Acts 27:1-44 | Trusting Against the Wind

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

Do you trust Jesus?

Now I'm not asking, do you believe in Jesus?

As in a factual kind of being who exists and who died for your sins, was buried, and rose again.

I'm asking if you trust him.

Not do you trust in him, as though your faith was placed in him once for all, but do you trust him each and every moment of every day such that you can follow him absolutely.

Our section in the book of Acts for this morning is Acts chapter 27.

Acts 27 · chapter mention

We've been working our way through this book, and we're going to finish it here in the next couple of weeks.

So if you have your Bible or your device, I encourage you to take it and find your way to Acts chapter 27.

Acts 27 · chapter mention

If you're using the Pew Bible in front of you, I believe that's about page 935 or 936.

I want you to think about the prophet Jonah as you make your way to Acts 27.

God called Jonah to go to the Gentile city of Nineveh to declare God's judgment against that people and that place.

You know the story, right?

If nothing else, from Veggie Tales.

Jonah refused to go.

He refused to go because he believed that God would be gracious and merciful to those people if they turned from their evil ways.

And Jonah didn't want those bad, evil, wicked people to receive God's mercy.

So he ran away.

The opposite direction.

He ran from Nineveh.

All the while knowing there was no way he could run away from God.

As Jonah eventually told the ship's sailors on his way to Tarshish, Jonah worshipped the God who created the earth, the sea, the water, the dry land, and yes, the great fish that eventually swallowed him.

And carried him back to the shore so that he would finish the mission to the Gentiles that God had given him.

There are several echoes of Jonah in this chapter of Acts.

We could perhaps even go so far as to say that the Apostle Paul's experience in Acts chapter 27 is the anti-Jonah, or maybe Jonah redeemed.

Acts 27 · chapter mention

For where Jonah ran to the sea to escape God's mission, to take the gospel of God's mercy and grace to the Gentiles, Paul went to the sea in pursuit of God's mission.

Look at it with me.

Acts chapter 27, I'll read it if you would follow along.

Acts 27 · chapter mention

Luke records for us that when it was decided that we would 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 Adramidium, 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 to 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 he put us on board.

We sailed slowly for a number of days, and arrived with difficulty off Snidus, and as the wind did not allow us to go farther, we sailed under the Lee of Crete off Salmon.

Coasting along it with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens, which was near the city of Lacia.

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 a 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 Cotta, 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 be run aground on the Cirtus, 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, Man, you should have listened to me and not yet sailed from Crete and incurred this injury and loss.

Yet now I take, 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 sailed 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 fathom is about six feet, about two meters.

So twenty of those.

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.

So 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, 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 were all encouraged and ate some food themselves.

We were in all about two hundred and seventy-six 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.

Soldiers thought 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.

May the Lord bless his word.

So from a historical perspective, this account moves the center of Christianity from Jerusalem and Judea to Italy and Rome.

It's a major shift taking place historically.

As we trace the biblical trajectory from Genesis to Revelation, this account shifts the focus away from Jews, primarily, to non-Jews.

You see, Rome wasn't thought of as the end of the world.

Rome was the center of the world.

It wasn't so much that all roads lead to Rome, but that all roads lead from Rome.

All of the ancient mile markers around Rome started with Rome as mile zero.

And the mile markers increased the further you got from Rome.

So Paul is headed to the center of the Gentile world because Jesus has said he must be a witness to him in Rome before Caesar.

So in this chapter, the gospel is on its way to the Gentiles.

From a theological perspective, this account instructs us, calls us, and urges us to trust God implicitly.

That means that we learn from Paul's travels that we need to trust God without qualification, without explanation or question, to trust him absolutely.

Because it's the core truth of this passage implied in the Apostle Paul's statement in verse 25, where he tells everyone on the boat to take heart, because he has faith in God, that it will be exactly as he was told.

Jonah believed God.

He knew how God worked.

He knew God's mercy and grace.

He knew how God would respond to those who confessed their sin and turned to him.

But Jonah was not willing to entrust himself to God absolutely.

You see, Jonah allowed his self-centeredness and his own desires to come between him and God as though there were a barrier in place.

Even in the stormy sea, Jonah would rather be drowned than to trust God's own designs as the best thing for those Gentile Ninevehites and for him.

But the Apostle Paul sets all of that aright.

The Lord Jesus first sets the Apostle Paul apart as apostle to the Gentiles.

He specifically sends him to Rome, that great enemy of the ancient Jewish people.

And Jonah went as a reluctant prisoner in the belly of a great fish.

Paul went as a willing prisoner of Christ Jesus to reach the Gentiles with the good news of a risen Jesus.

And we learn to trust God implicitly by walking with Paul and Luke.

Look at how Luke relates this instruction to us.

If you are our guest this morning and you're wondering why I'm using all of these names, Luke wrote the book of Acts.

He is with Paul.

We see that in all of the we statements, especially in this chapter.

We set sail from this place, we put to sea.

Luke is with Paul, and with them are Aristarchus, at least those three together.

And this section, this section of the book of Acts is divided into three different units.

The first one is what I've called trusting God against the wind.

But before we get against the wind, we have to understand what's going on in this chapter.

And the first is that we're traveling around the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea.

In the bottom right-hand corner of your screen, you'll see that there's Jerusalem.

That's where they began.

They went north from there to the city of Sidon, and then they start going around the pinnacle of Crete.

They get around to what amounts to the southern portion of modern-day Turkey.

That's where they change course and start going south to Crete.

But along the way, they've changed ships because larger ships are needed to go out into the open Mediterranean.

This is a larger ship from Alexandria, a grain ship.

It takes them out into the open sea where they end up on an island of Malta in chapter 28.

That's what's happening.

But this all requires trusting God against the wind.

Look at Luke's detailed explanation of the Apostle Paul's travel.

We know that the Lord has sent Paul to Rome.

In verse 1, that's what happens.

It's decided, it's time to go.

There's a group of prisoners escorted by a centurion and a squad of soldiers.

It's their responsibility to get them to the city of Rome to have a hearing before Caesar.

But implied in all of this situation is that Jesus is behind this.

From the very beginning of the book of Acts, this is the ascended, risen and ascended Lord Jesus' work.

He is working from heaven to accomplish his purpose.

He is sending Paul to Rome.

Jesus is doing this.

The Lord has sent Paul to Rome under floating house arrest.

The Lord gave Paul some kind treatment here by the centurion, even letting him go out on his own at Sidon, trusting him to come back when it's time to sail.

Very similar to what Joseph was allowed to do in the Old Testament.

The Lord put Paul in a large grain ship from Alexandria that could not sail against the wind.

Verse 11, the Lord gave Paul wisdom and discernment that was dismissed.

And finally, in verse 12, the Lord placed Paul in the hands of chance.

Did you catch that when we read through that?

Verse 12?

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.

As Christian readers, we don't believe in chance, do we?

Not too long ago, we worked our way through the book of Ruth, where chance is a common theme.

But it's a common theme to show us that these things didn't happen by chance.

But from the perspective of the sailors, from the perspective of everybody else on the boat, they hoped that there was a chance that this could happen.

But as we've been following in Luke and Paul's footsteps, we know that there's nothing to this chance.

We know that Paul is going to Rome because Christ has sent him there.

But that doesn't mean that the journey will be easy.

So what is Luke doing with these details?

I think there are at least three reasons.

There are three three possibilities of what he's doing.

Number one is he's helping us see the danger of traveling by sea.

We don't get this much today.

Pretty rare that we hear much about a sea danger.

Does happen, but not as commonplace as in ancient times.

You see, in ancient times there was this mythical idea about the sea being a dark and dangerous place.

And it was.

But it was seen as a place of opposition to the gods, specifically to the God of the sea.

If you went out onto the sea, you were placing your hands or your fate in the God of the sea.

In ancient times, it was the realm of behemoth and Leviathan in the time of Job.

The sea was known as a place of death and disaster.

Take in in American history, imagine the dangers of the westward travels on the Oregon Trail or on the Santa Fe Trail.

That would take months and months of travel, and most of the time you won't survive.

Take that and multiply the intensity, and you have sailing on the Mediterranean in the ancient world.

If you survived, you were blessed.

So Luke is helping us see the danger of traveling by sea.

And so then he's helping us feel the situation, as if we are there on the boat with Paul.

Part of the we group.

Luke wants us to feel as though we are there with him.

Encountering all of these obstacles, the frustrations of stagnant water, in a sailboat, with no wind, having to get somewhere.

And that helps us then feel the length of time and the sense of uncertainty.

Because we know that Jesus wants Paul in Rome.

How does he get there if he's stuck in the middle of the sea with no wind?

But what we might miss is a slight shift beginning in verse 6.

Paul is one of several prisoners being transported to Rome.

Verse 1, somebody else decided that it was time for the trip to be made.

Paul had no choice in that matter.

And Luke and Aristarchus go with Paul.

The next few verses detail the trips around the northeastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea to the fair havens of southern Crete.

But verse 6 changes the level.

Level of intensity.

The centurion, who's responsible for the prisoners going to Rome, transfers them to a much larger ship that will make its way to Italy.

This ship has come north across the Mediterranean Sea from Alexandria, Egypt, full of wheat from Egypt.

This is what feeds Rome.

It's obviously a large ship carrying 276 passengers, plus a large bounty of grain.

Notice, though, how the actions done to Paul, Luke, and Aristarchus begin to increase.

The centurion put them on board.

They didn't have a choice in that.

Later on, the wind did not allow them to go forward.

The wind is against them.

They coasted with great difficulty.

Now the centurion's just doing his job, putting them on the boat.

But it's as though the weather and the rest of the world is against them, pushing against them, keeping Paul from going.

Instead of Paul running away like Jonah, Paul's wanting to go and everybody else is pushing against him.

Unseen forces are keeping the gospel at bay.

Already, this journey is not going as anticipated, and we're not even a third of the way into the chapter.

Then Paul perceives in verse 10 that bad times are ahead.

Maybe it's his common sense.

Maybe it's an inner intuition.

Maybe it's divine revelation.

Luke doesn't tell us.

But do you feel the rise in tension?

We have a normal voyage where Paul is even free to go out and disembark and see some friends on a quick stop in Sidon in verse 3.

And then pretty soon we're slowing down in our sailing, and then there are contrary winds, and then there's difficulty.

Then there's being forced to stop by the wind.

Then there's more difficulty.

Then there's danger.

And now Paul says there's going to be total loss of the ship and dying.

But Julius, the friendly centurion, ignores Paul.

But put yourself in Paul's shoes.

Or in Luke's shoes.

They were forced to trust God going against the wind.

Nothing appeared to be in their favor.

Nothing was in their control.

Their warnings, even, weren't heeded.

Their lives are entirely in the hands of others.

Now we aren't given much information here about how our three brothers in Christ felt during this time.

We don't know what's going on inside of them.

But I think we can gather some elements from this first section here that challenge our trust.

One of those elements is that we are not alone in having to face the headwinds of life.

Hebrews 11 reminds us there's a hall of fame of faithful people who have faced the headwinds of life, who are a great cloud of witnesses cheering us on.

Brother and sister in Christ, you are not alone in facing the headwinds of life.

Keep the faith amid those trials.

Perhaps, though, it's even more significant to remember that God's purposes for us include the headwinds, or maybe even the stillness of life, where it feels as though no progress is being made.

God's purposes for us include the dangers, the difficulties, and the driftings of life.

The Lord Jesus designs those difficulties, dangers, and driftings to further his kingdom purposes, which includes molding us to be more like him.

If nothing else, it's during this time that the centurion begins to learn more and more about Paul and learns to trust him.

So he's learning, and we are learning, to trust Christ within the storms of life.

So we move then to what that looks like.

Verse 13.

The weather finally seems to be in their favor.

So the sailors determined to set sail for their destination across the open water of the Mediterranean.

But by now, we, as Luke's readers, are not expecting things to go as planned.

There's going to be a tire blowout.

We just know something's bad's going to happen.

And it does.

They're soon hit by a typhoon, a northeaster, which renders sailing impossible.

After doing all they could to keep the ship afloat, the crew begins the process of throwing stuff overboard to lighten the boat.

First went the extra sailing gear.

And then the extra cargo.

And notice how how Luke emphasizes here that they did it with their own hands.

Sailors taking their sailing gear, their precious gear that they need to make this boat happen, this trip happen, they're doing it with their own hands, throwing it overboard.

We need to feel the hopelessness expressed in verse 20.

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.

Feel the hopelessness.

All hope of being saved was abandoned.

Do you remember the sailors with Jonah?

Jonah got on the boat, went out into the Mediterranean, God hurled a great storm upon the sea, and the sailors fight tooth and nail, doing everything they can to keep the boat afloat.

At the very end of that account, records that the mariners were afraid.

These were leathery men, hardened men, sailors who knew and experienced the sea, and they were afraid.

And each cried out to his God, Jonah says.

And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten the boat.

But Jonah had gone down into the middle of the ship and took a nap.

So the captain came and said to Jonah, What are you doing?

Get up.

Wake up.

Call out to your God.

Maybe he'll think about us and maybe won't kill us.

Then the sailors said, Come, let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.

You see, they understood there's a spiritual component to what was going on.

And they wanted to find out who was at fault.

And this passage describes the standard ancient view of the sea.

It was a dark and dangerous place, almost a playground of the gods, if you will.

The weather, and especially storms, were viewed as the expression of the gods' feelings.

So favorable weather meant the gods were pleased with you.

Unfavorable meant the gods were not pleased with you.

Now imagine having that kind of a mindset, that kind of a perception about the sea without navigation.

You're in the middle of the open sea, you can't see anything but water and storms and clouds.

These were not the days of satellite technology and GPS.

They navigated only by the placement of the sun in the day and the stars at night.

But in this typhoon in Acts 27, they couldn't see the sun or the stars for day after day after day.

They're utterly out of control.

There's no salvation, there's no rescue, there's no hope.

In Jonah's case, he took a nap while the sailors freaked out.

Because Jonah had a death wish.

In Paul's case, the Apostle Paul reminded them of his warning.

They were in the situation because they had not listened to his counsel.

Now look at how Jonah's situation is reversed.

Jonah's found out by the casting of lots and tossed overboard.

And the ship was saved.

In Paul's situation, everyone would be safe if they listened to him, but the boat would be lost.

The key distinction between Paul and Jonah, however, is in verse 25, the key verse for this entire chapter of Acts.

Where Paul says, everybody, take heart.

Be encouraged.

For I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told.

In verse 23, we read that an angel had told Paul what to expect, and Paul entrusted himself to God absolutely, without question.

In the Jonah account, Jonah told the sailors to throw him overboard to be rescued themselves because the storm had been hurled at them from the hand of God himself.

So Jonah knew God and Jonah believed God, but Jonah did not want to trust that God was doing what was best in sending him to Gentile Nineveh.

In this account, Paul points those around him to God's word and the wisdom in trusting it.

Paul knew God.

He believed God's messenger, the angel, and he trusted in that word from God.

He believed that trusting in God's purpose to stand before the Gentile Caesar was the best and right thing, even if his name happened to be Nero.

And Paul trusted in God's purpose even in the midst of the storm.

Paul trusted rather than acting in a selfish, pouty way about God taking him through the headwinds and the storms while having his advice dismissed.

And when the time came, he reminded everyone around him here's what God says.

Trust in God's word.

But trusting in God's word often comes at a cost, friends.

He says here, but we must run aground on some island, verse 26.

Paul believed in God's word, he trusted in it to the very detail.

It will be exactly as I have been told.

And he trusted that God would fulfill his word, even including disaster.

You see, it's disastrous for a ship to run aground.

And this calls for trusting God to the end.

By trusting in his sovereign and personal purposes.

For Paul, Luke, and Aristarchus, that meant being driven across the Adriatic Sea between southern Greece and southern Italy for about two weeks.

And they didn't eat.

Then in the middle of one night, the sailors perceived that they're close to land.

They stopped the ship with anchors, four of them, and like the sailors in Jonah's day, they prayed for morning to come.

Morning came, the sailors acted like Jonah.

They acted selfishly.

You see, the sailors wanted to rescue themselves, so they got into the little ship's boat off the side, acting like they're going to go set out anchors further out.

Acting that way, even though they just wanted to get to land and leave everybody else behind.

But by now, the centurion believes Paul, and Paul reminds them of God's word.

Everyone must stay in the ship.

So the soldiers cut the ropes, holding the small boat to the side of the vessel.

Now everybody's even more hopeless.

Your last hope of getting from this boat to land is now gone.

Verse 33 relates how dire the situation was.

No one had eaten for two weeks.

They lived and probably slept fitfully for those two weeks without food, full of tension, completely full of suspense.

But God can be trusted to the very end.

For Paul had told, God had told Paul that everyone would be kept safe.

So not knowing where in the Mediterranean world they were, nor what lay ahead of them, Paul encouraged everyone to eat and be thankful.

Eat and give thanks.

Friends, giving thanks amid trials and after such trials as these can only occur in our hearts if we trust God to the very end.

And because of Paul's trust, everyone's encouraged.

Never underestimate the impact your trust in God to the very end can have on somebody else.

At this point, they finally abandoned their primary cargo.

Priceless wheat from Egypt.

This was the prophet for the boat's owner who's on the boats.

And so when the owner is jettisoning the cargo, he's throwing his cash overboard.

It signals the end.

It signals that they have no hope for the voyage to continue.

They didn't pull in the anchors to save them, but they cut the ropes.

Cutting the ropes to your anchors means they're gone.

You can't use them anymore.

They raise the sail, they head for the beach that they did not recognize.

Now, granted, after 14 days in a storm-tossed sea, a sandy beach probably looked a little bit like heaven.

You want to get there.

And then, crunch, and everything comes to a full stop.

They struck an underwater obstacle so firmly that the boat is immovable.

And the waters of the sea have so broken and battered the boat that it's beginning to crumble and to fall into pieces.

This is the pinnacle of desperation.

All hope of salvation in the boat is lost.

They're at their end.

And the soldiers thought only of themselves.

The soldiers are not much different than the sailors.

The sailors wanted to take the little boat and get to land themselves.

The soldiers are only thinking about themselves because if the prisoners get off the boat and somehow escape, then the soldiers' lives will be lost.

They'll be derelict in their duty and they will be executed.

So they think, let's just kill the prisoners, save ourselves.

But the centurion has been won over to Paul's side, and as a result, everyone is saved.

But the whole picture reveals that the soldiers and the sailors and everyone else are all part of God's mission.

God rules and directs all things, from kingdoms and nations to sailors and soldiers and waves and boats and reefs.

God directs history, even personal history.

The Apostle Paul's journey as a prisoner of Rome reveals to us that we can trust, not just believe something to be true, but to rely on it, to live by it.

We can trust Christ as the director of our lives.

Who's running this boat?

It's not the sailor.

It's not the owner.

It's not the centurion.

That's Jesus.

Christ is the director of our lives all the way down to the reefs that we hit, the unknown beaches we wash up on, or the losses that we take along the way.

Verse 24, he must stand before Caesar.

Everybody must stay on the beach.

Everyone must stay on the boat.

We must run aground on some island.

The musts of this passage remind us that God's plan of salvation is the only way of salvation.

The people here weren't saved by tossing things out of the boat.

They weren't saved by working harder.

They were physically saved by trusting in God's word through Paul.

God had said, this is what you need to do to be saved, and they listened to Paul and they listened to God's word through Paul, and they were physically saved.

Nothing else was acceptable but following the word of God through Paul.

Similarly, only by trusting in Christ can we be saved from spiritual disaster and spiritual death.

That is God's way, and that is God's only way.

Jonah fled from God.

And God pursued him in the storm.

Still, Jonah fled from God in the storm.

While God pursued him with the great fish.

If nothing else, we learn from Jonah that it is utter futility to escape, to try to escape God's purpose for you.

It's utter futility to seek to run away from what God has intended for us.

But trusting God at all times will strengthen your inner being to trust Christ and face the headwinds, the storms, and the shipwrecks in a way that aligns you with God's purpose, brings glory to his name, and may even save those who are with you.

And so we come full circle.

Do you trust God to the very end?

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, we believe in you.

Your people here have gathered together because we believe in you.

We've placed our faith in you.

And we've trusted you for our salvation.

Now we trust you and commit to you to trust you to the very end.

Sustain our faith.

Strengthen our inner being to walk with you day by day, moment by moment, as you take us to the very end when we see you again.

Cause us to be faithful in our purpose and your purpose.

Cause us to walk with you faithfully each and every day, so that others around us might see our trust in you.

For your glory.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.