“Island of Adventure”
Acts 28:1-10
August 24, 2008
Next week, Paul will find his way at last to Rome, as we end the study that has consumed us for many, many months. Today, we pick up the story with the weary travelers having all made it to shore, as God had promised the apostle Paul; not one was lost to the storm at sea.
I. Maltese Hospitality - :1-2
This is not where Paul planned on ending up, and he wouldn’t have chosen the means either: shipwreck following two-week hurricane! When they washed up on this beach, the 276 folks onboard ship had no clue where they were. Where they were, was Malta. Malta is an island in the Mediterranean, about 18 miles long and 8 miles wide, situated 58 mile south of Sicily and 180 miles north and east of Africa. It was a territory of Rome, but one granted a significant amount of autonomy to govern its own affairs. Augustus Caesar settled a number of military officers on the island, as well as placing a governor there; we learn in this passage that when this shipwreck took place, the governor was a man named “Publius”, who also founded the grocery chain Publix. Or not…
On the screen behind me are a few pictures of modern-day Saint John’s Bay, where it is believed the ship wrecked with these beleaguered travelers. So confident of that fact are the Maltese folks that this chapel, “Saint Paul’s Shipwreck Chapel”, was erected there. The island of Malta was a pretty prosperous place, actually, named for a word that meant “refuge”, and that suited the island quite well; interestingly, the villagers lived up to that name through the care they took for Paul. As you can see, the area is hilly, the hills rising right up out of the sea, and I’d imagine that many of the villagers had watched from the hills as this ship had broken apart, as folks swam and floated to the shore; we can easily imagine some of the folks from the island venturing into the surf to help rescue the weary travelers. And when they heard the people speak, the stranded travelers didn’t recognize the dialect they spoke, so the people there spoke the language of kind deeds, kindling a fire and making it plain that it was their intent to help the sopping wayfarers.
II. Maltese Fickleness - :3-6
One of the things I notice about last week and this is the “regular guy” status of Paul. He’s not above helping out with keeping the fire going that the natives built; he just goes and grabs firewood instead of expecting somebody else to do it. For his trouble, though, Paul gets bit by a viper, some type of venomous snake found in those days on this island of Malta. Now, I don’t know about you, but what’s happened to Paul would constitute, pardon the pun, the “perfect storm” for me: though I love the water, I’ve always thought that drowning would be, for me, a horrible way to die, and you can ask my family what’s at the top of my personal fear list: snakes. Paul nearly drowns (though God had promised him he wouldn’t), and then escaping that by the grace of God, a deadly snake latches onto his paw. I don’t know for sure what Paul thought, but I’m pretty sure my thoughts would be on the order of, “what next?”
These natives were not uncultured barbarians, but they were superstitious believers in the gods, and the Greek goddess Dike was apparently venerated by these Maltese islanders. Dike was “the personification of justice and revenge” (Stott). Their assumption that Paul’s being latched onto by the viper was that, though he’d cheated fate on the high seas, he couldn’t get away with the murder that he’d undoubtedly committed. One Statyllius Flaccus composed and recorded in the Greek word The Palatine Anthology an epitaph for a shipwrecked sailor who suffered just this fate:
“O, he escaped the storm and the raging of the murderous sea. But as he lay stranded in the Libyan sand, not far from the beach and heavy with sleep, at last, naked and destitute, weary as he was from the terrible shipwreck, the viper struck him dead. Why did he struggle against the waves? He did not escape the lot which was destined for him on land.”
There are today no venomous snakes on Malta—sounds like just the place for me, but it’s not unusual for an island as small, populous, and civilized as Malta to be now ridded of such vile beasts. This, though, was a viper that the natives just knew was sure to kill this man who was obviously about to face the death penalty inflicted by the gods for some terrible behavior.
But Paul didn’t die; shaking the viper off harmlessly like a fuzzy caterpillar, and then showing no signs of swelling, the superstitious natives declared just the opposite, that he was a god. Obviously, this man was no murderer, but rather a god, impervious to the poison which would snuff out the life of a mere mortal! Luke is amused by the fickleness of the crowd.
We read nothing of Paul’s rebuke of them; perhaps they did not openly attempt to worship him as some people at Lystra had (Acts 14). Now, Paul has survived storm, shipwreck, and snakebite; this is a man on a mission from God, directed by God and protected by God!
III. Maltese Blessing - :7-9
Publius, wishing to treat the shipwrecked lot with kindness, brought the survivors, at least some of them, including Paul, to his estate for three days while their situations were sorted out.
There is a particular disease indigenous to the island of Malta, known as Malta fever, the cause of which was traced, in the late 19th-century, to a microorganism in the milk of Maltese goats. It’s symptoms parallel those described as occurring in Publius’ father, though we can’t be certain, of course, that this was his malady. Good news travels fast, and word of the healing of the father of the “first man of the island” spread quickly, such that other sick folk were brought to Paul for him to minister to them, and according to Luke, these were healed by the power of God operating through Paul. Supernatural cures were a part of the ministry of Paul the apostle, and both in the case of Publius’ father, and in the case of the islanders, God worked through him to effect cure!
IV. Maltese Gratitude - :10
And so as the voyagers began their journey that would lead to Rome, the islanders showered them with gifts of appreciation for all the blessing that Paul had been to them. They had received from the hand of God, and it was natural for them to be thankful for the blessings of Providence, provided through the hand and life of the apostle Paul. Thankfulness in our lives is so critical!
Malta was likely a real time of refreshing for Paul, following a couple of bleak years in Caesarea, and a typhoon at sea that ended in shipwreck.
I want to spend the rest of our time together talking about
The Always-Prepared Believer
I believe that this term accurately described the apostle Paul. Here was a man who had been through a very trying couple of years. If you remember, he had well-meaning, Spirit-filled brothers and sisters in Christ telling him not to go to Jerusalem, and yet convinced that this was the plan of God, he went anyway. After a week there, he began to experience persecution and was nearly killed, followed by two years locked up in prison. Then, after appealing to Caesar, Paul and other prisoners are placed onboard a ship bound for Rome, and after a considerable journey with some difficult, the final two weeks are night-and-day typhoon, followed by shipwreck on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean. But if you think back with me, one thing we’ll recognize is that
• Paul was never “off-duty”.
In whatever situation Paul found himself, he was doing the work and will of God. There was never a point where Paul said, “I can take a break from this ‘Christian thing’. There was never a time when Paul took a vacation from the demands of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And this is one of the things that I’d like to really cement into your mind as a follower of Jesus Christ: we are “on duty” 24/7/365 for life. More than this, we cannot separate our lives into compartments, into the “sacred” and the “secular”, the “holy” and the “profane”, etc. The Scripture says, “whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.” Let me hit you with some of the ramifications of that:
• Everything you do matters to God. Everything matters in the sense of worshipping God. Everything you do, and every place you go, and every word you speak, and every thought you have, and every motive that motivates you, and every attitude you display: everything matters to God.
• You can bring God as much glory by doing your work “as unto the Lord” as you can standing here singing His praises or sitting here taking notes. In fact, the person who parks his backside in these seats, but whose mind and heart are 1000 miles away, brings God a lot less glory than you do when you perform some “mundane task” with a heart to serve God and serve others.
• There is not one standard for the workplace, or the ballfield, or the bedroom, or the movie theater, or the TV set, or the neighborhood, or the internet, and a different standard for the “religious stuff” we do. There’s not one standard for a certain group of people you’re around that’s different from the standard you use around Christian folks. If you wouldn’t use certain language in church, don’t use it anywhere else. If you wouldn’t adopt a certain attitude around a brother in Christ, don’t adopt it around somebody else. Sometimes I think that Christian folks think that there’s one set of ethics that applies in the workplace, and a different one at church, that there’s one vocabulary that’s their “church vocabulary”, and a different one when they’re with “the boys”.
• Paul was willing to minister in whatever situation he found himself.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes, I really don’t like the idea of not being in control. I want to steer the ship; I want to know what the agenda is going to be; I want to lay out the plans and then execute. And yet, that’s the opposite of what was taking place in Paul’s life. For two-plus years now, he’d made very few significant decisions about the direction and trajectory of his life. The circumstances were driving his whole life—circumstances, I might add, arranged by a sovereign God, of course. But still, other than a few times when God directly and audibly let Paul know what was going on, he was in a situation where life had to be made up as he went. Some of you can relate…
And yet, Paul had a prior commitment, a non-negotiable priority, to be a minister of Christ in whatever circumstance he found himself. He’s drug before an angry mob, and he tells the story of Jesus. He has an audience before the governor, and then before the king, and he gives witness for Christ. Then he’s put onboard a ship, and though a lowly prisoner, he ascends to a position wherein he ends up taking significant leadership, and I have little doubt influenced people toward Jesus Christ. Now, he’s on an island in the middle of nowhere, one which he hadn’t planned on going to, and he finds opportunity to share the love of Christ with the folks that God has brought into his path.
And that’s critical: no one “accidentally” comes into your path. We’ve talked about this before, but let’s place it in the context of ministry: you are, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, a minister. I know, we have people that we call by that name—I are one—but the fact is that every person who is a follower of Jesus is called to minister, and it’s my role to help prepare you to do just that. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at Ephesians 4:11-12. Question: who’s doing the work of ministry according to this verse? What’s the role of the “shepherd/pastor” and the “teachers”? To do the preparing! If you were being completely, technically, Biblically correct, and someone asked you, “who’s the minister at Red Oak”, the right answer would be, “we’ve got 50 or so of them!” “Wow! That’s a big church!” Tell you what: if we had 50+ people who consistently adopted the attitude of the apostle Paul, a man who knew himself to be a minister wherever he was and bloomed wherever he was planted, it would change some things in this community! Wherever Paul went, he saw himself as an agent of God, and a servant of people. Finally,
• Paul was prepared for divine appointments.
My point here is this, and it hearkens back to something I said a moment ago: if God is truly in control of the circumstances and events of our lives, then we need to ready ourselves for what can only be described as “divine appointments”. God places people into our lives, and it’s up to us to seize upon those “divine appointments” in such a way as to leave a winsome witness for Jesus Christ. No accidents: Paul gave testimony to some helpful folks on the beach, and managed next to not only heal Publius’ father, but to impact the entire island of Malta, because he understood that while he hadn’t planned or chosen to be there, the people that he met entailed divine appointments. Do we view the people in our lives as God’s divine appointments? Further, might I suggest that we pray that God make us more and more sensitive to the divine nature of the connections we make with people, that we pray with an eagerness that God send us divine appointments, make us aware of them, and then act as Christ’s representatives.
The tiny island of Malta, though not on Paul’s itinerary, proves to be an island of adventure, as the unleashed Holy Spirit of God works through Paul to spread the name and the fame of Jesus Christ, just as He desires to work through you and me in 2008 to do the same.
Table Talk
Do you think a lot of Christians tend to “compartmentalize” their lives into “sacred” and “secular”, into “God’s territory” and “my territory”? How does this tendency show up in a person’s life? How can we remember that we worship and serve God at all times?
