Castaway
Acts Series
Chuck Sligh
July 8, 2018
NOTE: A PowerPoint presentation is available for this sermon by request at chucksligh@hotmail.com.
TEXT: Please turn in your Bibles to Acts 28.
INTRODUCTION
Illus. – Stories of island castaways are a recurring theme for novels and movies. The idea has captured people’s attention from the beginning of the Age of Exploration all the way to the present. It all began with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in 1719, considered the first novel in the English language. Swiss author Johann David Wyss published the popular novel, The Swiss Family Robinson, in 1819. Perhaps the most influential of them all was Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1882 novel, Treasure Island. – Its influence was enormous in forming popular perceptions of pirates, including such elements as treasure maps marked with an “X,” schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands and one-legged seamen wearing parrots on their shoulders.
It was movies that brought the castaway theme to modern audiences. There have been several popular movie versions of Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson. And who can forget the Disney rendition of Treasure Island? This movie helped shape our culture’s perception of pirates in the same way the book version did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As historian Colin Woodard said National Geographic in 2011, “Newton’s performance [in Disney’s Treasure Island]—full of ‘arrs,’ ‘shiver me timbers,’ and references to landlubbers—not only stole the show, it permanently shaped pop culture’s vision of how pirates looked, acted and spoke.”
But castaway movies aren’t just for kids. – Some very thought-provoking popular movies about being marooned on an island, away from the comforts of modern society, include Lord of the Flies and Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks.
Our text today describes a real-life castaway story the Apostle Paul experienced. But sorry, there are no peg-legged pirates, hidden treasures, parrots or pirate talk. But there are adventures aplenty in this story involving superstitious inhabitants, a venomous snake bite and the performance of miracles.
Picking up Luke’s story in the book of Acts, you’ll recall that the captain of Paul’s ship HAD chosen to take a chance on sailing to Phoenix for safer wintering, despite Paul’s warnings not to proceed. [SHOW ON MAP.] Shortly after casting off in calm winds, they found themselves in a storm of hurricane proportions. Luke says they drifted around for 14 days in this horrific storm and finally ran aground on an island which turned out to be Malta, and all 276 people onboard survived, just as an angel had assured Paul.
This is where we pick up our story.
I. NOTE WITH ME FIRST OF ALL MALTESE HOSPITALITY IN ACTS 28:1-2 – “And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Malta2 And the barbarous people shewed us no little kindness: for they kindled a fire, and received us everyone, because of the present rain, and because of the cold.”
When the castaways washed up on the beach, they had no idea where they had landed. Luke tells us it was Malta, an island in the Mediterranean, as you can see from the map. They had meant to sail just 35 miles (50 km) up the coast of Crete to Phoenix, but ended up being driven by the storm 540 miles (or 870 km) off course.
The King James Version says the people in Malta were “barbarous people” but the word doesn’t refer to what we think of as uncouth people with barbarous, vicious ways. The term simply meant “foreigner,” or in this context, non-Roman. Malta was a Roman territory with a Roman garrison and a Roman governor, but the islanders weren’t Roman, so Luke uses the Greek word bárbaros.
Luke says the people showed unusual hospitality to the castaways, kindling a fire to feed them and receiving everyone from the ship, apparently meaning that they temporarily took them into their homes for shelter.
II. IN VERSES 3-6, WE SEE MALTESE SUPERSTITION. – “And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. 4 And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. 5 And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm. 6 Howbeit they looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god.”
Although the Maltese displayed great hospitality, we see Paul showing a servant’s spirit. He doesn’t leave all the work for his hosts; he goes out and SERVES! God bless those in the church who see that something needs to be done and don’t expect to be served, but rather step up and get the job done!
Well, the warmth of the fire woke a poisonous snake from its winter hibernation and while throwing some firewood on the fire, one of them fastened its venomous fangs unto Paul’s hand, holding on and not letting go, sinking its full measure of poison in.
Now notice the thinking of the Maltese islanders. They knew he was one of the prisoners, so they assumed he must have been a murderer or some other such serious criminal. Somehow, their thinking went, he escaped death from the shipwreck, but the goddess Justice wasn’t going to let him get away with murder. The snakebite was his getting his just punishment for his awful crimes.
When Paul shook off the venomous snake, they watched carefully, expecting the usual symptoms of a poisonous snakebite to start taking effect. The symptoms of the type of snake inhabiting Malta in that time included pain and swelling at the bite site, followed by difficulty breathing, then nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, sweating and salivating and finally an agonizing death. Yet Paul, protected by God, suffered no ill effects whatsoever. So, the Maltese suddenly changed their minds about Paul and assumed he was a god.
The Maltese islanders were superstitious, trusting false gods and goddesses, so they had bad theology. They assumed that problems and suffering is directly caused by behavior. Even Christians sometimes believe this.
Illus. – When I was told I was going to die of cancer in 1979, one of the members of our church came and after a few niceties said, “Brother Chuck, God must be punishing you for something you’ve done wrong. You need to confess your sin and God will forgive you and maybe spare your life.”
Well, I knew that sometimes God does judge us through sickness. Paul told the Corinthians that some people in their church had become sick and some had even died because of their abuse of the Lord’s Supper, and who will ever forget Ananias and Sapphira being struck dead for lying to the Holy Spirit?
But I’d already confessed every sin I knew of, and confessed I didn’t even know I’d committed, and I knew my heart was right, and in fact, I was closer to God then than at any time in my life. Yet there I was—in pain, expecting to die, suffering.
Job faced the same kind of bad theology. The Bible says he was the most righteous person on earth at the time—and yet he suffered terribly. In one day, the most righteous man in all the earth lost all his servants, all his sheep—his means of livelihood, all 10 of his children, and finally, his health. To top it off, he had a bitter wife who, instead of comforting him, told him, “Why don’t you just curse God and die.” (Nice lady, huh?)
Then three of his friends came to “encourage him,” but like the member of my church I told you about, their counsel was anything but encouraging. They did empathize with him and spend time with him, and that was commendable, but then they opened their mouths with accusations that Job had done wrong and if he’d repent of them, God would bless him again. The rest of the book is a refutation from God’s own lips of this idea.
The Bible identifies several reasons we suffer that have nothing to do with our own sin, although suffering is ultimately caused by being in a sin-cursed world. Sometimes suffering is designed to make us more dependent upon God, sometimes to make us stronger in our faith, sometimes to accomplish a greater good through your life, sometimes it’s to bring us witnessing opportunities, and sometimes it’s just to bring glory to God in some mysterious way.
When you go through troubles, of course, the first place to start is to search your heart and confess any known sin. But once you are sure that you’re right with God, that’s when you have to get into God’s Word and seek His face and grow closer to God and learn the lessons He wants you to learn from your trials.
And never think God loves you any less because you suffer. – God’s love is abiding; it never fails; it never changes; it’s not fickle; it’s not based on our performance. Paul assures us in Romans 8:35-39 – “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
III. LASTLY, NOTE WITH ME MALTESE BLESSINGS IN VERSES 7-10 – “In the same quarters were possessions of the chief man of the island, whose name was Publius; who received us, and lodged us three days courteously. 8 And it came to pass, that the father of Publius lay sick of a fever and of a bloody flux [a serious form of dysentery]: to whom Paul entered in, and prayed, and laid his hands on him, and healed him. 9 So when this was done, others also, which had diseases in the island, came, and were healed: 10 Who also honored us with many honors; and when we departed, they laded us with such things as were necessary.”
The Roman governor there was a man named Publius who also founded a grocery chain called Publix. (Just kidding—You’ll only get that if you’re from the South and know about the Publix grocery chain.) Not only were these islanders hospitable, but so was Publius. He kindly lodged and took care of them for three days until they could find places to lodging to wait out the rest of the winter.
While there, Publius’s father became ill with serious dysentery, often fatal in that day. Paul healed him, leading others the island to bring their own sick loved ones for healing. God blessed them for their hospitality, but their blessing was not merely physical. Tradition holds that Publius was converted, a church was established on Malta and Publius became its first pastor and remained their pastor for 31 years. There were many spiritual blessings that accrued from their kind hospitality.
CONCLUSION
Now I want to concentrate the remainder of my sermon on some observations from Paul’s life. Here was a man who had been through the wringer for the last two years. Well-meaning, Spirit-filled brothers and sisters in Christ warned him not to go to Jerusalem, and yet convinced that this was the plan of God, he went anyway.
Once in Jerusalem, he was misunderstood, misinterpreted and maligned by Christian brethren, nearly killed by a mob, became a victim of a case of mistaken identity with a notorious criminal wanted by Rome, was falsely arrested, was falsely accused by Jewish leaders from Jerusalem, was stalled for two years by Roman leaders hoping to extract a bribe from him and was kept in prison the whole time.
Then, after appealing to Caesar, Paul and other prisoners were put on a ship bound for Rome, and after a considerable journey with some difficulty, they experienced two weeks of unrelenting hurricane weather, followed by shipwreck on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, and finally, HE BITTEN BY A VENOMOUS SNAKE!
With all that in the back of your mind, notice three big-picture lessons we can see from Paul during this period and some little-picture applications too.
1) First, I want you to see 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’ve got to take a break from this ‘Christian thing.’” There was never a time when Paul took a vacation from the demands of discipleship. So, here’s the thing I want you to get: We are “on duty” 24/7/365 for life!
With that 24/7/365 perspective, Paul didn’t separate his life into compartments—into the “sacred” and the “secular;” the “holy” and the “profane.” When he was a free man to preach before his prison years, Paul was “on point” and “on mission” in serving God; and then when he was imprisoned and couldn’t preach and had to spend hours a day just sitting around in prison, he was still “on point” and “on mission” with serving God. He didn’t let his situation life interfere with bringing glory to God in his life.
No wonder he says to the Corinthians, “Whether therefore you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, do it all to the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31)
Let me hit you with some of the ramifications of Paul’s attitude and that verse:
a) First, everything you do matters to 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.
b) Second, 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 hearing God’s Word. – In fact, if you park yourself in these seats, but your mind and heart are 1000 miles away, it brings God less glory than if you perform some mundane task with a heart to serve God and serve others, at work or at home.
c) And third, there is not one standard for the workplace, or the ballfield, or the movie theater, or in front of the TV, or in the neighborhood, or on 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 people. If you wouldn’t use certain language in church, don’t use it elsewhere. If you wouldn’t adopt a certain attitude around a brother or sister in Christ, don’t adopt it around somebody else.
Sometimes I think that Christians 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 guys.”
2) A second big-picture thing I see about Paul during this 2-year imprisonment period is he was willing to serve God robustly, no matter what his circumstances.
I don’t know about you, but 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 it. 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 decisions about his life. Circumstances beyond his control were driving his whole life.
And yet, Paul had a prior commitment, a non-negotiable priority, to be a minister of Christ in whatever circumstances he found himself.
- He’s dragged before an angry mob, and he tells the story of Jesus.
- He has an audience before the Felix, the Roman governor, and later before King Agrippa and his wife, and he gives witness for Christ.
- Then he’s put onboard a ship, and though a lowly prisoner, he ascends to a position where he ends up taking significant leadership on the ship, and no doubt influenced some of the people onboard for Jesus Christ.
- Now, he’s on an island in the middle of nowhere, one which he hadn’t planned on going to, and his focus is serving others in the most menial of ways and sharing Christ with the folks that God has brought into his path.
No matter where Paul is or what crud he goes through, he works and serves Jesus.
God help us to have such a spirit of service that we flourish wherever we go, no matter what our trials are, regardless of our circumstances.
3. My last big-picture application is this: Paul was prepared for divine appointments.
You see, 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 witness for Jesus Christ. Paul served those hospitable folks on the beach, and in the end managed to not only heal Publius’ father, but to impact the entire island of Malta. Why? Because he understood that while he hadn’t planned or chosen to be on that island, the people that he met were “divine appointments.”
So here are my final challenges:
1) Number 1, make up your mind to be “on-duty” for God 23/7/365, everywhere you are, no matter who you’re with.
2) Second, don’t let your trials, suffering and struggles keep you from serving God.
3) Last, daily, wherever you go and whatever your circumstances, look for those “divine appointments.” – Pray for them; be sensitive to them during the day, and when you recognize them, act as Christ’s representative on earth and serve God and that person accordingly.
