Acts 28:1-11
Amen. You can be seated. Please
turn in your copy of God’s word to Acts chapter 28. It can be
found in the pew Bibles on page 937. Our reading today will be
verses one through 10 and then just the tip of verse 11 that
speaks of the timeframe. The apostle and his traveling
companions were on the island. Next week, next Sunday will be
our last Sunday in the book of acts. And then what we’ll plan
to do if the Lord allows us to make a, uh, a zip through the
epistles of Paul and we’ll look at them in order that he wrote
them. So that will have us begin in
a couple of weeks with the little book of Galatians. Let’s give
our attention now to God’s word. Acts chapter 28 beginning at
verse one. After we were brought safely
through, we then learned that the island was called Malta.
The native people showed us unusual kindness for they kindled a fire
and welcomed us all because it had begun to rain and it was
cold. When Paul had gathered a bundle
of sticks and put them on the fire, a viper came out because
of the heat and fastened on his hand. When the native people
saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another,
no doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the
sea, justice has not allowed him to live. He, however, shook
off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. They were
waiting for him to swell up or suddenly to fall down dead. But
when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune had come
to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a God. Now
in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the chief
man of the island named Publius, who received us and entertained
us hospitably for three days. It happened that the father of
Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery. And Paul visited him
and prayed and put his hands on him and healed him. 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 set
sail, they put on board whatever we needed. And after three months,
it speaks of them setting sail, but it gives us the duration
of his time on the island. Let’s look to God in prayer.
Lord, we thank you that Luke, the physician, the companion
of Paul was carried along by the Holy Spirit to write down
this eyewitness account of such a great work of your hand to
save your servant, Paul, so that he might soon be landed on the
shores of Rome, where he might give testimony to the emperor
of the goodness of God in Christ. And where for years he may teach
others and Preach the gospel to those who will come in here.
Lord, let us, with great joy, receive your word. Let us, with
great anticipation, hear it and lay it up in our lives, put it
into practice in our lives. Hear us and help us. We make
our prayer in the name of Christ, amen. Sometime back in the life of
the apostle Paul, he spent some time, I believe on his second
missionary journey, in the great city of Corinth, and remember
we spoke of how he wrote them four letters. When we come to
Galatians in a few weeks, that’s a pretty rough letter. Who has
bewitched you, that’s made you believe another gospel, he’ll
say to the Galatians. Well, to the Corinthians, he
had to write four letters. We have two of them in our Bibles,
and they were all four pretty rough letters, we might call
them the nastograms, right? He yelled at them in the letters
because of their faithlessness, their depravity, their sin, their
wickedness, and their disorder. Well, at the end of 2 Corinthians,
which would have been written from Ephesus later in his missionary
journey, He gets into this contest in a sense with his words with
what are called the traveling apostles, or as he refers to
them, the super apostles. Maybe some of you will remember
pep rallies from your high school days. You know, in one side of
the gymnasium says, we’ve got spirit. Yes, we do. What does
the other side say? We’ve got more. How about you?
And back and forth, back and forth. And so these pep rallies
are meant to, you know, who’s louder, us or us or them? Well,
you can get the sense of this with Paul in a contest of words
with these super apostles. These super apostles come with
worldly wisdom. They come with wealth. They come
with shiny pinstripe suits and they stay in nice hotels and
they ride in nice vehicles. Sort of sounds like modern day
TV preachers a bit, doesn’t it? And the apostle Paul comes in
humility. He comes as a servant of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And at the end of second Corinthians,
he lists as a badge for the sake of the Corinthian church, his
hardships, which he has endured up until that point. And he begins
by telling early in his ministry, I had to sneak out of Damascus.
I was let down out of a window in a basket, like loaves of bread
or a pile of fish headed to the market. And then he speaks about
all of his imprisonments, his beatings with rods from the Romans,
Five times he received from his own Jewish people, the 39 lashes,
the same as Jesus received before his crucifixion. He says, I was
often near death. I was stoned to death and left
for dead. Five times he was shipwrecked. And that doesn’t include the
one he just now crawled out of. This is the next one. He was
adrift during one of these earlier shipwrecks for a day and a night
at sea clinging to a piece of driftwood. He was always in danger
as he traveled by roadway, danger of rivers and robbers, danger
from his own people, danger from Gentiles, danger when in the
cities, danger when out in the wilderness or the countryside.
He was in danger from the sea. He was in danger from false teachers. He was in danger because of the
hard labor, the hard toils for the sake of the gospel, which
spent his body. He suffered many hardships, many
sleepless nights. He went without food. He was
hungry and he was thirsty. He was faced with cold and even
exposure. And to cap off all of the pressures
and the hardships the apostle endured, he says, there was the
daily pressure and anxiety of your spiritual care, your Christian
well-being. And we come to a passage where
the list has grown. He’s in another shipwreck. He’s
lost at sea for a couple of weeks. He lands on what some might say
would be a deserted island. It’s not, there are people. But
the list has grown. He spent two years in the Caesarean
jail. And now we can add to the list
a snake bite. The apostle Paul says to the
Corinthians, look, I serve Jesus whatever it takes. These others,
they’re imposters, they’re peddlers of human wisdom, but I come to
you with the wisdom of almighty God. And our passage so wonderfully
tells us that Paul and his companions were brought safely through the
storm. Our passage so wonderfully tells us that the people of the
island of Malta showed them unusual kindness. Our passage speaks
of justice, but it also gives us a glimpse of how we ought
to, as Christians, help and bless others. So for a few moments,
let’s think through each of these. First, Paul. was brought safely
through. He spent a couple of weeks in
the hostile and angry sea, and now he’s got his feet on firm
ground among hospitable islanders. Two awful weeks at sea where
they saw neither sun nor moon nor stars. They had not their
bearings. They drifted and did not know
where they were headed. They could not see. And That
passage of Acts chapter 27 describing the storm and the shipwreck says,
and so it was that all were brought safely to land. 276 men aboard
that ship. They touch land for the first
time in probably 20 days. 276 men see the ground. They see other human beings. They have the promise of food
and shelter and care. They’ve eaten bread once in the
last 15 days. And can you imagine what it looked
like as they stormed the beach of Malta? As they cast themselves
on the land, they came these souls who had been lost at sea.
Some years ago, maybe back in 2009, we all, Probably remember
well the flight that landed on the Hudson River in New York. 155 people on board. The plane
took off and birds took out their engines. And so gliding around
New York City, the wise pilot was able to find a place to land
and to glide that airplane into the river. And we remember the
images of the people standing on the wings, the plane just
bobbing there in the water, and the ferry boats and the jet skis
and the helicopters and anybody and everybody came and rescued
them, all 155 people saved. Perhaps when you take a airplane
for travel and you’re like many who when the plane hits the runway,
you take that collective sigh of relief. My dad was telling
me recently when he was in college, he took a trip to Russia back
when it was not Russia. I guess it was the USSR and they
flew out of Russia and landed in Helsinki, Finland to refuel
the plane. And he said the whole plane broke
out in an ovation and applause. They were out of enemy territory
and on safe land and friendly boundaries. Well, God promised,
you remember, God promised to bring Paul to Rome and an angel
came to him that night in prison back in Jerusalem when the angry
mob wanted his neck. God said, you will go to Jerusalem.
You will testify to Caesar. You will preach the gospel and
proclaim my name there. And God does get him to Rome,
that’s next week. But what God promises, God fulfills. When God gives his word, he keeps
his word. We as Christians can think of
a couple places where his word is given to us. Psalm 23, the
Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie
down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still
waters. He prepares a table in the presence
of my enemies. He anoints my head with oil.
My cup overflows, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house
of my God forever. He promises to get us to heaven, but there
will be peaks and valleys and shadows and bright days. There
will be enemies and hardships, losses and crosses. But Psalm
23 is something we can hold to. How about Psalm 91? He who dwells
in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the
Almighty. God’s wings are over us. And yes, life has speed bumps. Yes, life has hardships. God
sometimes takes us on the scenic route or perhaps the not so scenic
route. But we remember the promises
of God when He calls us He also keeps us, and then he brings
us all the way home. We may get there bruised and
scarred and beaten, but Paul here is brought safely through.
And God’s promises to us assure us that he will bring us safely
through. Life in this world may not be
rosy, and the hardships of life may take us straight to heaven,
but at least we’ll be there in his presence and shall remain
there forever. This life is not all there is.
So they’re brought safely through. The second thing our passage
shows us is that the people show Paul and his traveling companions
unusual kindness. Usually when we think of an island
at sea, usually when we think of a shipwreck and an island,
we think of Robinson Crusoe and there’s cannibals all around. Usually when we think of being
lost at sea and rescued onto an island, we find ourselves
worried about more evils that may befall us. Well, on these
islands, they find great mercy. On September the 11th of 2001,
there were approximately about 7,000 people
or so flying into the United States from Europe. And their
planes needed to be grounded. We didn’t know who, what, when,
where was next. And so there was a little island
called Gander in Newfoundland, an island up above Nova Scotia
in Canada. And all these planes were grounded
on this little bitty town’s airstrip. And so all of a sudden, a town
of 7,000 became a town of 14,000. And it’s interesting if you look,
I’m not sure which television station produced the documentary,
but I remember seeing it in the last year. The book that was
written was called The Day the World Came to Town. And you can imagine what it was
like for a little town. 7,000 people to have 7,000 more
people. They put people in schools. They put them in gymnasiums.
They fed them in cafeterias. Everybody, all hands on deck,
had to provide food and shelter and clothing. And when you watch
the interviews, you’ll see the headshots of people who said,
These were other human beings. They came. It wasn’t their choice.
It wasn’t our choice, but we let them use our showers. We
let them use our washers and our dryers. We, we gave them
whatever they needed. I forget how long these folks
stayed, but can’t you imagine a similar situation on the Island
of Malta, 276 people who were lost at sea. Now we’re on dry
land. These were wet and hungry and
and probably half insane and for sure giddy, dirty, wet, smelly
sailors, prisoners, soldiers, whoever was on that ship. And
they were welcomed. Incidentally, the island of Malta,
which was sometime in the past history, maybe a thousand BC,
about the time of King David, was inhabited by the Phoenicians.
And in the Phoenician language, the city or the name Malta simply
means refuge. How appropriately named. There on the island of Malta,
there is on the north side a bay called St. Paul’s Bay. It’s where
they believe Paul and his ship landed. And incidentally, as
you would have it, people get a little superstitious, about
30 feet under the water in St. Paul’s Bay, I’m not sure if it’s
still there or not. There’s a statue of Jesus looking
up and they call it the Christ our Savior statue. Apparently,
these statues placed around the world by Roman Catholics in places
where people have been lost or rescued at sea. And so this this
story, this little account in the life of St. Paul is known
all throughout the world and all throughout church history.
Well, as they arrive on the island, it’s raining and it’s cold. They’re
sailors and they’re soldiers and they’re prisoners. And you
can imagine there’s triage. Who are you? What do you need?
And they first build a fire. It gives them warmth. It gives
them light. It lets them all check in. Can you imagine? The
scripture tells us all 276 were accounted for, but there must
have been a nose count. There must have been a head count,
especially of the prisoners, you’ll remember, The soldiers
wanted to kill before the boat landed. If a Roman soldier lost
a prisoner, it was his own neck. It was his own life that would
be given in return. And so what a wonderful picture
we are given in Luke’s account of this rescue from the sea.
You know, Jesus, Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan.
Remember there was the priest and there was the Levite and
they walked past the man who fell among robbers and was laying
there on the side of the road, left for dead. The priest passed
by, the Levite passed by, but the Samaritan, we get the good
Samaritan. Remember the Samaritans were
hated when the Northern tribes were taken out of Israel over
to Assyria, they repatriated the area and those people that
live there, the peoples of the land, they were derogatorily
called. or the Samaritans. And Jesus
shows that it’s the Samaritan who meets the needs of the man
who fell among the robbers. And so we say today, so-and-so
was a good Samaritan. I was stuck on the side of the
road. They helped me with my flat tire. They came to me when
I was in need. And we remember Jesus teaching,
who is my neighbor? Well, it’s one who is in need. We remember the two tables of
the law. We’re to love God and we’re to love our neighbors. And sometimes, you know, Christians
aren’t so good at it. I remember my wife’s college
roommate was a waitress working her way through college. And
she said, the Christians are the worst. I work hard and I
wait their table. I bring them their food and they
leave me a $20 bill. Well, until I open it and it’s
a gospel track made to look like a $20 bill. Don’t do that. That’s
how people make a living. But Christians are sometimes
the worst and we ought to be the best. I don’t know if the
irony has hit you yet, but these men, these prisoners, these soldiers,
these sailors all landed from off the sea, leaving everything
behind. They’ve got nothing. And it says
that these Islanders provided them with everything they need.
And it’s going to say even for their three, after three months
for their journey to Rome, Our passage tells us these were barbarians. These were the simple people
we would probably say in our parlance, these were rednecks,
right? These were just everyday people.
And they show them the common decency of humanity. We live
in a world today and we say, where’s the decency? Where are
the Boy Scouts? Who’s gonna help the proverbial
little old lady across the street, right? It’s all gone. Well, the Christians, the blood
bought people who bear the name of Jesus ought to be the kindest
and the sweetest and the most generous and giving and helpful
people in this world. But in every human being, there
is written the law of God in our hearts, and we ought to serve
God with all that we have. Well, God has brought them safely
through. God has given them an unusual
welcome by these islanders. The third thing this passage
mentions, and perhaps it will seem strange to you, but it’s
the concept of justice. Paul washed ashore a prisoner. He probably was wearing chains.
I imagine in the hustle and bustle of everybody getting to shore,
these soldiers that were attached to each prisoner wanted to know,
where’s my guy? I imagine the people of the island
began to know some of these people are criminals. Some of them are
prisoners. And there must be, because this
is a Roman colony, there must be some place to keep them. Have
you got a jail cell? Have you got a prison? Have you
got a strong box where we can put them? Well, their lives were
spared because of the centurion who loved Paul. And as they’re
gathering wood for the fire, Paul too is gathering wood. He’s
laying wood on the fire. And as he lays a pile of sticks,
a viper, a cold-blooded animal, remember it’s winter, it’s rainy,
it warms up in the fire, it latches onto his hand. And these folks
who are, well, maybe superstitious, or they’ve got their pantheon
of Roman gods, They look at Paul and say, he must be a murderer. And if the sea did not bring
forth vengeance, if the sea did not bring forth justice, then
now it is the snake. It is the viper. It is the venomous
animal. You begin to see, you begin to
understand their worldview. We’ve got all these gods and
each of these gods represents certain phenomena or activity
in this world. He’s going to get his now. He’s
going to suffer for his murderous acts. Well, the Bible here tells
us no misfortune came to Paul. He shook the snake off and into
the fire. He suffered no harm. He was He
was a saved man. He was saved on the Damascus
road when God in Christ appeared to him and said, Saul, you’re
persecuting me. He appeared to him by his word
and by his grace and justified him and sanctified him and adopted
him and set him apart for this gospel ministry to the Gentiles
that for sure includes the island of Malta, the sailors on the
ship, and soon the city of the Roman empire, Rome itself. Well, he’s a wicked man. Yes. He’s a murderer. Yes. Remember breathing, breathing
threats and approving even at the stoning of Stephen. He’s the chief of centers. but
he’s received a different kind of justice. And we don’t know
what Paul said on this island. We don’t know if he preached
or evangelized. We have to assume he probably
did. The Bible is silent here, but he speaks of a different
justice. He speaks of the sins of the
people placed on the head of Jesus, the wrath of God being
poured out. on Jesus for the sins. And now
Paul says, I am an ambassador for Jesus Christ. I represent
the King of heaven and I implore you be reconciled to God. And so there’s a sense in this
passage of divine justice, not Roman or Greek justice, but God’s
justice. And perhaps it is by miracle.
Some will argue, oh, this wasn’t a poisonous snake. There’s none
on the island today. But if we take God at his word,
this was a viper, a poisonous animal. And God saved Paul from
him so that he might go to Rome. Well, we also have in this passage
one last little theme to consider, and it’s the theme of helping
and blessing others. Our passage speaks of the chief
man of the island, Publius. He’s probably the governor of
this Roman colony. His father has dysentery. Now,
my mother always taught me, don’t talk about dirty, gross things
in public, but dysentery is not fun, and it can go on for months,
and it can get better, and it can come back with a vengeance,
as we might say. Well, it’s a good thing Dr. Luke is there. They discovered
on the island of Malta that when you drink the goat’s milk, there’s
a bacteria in it and it’s not good for humans and it causes
this great sickness. And perhaps Dr. Luke recognized
some of these things, but it was the apostle Paul who could
visit and pray and he could lay hands and he could heal not only
the father of this governor, but all who heard on the island,
our passage says, came. and were healed by the apostle
Paul. When you go to places as a believer
in Jesus Christ, when I go to places as a minister of the gospel,
we bring the presence of Jesus. We don’t live in apostolic times,
so don’t go around bopping people on the head and trying to heal
them. We believe those things ended with apostolic times, but
we do believe God has raised up people who bear his image
to go to medical school, we believe God has raised up doctors and
lawyers and butchers and bakers and candlestick makers. And so
perhaps in God’s sovereignty, you receive help and blessing
from the hand of someone who God has made to help with the
maladies of the fall. And when you’re a believer in
Jesus, you bring the presence of Christ with you, perhaps you
sow seeds of the gospel. We don’t know if Paul preached
or evangelized or anyone got saved here. We aren’t told. We
can assume the best. But also admit we know nothing,
but in some way, shape or form, don’t you see the apostle Paul
was a help and a blessing to the people of the island, just
as they were a help and blessing to Paul and the people of the
boat. So also they were a help and blessing to them. Encourage
you to Visit people, pray with them, pray for them, take them
to the throne of grace, take them up in your prayers to the
great physician. The blessings of the covenant
that God has given and bestowed on you, they drip, we might say,
and there are there’s spillover and others receive it. We read
of this in first Corinthians seven when it says the unbelieving
spouse. is sanctified by the believing
spouse. Unbelieving children are sanctified by their believing
parents. Or we remember the great story
of Abraham and Abimelech in the book of Genesis. And Abimelech
recognized that God, the true God favored Abraham. And he came
to Abraham and said, I wanna make a treaty with you. Because
whatever you got going on, I want it to ease over on my side of
the fence. And so dear brothers and sisters,
When you’re out in the world, this sin, sick, dark, dying,
crooked, depraved world, remember that you can spread the aroma,
the fragrance of life through faith in Jesus Christ. You may
not get the words out and get to evangelize, but people will
know There’s something different about you and your life. Some of you, I know, were probably
Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts. The old motto was leave things
better than you found them. And that’s, in a sense, what
we see Paul doing here. But there’s a there’s a better
motto, isn’t there? And it’s the motto of the Lord
Jesus from Matthew chapter 7, 12. We know it is the golden
rule. Do unto others as you would have
them do unto you. There was a Quaker missionary
who had this saying, this motto, and he said this, I shall not
pass this way but once. In any good that I can do or
any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do
it now. Let me not defer or neglect it
for I shall not pass this way again. Let me encourage you in
the week ahead and the days of your life to come. Look to see
how you can serve others. You may not get to preach the
gospel. But you may, as we like to often say, get to serve as
the hands and the feet of Jesus and be a blessing to others.
And you can do so because he has been a great blessing to
you and he saved you, that you might be a fragrance in this
cursed world that needs to know of Christ. Let’s look to our
God in prayer. Lord, we give you thanks for
your everlasting word and your everlasting love, your everlasting
kindness that’s been shown to us in Jesus. We know that you’ll
bring us safely through because you’re a God of justice and you’ve
declared us righteous in your sight through the blood of Jesus. And as we approach your table
now, may we have our faith firmed up, our faith firmed up so that
we will know without a shadow of a doubt that you make and
keep covenant. You never leave, you never forsake, and you bless
your people. Hear us, help us, and be with
us as we come to your table now. In the name of Christ, amen.