompassing God's purpose is.

For example, in Isaiah 14, it says, this is the purpose that is purposed concerning the whole earth.

So it's not just personal that God intends things, but God also has an intent that encompasses everything.

All people, at all times, all nations, all over the earth.

If we think about it, it makes sense that God's purpose is intentional.

Luke chapter four, the Lord Jesus says, I must preach the good news, the kingdom of God, to other towns as well.

For I was sent for this purpose.

God's purpose for individuals, God's purpose all-encompassing, is for a purpose.

It is intentional.

Hebrews tells us that God's purpose is unchangeable.

Says so when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise, that is, of Israel, to show them the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath.

God's purpose is unchangeable because it is tied to his unchangeable character.

Finally, God's purpose is not just all-encompassing in terms of space, the whole earth, but it is all-encompassing in that it even goes to unbelieving people.

When we read Acts chapter 1, verse 1, where Luke references his gospel, the gospel of Luke, and what Jesus began to do and to teach, we see that Jesus in the book of Acts will continue and ultimately complete what he started.

Acts 1:1

That personal, intentional, unchangeable, all-encompassing purpose of God will come to pass.

So we expect that when we get to Acts 28.

Having repeatedly seen that God's purpose of gathering people from all nations surpasses all obstacles, even shipwreck and survival on an unknown beach in the Mediterranean Sea.

That's where we end Acts 27 and begin Acts 28.

So here in Acts 28, Luke relates how Paul and his companions with him, how their lives and even your life and my life are integrated into God's unshakable and unstoppable purpose.

This account of Paul's time on the island of Malta, just south of Italy, is not included merely to recount a few months of the Apostle Paul's life and ministry.

It's not just there to give us history.

It's here to show us how Christ was working to accomplish his purpose.

And if we look carefully, we will observe four characteristics of God's purpose at work in the life of the Apostle Paul, in which we ought to trust as God fulfills his purpose in us.

We're going to see as we work our way through these 16 verses this morning evidence of God's providence.

We'll see evidence of his promises, his power, and his purpose.

Look with me at the first two verses.

After we were brought safely through, we learned that the island was called Malta.

The native people showed us unusual kindness, for they kindled a fire and welcomed us all because it had begun to rain and was cold.

Notice here the safety of God's providence.

The safety of God's providence.

We don't need to look too far to see evidence of God's providence in this chapter.

It starts right in the first two verses.

God's providential directing of all things is woven throughout Acts from that very first verse that implies that the Lord Jesus is at work.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are at work in every page of Acts, every event, every location, and every person.

And at this point in the book, Paul must get to Rome to testify about the risen Lord Jesus in that place.

It's a divine must, which means God must bring it about.

Back in chapter 27, in verse 23, Paul was told exactly what would happen in the final moments on the ship at sea.

He says, 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 to 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.

So God graciously granted the lives of everyone on the boat, meaning he providentially determined to save all 276 people on board that ship and to save them physically.

God determined that it would happen by shipwreck, by running aground on an underwater obstacle.

If God's purpose includes an actual end with a place and a time with specific events and specific people at that place and that time, then God must be able to direct all things to that end, including how and where a ship wrecks and how people wash up onto shore.

We're already prepared for that with the prophet Jonah, aren't we?

Not just Jonah, though.

If God intended, as Joseph said in the Old Testament, to save Jacob's family by Joseph's rise to power in an Egyptian government, then God must be able to orchestrate events such that Joseph, as a teenager, gets from the land of Canaan to the land of Egypt and rises up through the political system to be Pharaoh's right-hand man.

Luke recorded after we were brought safely through, that those the words were brought are in the passive tense, meaning the action was done to them.

God brought them through.

Verse 2 also implies providence when viewed through the lens of ancient Roman thought and literature.

When it says the native people in verse 2, that's literally barbarians.

Now that primarily meant they weren't Greek-speaking people, and they weren't Greco-Roman cultured people.

But people groups in the barbarian category were often viewed as uncivilized, as wild and unhospitable.

So the treatment given to these survivors is utterly unexpected.

They not only showed us unusual kindness, they welcomed us.

They started a fire, warmed them up, dried them off, fed them.

And it occurred because God purposed to bring it about.

God did all of these unusual things in his purpose.

But the significant detail here is how Luke describes their rescue.

It takes five English words to translate the single word that Luke uses.

We were brought safely through, is one word in Luke's original writing.

Now Luke's word carries the basic sense of rescue, of deliverance from something, specifically from some kind of danger.

Sometimes it can be appropriately translated as saved, as in physically saved, physically rescued from some kind of danger.

Most often, though, this word carries the sense of safety, that is delivered safely.

So if you look back at chapter 27 and verse 44, Luke records, everybody jumped overboard and made 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.

No one was lost from the ship, is what that means.

That's safely.

Everybody survived.

Then Luke uses the same word in the following sentence to emphasize his point.

After we were brought safely through, so God's providence brought them safely through the storm to the beach and into a warm reception.

Safely.

Think about that word.

It describes how God brought them through the headwinds on the ship, through the still water where they couldn't move.

Through the typhoon and the crashing waves and the broken ship to the safety of the beach and the roaring fire.

Luke can use that concept of safely, even though their days were filled with uncertainty and danger.

He could employ the notion of safety even though they went two weeks without food, continually jettisoning objects from the boat through the raging water.

He could say safely, even though they endured swimming to shore, and others clinging to pieces of wood, praying that they would reach the beach.

He could say safely, even though they were ragged and weary and waterlogged.

Friends, your anxious spirits, your weary minds, and your tired and broken bodies must rest in the providential care of your Lord who works all things for his purpose.

Commit to knowing and believing that even the dangers and the uncertainties and the times of lack and powerlessness are places of safety when you are in his hands.

So why are we anxious?

And why do we worry?

Does not he who clothes the flowers of the fields in greater glory than Solomon and all his wealth care for you?

We are anxious and worried because we listen to our empty stomachs more than we look to the bread that comes from heaven to fill our souls.

We're anxious and we worry because we labor to be in control instead of resting in the safety of our Lord's providence.

We are anxious and we worry because we fail to trust in the good, purposeful providence of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But we are better able to see the security of his promises when we can trust in the goodness and safety of his providence.

Look with me at the security of God's promises.

Verse 3.

Paul picks up a bundle of sticks.

Just a normal kind thing to do, right?

Be participating in this comforting situation.

Feed the fire.

Grab a bunch of sticks, throw them on the fire.

But as we read through this, Luke relates the stuff of nightmares, right?

You pick up a bunch of sticks, and he's bitten by a poisonous snake.

And the way that Luke paints this picture, you imagine him holding up his hand and the snake just hanging there.

Because everybody else around him sees this poisonous snake hanging from his hand.

But Paul just calmly shakes it off into the fire.

As if nothing happened.

It seems Paul felt secure and safe.

But how does that relate to God's promises?

I suggest there are two ways that it relates to God's promises.

That is his physical protection against serpents and his spiritual promise of crushing the ultimate serpent.

Before we think about those, first consider with me Luke's perception of snakes.

Sometime we should do a theology of snakes on a Sunday morning.

Don't you think that would be fun?

We'll just stick with Luke.

Luke chapter 3, verse 7.

Luke 3:7

John the Baptist has crowds of people coming to hear him preach out by the Jordan River.

He looks out across the crowds, he surveys them all, and he says to them, Who warned you, you brood of vipers, to flee the coming wrath?

He calls all the people coming to seek him out, baby vipers.

Not a very positive perspective of poisonous snakes, if you ask me.

Later on, Luke chapter 11, verses 11 and 12, Jesus asks, What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead give him a serpent?

Luke 11:11

Again, a serpent is an unwelcome and undesirable gift.

Not something we would do.

So now consider the promise of physical protection against serpents.

Luke chapter 10, verses 18 and 19, Jesus sent out seventy-two disciples to minister among the towns of Israel.

Luke 10:18

When they returned, Jesus said, Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.

Interesting.

Mark, at the end of his gospel, Mark 16, verses 17 and 18, before Jesus ascended into heaven.

Mark 16:17

Jesus spoke to his disciples, saying, And these signs will accompany those who believe.

Now some people today foolishly think these promises are rights that allow them to play with poisonous snakes as part of their worship.

They are mistaken and take those promises too far.

In fact, they test God, just as Satan tempted the Lord Jesus to do on the pinnacle of the temple.

Jesus spoke these promises to specific people, not to everyone.

And he gave those promises to those who would need verification of the authority of their message, not to those who were attempting to show off.

They are promises of the power of the risen Christ to demonstrate his presence through his ambassadors.

And this account in Acts 28 is a demonstration of the truthfulness of Jesus' promise and the fulfillment of that promise.

You see, Luke has a pattern of representing vipers as evil agents.

Maybe they're just evil in the sense of you wouldn't do that as a good kind thing.

Sometimes they're evil agents as in representing the evil one, Satan.

So here it leads us to see this account as verification of Paul as the Lord's ambassador in the truthfulness of his message before those who've never heard it before.

Paul was secure in the Lord's promise that nothing would keep him from the Lord's purpose of testifying to the risen Lord before Caesar in his royal city, even poisonous snakes would not keep him from that.

But think also of the spiritual promise of crushing the ultimate serpent.

Some throughout church history have seen this image of Paul and the viper as symbolic of Christ conquering the domain of the great serpent, Satan.

Now there's nothing in the text that's obvious that tells us that Luke is thinking that.

However, we can see that spiritual promise in the background when we consider that the ultimate promise from the beginning of history, of human history, is that the ultimate man, the Lord Jesus Christ, will crush that great serpent who is the embodiment of evil.

And that all of history has been moving toward that point.

And when we consider that Paul is the divinely appointed ambassador to take the victory message of the risen Christ to the Gentile world, we now see that even the serpent can't stop that purpose.

Paul is a divine representative who embodies the power of the risen Christ.

He brings the power of the risen Christ and conquering Jesus to barbarian lands, extending the kingdom of Christ with the powerful demonstration that Christ, not Caesar, is Lord.

So, in two ways, then, Paul was secure in the Lord's promises.

First, he didn't worry about poisonous snakes.

Now, I doubt he was thinking about Jesus' promise to the disciples, but it is a fulfillment of that promise.

No, the Apostle Paul entrusted himself to the one who cared for him.

That was the first way that he was secure in the Lord's promises.

The second way that he was secure in the Lord's promises was in God's purpose for his world and his purpose for Paul.

God promised to bless the entire world through Abraham by sending a serpent crusher.

And the Lord Jesus sent Paul apart, set Paul apart as a unique envoy, a unique ambassador of his salvation, his forgiveness, his reconciliation, his grace, his mercy, and his power to be sent to the Gentile, non-Jewish world.

And God had said that Paul must testify about him in Jerusalem.

I'm not in Jerusalem, in Rome.

Paul believed in those commands and those promises, and he knew that nothing would keep those promises from being fulfilled.

Especially not a snake.

Now a literal snake cannot stand in the way of God's promise.

Neither can a figurative serpent, who is God's greatest enemy.

My friends, I want you to listen closely to what I will say next because this becomes one of our greatest means of anxiety and worry.

Nothing, nothing will take you out until everything in God's purpose for you is complete.

Nothing will take you out until God's purpose for you is complete.

Now we must not put the Lord our God to the test and think that we can go out snake hunting without getting hurt.

But the Lord's people can rest secure in knowing that nothing will take them out of this spiritual fight until everything in God's purpose for them is complete.

No matter what you face as a believer in Christ, nothing will end your time as his witness until his purpose for you is complete.

You can rest secure in the promises of God.

Look with me next in verses 7 through 10.

At the succor of God's power.

We don't hear this word succor anymore unless you read it in the King James Bible.

And that's unfortunate.

It's a good word because it combines several concepts into a single term.

So for example, Webster's dictionary says that succor means aid, help, giving assistance.

But it's in particular assistance that relieves and delivers somebody from difficulty, from need, from distress or anxiety.

So it's a term that combines the concepts of compassion and help with relief.

Many on this island of Malta needed the power of God in their distress.

They needed deliverance, they needed compassion.

First was Publius and his father.

Surely Publius was distressed, his father was sick with fever and dysentery.

Others then were brought, sick and diseased from all over this small island.

So we can be certain then that even though Luke doesn't mention it, that this physical succor, this provision along with compassion, this meeting needs along with compassion, was not without spiritual succor.

The two go hand in hand with Paul.

The reason is that Paul knew that physical rescue, while of some benefit, is not of eternal benefit.

So as the island people were brought comfort and assistance, just as they brought comfort and assistance to Paul and the other shipwrecked people, he succored them in their suffering from sickness and disease.

And that all served to confirm the message he proclaimed.

God's power brings aid, assistance, and deliverance.

Paul had seen it again and again.

And he delivered it to these people.

Now, Paul, God's power, God's power does not always soothe or heal our sicknesses and our diseases.

But it does rescue us from our ultimate problem, does it not?

Our slavery to sin and death.

And that kind of succor is worth carrying to others.

Sometimes all we have to offer is personal presence, being with someone that brings a sense of compassion with it, to sit down and listen.

Other times all we may be able to provide is food.

But we can always pray.

We can always speak of Jesus.

And we know that the prayers of a righteous person have great effect.

These are all ways we can bring the power of God to bear on those who are suffering.

Sometimes people need to know the power of God's forgiveness.

Sometimes they need to know the comfort of his mercy.

Sometimes they need to know his saving power, his sustaining power, and you might be the conduit.

There is succor in God's power.

Finally, in verses eleven through sixteen, we see the surety of God's purpose.

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.

Putting in at Syracuse, we stayed there for three days.

From there we made a circuit and arrived at Rhegium.

And after one day a south wind sprang up, and on the second day we came to Putioli.

There we found brothers, and we were invited to stay with them for seven days.

And so we came to Rome.

And so we came to Rome.

What a contrast these Maltese people are to those whom Paul has encountered before in the book of Acts.

He's been driven out of cities.

He's been beaten.

He's been stoned and left for dead.

He's been shipwrecked.

He's had to be rescued because people want to tear him apart.

But these people welcome him.

The barbarians welcome the agent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In part because of that welcome, they wait out the winter there, and then they're helped along on their way by them.

It's reminiscent of Jesus' words to his disciples.

When he sent them out, he told them to stay with those who welcomed them.

That's what we see here.

And so this becomes then the climactic scene of God's divine visitation on the Gentiles.

But we aren't told if these Maltese people became Christians.

Seems likely that some of them would have, especially given their treatment of Paul and the others.

But we don't know.

All we know is that this is a shock.

The barbarians treat Paul, Luke, and Aristarchus better than any other group has treated them.

That surely is a sign of God's gracious continuance of his intention for Paul to take the gospel to the non-Jews and ultimately to Rome.

Given the circumstances, it would be understandable if no one aboard that ship survived that storm or survived that winter.

But God caused them to not only survive, but to thrive.

And then they get on another boat from Alexandria.

And an account that is filled with irony, that highlights the guaranteed nature of God's purpose.

You see, the Lord Jesus wanted Paul in Rome to testify to a new Lord, risen from the dead and ruling over his kingdom from heaven.

To do that, they first board another ship that Luke says has the twin gods as a figurehead on the ship.

Have you ever seen those pictures of ancient sailboats that on the bow on the front of the boat has some image carved into it in massive pieces of wood?

That's what he's talking about here.

And the image is something that represents the twin gods.

The twin gods are the twins of Zeus, Castor and Pollux.

According to Greek mythology, these two gods were the protectors of sailors who also punished guilty people.

But by now, we know that it's God who controls the seas, right?

It's God who protects those who are on the sea, who are on the seas of life.

It's God who punishes the guilty, not some mythological creature.

And God puts Paul, whom the people thought were was guilty because of the snake bite, God puts him on a boat supposedly guarded by gods who punish the guilty.

Except Paul's not punished because Paul is innocent.

And in his innocence, God has a purpose for him to go to Rome to tell about Christ.

This is all the work of the Lord Jesus designed to instruct us in the outworking of his purpose.

What the Lord intends to do will be accomplished, and no amount of mythology, no amount of superstition, no snakes, no evil powers behind snakes will ever be able to stand in front of God's purpose.

What does that mean for Paul?

Well, it looks like this.

There we go.

Thank you, guys.

We start on the bottom of this image.

Malta is a tiny little island off the boot tip of Italy.

Over the next two weeks, this new ship carries Paul and his companions north through the city of Syracuse, through to Regium, and then to Putioli, just south of Rome.

Putioli is often considered to have been the place where all of the grain ships from Egypt came and docked and unloaded all of their grain.

It's about 140 miles or so by foot from Rome.

Christians are already present in Italy.

Paul encounters brothers and sisters there.

He lands on ground at Putioli, and there are already believers there.

So again, the way is paved for Paul to be received by Gentiles, and the gospel is spread among them.

He goes north to the Forum of Apius, which is about halfway between Putioli and Rome.

It was notorious for being a location of drunkenness and sin.

But it becomes a location of joy as believers encounter Paul having come down from Rome to meet him.

And it says Paul was encouraged.

He thanked God and took courage.

Why would he thank God and take courage?

Because his purpose is being fulfilled.

After all he's been through, God is paving the way yet again.

And the scene now ends then as he gets to Rome with Paul under house arrest, waiting for his opportunity to stand before Caesar.

So he remains a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ in the imperial city in chains.

You would think that after all of that, it would be better.

Oh, it is better.

He's under house arrest.

He can move around freely with a guard.

Friends, God's purpose is sure.

This account shows us that if nothing else.

But that does not mean that God's purpose will be carried out in comfort, painlessly, or even in freedom.

We are called, remember, to carry a cross, a means of execution.

But through it all, we can rest in God's purpose that is intentional, that is personal, that is all-encompassing, and that is unchangeable.

And nothing will stand in the way of that purpose.

We have known for several chapters now that the Lord wanted Paul in Rome.

And despite multiple obstacles, here he is.

In the same way, we can keep our eyes on the Lord Jesus who will fulfill his purpose for us.

Nothing can stand in the way of that purpose.

His purpose is trustworthy, it is sure, and it is a strong tower in which all should hope.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, help us to see you, even in the midst of the storms of life as our strong tower.

Cause us to know you so well that we will trust you even in the midst of the storm, even in the midst of the uncertainty, even in the midst of the lack of freedom that might come.

But cause us to know your purpose for us and to trust in it each and every moment of each day.

So that we will say at the end, when it is fulfilled, just like Paul, that it is all to the praise of your glorious grace.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

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