Fear Not!

0:02 In Acts chapter 27, if you will recall, they start off and they set sail from Caesarea. Is that working, you guys in the back? Sorry, I forgot to test this before a service. So I'm putting you to the test now. There we go. This is the...

0:48 Well, here, we'll go back one. This is the track that they take, or a proposed track that they take, until they get to Crete, the island. And then we read last week that a strong storm came through as they were sailing from Fair Havens for Phoenix. You can see the proposed route is that green line, and then a strong gale, a strong storm came through and swept them off course. And last week, we left in the middle of dire straits, is maybe the best way to put it.

1:35 They've been being driven along by this storm for about three days, and they can no longer see the stars at night or the sun during the day. They don't know if it's day or night in the boat. And I don't know how many of you have ever been on a boat, or anywhere, really. If you can't see day or night, it really begins to mess with you psychologically. And then throw on top of that the movement of the boat, and how some of us may not be equipped to be seafaring peoples because our stomachs don't handle it so well. So you can imagine that they've been on this boat

2:21 not seeing anything for a while now, and we're continuing in the text in Acts chapter 27. I'm just going to leave the map. In fact, I'll switch to the next one. I'll leave the map up there. This is kind of a proposed path that they might have taken, being blown by the wind and then coming back up into the Adriatic Sea, and then eventually landing, I'm using the word landing liberally, in Malta, which we'll get to next week. But we'll read this text and then we'll dive into it. Starting Acts 27, verses 21 through 32. "As they had long been without food, Paul stood up in their midst and

3:08 said, 'Men, you should have listened to me and not sailed from Crete to avoid this disaster 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 came to me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve, and he said, "Do not fear, Paul. You must stand before Caesar, and indeed God has granted you all who are sailing with you." So take heart, men, for I trust God that it will be exactly as I have been told. But we must run aground on some island.' Now when the 14th night had come, as we were drifting across

3:53 the Adriatic Sea about midnight, the sailors began to sense that they were nearing some land. So they took soundings and found that the water was 20 fathoms deep, and a bit farther along, they took another sounding and found that it was 15 fathoms deep. Fearing that we might run aground on the rocks, they threw out four anchors from the stern. They were longing for day to come. Now the sailors were trying to escape from the ship, and they had lowered the dinghy into the sea, pretending they were going to put out anchors from the bow. But Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, 'Unless these men remain on the ship, you cannot be saved.' Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the dinghy and let it drift

4:39 away." Here they have been without food. They've been long without food, is what Paul says. They're 14 days, 14 nights into the trip. This idea of being without food, I know I've already touched on it just slightly, but it could be two things. Number one, they could have thrown their food overboard to lighten the ship. But number two, they could have thrown their other food overboard and can't be able to eat anymore because of their troubled stomach. In either case, they've been going for 14 days without food. I don't know, can you imagine that?

5:25 I don't know how many of you have done an extended fast. I haven't done a 14-day fast, which is quite obvious. But anyways. I like to... Never mind. Stay on path here. Fasting's not necessarily my favorite thing in the world, and I've never been on a ship in the middle of a storm that has forced me to fast because I can't eat, either A, because there's no food, or B, because I can't keep the food down. I shared with you my story last week about having a little bit of difficulty, some seasickness on one of my boat rides. Let me share with you another story.

6:13 Not quite as long in duration, but it had potentially more severe consequences. So growing up, my dad and I, we liked to do all sorts of activities together, from golf to jumping on trampolines to you name it, we liked to do it. The problem is every time we did an activity together that had a potential severe consequence, one of us got hurt, and it was never me. It might have always been my fault,

7:00 but it was never me who got hurt. Such is the case when you have a young son and you're over 40. Yes, I am learning that now. Time comes back around. Anyways, my dad this one year, I think it must have been around the year 2000. I was 16. I think I had just turned 16. I had just gotten my lifeguarding license, and in order to do that, you have to swim a mile. So I passed this lifeguarding test, and I was like, "Great, I'm a great swimmer." And my dad bought a sailboat, and we decided to take the sailboat out on a local lake,

7:51 which is east of us. And it's a rather large lake. And we go out, and my dad and I knew better than to go by ourselves because neither one of us knew how to sail. So we took someone from the congregation, who is a longtime friend of ours, and let's say he was a large man, larger than me. And so we go out on the lake, and we're out on the lake, we're zipping across the lake. We're having fun. It's one of these sailboats that has this extra sail because it's a racing sailboat,

8:38 so it goes really fast, or at least it felt really fast to me. So we're out there, and we're having fun, my dad and I. I don't know if you've ever gone along, but the boat is almost on its side. We're just whipping through the sea, through the lake. And my dad's sitting there, and he slips and falls to the side of the boat, which is down. He gets back up and does fine, but then he slips again. And I was a 16-year-old kid. I'm probably wet, weighed 125 pounds. And so I'm trying to help him up, but

9:25 he's struggling a little bit. So the guy who is our captain, he leans over to also help. And I don't know if you understand how the center of gravity works in ships. But when mass moves from one side of the center of gravity to the other, the boat turns. And the boat just went, "Wee." And all of a sudden, we're in the water. And the boat is entirely upside down. We're in the middle, in the very center of the lake. There's no way that's shorter to go

10:13 should someone want to swim. And so at this point, we're looking around for perhaps another boater on the water to help us. Now, this should've been our first clue, but we're looking around. There's not a single boat on the lake. Not one. This is in around, I think it was around April, May, just the time of year when it's perfect boating season in Texas. And we're looking around, not a single boat. And we're kind of like, "Hmm, why are there no boats on the water?" And if we look to one direction, it's perhaps a little bit darker

10:59 than the rest of the directions. And the waves are starting to get a little bit bigger. So we get the boat turned back over, and we're like, "Okay." The man who is our captain, he's like, "I think we can get this going. If we can just get moving, we can bail and sail at the same time. And we'll just slowly come up out of the water." "Okay." We're trying to do this, and it doesn't happen. Boat goes back over. And this time, when we're trying to get it back upright, my dad cuts his foot on the keel. And I don't know, it was a pretty bad cut, don't you think? It seemed like a bad cut to me. And also, for those of you who don't know my dad,

11:49 he is not what I would call cold temperature resistant. In fact, the cold temperature has an immediate effect on him. And here we are, and the lake hasn't warmed up. It's not summertime yet. It may be warm while the sun is out, but it's not summertime. And we're in the water, and we've been now in the water, I think probably for 45 minutes. And he's starting to shiver. His lips are getting blue, and I'm like, "Dad, you've got to at least get up on the boat." The boat's upside down. I'm like, "Get up on the boat, warm up." And I'm like, "I'm going to swim to land." My dad's like, "You are absolutely not swimming to land."

12:34 And I look at him, and I was trying to be as polite a young 16-year-old man that I could be. And you hear laughter because those are the ones who knew me as a 16-year-old boy. As the 16-year-old that I was, I said, "Look, Dad, we're stuck in the middle of the lake. We're obviously not going anywhere. At this rate, you're going to die of hypothermia before we get anywhere." And I was like, "Just let me swim." And he goes, "No, no. You're only 16. I'm not letting my 16-year-old son swim the long way." It looked

13:21 like it was about a mile to shore. And I said, "Dad, who are you going to have swim to shore? The older gentleman with a cut foot whose lips are already blue, or the other man who is larger than me?" I was trying to be very nice, as nice as I possibly could be in the middle of the lake, upside down in the water for 45 minutes. Finally, I don't know, what do you think? It took 20 minutes for me to convince you? Something like that. Finally, I convinced him, and he said, "Okay, where are you

14:07 going?" I said, "Well, I'm going to swim that way." Sixteen-year-old me was not as smart as I thought I was. So, I don't know if any of you are 16, 17 in here, and you think you're the smartest person in the room. Just take note, you learn a lot over the next 10 years. Sixteen-year-old me, I thought I was the smartest person out on the lake because there were only three of us. And so I'm like, "I'm going to swim that way." It looked like it was a little bit closer than the other directions, except it was going against the waves. Oh. And so I'm like, "I'm just going to get going." My dad goes, "Well, you're going to

14:53 have to wear a life jacket." And I said, "I'm not wearing a life jacket. I can't actually swim in a life jacket." But I was quite glad I listened to my dad, and he made me take, I don't know, you guys, the seat cushions, the seat cushion floaty that's in a boat usually. So I just stuck that underneath my back, and I did the backstroke most of the way. And I will say, I was smart enough to keep a tower in between my feet, so I knew I was going in a straight line. I get to the land. I don't know, I think it was probably 45 minutes. It took me 45 minutes probably to swim to land. I holler in. These people come out. They pick me up in this...

15:39 Ironically, it was probably the type of boat that they had as their skiff or dinghy in the scripture here. And they come pick me up in this little jon boat, and they're rowing me into land. And the thing hasn't been used in so long, there's piles of ants. I'm getting eaten by these fire ants. And I'm like, "I would rather just swim." So I go in, and I go inside, and I call my mom because at this point, we had a cellphone, and we had it with us, but it was in a floaty thing. And when we turned over, we couldn't find it anymore. So I'm wondering if maybe my dad has found it. So I call my mom, and I'm like, "Hey, Mom, have you heard from Dad?"

16:26 And she goes, "What do you mean have I heard from Dad? You guys are on the lake together." And I was like, I don't know. Did I hang up? I think I might have hung up. No. I hung up, yeah. I hung up because I'm pretty sure right then the ambulance arrived to check me out. And then I called my mom back, and obviously, my mom was probably, at this point, not feeling very secure about the rest of her family. And anyways, long story short, I could go on and tell this story for all day long. Long story short, the, was it the Rockwall Coast Guard? Or the people in the boats came out, and they found my dad

17:11 after a little bit with the boats. No, with a different boat. They towed him. Anyways, we all got to shore safely. But it was, what would you say, a three, four-hour ordeal probably. And anyways, being out in the water with the waves coming over you, and these are little waves. These are like, I'm in Texas, and the storm hasn't hit yet waves. These are not the waves that push a boat from Crete towards Syrtis, and you just can't do anything to contradict it, and so you just throw the anchor out behind you and start praying. Being shipwrecked is not the most fun thing. Paul gets up at this point, and he stands up in their midst, and he says,

18:00 "Men, you should have listened to me." I feel like this is probably something my mom has said to my dad and me- ... at least a dozen times. "Men, you should have listened to me." Paul gets up. He's standing in their midst. What does it mean? How is he standing in the midst of 200... We know from later on in the chapter that there's 276 people on this boat. How is he commanding the attention of 276 people in the middle of a storm? How can he be heard? Is he underneath? Is he in the hold somewhere? Are they all gathered around? Is it-- Who knows? Does the storm maybe perhaps quiet down just so he can talk? Is there some supernatural elements?

18:47 What does it mean that he stands up in their midst? When I hear the words "in your midst" or "in the midst of," it reminds me of the account of the tabernacle, which dwelt in the midst of Israel, right in the middle. All of Israel camped around it, and everything in life was oriented around it. Everybody was looking at it all the time. Here Paul is in their midst, and he says, "You should have listened to me and not sailed from Crete to avoid this disaster and loss." He's reminding them that he warned them against this. Now, he's not saying, "I told you so." Just I want everybody to note that. For those of you who have husbands and sons who do stupid things,

19:33 just note, don't say, "I told you so." It's better to say, "I warned you about that, and now because I warned you about that and it came true, let me tell you what else I can see." So Paul is using it not to say, "I told you so," but to say, "I have been told that all of us, all the people will survive. So if you didn't believe me then, and that all happened, now I have the track record of being proven true. Now let me tell you, the ship is going to get shipwrecked, but all the people will be saved." So there should be a glimmer of hope in here for the people. He says, "Take heart. You can trust and believe me now

20:18 that there will be no loss of life, and that it will only be the loss of the ship." Those are the two things that he tells them. It should be encouraging because it means they don't have to fear for their lives. They just have to fear for the ship. But it doesn't necessarily work its way out in everyday expression, that element. Other than the prediction from Paul, at this point, what has changed? Is the storm still raging? Is the boat still tossing to and fro? Are they still sick? Perhaps they're still vomiting, even if they don't have anything left to vomit. Are they still being tossed to and fro? It's hard to change a mental outlook when you don't see any

21:03 other changes happening. So though Paul is trying to encourage them, I don't think that any of them are really actually being encouraged yet. He continues on in verse 23, "For this very night," this is why he's trying to encourage them. "This very night, there came to me an angel of God, to whom I belong and I serve." Now, last week, I shared with you that there were two major boat stories or ship stories that would have been known at this time. I went home, and I was corrected by my father that there's actually three, and I didn't think about the third one. It's so famous, it just went right over me.

21:48 But the flood story exists in every culture in the world. And in every culture in the world, there's a element of a group of people who survived the flood on a boat. So that's the third shipping story or boating story at this time that would have been known across cultures. Could it be that there's some similarity here to Noah's Ark in the fact that all of the life on board are being saved from what was prior to now, after this disaster? We're not entirely certain. Paul claims to have had an encounter with an angel from his God, and he knows that belonging to his

22:36 God, he knows that he belongs to his God and is continuing to serve him even by being on the ship. This is Paul on the ship is serving his God by being on the ship. I don't know if you've ever thought about it that way. In fact, it's almost in direct contrast to the story of Jonah, because when Jonah gets on the ship, he's actually acting in disobedience to God. So when Jonah's on the ship, he doesn't fight to share the concept of repentance or turning to the Lord to anybody on the ship. He doesn't appeal for the lives of the people on the ship. He just tells them to throw him overboard. "Just toss me over. Toss me. Just throw me overboard

23:23 and everything will be fine." I don't know if you guys ever really think about that. The fact that he's actually refusing to share. Jonah is refusing to share the fact that his God controls everything. And he says, "Just throw me overboard. You'll be fine. I'll just get eaten by a fish." Sure enough, he gets thrown overboard, he's eaten by a fish, and everybody on the board is fine. Paul here is the exact opposite. He's actually, by being on the boat, he's being obedient to the Lord. He's not running away from his calling. He's running with his calling, with the Lord, and even with the direction supplied by the Lord.

24:08 To the point that now Paul says, "You know what? The Lord told me all of you are going to be saved from the shipwreck." The ship's going to crash. Nothing else is going to survive, but the Lord has granted me all of your lives. I just want you to think about that in terms of Paul's mission. He is the apostle to who or whom? I don't know what the word is. He is the apostle to the Gentiles, and here he is on a boat full of Gentiles. And in fact, I don't know if you'll recall the story of Jonah for a moment. God told him to go to Nineveh. He fled the opposite way. He goes, "No, they persecute us. I don't want to deal with them." Here

24:54 Paul is on a boat with Roman soldiers. Paul could easily have said, "No, they persecute us. They oppress us. They've conquered us. There's no mercy found with them." Paul says, "Give me their lives. Put them on me." And the Lord says, "I've granted you all the lives of those who are with you." All the lives on the ship. It's so amazing to see that Paul's obedience brings about the, if you will, the salvation of life. The angel says, "Do not fear, Paul."

25:41 We're continuing in verse 24. "Do not fear, Paul. You must stand before Caesar, and indeed, God has granted you all who are sailing with you. So take heart, men." This is Paul. "So take heart, men, for I trust God that it will be exactly as I have been told. But we must run aground on some island." So here, the angel has told Paul what will happen in the future. By the way, I know everybody knows this, but when you encounter the angel of God anywhere in scripture, or very nearly anywhere in scripture, the reaction is, "Do not fear." That's what the messenger always says, "Do not fear."

26:28 I'm not sure that we can actually imagine how terrifying the angel of the Lord is. We always think, "Oh, we want to interact with the angel of God." Every single one of these people, the holiest people in Jewish history, said, "Just kill me now." This is a dangerous interaction. He says, "Do not fear." The angel could be addressing his fear of the angel himself, or the angel could be addressing the fear of the ship being in the storm at this moment.

27:13 In other words, don't let fear rule your life. Look beyond your circumstances to the promise of the Lord. I want to shift for just a moment into this week's Torah portion. I already did it with the children for a few minutes. But in this week's Torah portion, the Lord promises to deliver the inhabitants of the land of Canaan into the hands of Israel. And he says, "Just go. You got it." They send 12 scouts. These 12 scouts, they find enormous grapes, figs, pomegranates.

28:00 They see giants in the land. But they come back, and they spread a bad report among the people. This is what they say in Numbers 13:32-33, "The land through which we passed devours its residents. All the people we saw there are men of great size. We saw there the Nephilim. The sons of Anak are from the Nephilim. We seemed like grasshoppers in our eyes, as well as theirs." All, I'm going to say all, the 10 scouts. So I'm going to leave Joshua and Caleb out of this for a few

28:46 minutes. The 10, all they saw was fear. They looked and they... I don't know if you can imagine this. They don't start and say, "Well, look at all this great fruit we got. I mean, it broke the backs of two of us just to carry a thing of grapes." They don't look about what the land can produce. They don't even think about the Lord has promised this to them. They come back, and they say, "Oh, we saw these giants, and we saw that the land devours its residents." Then they say,

29:32 "We seemed like grasshoppers in our eyes." I want you to note, they didn't get this report from any of the inhabitants of the land. They could have said, "We seemed like grasshoppers in the eyes of the giants," and maybe they were right. But they don't say that. They say, "We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes." All of a sudden, they view themselves as insufficient and deficient, which by the way, it's okay to view yourself that way because you are. There's only one who is sufficient for us all. But if we only see that part and we don't see his sufficiency, then we've missed it.

30:20 And in fact, this week, the scouts, by doing this, they persuade the people with a bad report to disobey God. And by persuading the people to disobey the Lord and refuse to go in, the Lord gets angry. And he says, "Fine. Don't go in." Their fear, by the way, is that their children will be killed by the inhabitants of the land. What happens is that they die in exile, and their children actually are strong enough to inherit the land and take the land. But as soon as the Lord says, "Fine, don't go.

31:06 You're being disobedient. You're going to wander," all of a sudden, do you see what happens? "Oh, let's go. God says we can do it. Let's do it. I think we can do it." And they all go, and what happens? They die. Because again, they're being disobedient. They were disobedient to get to that point, and then now they're disobedient because God said, "Don't go." And then they're like, "Oh, we can do it. We've got God's blessing." This one act changed Jewish history forever.

31:55 Rabbinic tradition has it that they brought this bad report on Tisha B'Av. And on Tisha B'Av is the date of the destruction of the First Temple, the Second Temple, the expulsion from England in 1210, something like that, 1290, somewhere right around there. The expulsion from Spain in 1492. The critical document that enacted the mass murder of six million Jews in World War II was signed on Tisha B'Av. All of these things all happen on the same day. When you choose to believe a bad report,

32:43 and you choose to disobey the Lord, there's consequences. The consequences are heartbreaking. That being said, I don't want to leave you without hope. Because actually, even in the scripture, the Lord says, "This fast," the fast of Tisha B'Av, "will be turned into joy when the Messiah returns." Hallelujah. So it may be a day of mourning, but it is a day of joy when the Messiah comes.

33:29 Whether you take that to be Yeshua's first coming or his second, I'll leave that up to you. Paul here, he's instructing them, "Do not fear," because he must stand before Caesar, and in addition, God has granted him the lives of all of those who are on the ship. The promise of the Lord, in this case, is that Paul will stand before Caesar, and that the Lord will save the lives of those on board the ship with him. And Paul takes that and says, "Take heart, men." In other words, be encouraged, or "Chazaq!" Be strengthened. This is the time to be strengthened. I trust in my God and his promises, and this is what he has promised.

34:14 And since I already predicted these dire conditions, you should believe me with my next prediction. So now, we're going to continue in verse 27. "Now when the fourteenth night had come, as we were drifting across the Adriatic Sea about midnight, the sailors began to sense that they were nearing some land. So they took soundings, and they found that the water was 20 fathoms deep. A bit farther along they took another sounding and found that it was 15 fathoms deep. Fearing that we might run aground on the rocks, they threw out four anchors from the stern. They were longing for day to come. Now the sailors were trying to escape from the ship, and they had lowered the

35:00 dinghy into the sea, pretending that they're going to put out anchors from the bow. Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, 'Unless these men remain on the ship, you cannot be saved.' Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the dinghy and let it drift away." So the fourteenth night comes. It seems actually like the storm has calmed down a little bit. Why? Because the text, Luke tells us, he says that they're drifting along. Earlier in the text, they were being driven along by the storm. They were experiencing violent waves and tossing and turning, and now they're drifting along. The sailors, they sense that they're near some land, so they take some soundings. A sounding is basically you drop a rope with a

35:47 weight on it, and it goes down to see how far. And if you're like, "Fathoms? I can't fathom what a fathom is." One fathom is about six feet. So basically, you just do this with-- For those of us who are about six feet, you just toss the rope over. Anyways. The water's about 20 fathoms deep. It's about 120 feet. They take another sounding. In other words, there could be probably about a 30-minute interval here. A bit farther along, they take another sounding, and it's 15 fathoms or about 90 feet. And now fear again is starting to grip the sailors. Why do I say that?

36:33 The sailors know what's coming. Perhaps they even can hear the crashing of waves on the reefs ahead of them. I know I'm looking a little bit into the next text also, but the next text talks about the sea. When they run the ship aground, it's in between the seas, where the seas meet. And I read this fascinating book last time I taught through Acts, which was about eight years ago, I realized. And if anybody's looking for a really good book to read, it's called "The Lost Shipwreck of Paul." And it was written in the early 2000s.

37:19 And the man goes to Malta and reads the book of Acts as his treasure guide, if you will. And so there is a part, there is a harbor in Malta where the seas, they meet. And where it says between two seas or the seas meet, I can't remember exactly how the text says it. The seas crash, and it's this tumultuous area. And he uses that to go find where they cut loose the anchors. I'm getting into next week's text, but I have permission from Rabbi Sean. So they cut loose some of the anchors,

38:07 and he actually uses exactly what the text says to go and find the spots where the anchors should be, and he found the spots. And in fact, the anchors had already been brought in, and there was already a tradition on the island, and they had an anchor on the island. And the tradition was that it was Paul's, but he used the text to prove that it actually was Paul's because of where he was scuba diving. Such a fascinating book. The author is a former police detective, and so it reads like a detective story. But it's his true account of how he finds these anchors or where they were.

38:55 Anyways, here they are. They're longing for the day to come. They're stuck in night. Night in Jewish tradition or represented in Jewish sources is a time of trepidation and danger, a symbol perhaps of death and a return to chaos. The sailors, at least some of them, out of fear, they're trying to escape from the ship because they can hear that they're coming near a place where the ship is going to come aground. The problem is coming aground at night is very different than coming on ground during the daylight. You can't see anything. And so they decide they're going to hop in the little lifeboat, the little dinghy, and they're going to save themselves.

39:43 So they're dropping it from the front of the boat, and it must be that Paul notices what they're doing. The text doesn't exactly tell us, but he must have noticed, and he tells the centurion and the soldiers and says that unless these men stay on the boat, you cannot be saved. You as the centurion or the soldiers. Now, I want you to remind you what happened 14 days earlier. Paul says, "I don't think that we should push onward. We're going to get shipwrecked and you're going to lose everything." Now, here they are 14 days later, and Paul says, "Unless you stop them, you won't be saved." I can just imagine how quickly that centurion was like, "Okay, let's go get

40:29 this." Like, "I didn't listen to you the first time, but I'm going to listen to you this time." So the soldiers, they go and they cut the ropes and let the lifeboat drift away. But here I want to point out that Paul ties their physical salvation, their physical deliverance. I'm using the word salvation on purpose, by the way. He ties their physical salvation to the fact that they have to be unified as a group. They have to all move forward together. Some of them can't go on without, because that will cost the

41:15 salvation of everyone else. They have to move forward together. The irony is the lifeboat, the dinghy, the skiff, whatever you want to call it, that is an element of potential salvation. Those sailors know it. They're going to get in it, and they're going to save themselves. But salvation for the group is reliant upon throwing away the hope of salvation for some. Those sailors, they think it's salvation.

42:01 They don't know actually that they're going to survive anything. They could easily have shipwrecked in their little dinghy. But they think that they have a hope of salvation in the boat itself, in the skiff. But Paul knows that their hope of salvation lies in God's promise, which says that they have to stay together on the ship, and it cannot be Some going one way, some going a different way. They have to ride it out, if you will, together. So by releasing this last glimmer of hope in the physical realm, it guarantees all of their salvation.

42:47 It's such a thing, it reminded me of Isaiah 55, where the Lord says, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." We all think that if we can jump into the little skiff, that we can save ourselves. But our hope of salvation doesn't lie in a boat. Our hope of salvation relies, or is anchored, upon the promises of God. So what does this mean for you and me today?

43:37 The first thing I want to tell you is take heart. Be encouraged. I know this whole message is about a shipwreck, which is a little bit hard to be encouraging about a shipwreck. But be encouraged. Why do I say be encouraged? I suspect, maybe not all of you at this moment, but all of us at some moment will be driven by a storm in our own lives. Perhaps you're experiencing it now. What is the storm in your life that you're being driven by? In fact, maybe you didn't even listen when the Paul in your life said, "Don't go to the next harbor."

44:23 He even warned you. And perhaps you're like the centurion, you're like, "We got this." Perhaps you've been going, I'm using this term from the text. Perhaps you've gone 14 nights and you haven't eaten food. You're discouraged. You're anxious. You're full of fear. You don't know what to do, and you just need somebody to tell you, "Take heart." So that's what I'm going to do today. I'm going to tell you to take heart. It doesn't matter if you've been driven for 14 days or for three days or for 28 days or for five years. Your hope of salvation doesn't lie in a boat. Your hope of salvation lies in the promise of the Lord.

45:11 It's time, if you're in that moment, it's time for you to take heart. Now, it's difficult to register the mental with the physical reality. So in the present, what is your position? Are you on this ship only for the sake of getting to the next destination? Kind of like Jonah was. Are you on the ship only for the next destination? Or are you on the ship for the sake that you are going to stand in the midst of the people and intercede for the others around you, for their salvation from the same storm that you're stuck in?

45:58 Are you going to stand up like Paul and say, "It's time to take heart"? We may lose everything in this process, but the Lord has promised our lives. Number three, do not let fear rule your life. Philippians 4:4-7 says this, "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice." Maybe I should say that again. "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice."

46:44 By the way, Paul wrote that after the shipwreck, or at least that's the premise. That he experienced this shipwreck and then when he's in Rome, he writes this letter to the Philippians. "Again, I will say rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to all people. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious or full of fear about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the shalom, or the peace or the wholeness or the well-being of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Messiah Yeshua."

47:36 When the future prediction becomes the present living reality, it changes. So in other words, how do we handle theoretical circumstances when they become our actual lived reality? Let me say it a different way. We know-- I don't know if I want to give that example. Sometimes it's easy for us to know that the Lord provides. We say this all the time, "The Lord will provide, the Lord will provide, the Lord will provide," or, "The Lord is providing a way forward." I want you to know that's easy to know.

48:24 But when you're living in the moment of needing the Lord's provision, even if you know it, it's far harder to live in that moment. That's what I mean when I say how do we handle theoretical circumstances, the things that we know in our mind when they become a lived reality. We can say all day long, "Yes, I know that the Lord provides," but when we're living in the moment, what do we do? I think I've shared this story before, and I'll share it again. I think I had permission before, and I'll share it again. Marcus, do I have your permission to share your U-Haul story?

49:10 Thanks. Good thing we can do this on the-- Some stories I don't prepare ahead of time. But Marcus and Minika, they were moving back to Dallas eight years ago? About eight years ago. And he had had a job, and then the job stopped, and they had been living on savings. He felt like the Lord was saying wait, and they were waiting, and the savings was doing this, and they're waiting, and the savings continues to do this. And finally, he got a job offer in Dallas. They were living in a different state at that point.

49:55 And he said, "But I need you here next week." You can ask Marcus for the full story. I'm butchering it a little bit, but this is what I want to get to. One of the people from the congregation said, "I'll drive the U-Haul with you," which helped because then they could bring the U-Haul and their vehicle. But the cost of the U-Haul, they didn't have the money for. They had drained their savings so much that they didn't have the money for the U-Haul. The U-Haul was 850? $850. This lady from the congregation, didn't know any of this, came to Marcus. Or did she leave the letter at your house?

50:46 Oh, I thought it was the lady from the congregation. All right. It was a check that Minika was supposed to get from her old job, and it came, and it was $858. Am I right? When things like that happen at a specific time, you know that's the Lord. And the $8 was to get gas from Georgia to here. No, I'm just- New Beginnings. New Be-- Oh. The $8 was to go for one mile on today's gas prices. No, I'm just playing. But anyways, it's

51:31 easy for us to say that we know what God will do. It's harder for us to live in that moment of sitting and waiting for Him to do. It's very difficult. So, how do we handle that? Do we see an opportunity? Where do I draw this from in the text? Do we see an opportunity to abandon ship for our own sake and to leave the others behind? Or do we stay as a unified group and know that the Lord will provide? Avinu shebashamayim, our Father in heaven. Lord, we thank you for this text and thank you for the life of Paul and just ask

52:18 that you would continue to speak to us through the Book of Acts as we come drawing near to the end of the Book of Acts. Lord, we thank you for your provision in each of our lives. We bless you and praise you in Yeshua's name. Amen. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. Yevarechecha Adonai

53:03 ve'yishmerecha. Ya'er Adonai panav elecha veechuneka. Yissa Adonai panav elecha ve'yaseim lecha shalom. B'shem Yeshua ha'Mashiach. In the name of our Messiah, Yeshua. Shabbat shalom.