Leftovers - Acts 27

Happy Monday. We're back in with the ERC

Leftovers podcast. Fall is here.

It's it's official. Maybe not official, but.

I mean, yeah, you're right. But like weather wise, this is I

don't know how many episodes it was ago that we talked about

like our ideal climate. This wake up and it's 55°

outside on its way up to 70 is like for me that's prime.

It's so good. I mean, yeah, like, you wake up

and you had the windows open all night.

You didn't have to have the air conditioning or the heat on and

it feels crisp and cool and nice in the house and Oh my gosh,

it's just wonderful. Yeah, so great weekend.

I think I hadn't had a good weekend.

Wonderful gathering Sunday morning.

I thought your message keeping us on track in Acts and it's an

interesting balance. I feel like 'cause you said you

spoke harshly at points yesterday, but God speaks

harshly to his people. Like, and I, I think you

handled, you handled it well and you didn't necessarily do like

the cookie sandwich thing where it was like bad news, good news

bad or like, or, or you didn't wrap the bad news in the middle

of two good news things necessarily to make it more

palatable. You just kind of, you said it

like it is and I think it, it and I, I agreed it's something

that we're called to. We're not, we're not called to

sloth and laziness or just like whatever incompetence as people

like we're we're not, that's not, that's not where we should

end up. And thereby in our parenting or

even even our mentoring, even even day jobs or companies or

things that like you want employees, you want Co workers

that strive with the same tenacity that you do right?

And I think God, God wants that and doesn't want the lukewarm,

doesn't want half hearted. Even Paul, we've seen it a

couple different Times Now, he was sold that even when he was

against God, he was all sold out.

He was all in against God too. So no, I appreciated your

message on the conviction that we should have in our faith and

our choices, but also the because of who we belong to,

because of our security in God's sovereignty, in that the storms

are not something to shy away from either.

So, but you spoke well yesterday.

Thanks. Thanks for that.

I, I will tell you that we, we kind of had this conversation in

Bible study yesterday prior to our, you know, corporate

gathering, which is I, I, I want to receive what you just said

and I, and I will, but like, honestly, like, I feel like if I

feel like when, when pastors or preachers maybe like take more

credit than they should, I think it's wrong.

And I do think you are taking more credit than you should.

And here's why. Because I, I might have some

mildly original thoughts, but all of my material is completely

decided and none of it has to do with any of my cleverness.

You know what I mean? So like, if I write an original

fiction book, sure, cool, I can take credit for some of those

ideas and whatever. But like, the Bible is just the

most magnificent story and history and poetry and all these

different genres that the Bible is, it's the most magnificent

book on the planet. Even if you're not a Christian,

you, you should look at the Bible as a whole and say this

book is fantastic. Yeah.

So yeah, I just think, and I tell people this, we have the

best material on the planet to work with in terms of like

teaching and preaching. And so, yeah, I just, I look at

the the material we have and I just go, this is amazing stuff.

And if the sermon is bad, it's not because the material isn't

interesting, it's because I'm not good.

Like, let's be honest, it's like a history teacher.

I always thought, I always thought that history should be

like the best class besides like art or gym or whatever, you

know, because like history is not boring.

You can make it boring in your presentation, but it's not

boring. The, the, the onus is on the

speaker. You know, if it's terrible,

that's that's your fault. Because this history is like

when kids study like World War 2, for example, like that should

be exciting and interesting and engaging.

If you make that boring, you're just bad at what you do.

That's quite honestly, you're not good at it.

So God's word is such that if you fail, it's your Yeah.

It's on you. I think that's on the preacher

like because the material's great.

So that's that's on the preacher, so.

I appreciate that perspective. Yeah, and that's why I like I,

I, you know, that's why I think like, it is important to

critique. Like, constructively speaking,

it is important to critique, you know, pastors and stuff and how

they bring a message just because, like, dude, come on,

you've got the best material on the planet and you're putting

people to sleep. What are you doing?

Because this material is great. No, that's fair.

That's fair assessment. But Despite that, yeah, I don't

think you failed yesterday. I I had one.

Better way to say. I had I'll, I'll just name her.

Shannon came up to me and she's really funny.

I, I, I, and she's not the first person who said something like

this to me. She's like, and she smiled and

she laughed and she said, Pastor Chris, that didn't suck.

Wow, yeah. And I was like, wow, huge praise

coming from Shannon. So that's, that's great.

I had somebody else say something similar to me like a

year or two ago and she's like, I'll just let you know.

If you didn't bomb, how about that?

Like, OK cool, thanks. Well, we are the next couple

weeks will be recorded episodes both for your vacation and Labor

Day and then we are going to Church Leaders Summit in

Jacksonville Church of the oh man Church of the 1122.

That's what it is. Yeah, Church of the 1122 Joby

Martin lead pastor there. But they have a church leaders

summit for all sorts of ministry volunteer systems things.

You and me and Christian are all going to that.

So the first couple Mondays in September will be recorded Ask

me anything episodes. We already have one of them

recorded and ready to go. We'll we'll track a second one.

Just have a couple hours worth of us answering your questions.

We've continued to get questions from you and we're also going to

use some of them to fill the early part of these regular

podcasts too. This question we got and I just

it sounds weird to say, but from a production just like

everything going off without a hitch sort of way.

Yesterday, like yesterday was a good day for me.

I feel like there there wasn't, there were very few fires to put

out. The fires that were wrong or or

went wrong were usually just like a click of a button or

something or they were very minor details.

But so I wanted to ask this question that we got in last

week too. I'm blown away each service with

the talent of the worship teams. Could you give some insight as

to how the members prepare for each service?

Are they self-taught? Are they currently taking or

giving music lessons? When you practice, how is

practice run? So many combinations of the team

and all the people and they all work so well together.

Do they practice on their own or do you all practice together and

then assign A-Team for each Sunday?

Kudos to the whole team, I think they're phenomenal.

Oh my gosh, so whoever asked that question, like they are

spot on. I, I, you know, 'cause you, you.

And it's, it's not like you have to have like an entire band to

have like a good worship service from the perspective of music,

right? You can have like you can sing

hymns with a piano and it can be amazing and moving and really

special. But when you put in as many

different elements as you do here at ERC and it still comes

off like amazing and not cluttered.

And I it is, it is phenomenal like we are.

So it, this word gets used too much, but in this case, it's

true. We are so blessed to have the

the the team and the talent that we do, and that doesn't that

doesn't happen by accident, sure.

Yeah, I've, I've poured a lot of intentionality into crafting and

leading the worship ministry as it is.

So that's, that's part of it. And I do think you need to have

a leader and even someone who's pastoring people well in order

to develop that. But the other part is the is the

response. And I, I could be wrong and

there's definitely like motivational speakers and things

that could maybe fight this perspective, but I've always

kind of held to I, I can't teach passion like I can't, I can't

teach even the volunteers on the worship team how to care more

about their gifts or how well they prepare.

The that's that's largely on the inside of a person.

And I think more than just worship team like that in

general, that character trait in general.

There's a business cliche. Like you don't.

The most successful companies don't.

It's not that they learn how to motivate people.

They hire motivated people as it's kind of the same thing,

like you can't teach motivation people who either have

motivation or they find motivation or they just don't

have it. So part of that blessing is the

the drive. Yeah.

So in that sense it is on the individuals.

I think some of the more we we have different levels of

involvement and some people are more regularly involved.

Some people play more instruments and thing, but

that's largely that's largely on them how how much they've

decided to pursue that passion or that aspect of their

giftings. And then my job and it is to

coordinate how that all works together or or how it works well

to create powerful moments in worship, in music to then bless

the congregation, to encourage the congregation in that.

So I have to, I have to coordinate those things, sure,

and that and that takes planning.

But behind the scenes stuff, I usually get the worship set list

out to the teams like 10 days before a service.

And it's not eventually, although volunteers like do kind

of know all the songs, but we don't practice with all the

volunteers and then whittle down for Sunday.

It's whatever whatever team is that Sunday, they practiced the

preceding Wednesday four days beforehand.

Like we had a midweek rehearsal, and then they practice Sunday

morning as well for the service. So everyone kind of has to know

all the songs, but we're only doing it with combinations of

seven, 8-9 people in the band at a time, something like that.

And then I just have to coordinate, OK, Grace is leading

this song this week, Shannon's leading this song this week,

Ellie's leading this song. Like whatever it may be, that

plan goes out and those singers prepare to lead that song.

Lead guitarist just learns the lead guitar parts and the

drummer has their parts and the bassist is like all the

instrumentalists. We're to the point, and this

wasn't where this ministry was seven years ago, but we're to

the point where, yeah, most of the musicians are to the point

of you're either being self-taught or to the point

where if there's new songs, yeah, they self teach them the

new songs. Based on the systems I've kind

of set in place, I get out music and a MP3 recording that's close

to how I think we should do the song in the worship service.

And it's in the right key. It's it's in the key that will

play it in for singability. And so the congregation can sing

along too. And largely they prep on their

own. We put the pieces together at

the midweek rehearsal, do that again Sunday morning.

And that's that's how it comes out.

So it's just a drive of excellence in preparation

amongst these individuals that then get coordinated on a team

week to week. I think one of the interesting

things too is that, and you know, again, you have to, I hope

you can receive that well. Every good leader, every

successful leader of people, they have high expectations.

And so, you know, if you, if you have a certain amount of talent,

let's say musically within your church already, and you say,

well, we're, we're already pretty good.

So like, let's just all meet up on Sunday and it's going to work

out fine. Like no, like you build in you

in particular, you've built in these expectations of, you know,

what if like this isn't a passion for you like you talked

about, and it's not something that you enjoy and pursue doing

even when I'm not asking you to. Like I, I don't know how well

you'll ultimately, and I might be wrong here, but I don't know

how well you'll ultimately function within this group of

very talented people because talent alone is maybe not

enough. Like you have to have a passion.

You have to want to work towards being better at it every single

week. And I, and from my perspective,

which again, I think everybody knows, I have nothing to do with

any of this, but I am a receiver of the good work of other

people. And I watch, I watch so many

people as I'm in the office or in the building all week long.

I watch so many people come in and out and they're just

practicing on their own. And it's, and I'm not even going

to name any of them because they probably wouldn't want that, but

like to see them taking their free time and using that passion

like when nobody, nobody knows, like they're not getting quote

UN quote like credit for that time.

They just want to be prepared and they want to be as great as

they can be on Sunday, not for their own sake, because that's

really where the heart of our worship team is.

It's not for their own sake and for everybody to pat them on the

back. It is so that people can worship

in freedom. And there aren't these hiccups

in these like weird, odd moments of like, oh man, I forgot this

part. And so like, now it throws

everybody. No, like people prepare well

because they want us to be able to worship well.

And there is then that built in accountability on the teams to,

of wanting their parts polished enough and prepared enough

because there's others that their their parts are going to

be ready, their part, their parts are good and excellent.

So I don't want to take too much credit in that realm either.

I understand that I'm the leader and and maybe some of the

excellence, an example and some of those things are, are coming

down. But we're also blessed here by

people that have, as you described, responded with that

initiative to, to take their own time to prepare and be

meticulous about it. I often, well, I don't, I don't

have music in front of me on Sunday mornings.

And that's largely that's the level of preparation that I'm

comfortable with more for a Worshipful spirit in myself.

If I'm not thinking about chord changes or what the next words

are, if those are just internalized and a part of me,

like that's how, that's how I can worship or lead worship more

freely if I'm not caught up in the minutiae of that of, of

exactly what it is. So that's a lot of the behind

the scenes stuff. I also I shared this with JT,

our production lead and he had some thoughts on production too,

or at least the stuff in the booth.

Preparing for the production side of things is different than

the band member. It's details, making sure

everything and anything from the iPads are charged at the sound

system is working to how the slideshow, the words, lyrics are

built out. So he says I'm always learning

and striving to be better, figuring out ways that are

better that we could do things. Many great worship directors and

production leaders post helpful information on social media and

YouTube. Grateful for the talent of our

worship team at ERC. It makes my job easier in the

booth. Being able to provide an

experience to the congregation is very rewarding and an act of

worship in itself. Practice happens together and

individually. We expect our time together to

be not so much of what I am place, what I am playing versus

a how we do our parts together, how our parts come together.

I think the level of accountability behold of each

other help set expectations of where we want to be as a team

and where we want to continue to go.

So all that is to say, summarizing his thoughts, the

the preparation of the worship team, the band members, the

instrumentalists and the vocalists, that makes the the

production side of things for the for the booth.

As far as how Florida State the slides go out or service

transitions or technology things.

The preparation of the band makes that job easier, but also

the the readiness of the production team to navigate

whatever little instrumental snafus or a microphone that your

your greatest fear, the microphone that doesn't work.

I'm so afraid of it all the time.

They're, they're almost on like they're almost on red alert,

like on call troubleshooting all the time back there too, just to

make sure things go smoothly. And those things need to kind of

work in concert together. So JT especially and, and the

volunteers in the tech booth like they are, they are largely

self-taught on a lot of this technology things.

YouTube's a great resource, social media followers and

things just for how especially in our kind of smaller room and

we have an odd shaped room like the this isn't really how you

would build out an auditorium. It wouldn't be flat, it would be

sloped, it wouldn't be boxy. Several things about that room

are just we, we work with what we have and it's fine and it's

great. And I actually, I love that room

despite its lack of, it's not the way you'd audio engineer a

room. Like it's an architecturally

build out a room. It's fine.

It's great for our own purposes. But that presents a unique set

of challenges too, for JT to, to process how the sound moves in

this shoe box of a room. So yeah, lots, lots of things

with that. And JT too has just kind of dove

headlong into this. And the things that he learns he

tries to pass on to the rest of the volunteers.

So they're on the same page, but he's, he's done a lot of extra

work that you probably wouldn't guess or experience or, or even

know that he's just embedded this knowledge and in himself

of, of how to not make a kick drum sound really harsh or too

boomy. Like he, he's got it equalized.

He's got it mixed to the point that that it sounds really good

in the room or or the right time to use.

Reverb on voices or or or other things he's he's very hands on

in how he does stuff. So but that has to work in if

he's doing all those things but the band just doesn't sound

good, then it still doesn't work.

He can he can, he can try to work all the miracles that he

can, but if the musicians aren't prepared, he Can't Sing the

melody for him or he can't play the guitar solo or, or whatever

it is. So yeah, it's cool to see those

teams of people. And like he said, even the

minimizing distractions kind of the the excellence in production

aspect of it too. And it's not even a stylistic

thing because again, I think like you said, hymns can be done

well, they can be done excellently.

I'm not saying our style of worship here is superior to

others, but there are a lot more moving parts with with how we do

it. But that also leads to more

people being involved and and Ian and serving on on how that's

done. So long winded a lot of

discussion to answer that question, but I think it's one

that maybe more more than just that person wonder and maybe

just don't articulate that question all the time or ask

that question all the time. So that's that's how prep for

Sunday's worship sets go. Yeah.

And here's the thing, like even hearing you talk about this or

seeing JT in the building, like, again, when nobody else is going

to know that this guy is grinding and working at, you

know, levels of perfection from a perspective like mine where,

again, I don't really know much about the intricacies of music

or production. But here's what I do know from

somebody with that perspective. I know when something sounds

bad. I know when something's not

working. I may not, I may not be able to

name what it is that's wrong, but I can tell you that there's

something wrong here and it's it's not coming off right.

And so, I mean, like the people who are so keyed into those

details that I could never name, but it, it creates, it creates

excellence. Man, my hat's off to all of

them. Like, honestly, it's, it's so

impressive what you guys do on any given week.

And yeah, I, I hope that, I hope we never take that for granted.

You know, I hope we never just look at that and go, well,

that's just, you know, that's just what we do is fine.

Like, come on. Like the number of hours that

are put into any service to, to make that come off without a

hitch. It's a fantastic number of

hours, Yeah. Well, thanks man.

And it's, yeah, truly for me sounds cliche, but it's, it's a

blessing to work with the people in that ministry that we have

here. And just the, I mean, I do feel

a general passion and excitement around our worship ministry

here, the band here, and just people's people's connection to

that. It's a, it's a blessing to

minister and encourage in that way, in, in a way that we can

make songs unique in our own or at least have our people

attached to them. So yeah, it's great.

Yeah, I love that one. One thing maybe real quick as an

aside, you, you know, you kind of started this conversation by

talking about you can't really teach passion, You can't teach

motivation. I I think there's, I think

there's something similar to even even talking or teaching.

OK, so I, I've sat down with people and like, I have like a,

a pretty general process. I used to prepare to speak,

right? And so I can, I can walk

somebody through like, here's how I'm going to, here's the

lens with which I'm going to look through this text and hear

the things I'm trying to draw out of it or like help us see.

And I, I can teach people my like process, for example, how

I'm going to, how I'm going to prepare for that.

But you know what? I could never teach anybody.

I could never teach anybody like to be excited to talk about

God's word. I can't teach you that.

So like, for example, I, I, I understand because I've listened

to myself enough Times Now that like, like I, I get loud

sometimes and I kind of joke like I come off like a coach at

halftime whose team is down. Like, so there's, there's a

level of like kind of passion there.

But you know what I don't do? I don't, I don't go, you know

what I'm going to do at this point?

I'm going to raise my volume. No, that's like, that's just a

heart position of like being passionate about what we're

talking about in God's Word. And yeah, you can't teach those

things. So if you're kind of like a very

level, very calm person, which some of my favorite pastors that

I listen to are, are like that and I'm not.

And I had to eventually be OK with that because I kind of

wanted to like be like them, like stylistically, but it just

didn't you, it didn't ring true. And so like that's those kind of

passion things. You you're right.

You just cannot teach them. Yeah, no, I think that's, I

think that's a big part of it. And fortunately the yeah, I

think the sincerity of heart and that heart posture of worship we

start, I guess I left out maybe the biggest, maybe the biggest

part, even before the musical aspect.

It, it starts with individual relationship with God like these

individuals relationships with God relating to a life of

worship, which then informs how they how their involvement on

worship team here and then how they lead on worship on Sunday

mornings. No one's up there really faking

this or, or or being a, an actor or a character in in a play or

something like we're not, we're not putting on a performance or

pretending to be something that they aren't.

There's a level of sincerity and genuineness of heart in these

worship leaders lives. I'm not trying to put them on a

pedestal as being like the best Christians at church.

I'm not I'm not saying that. But that's where it starts to

the faithfulness from them to to be in God's word, to be in

relationship with God to even to your sermon on the on the stormy

days in the stormy days, I've shared maybe sometimes that it

just felt less than that morning.

It wasn't, it wasn't a typical Sunday, wasn't as jazz as usual

to just be at church and do that.

So another part of it that we do each each and every week at our

Wednesday rehearsals, we use this book called Before we

Gather and it's a it's a worship devotional, 52 week worship

devotional by Zach Hicks. He's a worship pastor in

Florida. He wrote the book literally

called the worship pastor. But his, his teaching and his

theology of worship has informed much of my learning and an

execution of, of theology of worship.

And this has just been a cool. He has like 6 points of prayer

just generally for our worship teams to be praying for the

congregation. But then each week within each

devotional, there's three like specific things to pray over and

for that week. And we always, I always kind of

made a point to start, we start our rehearsal time together.

That starts in the in the word. There's always a devotional

there. We always start rooted in the

word. We're not just ripping off

songs. That's that's where our practice

time starts. But it's also that's a personal

aspect of their lives too, so. Man, that is such a cool

insight. No, I mean, I think that's so

awesome. Like, hey, we don't just come

and practice songs. Like we're diving into the word

together and we're and we're thinking through the deeper

things of how do we bless and honor God's name even when we're

not singing? Oh my gosh, that is so cool.

That is. Awesome.

It has to be though. And I that's.

You you say it has to be, but I think that there are like high

level musicians even within Christianity who like you can

just kind of tell it's a performance for them.

It's not felt and and it's, it's hard to put your finger exactly

on what that is until you see it.

And and when you see it, you're like, oh, they're putting on

quite a show and show meaning like this.

They're not experiencing this. They're they're doing this to

like, yeah, I think that's so awesome that you guys do that.

That's incredible. And man, I just, I, I can't say

enough good things about that. I'm kind of blown away.

That's so cool. I'm glad, yeah.

And I hope that's encouraging to hear the they care.

They definitely care. If you can't tell the worship

ministry, those worship leaders, it's a valuable part of their

relationship and they're they're ecstatic to give and encourage

and serve in that way week after week.

It's really makes my job a joy. So, all right, we were in a

large part of Acts 27 yesterday. You took about half the chapter.

Where are we going? Do you want to dive into deeper

details on 20 through 38? Are we winding back the clock to

the first part of Acts 27? Where would you like to dive in?

Let's see what I did there. Yeah.

Shipwreck of a passage. Yes, yes, exactly.

No, I think I think we can spend at least a little time on the

front end of chapter 27, which again, if you went back and read

it as I suggested, hope you did that.

But even if you didn't on the front end, there's a lot of like

very particular details. But what I love seeing in this

is that like Luke, as the author of the book of Acts, the early

church history, he says we and us throughout this text.

And what's interesting about that is that so Paul, for

example, like they have not convicted him of anything.

It's been multiple years of conversations and these like

so-called trials and whatever, they still have yet to be able

to convict him of anything. So therefore they have to by law

give him as much freedom as they can give anybody who is being

held. So like if you think about a

person who's being held before or trial, they're put if they

haven't posted bail, they're in prison.

They don't have a lot of freedoms like they have to just

like every other prisoner who has been convicted of whatever.

Like you get maybe a phone call every so often.

You get this every so often. They can't do that to Paul.

He So therefore he has these travel companions who get to be

with him all the time and he still has his friends around.

And that doesn't make, by the way, don't hear me say that.

That makes like his, you know, time in captivity.

Awesome. That's terrible, right?

It's still terrible. His freedom has still been taken

away. He still has no choice as to

where he's going or when he's going, you know, all that kind

of stuff. But like, I think it's so cool

that like we get a first hand eyewitness account of these

things that are happening. It's not, hey, Paul met Luke in

Rome after the fact. And then he's kind of like

recounting like, oh, this is what happened on the ship.

It was pretty rough. No, like Luke was there the

entire time. And scholars will point out the

fact that when the ship, you know, in in the midst of the

storm, everything is going wrong.

And they have a certain number of sailors of on there, of

course. But like, it is highly probable

that Luke himself and others had to put in a lot of work to keep

the ship together. So they're, they're working on

the ship even though they're not sailors, but the sailors are

probably coordinating, telling them like, no, you throw this

over and you grab this hoist and you do this and you do this

because like the it's just, it is a wild ride.

One of the things that I don't think I was able to bring out

enough yesterday is like they're facing what's called a

Nor'easter. So this is a major, incredibly

large, violent storm. And what's also interesting is,

yeah, we're in the kind of season or time of year when

that's more typical in the Mediterranean Sea.

But like the way it's described in in what ultimately happens to

the ship, it's still unusual. This was an unusually violent

storm. And the fact that it lasted

multiple weeks. So we get this detail that there

were days on end where they didn't see sun, moon or stars.

So like this, this storm literally just completely

encompassed them. And you look at that and if

you're paying close attention, you're like, that's just not

normal for a storm to stay right over the top of a boat for that

many weeks in a row. That's not normal.

Like there's clearly something supernatural happening here.

And so that draws us back into why does God allow this kind of

stuff? Like why would he, why would he

do this or why would he allow it if he's not the one actively

doing it, right? And then you get into some

bigger, broader questions that I think we started to answer

yesterday. But you know, I just look at the

beginning of Acts chapter 27, see the details in it and and

Acts 27 · chapter mention

it's so interesting. Yeah, and even to your just the

severity of this storm to your point there verse 7, the wind

not permitting us to proceed that that idea of not seeing sun

or moon or stars for days. There's even Paul's writing the

wind not permitting us to proceed.

That's not that's not a thing that like is normal, right?

So, yeah, some of these things, just the extremity of the storm

and the peril, Paul says, to the crew versus 9 and 10.

Paul advised them saying, man, I perceive that this voyage will

end with disaster and much loss not only of the cargo and the

ship, but also our lives. That's Paul's reaction to this

ongoing storm. Not really halftime pep talk,

sort of like that's usually what you do.

Hey, guys, we're down by a billion.

We're just, we're, we're just going to sit here and lose and

die. And that's that's just the

state. And yet, and you kind of talked

about, I think we're going to head this way.

Paul perceived that the voyage will end with disaster and much

loss, not only the ship but also our lives.

And yet, what was their decision?

Their decision was to press on. Do it anyway, right?

Do it. Anyway, it's it's going to be

fine. Yeah.

So nevertheless the Centurion verses 11 and 12 was more

persuaded by the helmsman and the owner of the ship and by the

things Paul spoke of. So maybe not proceeding for

great reasons not certainly not leaning on the sovereignty of

God right in in the moment there other excuses in verse 12 the

harbor was not suitable to winter in the majority of the

sailors advised him to set on also so taken by a vote over the

crew they decided to sail on despite Paul saying I believe in

God and trust in his sovereignty.

We're all going to die, but. Well, The thing is though, you

know, from a very practical human perspective, I, I do kind

of get it. Who are you going to listen to?

Are you going to listen to the Jewish teacher, Rabbi, you know,

or are you going to listen to the sailors who do this for a

living? So from that perspective I can I

can give them a pass a little bit and say but but then again,

the scholars tell us that up to this point Paul has travelled

some 3500 miles across the sea, back and forth, back and forth.

And so. Though he's not sailor by trade,

his experience? It's it's nearly unrivaled

unless you are in fact a sailor. It'd be like, OK, so maybe

modern day example. So I might not be an over the

road trucker, but what if I drive, you know, 40,000 miles a

year across the United States for my job in a normal car?

Sure, I don't know how to maybe move the boat the way that you

do, but I understand traffic. I understand road conditions, I

understand weather patterns. I get all of those things about

moving through this space. And so like, yeah, I, I would

tell you that like his opinion, although valid, it's just not

heard because he doesn't have the title.

He's not the professional, Yeah. Yep.

So, but it's, you know, whatever they, they still manage somehow,

I guess. Yeah, if if total loss of the

ship and all the cargo and everything in it.

And you know, if, if that's a win, I guess, I guess that's

what we got. Yeah, Yeah.

So throughout the rest of this, we see kind of versus 13141516

up to where you started in 20, the storm is happening.

They're throwing things overboard, they're trying to

lighten the ship. There's verse 15 is it could not

head into the wind. So we let her drive.

They're just letting where the ship will go, it will go and and

doing that. Then verse 20, kind of where you

started yesterday when neither sun nor stars appeared for many

days and no small Tempest beat on us, all hope that we would be

saved was finally given up. Can you imagine, Can you imagine

being in the middle of this, you know, 1000 foot wide or thousand

mile wide sea and you know it all these things and at some

point you just look around at all the professionals, you look

at all the capable people and you say it just doesn't matter.

Like we're we're not going to make it.

I mean, I don't know where does that put you mentally and

emotionally And, and maybe then, and I didn't bring this out

yesterday specifically, but like, isn't that exactly where

God needs us? If we are so, so far from

wanting to lean on him, he has to put us in the position of

having no hope left in any resources or any abilities that

we have. And I think it's, it's

unfortunate that people have to meet God that way.

But this is a God who loves us so much that he is so willing

to, to allow these hard things to happen.

So, I mean, we, we talked about like allowing our kids to go

through hardship because that forms their character.

We talked about that a little bit yesterday, but I mean like

think about God as a father right at me as a father.

Like I listen, I have always allowed what we call safe

mistakes. So for example, in our

parenting, we can see that like we know what's going to happen

when our kid makes this choice and even though they can't see

it, we can see it coming that I whole I told you so thing we can

see it coming. But if it is not truly

disastrous for their lives, we have intentionally allowed them

to make those quote UN quote safe mistakes because it is

going to change their character and it's going to create, you

know, some wisdom and it's going to create some dependents in the

right places rather than, oh, I got this, I got this, I got

this. And how much more than does God

do that with us, especially when we're stubborn, especially when

we refuse to see him or repent or acknowledge him.

God is willing. Through love He is allowing

through love us to endure incredibly difficult things so

that we might actually start looking up.

And that is such an important part of God's character is that

He loves you enough to let you suffer.

And again, on the surface without an explanation, that

that doesn't sound right because you're like, oh man, if you love

me, you won't let me suffer. No, I love you so much, I'll let

you suffer. How about that, You know?

And so I, I that's absolutely in God's character traits.

And that's getting to the I told you so moment here, which you

talked about yesterday. But verses 21 and 22 and Acts

27, Paul says, men, you should have listened to me and not

sailed from Crete and incurred this disaster and loss that's

there. And a lot of the time that

sentence feels really good to say Now they already knew that,

right? But but they already knew that

this was a bad idea and they should have listened to Paul

someone someone who's already been punched like you don't you

don't necessarily need to tell them like you should have not

gotten punched right. They they know that it ended

poorly. Right.

In response to that, though, he's on this high horse just for

a second. He also wraps in this message of

hope. I urge you to take heart.

There will be no loss of life among you, but only the ship.

So somehow, though again, Paul was there to tell them not to

press on, they ignore God's advice and did their own thing

in the storm, in the suffering, and God let them be in the

suffering of their own. Well, I mean, they chose to be

in the suffering despite ignoring God's warning, which is

maybe a lot of the time where our suffering comes from.

Oh, I suspect so. Even in that, there's hope

offered here. Right there there's deliverance.

It again sounds strange. Verse 23 For there stood by me

in the night an Angel of God, to whom I belong and to whom I

serve, saying, Do not be afraid. He goes on to tell them how.

Verse 26 I believe God, it will be just as he told me.

However, we must run aground on a certain island.

And is that usually what you do with a boat?

I'm not a sailor, but you don't you don't usually look to beach

it. Right.

No, no, you're not. Probably.

I mean, that's obviously worst case scenario is to hey guys,

let's just go ahead and destroy the ship.

Because another aspect of this that you that no doubt they have

thought about is even if we can run this thing aground and

destroy the ship and get to land somewhere, how will we ever get

off land? We have no guarantees that we

will be able to get another ship, especially with 276 of us.

There aren't just ships around that are.

It's like, oh, hey, we can throw your 276 people on and no big

deal. Like there is so much happening

here that like God is so clearly orchestrating, but man, these

guys, they have to. They're going to have to.

And they ultimately do, not by choice, but through Paul's

faith, through Paul's faith in God, that God will stick to his

word, which is Paul, you must preach the gospel to Caesar.

If God says you must do something, it's going to happen.

So here we go. Let's, let's make a comparison

point. Jonah.

And this moment, OK, God says, hey, Jonah, I need you.

You're going to go tell these people over here that they need

to repent of their evil and their violence.

And Jonah's like, Nah, actually I kind of hate those people and

I would prefer that they burn. So let me not go preach in case

they actually do repent because I don't really want that.

I don't want that for them. So so you compare these two

things and let's let's talk about Jonah while he's on the

sea for a moment, OK? So like what happens to Jonah?

The the, The Tempest, the storm hits the boat.

Jonah is down below. He's snoozing away.

OK, well, what's Paul doing? Paul is actively engaging

everybody on that boat, speaking the gospel, speaking God's

truth, speaking God's wisdom to them the entire time.

He's not passively just like, well, you know what, you're bad,

right? Deal with it.

Wish. She knew what I knew.

Yeah, I wish she, yeah. Whereas Jonah's like, Nah,

whatever. I don't, I, I don't have to care

about this. I'm, I'm just bailing, you know,

So we, we see kind of a polar opposite there.

Maybe the other really interesting thing that we see

that's really opposite is Jonah comes to the point where he

finally actually cares enough about somebody else.

It took him a long time and took a violent, crazy storm for him

to do it, but he finally at some point cares enough about

somebody else to say, you know what?

For the sake of your lives, throw me overboard.

I guarantee if you throw me overboard, give me to the sea,

give me to this Tempest, give me to God who's clearly angry right

now. You'll live.

The rest of you will be safe. Yeah, and, and but he has to

come to the end of himself to be able to even do that.

Whereas Paul, he's he's not saying, hey, throw me overboard.

God's mad at me. Like, no, like God is putting us

in this position so that not only will I get to where I need

to get to because he's guaranteed that, but you're

going to meet him like, and that's the that's the other cool

thing about the Jonah. And this as a parallel, too.

In both cases, the storm, the violence, the potential for

death causes the sailors and Jonah's boat to meet the living

God. And it causes the sailors and

Paul's boat to meet the living God.

So is the storm necessary? You bet it is.

Seems like. It's so necessary, yeah.

Yeah. And what I also think is is

interesting. This just kind of came to me in

reviewing the passage here again.

Somehow Paul's message of hope, it also includes there will be

no loss of life, but only of the ship.

That still sounds like bad news. Like that's still bad news.

OK, we lost the ship. We might be stuck on this island

if if we beach, it might not be able to get off.

And we've already tossed all the cargo.

Our hope of making profit on this journey is also gone.

But the hope in that still highlights the thing that

matters, right? You, you have your life and this

opportunity for Paul not only to preach the gospel, but for you

to, as you just eloquently put it, encounter the living God in

amidst this storm. That's still what matters.

The I, I gosh, I was even talking to someone else about

the rich young ruler this morning, but I just I like it

and I've talked about it before. Well, you.

Should it's a It's a great moment, so.

He asked Jesus, what must I do to be saved, right and go and

sell everything you have, and follow me.

And the young ruler went away, for he had much wealth he

wanted. He went away sad, for he had

much wealth and a lot to give up.

Isn't in a way the same thing is happening here.

It seems like they don't have a choice, but because of their

defiance of God's will at the onset, they now suffered and

struggled through the storm to the point Jesus told the rich

young ruler You, you want you want to end up in heaven and

follow me. OK, Go live your life to the

point where all you have left is me.

And then follow that and let it inform the rest of the things

that make up your life after that.

Right? Like me first and then the

things that come in tow in following me, those will be the

things that make up your life. This is kind of reverse of OK,

you lost all the other things from from your life.

Now all you have is this message of the gospel that Paul is

sharing. All you have is this encounter

with the living God who's saving you in the storm.

So they both kind of ended up in the same place, right?

One one kind of kicking and screaming in defiance of God's

will, and the other one just completely in defiance of God.

He didn't want to go to that place.

He didn't want his life to be in that place.

But sometimes in the storm our way, our life winds up in that

place unwillingly, right? And then we're still met with

the decision and somewhat in the example of Jonah, somewhat in

the there's still defiant, there's still some who are not

convinced, right. You know what, you, you bring up

such an excellent point and it just draws my attention to this

very obvious. Well, it's, it's obvious the way

that Jesus talks about it. Seek God and his Kingdom 1st and

then all these things will be added to you.

Here's what I think that most of us do most of the time, which is

we say, OK, let me get my life right.

So let me get my career in line. Let me get my job straight.

Let me get my family the way I want it, and then I will come

back to church. Think about it.

Think about it, how many families?

And, and this is no offense to anybody, if this was you, like

this was us in some way as well when we were younger.

But like, how many people are like, well, I kind of went to

youth group when I was a teenager, but then like I

started pursuing college or my career or family or this and

this and this. And then by the time I'm in my

late 20s or 30s, like, oh man, I guess I'm kind of thinking about

God now that I've set up these other things in my life so I can

add God to these other things. And it's like, Nope, no, no, no,

no, you got the order all wrong. We, we hold on to God and we

lean on him and we say, this is my purpose.

This is I exist to know and worship him and make him known.

And then God promises who is the owner and sustainer and creator

of everything on the planet. He promises to give you

everything you need after you seek Him first.

But we try and do it in the other order and so many times

that messes us up so badly. It puts everything out of whack.

It takes everything out of its proper priority and its proper

place. And we, you know, in the worst

case scenarios, we end up striving and worshipping those

things our entire lives and never meet God.

You know, where is like, if we start with him, all these things

are going to come anyway. He's he's going to do those

things as we're faithfully like, you know, in a relationship with

him. But do we trust that?

Do we trust that process that God says, OK, this is the order

of operations. And if you follow this order of

operations, I will bless you. I will keep you.

I will doesn't mean that the storms won't come, but like I'm

going to be with you the entire time.

You know, we, yeah, we mess up the order of operations.

Yeah. Yep, and that's and that's just

kind of what jumped out to me there, though.

We messed up the order of operations like that's that's

God's will working in all that too.

He had a plan, He had a destination.

He it was more painful because of how we screwed it up rather

than just kind of follow it, making our own way through His

will rather than just following it from the get go.

And that's the thing, we just experience more pain when when

we mess it up. It doesn't mean that God's

sovereignty won't still exist. His plan is going to be his plan

and ain't nothing's going to change that.

So think about Abraham, for example.

Let's pull back to him. God said, hey, I am going to

make your descendants as numerous as the stars.

And because Abraham got a little impatient, we might say him and

his wife came up with this idea like, Hey, why don't you?

God hasn't come through yet. So why don't you have a, a child

with my servant? And we, if you know anything

about the Bible, you know where that went.

It was they faced a lot of unnecessary difficulty because

they didn't just rest and trust in the fact that God was going

to come through. And so I mean, like, there's so

many examples of that. And I can think of examples of

my own life which we don't need to get into.

But like all those things are there.

Like if we can just manage to put our faith and trust in him,

we will. We will have less storms.

Yeah, they'll come. There's there's still going to

be hardship. We live in a sinful, broken

world. But like, man, we're going to

have less of that. Yeah.

And there's a question that was brought up that I think we'll

get to on the second week of the AMA episodes, but related to

God's will and just how we we'll get into more detail with that.

But just how we discern the spirit of God's voice versus our

own personal voice. And that that story of Abraham

and Sarah, I think is is perfect for that because OK, God

promised that you would have a child.

And at this point, while culturally acceptable, still not

biblically permissible was polygamy.

So like it marriage was still that we that we see examples of

this and this will be maybe a different discussion we can have

too. Just because it was culturally

acceptable does not mean that the that's the way that God drew

it up. Even these even these pillars of

the faith seemingly that was sinful.

That was a sinful thing for Abraham to do so discerning

God's will, God's will versus my fleshly will.

Well this thing that I'm called to and Abraham would have

behooved him to ask himself this in this moment could God

promised me this thing. Hey, I got this really good

idea. I'll go try to have a baby with

someone who's not actually my wife.

Maybe that's what God meant. No, like God doesn't contradict

his own word or his precepts or his his biblical ethic.

So this thing that you're that he's Abraham's trying to jam

this jigsaw puzzle puzzle piece into a space that it doesn't fit

because it doesn't his reasoning doesn't line up with God's word.

No, God's will isn't going to come about by him contradicting

his own precepts. So that just that doesn't make

sense. That instance of action to take.

Of course, it was from Abraham and not from God, because God

doesn't contradict himself in in his will.

And I know that's hard to it's hard to see, but and so just on

a on a basic level, this thing that you want to do or this

thing that you feel like you're called to do, does it go against

scripture? Does it go against God's promise

or how God's character would bring this thing about?

If it does, that's, that's full stop.

You don't, you don't need to worry about that.

If it doesn't, not saying that that's a slam dunk, but but it's

also if you're where there's freedom, right?

We we believe in the freedom outside of Scripture does not

address each and every exact specific situation that we will

encounter right? But there is a prevailing

overarching character and voice of we talk about that like the

voice of God. What does God sound like it is

is does it sound like it's in his character?

Does this line up with how God values life and how God and

Jesus and even Christians or followers, the early disciples,

how they interact with the word, how they teach about God's word

there there's there's a common vein throughout Scripture that

is Christian ethic that informs how we live as Christians in

this day and age now too, right. So start, start there.

You use use scripture to interpret Scripture.

Use Scripture to interpret the decisions you have in your life.

And if it doesn't necessarily specifically yay or nay what's

facing you, Well, if it's not a no sure, give it like give it a

shot. If that's if that's what you

feel called to and you see how it lines up in God's greater

will, but it might not be. There might still be some

struggle in that right, like you might, you might part of the

process and getting you to his will might be a mistake, might

be screwing up, might be experiencing failure or hurt or

storm in that. But it was within His will for

you to learn that, for you to learn from that failure to get

to where He had you intended. Absolutely.

So I want to bring this up because I think during the week

that this text is preached, I think it's one of our Ask Me

Anything episodes that is pre recorded.

But we're coming upon Moses, right?

So get this, God, does God ask the question?

I keep saying that, but it's important.

Ask the question, does God want his people to be oppressed and

in slavery in Egypt? Nope.

No. OK, So what we see early in

Moses's life is that he knows who he is.

He understands that he's a Hebrew.

He's known that his whole life, despite his Egyptian upbringing.

And at some point he decides, you know what?

I don't think my people should be in slavery anymore.

And so I see this guy mistreating this.

So let's start a movement. And he kills an Egyptian

soldier. OK, So does God want, does God

want Moses to commit murder? No.

But does God want his people free?

Yes. Well, we, we see what happens

here. Is that because, yeah, maybe

Moses has God's heart and mind for freedom for his people, but

he doesn't have the methodology in mind.

And so therefore, how do we, great, how do we gauge the

methodology that God wants us to use?

Well, let's Fast forward to Galatians and go to the fruit of

the Spirit list. So if I have a decision that's

not maybe clearly marked in the Bible, I'm like, well, which

way? Which way should I go?

Well, why not use this as a filter, This decision, does it

promote Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness, self-control?

If if the decision that I'm thinking about making does not

encompass those traits of the fruit of the spirit, then I'm

probably not making the godly decision, you know, and so.

If it brings about anger, if it brings about anxiety, if it

brings about revenge, if it brings about even even judgement

to some degree, are those the things that we're supposed to

pursue? If there's, if there's deception

involved, if there's things happening that aren't above

board, it's that's not the way, that's not the ways of God,

right? That's not how he works.

His will. Yeah, you might have.

You might have the proper end result in mind, but if you don't

have the proper process in mind, again, you can even use the

Fruit of the Spirit list to filter the process a little bit.

Man, guess what? You are probably going to end up

you and potentially others. You're going to end up enduring

some hardship that didn't have to be there if you'd done it

God's way in God's time. And again, that goes back to,

you know, all the way back to the Moses thing.

Yeah. God wanted his people free, but

Moses didn't do it God's way, and he didn't do it in God's

time. Therefore, he ended up spending

40 years in obscurity learning that lesson.

Yeah. Yeah, we'll get to that in a

couple weeks. Indeed, we are coming up on the

hour here. Anything else that you want to

jump into here from the end of Acts 27?

Well, I think maybe one last thing that we can probably

pretty quickly talk about is something that maybe we don't

always see in the surface that I actually, I didn't see it on the

surface either, but I was listening to Tim Keller and he

brought this up. He, he, it tells us, well, the

text tells us that God guarantees to Paul that nobody's

going to die. OK, But then you jump forward

and you see the sailors maybe trying to sneak off the boat

because they're like, this is a lost cause.

And Paul then says, hey, if they don't get back here, we're going

to die. So like, how can it be both?

God guarantees that everybody's going to live, but then Paul

comes back and says, well, but if they don't do this, then

we're all going to die. Can it be both like, but is

God's promise that nobody's going to die?

Is that real? Like is he sovereign?

Is he all powerful? Is it his plan?

Or is it down to human choice? We really struggle with this,

don't we? Sure, you know, because here's

the thing. If if we.

Can we manipulate the will of God by our choices?

Yeah, uh huh. Now here's the thing.

So if I believe that God is sovereign in such a way that no

matter what I do, no matter how I act, whatever, it's going to

work out the way He wants it to work out.

So I'll do whatever I want whenever I want, or I'll do

nothing because it's all going to work anyway.

That is a wrong point of view. Another equally in opposite

wrong point of view is I can't trust God to do anything.

I have to do everything myself. Like I, I have to put in all the

work. I have to be Abraham.

I have to make the things happen because God's not going to make

him happen. He's not as powerful and as

sovereign as I think. Both extremes are incorrect.

Both extremes are incorrect. So then you have to ask

yourself, well, which because we tend to think in this almost

like bipolar sense, we think, well, it's either all, it's

either it's either all God or it's either all me.

It can't, it can't be a combination of both.

So an interesting way to think about this is God has an end in

mind, not just in mind that he will exact, he will exact his

end the way he wants it to, but he wants our participation.

He want it. We're not robots.

We are free thinkers with independent willpower.

So like it is a both. And so go back to Acts chapter

Acts 2 · chapter mention

2, for example, where it is absolutely God's plan that Jesus

Christ die for our sins. That's been the plan since

Genesis. Yet Peter can honestly stand up

in front of all those people and say you did this, this is your

fault. How can both be true?

Both can be true because God understanding our hearts

knowing, knowing our like proclivities to violence or

whatever that might look like, He understands those things.

But that is not going to stop his end game plan, right?

It is both and, absolutely. Yeah, no, that's so good.

That's. Well, I can, I can thank Tim

Keller for that insight. I think he probably said it

better than I did, but like I, I had not picked up on that idea

until I listened to him. So if you're not listening to

Tim Keller regularly, do that for yourself.

And he's got a podcast where I think they put out two sermons a

week. The the man was just an absolute

theological genius. His insights are, I talk about

him way too much, I think. But he's the person who I live.

He's the person who I listen to most.

Yeah, personally, yeah. So there you go.

No, I think that's a great influence to model.

He was. He was almost a Lithium brother

and pastor for a few. So close.

I heard that. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Still did much for the modern church, I think, in his theology

and philosophy of the Bible. So absolutely.

Yeah, All right. Before we go, you won't hear us

live for a couple weeks, but you probably wouldn't be able to

tell that much if I hadn't said that.

So we do have the Ask Me Anything episodes, Kristen

sitting in with us on those, and that'll be fun.

Wanted to give you a little sneak peek of what's coming up

next week. Just a little hook.

So take a listen to this. What's the what's the first

question? Kristen's gonna be the question

asker mediator here. And you're I mean, you're

welcome to inject your opinion, especially on the on the funny

ones. Yeah, but.

I mean, this one is really important.

Which Disney Princess would you be and why?

Oh my goodness. All right.

Just going right for it. This.

This is good. I am so excited about this

question. Yeah.

Who? Who would like to go first?

Oh my. Well, I don't oh, man, I can't

take the pasture hat off. I got like my immediate.

So my immediate reaction to this question is none of them because

God made God made me. I know Kristen's shaken her.

That's why, Because God created the man and woman, Kristen.

You're a. Princess, I'm sorry, that's

that's just immediately where it went.

Like that's just not we, we don't we like we never really

had. I'll let Oliver, Oliver's four

sisters, obviously. And I remember there was one

time that like one of the grandmas thought it was cute to

also dress him up and dress to play dress up with his Princess

sisters. And I, I was viscerally mad.

Actually. I was like, no, get him out of

that right now. So anyway, that's my initial

reaction to this question is that I'm not a Princess and I'm

not trying to be 1. So why don't you jump in?

And I I need, I need to, I need to take off like rational

logical binary mat right now and have a problem with that.

He doesn't let my creative imagination flow a little bit

here. OK, I I hope it actually you.

I think you actually like cued me in pretty good with your

explanation of I'm not a Princess, but let me tell you

which Princess I in fact AM. I, in fact, am Wow.

Oh no, well, would be in this scenario.

My apologies, I'm not. I'm not actually.

Clean. Yeah.

So that'll be fun. We'll we'll have a good time

with answering y'all's questions.

That's just a little taste of the hilarity that's in store.

We have some, we have some deeper theological church based

questions too. But yeah, the Princess question

was. Oh my gosh.

That was quite a conversation, so yeah, it'll be great.

Thanks for submitting all your questions.

We will get to as many of them as we possibly can.

If we don't, we'll we'll stash for a later episode or answer

them weekly, something like that.

We do want to get to everything. We appreciate your guys's

participation in that and and love you all as a church

community. We'll see you next week.