Bible Guys Classics: Acts 27 Part 1

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So, Jeff, you remember The Little Mermaid in nineteen eighty nine. Sure,

the first line in the movie, A storm's of ruin.

Okay, well that's actually what happens here, big shipwreck. It's

a mess. So he's Chris and I'm Jeff, and we're

the Bible guys.

So Jeff Chris. Today we're going to be looking at

mail bags.

Oh those are fun.

I wish we had a little jingle that said mailbaggs.

That's right. Clues Yeah, well oh actually, yes, wow, maybe

that's why it was in my mind it might have

been it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, So we watched Blues Clues. Uh uh, yeah,

and then with Steve, right, and then that new guy

just ruined that.

The new guy ruined it. Yeah, yeah, it's not his fault.

But it wasn't his fault. You're right, but Steve is

going to college. That Steve is going to college.

We all cried, we did.

Hey real, Wow, that was rare. Now, mail bags is

basically any question that comes in via email or posting

on the website, whatever it is. And so from Paul

H he says this, have you ever thought about inventing something?

If you have, Oh, what would it be and what

would the main purpose be? Yeah?

Well, hi, Paul H.

I know, right, what a great question.

That's a good question. It's cool man invent something. Well,

if I ever thought of inventing something, don't you think

I would have invented it?

Well, I mean not really. People have good ideas all

the time. I had. I had two good ideas that

I talked that I actually talked about inventing all the time.

The first one was, and this was a long time ago.

I'm talking like I was like twelve years old, thirteen

years old, I thought, why don't they make salt that's colored?

Because now they have pink salt.

And everything else, right, But like I think pink salt

always exists.

I know, I know, but sometimes they do die like green,

you know, like red and green for Christmas or whatever.

But I always thought, like, sometimes you can't see the

salt on your food, so a lot of times I'll

pour them a hand and like sprinkling on the food.

Very clever.

So I thought that, And then the second one was like,

you know, when I was in my early twenties, back

before technology, you know, really sort of took off, right,

So I guess I guess I was in my late twenties,

and I actually I thought to myself, gosh, why don't

they do paperless receipts. Why don't the credit card people

get together? And then every time you use something, it

goes into like a storage somewhere and you could access

it instead of saving receipts. Wow, because I used to

save receipts. Well, now they do that sort of thing. Sure, right, yeah, yeah,

so I could have been very good kazillionaire.

Well I'm sure. Yeah, yes, well you missed it, man,

I wish maybe you missed your calling. I'm not really

like an inventor guy. I never go around thinking, you know,

what they should make or invent. I'm more of an innovator.

I take what's there and go, hey, they should move

this over, you know, two inches, it should be a

little brighter, whatever, this could be done better design in

strengths finders. Have you ever taken the strengths finders test?

So I have maximizer, which is one of those that

you just can't help it. You gotta turn the dial

two degrees over, you gotta flip the swede, you gotta right.

That's me. So I'm not really an inventor, but more

of an innovator.

Okay, Yeah, I've often thought about what it would be

like to invent something that'd be pretty cool.

Yeah.

So a friend up my street, Greg Granger, he lived

right up the street from me. In elementary school. His

father invented the anchor, the patent for the anchor that

the Navy uses. So he actually invented like a better anchor,

a better anchor, and patent it. And guess what, they

got rich and sold their house and they now moved away.

Wow, so he is he is probably still benefiting from me.

So it works, man, It just takes one idea, one

good idea.

Yep.

Ye, Well, good, Chris. That was a good question, by

the way, Paul, I was really good, and it gave

us some more insight into the wonder that is Chris.

Sarbu wonder that is Chris. That's how his brain works, man, Burt.

Reynolds said, that's just part of the wonderfulness of me.

Oh so now you're quitting yourself to Burt Reynolds.

No, no, hey, as long as it's young Burt Reynolds.

Okay, okay, Well, hey, so this this passage is a

neat passage. It's kind of a fun passage on one

side because it's it's almost like a movie moment, right

just it turns into just a mess. But here we go.

It says were chapter.

Yes, did we say that?

I was just saying it as you interrupted me. Yeah,

I'm pretty sure it came out of my mouth.

Version wait wait wait wait, version ladies and gentlemen en.

Yes, yes, so as I was saying before I was

so rudely interrupted Acts Chapter twenty seven. We're just going

to read the first twenty six verses today. It says,

when the time came we set sail for Italy. Paul

and several other prisoners were placing the custody of a

Roman soldier named Julius, a captain of the Imperial Regiment. Aristarchus,

a Macedonian from Thessalonica, was also with us. We left

on a ship whose home port was someplace on the

northwest coast of the province of Asia. I don't even

know how to say that a drama team. You sure,

I don't know. It was scheduled to make several shops

at ports along the coast of the province for any

of our listeners from that town. We're sorry that I

couldn't pronounce it. The next day, when we docked inside

on Julius was very kind to Paul and let him

go a short a visit with friends so they could

provide for his needs. Putting out to sea from there,

we encountered strong headwinds that made it difficult to keep

the ship on course, so we sailed north of Cyprus

between the island and the mainland, keeping to the open sea.

We passed along the coast of Solicita in Amphilia, landing

in Myra in the province of Lycia. There the commanding

officer founded an Egyptian ship from Alexandria that was bound

for Italy and he put us on board. We had

several days of slow sailing, and after great difficulty, we

finally neared Sinaidas, but the wind was against us, so

we sailed across to Crete and along the sheltered coast

island past the Cape of Salomony. We struggled along the

coast with great difficulty and finally arrived at fair Havens,

near the town of Lasia. We had lost a lot

of time. The weather was becoming dangerous for sea travel

because it was so late in the fall, and Paul

spoke to the ship's officers about it. Men, he said,

I believe there's trouble ahead if we go on shipwreck,

loss of cargo, and dangered our lives as well. But

the officer in charge of prisoners listened more to the

ship's captain the owner, than the ball And since fair

Haven's was an exposed harbor a poor place to spend

the winter, most of the crew wanted to go on

to Phoenix, farther up the coast to Crete and spend

the winter there. Phoenix was a good harbor with only

a southwest to northwest exposure. I think that was before

it was in the desert. When a light wind began

blowing from the south. The sailors thought they could make it,

so they pulled up an anchor and sailed close to

the shore of Crete, but the weather changed abruptly in

a wind of typhoon strength called a nor'easter, burst across

the island and blew us out to sea. The sailors

couldn't turn the ship into the wind, so they gave

up and let it run before the gale. We sailed

along the sheltered side of a small island named Quada,

where the great difficulty we hosted, or where with great

difficulty we hoisted aboard the lifeboat being towed behind us.

Then the sailors bound ropes around the whull of the

ship to strengthen it. They were afraid of being driven

across the sandbars assertis off the African coast, so they

lowered the sea anchor to slow the ship and were

driven before the wind. The next day, as guille force

winds continued to batter the ship, the crew began throwing

the cargo overboard. The following day, they even took some

of the ship's gear and threw it overboard. The terrible

storm raged for many days, blotting out the sun and

the stars, until at last all hope was gone. Know

what had eaten for a long time. Finally Paul called

the crew together and said, men, you should have listened

to me in the first place and not left crete.

You would have avoided all this damage and loss. But

take courage. None of you will lose your lives, even

though the ship will go down. For last night, an

angel of the God to whom I belong and whom

I served, stood beside me, and he said, don't be afraid, Paul,

for you will surely stand trial before Caesar. What's more,

God and his goodness has granted safety to everyone's sailing

with you. So take courage, for I believe God it'll

be just as he said. But we will be shipwrecked

on an island. There you go. What a mess, you know?

This checker is one of the reasons why I actually

am glad that you are the one reading.

Oh all these words, I can't pronounce them.

I mean, they're just crazy.

They are real places. This is one of the beauties

of Luke's writing. And we've commented on this before. I

remember Luke is writing the Book of Acts. As a

matter of fact, apparently he's on this boat ride with Paul,

which and he uses, Yeah, he says, we so Luke

is writing, and Luke is so precise, and this is

what's interesting. He tells you the exact places. When a

problem comes up, he provides a solution. So instead of

going out around, we went in between the islands. You know,

it came to the point where it was the wrong

time of year. We were getting that bad time of

the year. When said that all the people who were

reading would have known these particulars, right, they would have

known these specific things, And it just gives a sense

of authenticity that you don't get in fiction. Right. It's

the precision is very important, and for Luke especially, And

so when he's that precise about islands and sailing weather

and where the best harbors were and the fact that

fair Haven's was an open harbor, not a great place

to winter, all those things. When he's that precise on

those things, then when I go back and look about

what he wrote about the resurrection, Yeah, as he mentions

the witnesses of Christ, as he talks about Paul's miracles

and the things that he did, it gives you so

much more confidence that Luke is is writing with authenticity

and accuracy, and that this story is rooted in time

and in place. It's not just some fictional thing. This

is rooted in a real time, in a real place,

in real circumstances.

Yeah. And it's interesting too because he said it's dangerous

to sail because it's so late in the fall. And

so what's great is is that we know that, you know,

it's very dangerous to sail back in those days with

an overcast because they didn't have a compass back then, right,

so they only use the stars to navigate. So if

you think about it, you know this took place, by

the way in October, and so you know, September was

actually pretty dangerous. November was treacherous. So this is right

sort of like right there in between, like we may

get lucky, you know.

We want to shoot through in the last trip.

Yes, and if we're skilled sailors then we probably have

you know, made this run before. You know, even though

that it's it's pretty dangerous. So that's that's the context there,

because it's hard for us to believe that the stars

are anything more than just something to gaze at it now,

but back then it was essential for people navigating ships.

So so that's why it was dangerous. And I think

it's also interesting that Paul had more of an insight

about the danger than the actual captain, did, you know.

And so it's it's believed, like my notes here, my

study notes say it could have been that God gave

him some insight and said, like, this is this is

going to be a dangerous trip. And so Paul, you know,

he was being held captive. He was in house arrest

and Julius was the name of the Roman guard assigned

to him, and they didn't really know Paul. Although Julius

begins his journey with Paul and spends two years, as

we're about to see, in this house arrest and actually

Julius gives Paul incredible leeway eventually and starts listening to him.

But at this point he really didn't know Paul, and

they I don't think that they understood just who it

was that was giving them advice, right, and so they said, oh,

who's this guy? Yeah, whatever, you know, because they're trying

to get to Rome, because Paul appealed to Rome, right.

Yeah. Well, by verse twenty one, after the shipwreck happens,

or before the shipwreck, happens. But when it looks like

all hope is lost, Paul goes, listen, I told you so, right,

And it's not like you guys are jerks. It's just

saying listen, just to remind you. God has given me

some insight and you can trust that insight. It turns

out what God says is going to happen is going

to happen. And from that point on they really began

to pay closer attention to him. So there's a few

interesting things in here. One and here's the big devotional component.

I think this is because we talked about this before.

When we're reading through Paul's epistles, the Letters to the Churches,

there's so much theology there. It just goes from theological concept,

theological concept and instruction insights, yeah, and how to live

as a follower of Jesus, all those kinds of things.

As you read through the Book of Acts, there's a

lot of just narrative like this. This is a narrative.

It's just a story. Year it's a story, and it's important.

God decided he wanted that story in the Bible. And

so there's times in the Bible where both Peter and

Paul mentioned that these stories were given to us. For example,

So anytime you come across a large, large passage like

that and it's name and names of towns you can't

pronounce in telling you details that you're like, why is

the time? Is what you look for? Is? So what

is this an example to me? For what example should

I be extracting there? And I think that the big

picture here is even if you're a saint, because we

call him Saint Paul, Now everybody who's a believer in

Christ is a saint. But you know what I'm saying,

we tend to elevate Paul like he should get special

treatment from God. Even if you're Saint Paul. It's not

always smooth sailing, right, right, So we expect that when

we follow our Jesus, everything gets better and easier. But here,

for Paul, that's not what happened. Right. Nature still happens.

The things in the in the universe are still going forward.

So a friend of mine, who is a counselor, who

used to counsel our staff of the church, used toore

cut Uh, his name is Jack, and he said, uh,

he said, listen, he goes, You're always going to have

a storm. He talked about the storms of life, and

here's what he said. He said, a major, major upsetting

and uprooting storm happens on the average statistically. This is actually,

you know, based on study, about every seven years there

is a in your life. In your life, there's a

life changing type of event that happens like every seven years.

The death of a parent, major breakup, yeah, move, moving.

Yep, all those things. And so he says, he goes, so,

chances are you're either just coming out of a storm,

or you're going into the storm, or you're in the storm.

Right right, So think about that, and all of us

want to be at that three and a half year

mark where where man, it's just smooth hailing. That's what

we want. We long for those days. That's heaven, right right,

but we long for paradise.

Yeah yeah, so so, and I'm not sure you know.

And by the way, those are those are major events.

So that's not counting the little thing in our lives,

you know that. You know, Oh this lady at work,

Oh she's just giving me the hardest time, and she's

she's going to be the death of me, you know

that kind of thing. So, so I think that that's

interesting because you know, we have to understand that we

need to prepare this in this walk, in this life

that God calls us her like like, I think that

most of life is having to deal with things that

we don't want to deal with.

Absolutely. So you know, Paul comes to the conclusion at

the end. He's not really saying I told you so,

I told you so, like rubbing it in. He's just

trying to say, hey, listen, you can trust me when

I tell you these things because God's given me this insight.

And this is one of the reasons why you invest

in faith, that you keep investing and growing faith comes

by hearing and hearing by the word of God, according

to the Book of Romans, and so we need to

spend time in God's word. It builds our faith. The

experiences in our life that we survive that we make

it through builds our faith. And so he's very confident

that God is going to bring them through the problem. Right.

He's not going, oh my, what are we going to do?

Which he's not freaking out, he's not running around. He

kind of becomes a rock in the middle of all

of this stress. And he's saying, and then God gave

him confidence too. Right, the angel came and said, listen,

nobody's gonna die. It's gonna get rough. This is gonna

be awful, right, so embrace it. But nobody's gonna die.

You're gonna survive this. And so if you knew a

bad thing was coming, but you know you're gonna survive, Okay,

that's very different. Then you kind of just the Navy

seals say, embrace the suck. That's what they say. Right,

So it's gonna be bad. This is gonna be bad,

Just embrace it, go through it because you're gonna live

through it. Right, You're gonna push through. Your training is

gonna bring you this, bring through this. And it's kind

of the same thing here. I think that's what he's

trying to say, is it's not gonna be nice. It's

gonna be rough, but we're gonna make it. And it

gives you so much more confidence when you find out

you have cancer, when you find out you're gonna lose

your job, or when you can find out that there's

some kind of crisis that's happening in your life, to

go to be able to rely on the fact that

God's got this right, God's got it. We're gonna go

through it. But God's got it.

So if you, if you'll allow me and just to

kind of beer with me through this example. I was

at physical therapy because I tore my rotator cuff on

my shoulder, and uh, this guy, you know, the guy

who owns the place, comes up and says, hey, he goes,

would you be up for dry needling? It will help

you with your pain? And I and I was like, hey,

what's dry needling? And he's like, it really helps, and

then he goes, are you afraid of needles? And even

though I needles, I said, no, I'm not afraid of needles.

No, I'm not afraid of Yeah.

So she comes out and and uh and she's like, oh,

and by the way, I should have I should have

known because then he says to the lady who's going

to do it? He says, hey, he seems to be

up for it.

Oh yeah, yeah, anytime a doctor says he seems to

be up for something.

And I was like, yeah, buckle up because pressure's coming.

So anyway, so she takes up these needles.

Feel a little pressure, I'm good under pressure.

Pressure is the very definition of pain. So Anyway, the

point is is that he took she took needles, and

she starts sticking them like acupuncture and my shoulder what

and when.

She stuck it in, she just stick them in the surface.

Well no, no, no, she goes, she goes, you're gonna

feel me drive it all the way down into the muscle.

So she sticks me and then she like starts driving

it down and it felt like it went down three inches.

Did it feel like she was stabbing you?

I mean it was, you know, she was great. But

the point is is.

That you know, I didn't do anything. They just were

back in the back room laughing.

Right. Well, it was. It was a weird sensation. And

then she goes, when I let go, you know, you

won't feel it, and she was right, like I felt

it was there, but it wasn't like painful anymore. Well,

she stabbed me five times in the fifth when I

jumped out of my chair, I was like, oh, She's like,

I'll use the thinner needle in the same place she

stabbed me. So finally I'm sitting there and going and

then she's like, now I'm gonna look electricity up to it.

So she looks electricity up to the things, and then

she turns it up and says, I'm gonna increase the intensity,

and so my my shoulders went bump, bump, bump, like this.

Were you in an episode of The Princess Bride. No,

there's out of the machine.

Yeah yeah, yeah, so.

You've been tortured.

As one day goes high as level five. But I

wouldn't know what that would do to you.

Nobody's ever survived.

So anyway, whatever, what end up happening was she said, hey,

you know, go as high as you can without you know,

without thinking it's unbearable. So I'm thinking, what is this?

What is going on? So she turns it up, and

finally I get to the place where I'm like, okay, okay, okay,

right there, I think I could bear it in any

higher it'd be unbearable. So my shoulder's thumping, right and

every time it's thumping, it's like it feels like it's

being stabbed, which it is like five times with five

needles and so and then I said, okay, right there,

right there, And then.

She said, that was your max. That's my max. That's

all you could handle.

That was my max. And then she says to me which,

by the way, they didn't even tell me any of this.

They didn't tell me electricity, what was happening?

Then tell me anything?

And then she goes, okay, I'll let you sit there

for fifteen minutes.

So you pushed it your max all the way.

Yeah, and then she leaves and says fifteen minutes. Oh.

She hands me a bell, and I thought I was

going to ring that bell like thirty thousand times. I

was like, I can't handle it. So it's going thump, dump, dump,

and you know, it feels like it's being stabbed every thump.

And then here's here's the fun. That's the fun part

of the story. The here's the meaning of the story.

And this is honest to goodness truth. Right about seven

minutes in, I actually thought to myself, I cannot survive

any longer, right, I'm just surviving, like by the second here,

I cannot take this any longer. And here's what I

thought of. I thought of Navy seals.

Oh yeah, I did.

I thought I thought of Navy seals. And I thought

to myself, wait a minute, I'm comparing this pain to

what before they stuck in my shoulder. But what if

I compared this pain to like, you know, like what

a man should be able to bear or a human

should be able to bear. And so I actually said

to myself, this is bearable and I can handle this.

Are you trying to tell me that other people can

do this and I can't do this. I'm just as

strong as other people. And so I changed my attitude

and I said, I wonder if a Navy seal would say, ooh,

take it out of my arm right, like they would

never do it right right? And I swear to you

that's what I thought of. I thought of Navy seals.

And would you know, I promise you that at that point,

after that, I was like, this is this is fine.

It's bearable. It's easy. Yeah, it's not wasn't easy, but

like I felt like it was pretty easy to.

Knowing that you can survive. A lot of it is mental.

It is mental.

It's so. Chuck Swindall one of my favorite Bible pastors preachers.

He's going to be ninety in October, but I mean

he was a dynamic through my lifetime growing up. He

has a book called life is ten percent what happens

to you and ninety percent how you respond? Right? What

a great title, right, and that's true. So we get

freaked out about what's happening sometimes and we convince ourselves

in our minds. We convince ourselves, I can't make it

through this. Yeah, But then when you make that pivot

and you go, you know what, I can make it through.

That's right. It's just what your brain is telling you.

What you tell yourself is what's probably going to happen.

So when you tell yourself I can't make it, you can't.

But when you tell yourself, you know what, it's only

five more minutes, I can make it. That was my

wife the first time we were going to have our

first child, and Bonnie was nervous. She's like, I just

don't know. I don't know I can live through this.

And I was really flippant, and I'm like, what do

you mean. At the time, it's like seven billion people

on the planet, seven billion other women have gone through this. Wow,

And she goes, it's.

Easy for you to say, hey man, you have the gift,

my friend, the gift of them.

But was that true? It was true? Of course, every

person you see say this is what people went through.

It's just quite possibly the worst thing to say at

that moment.

Yes it was, Yes, it was. It was horrible. It

was the dumbest thing. But in my mind, when I

find when I find myself facing something like that, I've had.

I've had twenty sets of stitches. Wow, I'm just a

little clumsy, and you know, the first couple of times

you're freaking out somebody's poking thread through you. By the

end you're like, here, you want me to do it?

And so I had a nurse one time. She was

getting ready to do some stitches on my hand. I

cut myself with the saw and she's going rey to

do and the guy was going to do it, and

then he said, hey, we have a new nurse. She's

never done stitches. Could she do it for you? Sure,

it's on my hand. I don't care how it looks.

So she comes in and she looks so nervous, you know,

and I'm like, calm on her down, it's gonna be okay.

And she says, why are you so calm? This is horrible.

I said, this is my twentieth set of stitches, right,

so here, just don't worry about and it's going to

need to be a little bit deeper. And the guy

who's teaching her is laughing because I'm helping guide her

through watching her sew me up. Well, the reason why

that wasn't scared to me is because that was my

twentieth time right to have those stitches right. So it's

gonna pinch a little bit. Okay, you know you get

all this stuff. Once you've experienced something, you're gonna be okay. Well,

we know Paul went through three shipwrecks, right, right, and

so this is this is one of them, and so

it's gonna be okay. And I think that there is

a lot to be said about trusting that God's in control.

That life is not always going to be smooth sailing.

It wasn't for Saint Paul, it's not going to be

for us, but we can trust that God's in control.

Well, that's a great place to end in a great

message out of this passage. So we will see you

next time on the Bible guys.

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