Acts: God’s Providence and Our Decisions

So this morning we will finish our study on the book of Acts that we've been going week by week for a while now.

Everything's going wrong for Paul at this point.

St.

Paul, back half of the book of Acts, is largely about this guy.

He's been falsely accused.

He's been in prison.

He was almost assassinated.

Now he's put on a ship.

He's still in chains.

He's still in prison.

He's being put on this ship to be taken to Rome for another trial.

So they have to sail across the Mediterranean.

So in Acts 27, they are sailing along Crete toward Italy.

They sail by an island called Cata, which is now Gavdos.

I looked it up to see what this looked like quite a lovely place to be in prison.

It looks like a good spot for a book and a drink, actually.

But at the time that Paul was there, it was a huge storm, really bad weather.

They're barely holding the ship together.

So we jump in there, Acts 27, verse 21.

Acts 27:21

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 God, to whom I belong and whom I worship.

And he said, Do not be afraid, Paul.

You must stand before Caesar.

Then 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.

Point number one is this we live in the peace of a guiding heavenly Father.

We have peace from that, that he guides us, while participating in the unfolding story.

In Paul's time, there were Stoics and there were Epicureans, two different philosophies.

Now, the Stoics said everything is fixed.

It's all fixed.

Doesn't matter what you do.

So to a Stoic, you just accept suffering because it just has to happen, it's gonna happen, you can't avoid it.

The Epicurean said, I don't really know about that.

Epicurean said everything's random, it's all chance.

So you should do everything you can to avoid some suffering.

And then Paul comes along, and Paul actually thinks about it differently.

He presents a third way.

In verse 22, he basically says, like, hey, God appeared to me, God said it, no one will die, we'll lose the ship, no one will die.

Providence.

It's fixed.

Yet in verse 30, when Paul finds out that the soldiers are getting in lifeboats or trying to leave the ship, he pleads with us.

No, no, no, like we gotta stay on the ship.

Like it's wise to stay on the ship.

You need to stay on the ship.

So he's sure that they will all be fine, and yet at the same time, he's pleading with them to act in a certain way.

So it's fixed and they need to make wise decisions.

Isn't that interesting?

It's not stoic, it's not Epicurean, it's not fixed, it's not all chance, it's not all sovereignty without human interaction at all, and yet at the same time, we should be wise.

See, if the future is fixed, then our choices don't matter.

But if the future is totally based on our choices, then the weight of history rests on you.

You'd have huge anxiety.

Even the weight of your own life or your family totally rested on you.

And Paul in the Bible gives us a much more profound and freeing way to think about our lives.

Last summer at the beach, I was riding bikes with my youngest daughter.

My youngest daughter and I, we were talking about the story this week, and I see how Providence and wise choices are playing out here.

We were riding back from the pool on our bikes.

She's in front of me.

We're riding over this little bike bridge over a lake.

So we're riding over this, we're coming just down.

We're about to hit where the bridge hits the little sidewalk landing.

And as we're coming down there, I see a 22-year-old guy, moron.

He's riding toward us.

And I know it's here's how I know he's a moron, because he's on his phone.

Okay?

And I've been crying about this all week because I'm a dad.

I'm like, these kids, they're on their phone, somebody's gonna get hurt.

Like, I've been doing that all week.

So I was ready.

I was already, I saw it, I'm already like, ugh.

You know, he has one hand, he's riding pretty good pace, pretty good clip going.

One hand here, and he's doing something.

Something so important.

It's so important, you know, he's doing something, and just about when I see him, and this is all where it's happening pretty quick.

He clips an A-frame sign, it shoots off, and it hits a dad and two other kids.

Okay.

He feels it, of course, the moron feels it, so then he he, you know, he's still going, he doesn't break.

He because you can't stop.

You know, you don't stop, of course not.

So he just keeps riding the same speed, and he's like, I'm sorry, you know, and and then about then my daughter screams because he barrels into her, and they both fall down.

So I have some choices.

So I quickly check her.

The moron's gathering himself, and I'm catching my breath.

He's young enough to be my son, functionally.

And I was a foolish kid as well.

He starts to talk, and I've had a moment to catch my breath.

Okay, so I'm like, okay, stay calm, don't you?

Alright, so he's and I just I mean, if so if an older dude does that to you, right?

That's the that is a power moment where he's like, shut your mouth.

Here's what I said.

If I see you anywhere this week on a bike and on your phone, I will chase you down.

I will take your phone from you and I will throw it in the lake.

You need to put your phone in your pocket and you ride away.

And I was sort of proud of myself at this point.

Like I had, I was clear, I had clarity, you know, I wasn't violent, I didn't cuss, I was like, it wasn't pastoral, you know.

I mean, I wasn't priestly, I wasn't giving him absolution, somebody else's job.

And about then the other dad shows up.

And the other dad shows up, and he's bigger than me, not hard, but it's just true.

He's kind of bigger, bigger boy.

And he catches the tail end of my little speech, and all he says is, he says, he looks him down in the eye, he says, You're lucky he got to you before me, because you would have got a lot worse from me.

And then he says, Go on and get.

Go on and get.

And the moron wrote away, he had it sucking his thumb this time, his phone was probably sucking his thumb.

Okay, I want to talk about the moron for a second.

I want to talk about the moron because I've been a moron.

I will be again.

You have been a moron, you will be again.

Now, nobody would say in this little situation, Russ, calm down.

It's all providence.

Leave the kid alone, let him go, wish him well.

It's all providence.

It's fixed.

Nobody would say that.

Right?

Now, we also wouldn't get on a bike and get such anxiety on whether I turn left or right and how I affect the universe.

Right?

It's just a way to say there's a sovereign plan of God working at some.

I'm welcoming you into mystery here now, right?

Like I'm not gonna explain everything, clean it all up.

I'm just saying there's a providential, sovereign hand of God, a fatherly hand that's active in your life, and you are a participant in the unfolding story.

Now, here's what it gives you it won't give you certainty, but it will help you be humbled and at peace in God's fatherly, sovereign hand.

And it will welcome you into being empowered to make wise choices.

After 14 days, this awful storm, Paul and the soldiers, soldiers are losing it.

Paul stays pretty cool about this, which is interesting because he has no status, he has no power, and yet he's the one on the boat that rises up to be a leader.

Finally, everybody makes it on shore to Malta.

Now, here's a map just to get a little bit of an idea where they're at.

So Malta's over there on the left side, um, way down, so you kind of see the boot of Italy, you see Naples, and you come down, and then below that is Malta.

You see the name, you don't really see the island, a little island over there.

Crete was over there to the right, you see Cutta's there at the bottom right.

And so they've they've sailed all the way across there at Malta, and they need to get up, they need to get up into Italy, into Rome.

That's where they're headed.

So they're on Malta.

They make it safely ashore.

Acts 28, verse 7.

Acts 28:7

Now, in the neighborhood of that place where lands belonging to the chief man of the island named Publis, who received us and entertained us hospitably for three days, it happened that the father of Publis lay sick with fever and dysentery, and Paul visited him and prayed, and putting his hands on him healed him.

And when he and when this had taken place, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured.

They also honored us greatly.

And when we were about to sail, they put on board whatever we needed.

So here's point number two.

This is sort of a repeating theme that you see Paul sort of exemplifying.

True bravery is grown in the awareness of our own weaknesses.

It's not the soldiers, the one with the powers rising up to be leaders, is actually the one who's aware of his weaknesses, tapping into a greater strength.

Last week I went to hit some golf balls with my oldest daughter at the driving range, and to get there, we're unloading.

I forgot my shoes.

Forgot my golfing shoes.

I just have flip-flops.

So it's a little redneck, won't be the first time I've done this.

So I hit golf balls in my flip-flops.

I get a couple looks.

I'm being somewhat aware, you know.

And there was like an uptight golfer.

And like, you know, flip-flops.

I mean, come on.

I mean, have some respect.

And I'm like, hey, I know I'm not tiger, okay?

Like, I'm aware.

I'm wearing flip-flops, I'm aware, you know, go on again.

I got a little redneck in me, right?

Like, I'm aware of this.

But you know what else I'm also aware of?

That guy, he ain't tiger either, because I saw him swing a few, but he had a good golf bag and he had everything was primed proper, and he lives at PGA's superstore.

Fantastic.

The point is this: I'm not Tiger, but you ain't Tiger either, right?

Like, that's the point there.

And he just looks judgy and tired, and he's wearing everybody out.

Here's the point: pretending to be all put together and strong all the time, it sounds really good until you realize you're not always put together and always strong.

We don't always have it put all together.

The good news of the Bible is that the Bible's not obsessed with us doing this pretending.

The Bible actually calls us into recognizing our weaknesses.

God calls us to face and feel our weaknesses, not to hide from them.

2 Corinthians 12, 9 through 11.

But he said to me, it's Paul writing, My grace is sufficient for you.

The Lord is speaking to Paul.

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

See, he knew this kind of stuff when he's on that ship.

And he's in chains and he's in weakness.

Paul says this, therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

So he's honest about who he already is.

He's not trying to cause more weakness.

He's just saying, like, yeah, I don't have it all together all the time.

That's a great freedom for us to admit something that we've been trying to avoid our whole lives.

We're not perfect, we're not always strong.

Isn't it interesting on this ship that none of the soldiers rise up to be the leader?

It's actually the one who can admit his weaknesses.

But he's tapped into a power beyond his sufficiency.

That crew, they stayed in Malta for three months, eventually set sail north up to Rome.

Once they get to Rome, Paul was in a rented house.

He had to rent it himself, but he had a guard there who guarded him.

And so he was in this rented house for two years, and Christians come visit him, and Jewish leaders came and listened to him.

And then we get these two verses, the last two verses, the entire book of the book of Acts.

Acts 28, 30, and 31.

He lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

Point number three, you and I are beloved characters in God's story of redeeming love for us.

The Roman courts gave people two years, a two-year period for accusers to come and prosecute.

So the fact that two years passed meant that probably nobody came and made that journey from Judea across that sea to Rome to prosecute Paul.

Now, Luke, who's writing this book, he never says it, but it's most likely that because of this, that Paul probably would have been freed.

Now, what we know is that he was imprisoned again, and we know that he was executed.

But Luke mentions none of that in this book.

Could have.

Mentions none of it.

The book of Acts just ends abruptly.

We kind of don't know what happens to Paul.

Which is crazy because the back half of the whole book's been about Paul, and we don't get any resolution about Paul.

And it's almost like it's Luke's way to say, Paul's not the point.

Paul was never the point.

And you and I are never the point.

We are loved, we are welcomed, included, but the world does not exist to praise you or revolve around you.

Do you remember the great profound movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 1986?

It's been almost 40 years, so I can ruin it a little bit.

You've had time.

Remember Ferris fakes a sick day, right?

So he can have the day of his life with his girlfriend Sloan, who I still have a crush on.

I started to have a crush on her when I was seven years old, 1986.

Sloan Peterson.

There they are.

Ferris Sloan.

That's Cameron in the back.

That's his best friend.

At the beginning of the movie, Cameron was sick.

We're not sure.

Was he actually sick?

Or did he think he was sick?

I don't know if you remember, he's laying in bed.

I mean, he looked like he was in a coffin almost.

And Ferris just drags him out of bed, convinces them to drive Cameron's dad's Ferrari, and they have the day of their lives.

And the entire story, the entire movie, is about Ferris.

It's Ferris's story.

It's what he wants.

All the glory goes to Ferris.

But Ferris really loves Cameron.

Now, we want the world to revolve around us like the movie revolves around Ferris.

Just like the world cooperates with us.

Or even our family, our spouse, our child.

Just to revolve around us.

Cooperate.

We spend a lot of energy to try to get this to happen.

It's exhausting.

But we're much more like Cameron.

We're a character in a larger story.

I love that this story is all about Ferris.

I've probably watched it a hundred times at this point.

So I've been able to analyze the brilliance of profoundness.

The story's all about Ferris.

And yet Cameron has a healing journey of his own.

Right?

By the end of the movie, we see Cameron sort of coming out of a cocoon, out of a death.

To be brave, to be willing to be brave.

See, we're a character in a larger story.

We have our own journey within that story.

We're characters in God's big story.

With our little story unfolding of a story of redeeming love and restoration of all that's broken.

And what this means for us is it means that we're secure in God's love, and we're also not egomaniacs.

So it isn't interesting, the book of Acts just ends.

Almost Luke's way to say, I'm not trying to draw attention to Paul over and over again.

I want you to really think about what is Paul about?

Well, the last verse tells us.

That verse 31.

What is it that Paul just keeps doing over and over and over?

Proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.

This past Thursday I went to Nastral to see my mentor Scotty Smith.

Here's a picture of the two of us.

There we are.

We went to dinner.

We went for a long walk.

We talked.

He's 73 now.

He spends time with young leaders.

He preaches and teaches some.

He helps out his church.

Hangs with his family.

He goes fishing with friends.

And he wakes up every morning.

He writes prayers, sends them out for people to read.

He writes these little gospel bomb tweets.

And then for all his kind of curmudgeon friends like myself who don't get on social media, he texts it to us.

Last weekend, right before Father's Day weekend.

He's got a series of just lavish, lavish gospel tweets.

Here's the first one I got.

A long way off, his father saw him.

Filled with compassion, he ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him.

Because of what Jesus did for us, this is how our Father loves each of us today.

No exaggeration.

Strings attached or fine print.

The next day he sent out another one.

Behold, ponder, contemplate, be astonished, smitten and speechless at the great love the Father has lavished on us.

The greatest sorrow, so John Owen quote, the greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him is not to believe that he loves you.

See, we tend to think it'd be like, well, the greatest unkindness I could do to God is like I don't perform for him.

To not believe that he loves you.

To know you are loved without conditions.

That's what Paul's doing.

He's proclaiming the kingdom of God.

What is the kingdom like?

What is it like to be known and loved by God through Jesus?

It's our calling.

It's your calling, whether you be a preacher or you work in the business world, or you're a parent.

It's just to keep falling into this.

Because this is enough for us.

It's enough for our guilt.

It's enough for our sin.

It's enough for our shame.

It's enough for our righteousness.

It's enough to give us a secure identity as a child of God.

It's enough to relieve us for being pretentious.

Or judgmental.

Performing, posturing, all that exhaustion.

This is what we should do.

Verse 31, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness without hindrance.

We just keep doing it.

We just keep doing it.

God could not love you anymore or any less.

Isn't that good news?

And you know why?

It has nothing to do with you.

This is what Jesus did for you.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that you love us and you like us.

Thank you that your heart is for us, that on the cross all of our sin and shortcoming was handled.

That you are not disappointed with us, you do not condemn us, but you see us as your righteous, beloved children as we are, not as we should be, because of Jesus for us.

That the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was really enough for all of our sin and shortcoming and failure and mess-ups and self-centeredness.

And it put upon us a righteous standing that is forever secure.

Not because of what we do, but because of what you have done for us.

Help us to trust this more, help us to rest in it, know the freedom of it, and to know what this freedom might be like, what the implications of this freedom are.

God, we invite your Holy Spirit to speak to us about what does it mean to live in the freedom of knowing Christ and being known by Christ.

And Holy Spirit, we ask that you would blow freshly in this church and in our hearts.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.