You're listening to audio from Faith Church, located on the North Side Of Indianapolis. If you'd like to check out more information about our church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindi.com. Now, here's the teaching. Thank you, Terry, for reading the scripture for us and leading us in that very meaningful prayer. I appreciate our elders and the way they're not just involved in decision making meetings, but how they're very much involved in the life and ministry, working among us and leading us in these important ways.

Well, hello everyone. I am Tom Macy, pastor Emeritus here. I've not actually, preached on a Sunday morning here for almost two years, but the one thing that's different, I'm standing here on two new knees since I preached here last. Yeah. Thank you.

They're not as good as my resurrection knees will be, but they are definitely an improvement over what I had before. Well, last week, Nick Carter led us through the first half of this chapter. The first stages of the voyage of Paul, the prisoner of Rome to go to Rome and the breakout of a horrific Mediterranean storm. If you were not here last week, I urge you to go online sometime this week and listen to Nick's message from last Sunday. It was tremendous.

I've listened to it a couple of times already and may listen to it some more. Tremendous encouragement and truth. But ending at verse 20, we were left out to sea somewhere in the Mediterranean, who knows where. We really don't know. And look at the absolutely hopeless situation at the end of that section.

Verse 20. When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and no small tempest lay before us, all hope of our being lay upon us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned. We're doomed. We don't know where we are. We're lost at sea.

It's over. And guess what? Did you notice the passage I've been assigned that we've just heard when we get to the end? We're sicker and more scared than ever with no more hope from when we started except for a word from God. And yet even that, at the end of this reading, is a promise yet unfulfilled.

Do you believe it will be fulfilled? Take a moment to review the narrative with me. Paul and friends, Luke, the author of this work, Aristarchus, was along with him. We don't know who else. Set sail from Caesarea on the coast of Israel between modern day Tel Aviv and Haifa.

First day, they made it as far as Sidon, which is just below modern Beirut in Lebanon. Mainland Of Asia, modern day Turkey, chained ships to a larger, more seaworthy cargo ship from Alexandria, Egypt, for fifty years of Bible reading and then it jumps out at you. I'm reading Isaiah 23 in my regular Bible reading on Friday morning And I see the statement, the harvest of the Nile that was critical for Isaiah's day for Israel to have some of that wheat from Egypt. And in the days of Joseph, of course, in a time of critical world famine, not only Egypt needed that extra grain that had been saved, but the rest of the world did as well. And in Paul's day, Rome depended on Egyptian wheat, just like you all are dependent on Kansas wheat.

So they headed out to sea, slowed by headwinds and came to Crete. It's late season for sea safe sea travel. Paul advised they settle for the winter in a wonderfully named place called Fair Havens. Good place to stay, but they overruled his advice. The decision was to sail just 40 miles further to the port at Phoenix that they thought would be better for wintering and so they're on their way singing their favorite Glen Campbell tune by the time I get to Phoenix, but they didn't make it to Phoenix.

They were caught in this terrifying storm and driven out to open sea and it's hard to say how long they were lost at sea. Mentions verse 19, the third day and verse 20, many days and then verse 27, the fourteenth night had come. Don't know if that's cumulative or it was a total of 14. That's all mentioned after the left creed. And then verse 27 says that on the fourteenth night, they hadn't seen sun or stars all this time, no way of navigation.

They didn't know where they were. They're so sick they can't eat. They've thrown much of the cargo and the ship's tackle overboard. They're desperate. But the scariest part is yet to come, as they realize they're close to land and they're in danger of being dashed onto the rocks with the ship coming apart.

As Paul had warned earlier in verse 10, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo in the ship, but also also of our lives. It wouldn't have been safer if they knew where they were to stay in the open seas, far from any land until the storm broke. And then they would be able to find a safe place, to port. But they didn't have that luxury, not an option because they didn't didn't know that where they were and the storm was such that they had no control over where they would go. So sick, frightened, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned.

Now, I know a little bit about being seasick. Late nineties, I think it was, I took an Aegean Sea cruise from Athens across to the ruins of Ephesus on the, harbor, on the, West Side of Turk modern day Turkey, Asia Minor at the time. And we stopped at Rhodes on the way over and stopped at Patmos where, John was exiled and wrote the Revelation on the way back. We're barely out of Athens. I'm excited.

I'm exploring the ship. I've never done anything like this. I'm anxious to see it all. I'm excited about eating all the wonderful food, but I'm getting sick. No storms, just the gradual motion of the ship on calm seas was enough to make me so sick.

I had to go to my stateroom, my cabin. I had to lay down, not move, and could barely survive that way. It was miserable. It was worse than when I took the family to worlds of misery in Kansas City and the Orient Express roller coaster. Complete with 60 foot vertical loop, a full three sixty degrees followed by double inverting kamikaze curve later known as the batwing element.

I suppose wherever you go in Southern Indiana or Cincinnati has similar things. But I was sick the rest of the day. It was miserable. Give me an old fashioned wooden up and down roller coaster any day. Well, maybe not anymore.

I'm getting too old for that. But I'm very sympathetic with Paul and his friends even though what I've experienced, which made me very sick, was a tiny fraction of the terror and the sickness that they dealt with day after day after day. I wasn't worried about dying as they were, just missing the joy and purpose of the cruise. Well, I did get better after a few hours, adjusted to the motion, and had a great time, but not so here. All hope of our being saved was at last abandoned like what Dante saw in his work as he goes past the entrance of hell and the sign says, abandon all hope, all ye who enter here.

Now Nick mentioned last week that Paul's warning in verse 10 was wrong. He was right about losing the cargo and the ship, but ultimately wrong about the loss of lives. Now let's clarify. Paul didn't say that God told him they would all die. This was not prophecy in verse 10.

This was just reason and logic. Paul had been shipwrecked three times already. He knew about these things. He was saying this is not a good time to sail. The probability of disaster was very high and he was right about that.

It was a terrible idea to sail. But the heart of this passage as we get down to verses 21 to 26 now is not just Paul's opinion. He starts out by saying essentially, I told you, Sho, you should have listened to me and not set sail from Crete and incurred this injury and loss. But now he's going beyond practical advice that he had given previously to bring a comforting message from God that came to him through an angel. Look at your bible again, page eleven thirteen if you're using one of the bibles provided.

And let's just read again that middle section verses 21 and following. Since they've been without food for a long long time, Paul stood up up among them and said, men, you should have listened to me and not set sail from Crete and incurred this injury and loss. Yet now, I urge you to take heart for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For this very night, there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship. And he said, do not be afraid Paul.

You must stand before Caesar. And behold God has granted you all those who sail with you. So take heart men for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have told you but we must run aground on some islands. So here's the heart of the sermon, the same thing Nick told us last Sunday. In the in the desperate reality that we're in and and whatever your desperate reality is today, and I'm sure there are many many concerns, things that are weighing on you as you're sitting here today.

When we stare death in the face, when we look at unresolvable problems, we're not in control. Oh, we can take little steps. Just use our wisdom, do the best we can to try and improve the situation. Try lightening the ship, throwing the cargo into the sea, trying to strengthen the ship, tying it together. I don't know how that worked.

But what could they do against this mighty storm? We have no control, no logic, no blaming the pilot and the ship owner. That ship's already sailed literally and they're on it. That won't help. And so it is with you.

You are not in control of your own situation. You know that, don't you? You're not in control. James four fourteen says, you do not know what will what tomorrow will bring. You can plan for tomorrow.

Planning's good. But you don't know what tomorrow's gonna be like in your life. You're not in control. And again, I'm borrowing from Nick from last week, but you don't need to be in control when you know who is in control. That's still true this week as it was last week.

I have a favorite quotation that I picked up many many years ago from, Maxey Dunham who is now 90 years old, president emeritus of Asbury Seminary down in Kentucky. But he wrote in his commentary on, Exodus as he was talk discussing all the problems they dealt with as they came to the mountain at Sinai and all the problems they were having and bad decisions they were making. And, Maxey writes this. He says, we can live with the questions. Can't figure out what God's doing.

Can't figure out why this is happening. Why we're in this situation. He says we can live with the questions if we remember who God is, if we know who God is. With with all the questions about the purpose behind the hard things of life, the losses, the fears, the questions of Job in his suffering, the frustrations of Asaph as he wrote Psalm 73 and said, this doesn't make sense, Lord. The the wicked are blessed and the righteous suffer.

That's not the way it's supposed to be. What's wrong? Why such suffering? Why such hopeless situations? Why me, lord?

We can live with the questions if we know who God is. If we remember who God is. Now remember Job didn't really get his multitude of questions answered. He just came face to face with who God is. And he had to take comfort in that and be satisfied that he came to a point of surrender and repentance not over specific sins that could be identified as the cause of his problems, but his repentance about his attitude toward God, his blaming of God.

And he had to learn what we have to learn. We can live with the questions if we know who God is. Well, who is God? Well, that's a bigger question than we have time for today. So let's narrow it down to what we see and learn about God in the midst of this horrific storm such that whatever your situation, whatever is bothering you today, without God, all hope of our being saved is abandoned.

But with God, we learn there is hope. Let's see if we can pull a couple of things from this text that will help. I've got two main points, a couple of subs under the first one. But number one, God is sovereign over all things, storms included. That was good to know Wednesday night.

Did you remember that Wednesday night when the 70 mile an hour winds or whatever they were were going through here? I learned yesterday that some of you still didn't have your power yesterday. I hope you've got it today. Trees fell over not far from our house. Hopefully not close enough to be a problem for us, but not far from our house.

A tree went down, broke at the base, fell up against the house in that yard. Thankfully for them, it didn't do much damage. But you say, well, where was God on Wednesday night? Was he on a break? Did he forget to take care of you?

Are we just victims of chance? Or are we victims of the whims of the gods who are competing with one another as the Greek Roman world had so many gods and goddesses that you you you try to please them as best you can. But if you please this one, you offend this one in the process. It's pretty hopeless. Paul sets himself apart from all that, verse 23, for this very night, there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship.

Now who is the God to whom Paul belongs? Even before God spoke to Paul that night, he was solidly established in a biblical worldview of who God is. We all have a worldview. Question is that a God centered world view that aligns with scripture and the revelation of God in scripture or is it one of the many inventions of humanity? Paul is a Jew.

He identifies himself with the God of the Jews, Yahweh, the Lord, the only God who is sovereign over all things. Just some examples. Job said, in regard to his calamity, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised. After round two of his troubles, Job said, shall we not receive good from God and not trouble?

In his lengthy speeches of complaint against God, Job never doubted God's sovereignty over all things. He didn't like it because of the way it was affecting him, but he believed it. He had a biblical view of God. He said to God, you lift me up on the wind, you make me ride on it, and you toss me about in the roar of the storm. That's a figurative language for what he was going through.

In Paul's case, it wasn't figurative at all, was it? Job says, I know you will bring me to death and to the house appointed for all living. Now how can you read the bible for fifty years and not see something for fifty years until just now? Well, that happens to me all the time. He mentions the house appointed for all the living.

It's interesting. Job clearly believed there's other statements that indicate the same thing. He believed in the immortality of the spirit or you may call it the soul. I believe it's the same, concept. There's a spiritual side of us.

There's a physical side of us or part of us, however you define that. We live beyond death. So he mentions this house where he's gonna go in relation to death and I hadn't noticed it before or thought about it before in light of Jesus words in John 14, in my father's house are many rooms, I go to prepare a place for you. Job didn't understand that, but he didn't understand that God was sovereign over his situation, over his death, and over his future after he died. God's sovereignty over all things, including storms, is seen in the story of Jonah.

The Lord hurled a great wind. It just so happened there was a storm that day. No, no, no. The Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship threatened to break up. God makes the calls.

God says in Isaiah 45, I formed the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create dastard disaster. I, the Lord, do all these things. The ancients with multiple gods such as Homer's works, the Iliad and the Odyssey saw the gods competing with one another and manipulating one another. No comfort in those false gods.

Scripture gives us the truth of monotheism as it says in Isaiah 46, I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come. I say my purpose will stand. I will do all that I please.

What I've said that I will bring about. What I've planned that I will do. In the gospels, one of my favorite excerpts from the life of Jesus in his time here on earth, the disciples are with Jesus out on the Sea Of Galilee. A storm comes up. Galilee's famous for that.

Jesus is asleep. The disciples are terrified. They're gonna die. They're in panic mode. And so they wake Jesus up.

Teacher, don't you care that we're perishing? We're gonna die? And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the sea. Peace be still. And there was a great calm on the sea, but not in the hearts of the disciples.

It says next, they were even more terrified terrified. Who is this? That even the wind and the waves obey him. Who is this? He is Jesus Christ, the sovereign lord over all things including the weather, clouds, wind, storms, rain, drought, but not just the weather, no matter what crisis you're in, when you can't make sense of it all and the why questions go unanswered, remember that God is sovereign over all things.

Do I understand the sovereignty of God? Can I explain to you all the questions you have about the sovereignty of God? No. It's way beyond me. But I trust that what God says about himself is true, that he is in control.

So that's our first first point. God is sovereign over all things with with two implications in the text. Because God is sovereign, God is worthy to be worshiped. As Paul shares with his fellow passengers, he roots his words in this explanation for this very night or stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong. He received a special revelation from God through an angel, but he said the God to whom I belong and to whom I worship.

I won't dwell on this one. I would argue though that it's the main point of scripture, the most repeated command in different forms in the bible. In all things, God is to be worshiped, God is to be glorified. Even in this time of greatest despair, Job said affirming in one statement God's sovereignty and that he's to be worshiped. The Lord gave the Lord is taken away.

May the name of the Lord be praised. Now I think he slipped a little in the coming chapters, but he came back to that and how important that is. And then the second implication of God's sovereignty, because he's sovereign, God's purposes will be accomplished. Why is Paul on this boat? He's expressed his desire to go to Rome.

Eventually, he wants to go to Spain. We don't know if he ever made that. And in God's sovereign plan, it it came about not by his planning a trip to to to Rome laid out by triple a, didn't know go here and then go there, you get there eventually. No. He goes to Jerusalem hoping to go to Rome, but he goes to Jerusalem is arrested there.

He's a prisoner now for a very long time. He has to make his defense before the people in general, before the Jewish leaders, and in several hearings before Roman authorities, before Agrippa, the the king at the time, great grandson, I believe, of Herod the Great. He knew that's why he was on that ship to go to Rome. Circumstances, he didn't know how it would work out. But God reminds him and encourages him in that storm on the Mediterranean that he will keep that divine appointment.

Verse 24, you must stand before Caesar. He will take the gospel to the top human authority in the world. What's God's purpose for us? We'll go back to the beginning of acts chapter one for an important part of it at least, but you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit is upon you, and you'll be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth. Now knowing that God is sovereign all over all things and knowing just a little bit about the massive implications of that great truth, what does that do for those for whom it says all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned?

If we all know if all we know is that God is sovereign over all things, that alone would not be particularly comforting, would it? Because we don't know what he's gonna do with us. Are we doomed? And God's behind it all. But no, we know more about God than that.

The next reminder combined with the sovereignty of God is of great comfort. This is where we find hope for the helpless, and here's my second main point now of the text. God is loving and gracious with a plan to rescue us. Here's a temporal rescue, and then we're gonna relate it to the eternal rescue. Verse 22 calls them together.

I'm thinking this storm must have eased just a little bit for them to even have this conversation. I mean, they're bouncing against the walls of the boat down underneath probably most of them. But he calls them together, says God's God's revealed himself to me. He's got some things to say. Verse 22, I urge you to take heart.

There will be no loss of life. Verse 24. Do not be afraid. God has granted you all those who sail with you. It's what God says to Paul.

Verse 34. For not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you. That's a great promise. It's not fulfilled instantly. They're not suddenly beamed to the land under a nice palm tree.

They're still in danger. The most dangerous part is still to come. We must run aground on some island. The shipwreck is yet to come. The boat's gonna break apart.

Everyone's in great danger. Still doing what they can to minimize the danger. They know they're getting into shallow water. They let down the anchors and add more drag to slow the boat down. Some of the sailors decide we're gonna escape.

We can't do anything more for this boat. We're gonna take the the little boat, put it over the side and escape. And Paul says, you do that and there's no hope. They didn't believe. But the soldiers did believe when they cut that boat loose and said we're all staying on ship.

We're listening to Paul now. Had little to nothing to eat for more than two weeks due to sea sickness, so Paul urges them to eat to regain their strength. He repeats the promise that they'll be saved. They throw overboard the rest of the wheat, so the cargo for Rome is now all gone. They wait for the inevitable shipwreck, but God promises to save all of them and I love it that they give us the number.

276 persons were on that ship and every one of them will be saved. What kind of God is that? You remember how God described himself after the golden calf debacle in Exodus 34? These people were such rebels that he had saved out of Egypt and were taking to the promised land, and they're such rebels. But to people who deserved punishment and rejection by God, God said to them, the Lord, the Lord, the passionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.

And you wish you'd just stop there, but it goes on to say, yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished. Oh, so there's a catch to God's love. He says, he loves us, but the end is gonna judge us anyway? Well, let's just dig into that a little bit. God is love, but he's also holy.

Sin can't be ignored, it has to be punished. And that's why you have a picture of what's needed in the sacrificial introduced in Exodus with the Passover certainly, but developed more in Leviticus with the whole sacrificial system to atone for sin. So this sin is punished in some sense by the killing of the animals. But even that was just figurative. That was a picture pointing forward to a necessary all sufficient sacrifice in Jesus Christ.

God's desire is not to punish but to forgive. He's patient with you not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance. But God graciously promises to save them from death. And spoiler alert, well, not really because it says it in this text that's gonna happen, they all came to safety. But do you realize that they faced a far greater danger that continued after they had been rescued from the storm and from the ship?

They faced a far greater danger. Of all the things that currently burden you, if God in his mercy rescues you from that difficult situation, however he carries you through that difficult situation, whatever burdens you today, you face a far greater danger in your life than that, than any of that. They were saved from death at that time, but they still face death and we still face death. This brings to mind the line I referenced a moment ago from the thirteenth century Florentine poet, Dante Alighieri and his most famous work, The Divine Comedy, several parts to it. I confess, I've not read it.

The first part called inferno, as Dante passes through the gate of hell which has a sign attached, abandon all hope you who enter here. Now some think it might agree that our views of hell may be more influenced by Dante than the scripture, though neither is a source of great comfort. It's very real and must be taken seriously. This voyage has a similar feel. All hope of our being saved was at last abandoned.

But there's an antidote not just for the individual storms and problems in your life, which God may or may not in his sovereignty resolve it the way you would like it to be resolved. But you have a far greater concern and that is what happens to you in the end. Not long after Paul arrived in Rome, he wrote a letter to believers in Ephesus in a g n seaport on the Asia Minor Coast, Turkey today. And he used similar language to remind them who they were. These are gentiles.

Who they were before they put their faith in Jesus. And he writes this in Ephesians two. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ. Listen to the language, having no hope. No hope and without God in the world.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ for he himself is our peace. Couple of years before Paul made that trip to Rome, he wrote a letter to that church in Rome that addressed these very issues and I'm just gonna kinda skip through picking, the the main ideas from, several chapters as Paul writes to them and reminds them that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But God demonstrates his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. And then there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus to begin that wonderful eighth chapter of Romans.

So our ultimate hope, my friends, is not in rescue from the storm or the particular storm that you're in. No promise of that. Our hope is the eternal rescue that Jesus came to deliver to us as Jesus went to the cross, took our punishment upon himself so that through faith in him, we are forgiven and have eternal life. That's the ultimate rescue. Do not abandon all hope of being saved today.

Embrace the hope found in Jesus Christ. Put your hope in him. Receive him as your Lord and savior. Trust in him to save you, and he will. He will.

Let's pray. Oh, God, we thank you for this glorious hope that is found in Jesus, our crucified and risen. Lord, our coming king will rescue us not only from condemnation, but from sin of this world, and one day, usher us into the new heavens and the new earth, where righteousness prevails. Thank you for holding us, for keeping us, for bringing us to hope in Jesus Christ. We pray in his name.

Amen.