Pastor Jeremy M. Thomas
Fredericksburg Bible Church
107 East Austin
Fredericksburg, Texas 78624
830-997-8834      jthomas@fbgbible.org
A0943 – October 25, 2009 – Acts 27:27-28:10 – The Shipwreck On Malta

Now, we’re studying a famous chapter in the NT, Acts 27. This piece of literature is a classic in its own right. It’s been studied by secular students of ancient navigation for centuries. We’re studying it for its navigational value but also for its doctrinal value. It’s one of the most vivid examples of a believer who is able to relax and trust the Lord during a life-threatening situation. Paul is able to do this because Paul was a master at applying the faith-rest drill and so we’re learning to mimic Paul when we face a pressure situation. 

Now the faith-rest drill, as we’ve said, is a basic technique. We’re not saying it is an easy technique, but it is a basic technique to living the Christian life. As far as I can tell all the great saints of Scripture utilized this basic technique in their life. It can be used for the small every day pressures just as much as big pressures. I encourage you to practice it in the every day small things so when the big things come you automatically respond by going through the technique. One way or the other you’re going to train yourself to respond. And if you respond to the every day pressures of life with gimmicks then when the day comes that the big pressure hits you’re going to respond with a gimmick. You simply can’t respond otherwise because you haven’t trained yourself to respond otherwise. So God sends us little everyday pressures as training devices and if we train and apply and train and apply then when the big things happen in life it’s just automatic. That’s why when Paul faced this northeaster he was able to apply the faith-rest drill. He had trained and trained and trained and then this storm whipped up and he just went on automatic. Now the storm they faced on those waters was a terrifying storm. It was a storm in which everyone on that ship except Paul gave up and resigned that they were going to die. And Paul could have very easily been dragged down with them into a hopeless mess. But Paul was so accustomed to applying this drill in all the little every day pressures that when the big pressure hit, the tremendous pressure of watching waves of 30-40 feet and half a mile, maybe three-quarter of a mile long, pound against your ship, he was able to relax. So let’s review the drill. The first step is Recall. You must be able to recall some fragment of Scripture, some verse, some event, something, not some gimmick you learned in psychology class, not what you learned in sociology, but something you learned from the word of God. The second step is Connect; connect your situation with what you can recall from the word of God. Think through and try to find parallels whether they be in the situation themselves or the mentality used to wade through the difficulty, those kinds of things, but there has to be this connection. Third is the Rationale and the rationale is the reasoning processes that go on as you face the difficulty. Can I really trust the word of God is sufficient? Because you can’t make yourself trust. You have to be convinced something is true before you can trust. And the only way to be convinced is to spend time thinking about the word of God, spend time correlating the word of God, and spend time thinking through the big picture of the word of God.  All that is building a framework of thinking so that the verse you recall and connect to your situation has some power behind it.  It doesn’t have much power outside of the larger framework; it has power inside of the framework because when seen inside the larger frame you realize that not to trust you have to reject the larger frame, since your difficulty falls in the larger frame.  And then the fourth step is the rest.  That’s the result, that’s when you’re casting your cares upon him for He cares for you, that’s when the peace of God that transcends all comprehension is enjoyed; that kind of a relaxed mental attitude despite the chaos that surrounds. When you’re enjoying the rest then you’re where Paul was on that ship. 

So to get up to speed let’s retrace Paul’s voyage so far and then we’ll move into the shipwreck on the island of Malta. The voyage starts off in the port of Caesarea where Paul appealed to Caesar. They depart in an Adramyttian ship; this was a smaller coastal vessel, so they hugged the coast up to Sidon and then went on the lee side of the isle of Cyprus. The wind at this time of year was out of the west so they had to hug closely this shore along Cilicia and Pamphylia using the current which slowly carried them along till they reached Myra and Lycia. It’s at this point that they change over to an Alexandrian ship.  This was a larger vessel contracted out by Rome to carry the grain from Egypt to Rome, so they share the same destination. The problem was they were sailing during the “dangerous” season. From Sept 14th-Nov 11th the open seas of the Mediterranean were increasingly dangerous and so they set out in the face of winds coming out of the NW. They’re trying to bear across the mouth of the Aegean Sea but it takes a long time to make it out to Cnidus so at that point they decide to come south under the island of Crete. They make it around Salmone and port at Fair Havens. This is when they entered into a sailor’s council of which Paul took part. Paul advised them that the seas were now very dangerous since it was after Yom Kippur and therefore there was great risk, but the commander didn’t listen to Paul. That’s mistake number one. And they commit mistake number two which is they interpret this moderate south wind as a confirmation of their decision and so they set sail for Phoenix and that’s it. That’s the crucial error because suddenly out of nowhere comes this Euraquilo, which is the Greek term for a northeaster, and it whips down from the island of Crete and you have this tremendous problem because they’re being driven southwest. They hadn’t made any preparations for this kind of thing so they have to basically give way to it and just be driven along. They knew of an island called Clauda twenty three miles out so they head for the lee side of that island and when they get there they start making preparations. They get the dinghy aboard and tie it down, they get the undergirding cables around the hull to protect the hull and the mast and they let the auxiliary equipment down to try and slow the ship down. They have to do this because the growing threat is the shallows of the Syrtis Major. Many a ship has been crushed in these shallows. And the emphasis from this point forward is that the wine kept blowing and blowing and blowing and what that means is you have a major fetch problem. Fetch is the function of wind speed and prolonged winds over a length of water. The problem is the wind transfers more and more energy to the water and so the waves get larger and larger and larger and longer and longer and longer and this is the emphasis in the text. Luke is drawing our attention to the fetch problem. He’s trying to build how fierce this storm was. So the waves are getting larger, they ditch the cargo and nobody can eat; just think of you’re stomach having to handle these kinds of seas. Anybody who’s been seasick knows the last thing you want to do is eat.  Besides you can’t make anything in this kind of weather and it’s at that point, about three days into this thing, when everybody is hopeless that Paul says look, I told you so. I’m not an idiot when it comes to sailing. We should have never set out from Fair Havens. But now that we have he gives them revelation. Paul is an apostle and Paul received direct revelation that nobody was going to die on that ship and so Paul says, I must stand before Caesar and therefore because you’re associated with me you get to survive too. Therefore take courage

Now verse 27, there’s a time gap between verse 26 and 27, the next observation, it’s been fourteen days since they left port, so you can imagine, they’re still in the northeaster, the wind is still blowing, and for fourteen days now they’ve been facing these large waves. 27But when the fourteenth night came, as we were being driven about in the Adriatic Sea. Now that might confuse some of you familiar with Mediterranean geography. I thought Paul was out in the central Mediterranean, but the text says he was up in the Adriatic Sea. Nonsense. This should be translated the Hadria Sea and it was in the central Mediterranean. The sea we know today as the Adriatic Sea was called the Gulf of Hadria. He is out in the middle of the Mediterranean. He goes on and describes, about midnight. It’s pitch dark now, understand that to catch the scene, it’s pitch black, the sailors began to surmise that they were approaching some land. Something tells them this, probably they could hear the waters breaking against the land, these were large waves so they could hear it, which meant land. 

And so in verse 28 they begin to take soundings. This is dropping a weighted line down and measuring the depth of the water and they’re getting decreasing depth. The first sounding says its 120 feet deep; the second sounding says its 90 feet. So now they’re in a situation that you would think, if you’re not used to sailing, you would think this is great, they’re coming on land. No it isn’t, not at night it isn’t because you can get smashed up against rocks and its death, just like crashing an airplane in the darkness. There’s no way you can jump out because you don’t know how high you are and even if you jump off the boat into the waves they could crush you against the rocks. So you have a tense situation here.

And so the sailors do something in verse 29 that was a surprise to scholars. they cast four anchors from the stern. Scholars once asked how boats were controlled in the 1st century and it turns out in the course of scholarly investigation that verse 29 was a breakthrough because it told them that in ancient times the way these men would control their boats would be they’d drop anchor off the rear instead of the front.  In this situation, they'd start dragging that anchor very slowly, and they’d slow their speed down as they’d protect themselves till they could see where they were. And since then we’ve found pictures of ancient ships fitted for anchors at the stern. 

Verse 30, But as the sailors were trying to escape from the ship and had let down the ship’s boat into the sea, on the pretense of intending to lay out anchors from the bow, 31Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, “Unless these men remain in the ship, you yourselves cannot be saved. Now there’s something you want to note about this, about Paul. Here Paul has said that none of the 276 lives would be lost, and we’ve gone to great lengths to say that that’s a sovereign decree of God, that no way is anyone going to die. Yet, if Paul was a fatalist he’d sit back and say well, no problem, que sera sera, whatever will be will be. Because after all, God’s sovereign plan is that nobody will drown. Yeah, but Paul doesn’t do that. Notice what’s happening.  Here are these sailors, and after they’ve dropped anchors off the stern they head to the bow and Paul noticed these guys.  They’re lowering the ship's boat. So he looks over, what are you guys doing? Oh, we’re just going around to the front, we’re going to put some anchors down. Well, Paul is smart enough to know that’s not the procedure in this kind of a situation. So he runs to the centurion in verse 31. Notice he bypasses the captain of the vessel because maybe he’s in on this too, Paul doesn’t know. Besides, the captain doesn’t make the decision, the centurion does.  Verse 31, Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, “Unless these men remain in the ship, you yourselves cannot be saved.” Now this is the principle of association we started last week. Here you see it again. And what he’s saying is everyone’s survival depends on everyone remaining with me on the ship. If they sever that association then they sever themselves from the blessing. Stay on the ship. And now we’re late in the storm, and now Paul has credibility. Paul didn’t have credibility before. Paul was taken into the sailor’s council, did they listen to Paul? No. They did their own thing. And since they’ve been in the storm Paul’s encouraged them to relax. Paul’s told them that God said you’re all going to live. Paul’s told them they’re going to run aground on a certain island, and here they are eleven days later, they’re all still alive and they’re approaching the island. Paul has credibility with the commander of the ship. And the principle is you, as a Christian, have to gain credibility with the world. Don’t think you can go in and just have instant credibility and everyone’s going to listen to what you have to say and just go ooh, ahh over you. You have to gain credibility. I wish I knew this when I came to this church. Paul gained credibility by patiently waiting on the Lord, making wise decisions and applying the word of God to the situation. So just relax, some of you I know want credibility, you want other people to listen to what you have to say and every time you open your mouth with some advice people don’t listen. Just relax, live your life as a Christian, make wise decisions, apply the word of God to situations and you’ll gain credibility and then people will pay attention to what you say. So, finally, the commander pays attention to what Paul has to say and he orders his soldiers, v 32, to cut away the ship's boat, and like good soldiers they follow the orders and clip, clip, clip the thing falls in the water and that’s the end of that problem, no one’s getting off the ship now. 

Verse 33, Until the day was about to dawn, Paul knows they’re near land, now again watch this because Paul’s concern for them reflects God’s concern for us, and there’s a thoughtfulness and a kindness in the middle of all this chaos of the storm that you want to catch. Until the day was about to dawn, Paul was encouraging them all to take some food, saying, “Today is the fourteenth day that you have been constantly watching and going without eating, having taken nothing. 34“Therefore I encourage you to take some food, for this is for your preservation, for not a hair from the head of any of you will perish.” 35Having said this, he took bread and gave thanks to God in the presence of all, and he broke it and began to eat. 36All of them were encouraged and they themselves also took food. 37All of us in the ship were two hundred and seventy-six persons.

Now let’s back off and look what’s happened. For fourteen days these people haven’t eaten. Now there’s a fasting situation but it’s not because they’re getting brownie points with God. This entire trip from here the ship’s rocking back and forth, and you don’t feel like eating, that’s the problem. You get sick, you feel nauseous. So it’s not a religious fast. Plus the fact you couldn’t cook food. The only way you could cook food was to have a fire on the deck; well, you’re not going to have a fire on the deck with the wind 45 miles an hour and the waves crashing over the deck. So Paul is concerned because these people might have to swim several hundred yards to shore and to swim requires energy. And Paul is thinking, what is God’s sovereign will? Everyone’s going to be saved, but Paul says that doesn’t mean we’re going to be saved by no means, and one of the means is to stay aboard until we have to abandon ship and when you do abandon ship if you have to swim several hundred yards you’re going to need energy to do that and if you haven’t eaten for fourteen days you don’t have any energy, so let’s start eating now. Do you see the thoughtfulness and care of Paul for the non-Christians physical health? He wants them saved, God says they’re going to be saved, but Paul is involved in helping them be saved. 

And so he gets out in verse 35 and if you can imagine this, it’s written in the same language as communion, Having said this, he took bread and gave thanks to God in the presence of all, and he broke it and began to eat. Now they’re not serving communion, it’s just that Paul has gained rapport with these men, enough so that he could openly pray for the food, that’s 276 people he’s publicly praying for. The result in verse 36, change in mental attitude. All of them were encouraged and they themselves also took food. So they’re encouraged by Paul’s prayer, now they do like Paul and they’re following his example here. Paul’s leading this ship; Paul is in command of these men. They had no hope and here a Christian who has hope has to hold their hand all the way to safety and that’s what Paul does. Verse 37 is where it notes two hundred and seventy-six persons; Paul took the hand of 276 non-Christians and helped them along. 

Verse 38, they get their strength back, enough to do some work, When they had eaten enough, they began to lighten the ship by throwing out the wheat into the sea. Whatever they had kept back from the earlier tossing overboard of cargo, this would lighten the ship so that when they beached the thing they could get farther up on the land, that’s the idea. Verse 39, 39When day came, they could not recognize the land; they didn’t know it was the island of Malta, but they did observe a bay with a beach, and they resolved to drive the ship onto it if they could. By the way, that bay is still there, and the locals call that bay, St. Paul’s Bay, and that’s where they set out to drive the ship up on that beach if they could. Verse 40, And casting off the anchors, they left them in the sea while at the same time they were loosening the ropes of the rudders; that’s how they steered the ship, and hoisting the foresail to the wind, that maneuver is going to allow them to pick up some speed because they want to drive up on the land as far as they can, and so they were heading for the beach. 

And then it happens, verse 41, But striking a reef where two seas met, they ran the vessel aground; and the prow stuck fast and remained immovable.  So they’re going to have to swim, thankfully they’ve taken some food. but the stern began to be broken up by the force of the waves. And in verse 42 we have a problem. Roman soldiers were responsible for the prisoners and if they lost any prisoners they lost their lives.  You remember the Philippian jailer?  What did he do when he thought all the prisoners were gone? He started to commit suicide. It was then that Paul said hold your horses jailer, we’re all here. So he saved the Philippian jailer from making that mistake and here Paul has made enough impact on this centurion that the centurion respects Paul and Paul said we’re all going to make it safely to shore so we’re all going to make it safely to shore. Let’s see how it happens. The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners, so that none of them would swim away and escape; 43but the centurion, wanting to bring Paul safely through, kept them from their intention, and commanded that those who could swim should jump overboard first and get to land, Paul again is saved, this was an attempt on Paul’s life. And Satan is trying here to take Paul out; you might even interpret the storm as a demonic attempt to take Paul out.  There’s some indication in Scripture that demons are involved in the wind and the waves and we have a nice little remembrance of this in the Gospel of Mark when Jesus is asleep in the boat on the Lake of Galilee and one of the winds has stirred things up to the point the disciples are afraid and they wake Jesus up.  Hey, how are you sleeping and we’re over here about to sink. Yeah guys, what’s wrong with you and He rebukes the winds and the waves and the verb He used there "to rebuke" is a word only used to speak to angelic powers and so there’s some possibility that the entire northeaster we just went through was stirred up by the demonic powers to try and kill Paul. They were unsuccessful so the Roman soldiers almost kill Paul, but the centurion steps in and rescues. Paul is still on his way to Rome. So he makes this command that those who could swim should jump overboard first and get to land, verse 44, and the rest should follow, some on planks, and others on various things from the ship. And so it happened that they all were brought safely to land. And there God’s word has come true just as Paul said, in spite of all the attempts to derail God’s sovereign plan, God’s sovereign plan comes to pass. 

We’re going to conclude the shipwreck by turning to a passage that you’ve read time and time again before but now having shared this shipwreck experience of the apostle Paul I wonder if this passage might sound just a little bit different. Let’s conclude by turning to Rom 8:28. You see, symbolically, the wind in Scripture always refers to spiritual forces. A storm refers to the adversities of life, and what you’ve got is almost… it’s a literal picture, of course, of a real shipwreck, but on the other hand a spiritual lesson can be drawn from the picture of this. That experience that these people had is like we experience; storm and the adversity of life—what gets you through? What gets you finally on the shore safely? Certainly not your own efforts; its God’s sovereign grace that gets you there, and that’s why Paul, after saying Rom 8:28, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Now the man surviving four shipwrecks writes this in v 35, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth,” and the word depth there would be the depth of the sea, “nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Paul, how did you come up with that? I survived a shipwreck four times, that’s how I came up with that.

Acts 28:1, the second part of our lesson today, here they’re on the island, When they had been brought safely through, then we found out that the island was called Malta. 2The natives showed us extraordinary kindness; for because of the rain that had set in and because of the cold, they kindled a fire and received us all. The picture there is like the weather we’ve had recently where it’s cold and drizzly outside. And they come to this island at the end of October and they meet the natives, verse 2.  Notice the native, that’s the Greek word “barbarian,” that’s what Luke calls them. Now this particular passage is a good reference point for you when you want to interpret other passages in the Bible that use the word “barbarian.” And you’ll want to do this because there’s one very famous passage in the NT, 1 Cor 14, that uses the word barbarian in connection with tongues and you can never come to a firm conclusion about the nature of tongues until you come to a firm conclusion as to what barbarians are. And this being the case, we have to define the word “barbarian” as it is used in the NT. 

The word “barbarian” in the NT means someone who is non-Greek speaking. It doesn’t mean somebody who is unrefined, it just means somebody who does not speak Greek, and we think these people were Phoenicians.  The Phoenicians were the greatest seafaring people of the ancient world, they established all the Mediterranean trade routes and they settled several of these islands, so we think they spoke a Phoenician dialect.  But the text uses this word barbarian to describe them because they didn’t speak Greek. And maybe that will shed some light on what Paul meant when he says in 1 Cor 14 that one who speaks a tongue speaks as a barbarian.  In other words, he speaks some other language, not some gobbledygook, but some other known human language, just not Greek. We have the saying, “It’s Greek to me,” well, they had the saying, “It’s barbarian to me.”

So on this island of Malta these people are very friendly, very kind.  They get a fire going for these men and the scene is set for two authentications of Paul’s apostleship. Paul is going to demonstrate for the last time in the Book of Acts that he is an apostle because he does the signs of an apostle. So remember, these guys had to be authenticated by God.  Are these the real messengers of God?  Apostle just means messenger.  So if someone is a true messenger of God they will do these signs that authenticate and these came at the beginning of the Church to form the foundation of the Church. And Ephesians says once the foundation is laid by these guys, then of course we have the other spiritual gifts remaining for the building phase of the Church. If it helps you think of the spiritual gifts this way:  they were foundational gifts and those were operational in the 1st century and then there were building gifts and those were operational from the 1st century on till the present day. Don’t get bent out of shape just because certain gifts are no longer operational today. They served a certain purpose and you and I benefit from their use in the first century. So the easiest way to think of them is the analogy of constructing a building. Ephesians says the church is like a building so the first thing you do is lay the foundation and once you’ve done that there’s no reason to keep laying the foundation, when it’s done it’s done and then you build and today we’re in the building phase of the Church. But Paul was part of the foundational phase. When the NT canon of Scripture was complete the foundation was laid and we could go on building, growing, learning and remembering what Christ and the apostles founded.  

So the first sign of Paul’s apostleship, Acts 28:3-6, But when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened itself on his hand. 4When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they began saying to one another, “Undoubtedly this man is a murderer, and though he has been saved from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live.” 5However he shook the creature off into the fire and suffered no harm. 6But they were expecting that he was about to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But after they had waited a long time and had seen nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and began to say that he was a god. The fickleness of paganism.

The snake coming out here evidently is another satanic attack on Paul once again to kill him. Satan does not want Paul to get to Rome. Satan places obstacles in the way of God’s plan. But the fact that he can handle the snake here and not be hurt is an apostolic sign. Now it’s been passages like this in church history that have given rise to a practice that, I guess the hillbillies in Tennessee still do, the snake handling routine, where they bring these venomous snakes out of the freezer box and do their thing. That is a complete misapplication of the sign gifts of the apostles. That kind of snake handling is a dare, it’s a test, it’s putting God to the test as to whether or not He will fulfill His promises. And people get killed doing this kind of thing. But in any case that’s not the spirit in which these signs were given. The apostolic signs, including snake handling, were given simply because these apostles had to have validation as they ventured forth into the world with the gospel, and to validate these men as authentic.  If a snake did happen to bite them, then they were protected. Just because Paul had this didn’t mean everywhere he went around saying put a snake on me, let it bite me. Paul never did that; it was just if it happened, as here, he would be alright. And you will note between verse 4 and verse 6 the momentous shift in these people from calling him a murderer one moment to a god the next. It’s an excellent example of how the pagan mind works; it’s always trying to associate, trying to identify meaning but in the end its pagan man that assigns the meaning. It’s standard operating procedure for autonomous man, so the sign is a true sign but they misinterpret the sign which shows they’re operating under pagan presuppositions.

Acts 28:7-10 is a second manifestation of a sign gift. Now in the neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the leading man of the island, named Publius, who welcomed us and entertained us courteously three days. 8And it happened that the father of Publius was lying in bed afflicted with recurrent fever and dysentery; and Paul went in to see him and after he had prayed, he laid his hands on him and healed him. 9After this had happened, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases were coming to him and getting cured. 10They also honored us with many marks of respect; and when we were setting sail, they supplied us with all we needed. In this situation we have the healing gifts of the apostles authenticated. This particular dysentery fever in verse 8 is a fever that still is on Malta, it’s called Malta fever, and it is due apparently to a bacterium in unpasteurized milk, and it seems to have arisen out of Malta. And the idea, then, is that Paul has dominion over this disease.

Now in verses 9-10 it looks like we have a whole series of miraculous healings, but that’s not the case. Only some of them were. And we know that’s the case because in verse 10 in response to this chain of healings do the people honor Paul? No, they honor us, plural, that means Luke and Paul together. So apparently Luke was using medical practices along with Paul’s miraculous healing and there you have a far more normative position in Christianity toward medicine. The Bible is never against medicine; Leviticus for example, gives medical procedures, washing of the hands in running water, sterilizing of infectious clothing. There are all kinds of things, surgical laws, for example, circumcision, hygienic laws, dietary laws. So the Bible is never, never against medical practice. The Bible also says at times there will be such things as miraculous healings but that isn’t the normal operation. We only have four major periods of miracles in the Bible; they always operate for about two generations and then they’re cut off and things are back to God’s normal mode. And the normal mode is by medicine and exercise, good diet, those kinds of things. So don’t be anti-medicine. Medical practice has its place and we can be grateful for some of the advances in medical practice. The problems today in medicine is it has, in many cases, over-extended itself into thinking they can solve any problem with drugs. It’s true that we can have chemical imbalance in our bodies due to the Fall, our bodies aren’t perfect and there’s room for administration of drugs to restore balance and resolve some of those issues. But the administration of drugs to solve other problems of depression and so forth that are not replacement therapy but manipulation of synaptic chemistry that manipulates brain messaging, and that often cause dependency can seriously damage you spiritually in that they become what you depend on and not God. And that kind of a treatment, when it arises out of the medical communities arrogance that we can solve all your problems, just take this drug, and you don’t know what the drug does so you just do what the doctor says because the doctor knows, this kind of mentality that the doctor is the expert and he knows all is a pagan mentality. He doesn’t know all about the human body. I would venture to say that he knows less than 25% of what is knowable about the human body. I can easily knock off 50% of his knowledge just by saying that human beings are not body only; they’re body and spirit, half of each. And then another 25% we can knock off because just look how much they really do not know. So don’t take it as gospel, some things yes, we’ve worked some things out, but we’re no where near knocking it out. Another example would just be going in every time you get sick and getting an antibiotic and if you are always feeding your body these antibiotics to clear up every thing then you never give your immune system the opportunity to build up antibodies to fight off sickness and then you’re always getting sick.  Touch a door handle and you get sick. This kind of a thing is overrunning society and so we see more and more illness and we take more and more drugs and it takes more and more intervention. And that fuels big business in medicine and pharmaceuticals. And that’s another thing we won’t go into much but most of the whole system is manipulated by money.  We’re going to do this procedure, you’ve just got to have this procedure ma’am and you don’t know any better, that’s what the doctor said. So you have the procedure.  The reason they pushed for it was money, so you’re out 30,000 dollars or your insurance company is.  Premiums increase, the whole thing continues because everyone is money hungry. Get informed about what you’re being prescribed, what you’re putting in your body because it’s not your body, its God’s body.  You’re his vessel and you should take care of it. And a lot of it is about money. So we’re facing a medical crisis today in one sense. We’re not against medicine at all. It has its sphere of operation, the human body, but it’s not a god.

So the Christian, who knows his Bible, goes to the doctor he knows that God is the ultimate doctor. And we should always be in prayer that when we go to the doctor that God would work in and through this doctor to diagnose my problem and give me the right solution, whether it is surgical, medicinal or dietary. 

So Paul heals, in this case miraculously; Luke apparently uses medical knowledge to cure several people in vv 9-10 and in verse 10 they are paid. The word honor means honorarium, or payment.  Monetary gifts are given to Paul and Luke.  They didn’t require them, this is just what the people wanted to do and so once more during this transitional period the apostolic signs were given. And the barbarians of Malta give them monetary gifts and some supplies to help them on toward Rome. They’re in Malta for three months and we’ll be setting sail for Rome next week.  That’s where Luke has been leading us, from Jerusalem in Acts 1 to Rome in Acts 28, so we’ll conclude next week. Don’t forget to put in your questions.

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