27 Aug The Trial of Your Life | 04 We Will Not Abandon Ship
Hello Mosaic Church,
In light of us having to cancel services today due to Hurricane Harvey and the fact that we do not have power at our facilities, our leadership team thought it would be a good idea to send out a blog version of the message. It is slightly different from what you would have heard preached this morning, but still communicates the heart of what I felt God was wanting to say to us. If you’d prefer to hear the audio I recorded that at my house this morning as well. You can listen to that below. We wanted you to have the opportunity to gather with your family and friends this morning at home and not miss the chance to still worship our Lord. After all, the church is not a building, it’s you and it’s me, the people of God, and no hurricane or power outage can keep us from worshipping Jesus together. I hope you enjoy.
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It’s been extremely difficult for me to watch what’s going on in our nation. As I see situations like Charlottesville, my heart is full of hurt, and fear, and what I hope is a righteous anger, because it’s an assault on God’s design and God’s desire for humanity. Yes, I am a white male, but I have a daughter from Ethiopia, my kids’ best friends in our neighborhood are Jordanian, and many of the people I consider family, who I would willingly give my life for, are people of color. What I’ve seen in our nation is not not the world I want my kids or my friends to have to live in.
Racism and any kind of cultural or ethnic supremacy stand in direct opposition to the Truth that we are all made in God’s image. It denies that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and yet salvation is offered to all by the reconciling, redeeming, sin conquering, blood of Jesus.
That kind of hate and prejudice is wrong. Not just morally wrong. not just politically wrong. It is theologically wrong, because it has no place in God’s Kingdom. It..Is…Sin, plain and simple.
It was sin in the U.S. in 1860’s. It was sin in Germany in the 1940’s. It was sin in South Africa in the 1950’s. It was sin in Birmingham in the 1960’s. It was sin in Rwanda in the 1990’s. And it is still sin today in 2017. And, as members of God’s Kingdom I hope we can all agree that it is something we will not choose to tolerate or ignore.
But, as frustrating and hurtful as it has been to see all of this, I know I shouldn’t be surprised when I see that kind of hate because we live in a broken world. A world where man wants to be his own god rather than fulfill the purpose of God. It’s A world full of storms. A world full of shipwrecks. Those shipwrecks hit us as individuals, they hit us as a nation, and yes, they even hit us as a church community. Many of us are hurt and scared and angry and in a church as diverse as Mosaic it’s possible for people to feel alone or misunderstood as we process through those emotions.
And if we don’t know how to navigate through those storms then it can threaten to wreck our ship as well.
And so the question we must ask ourselves today is how can we weather these storms together in such a way that displays the glory of God and the Truth of His Kingdom to the world around us. I believe we can answer that question by looking at our passage today in Acts 27 and seeing what the author, Luke, has to say to us about: The Origin of Storms, The Power of Friendship, The Heart of Salvation
In excerpts from Acts 27 we read this:
1 And when it was decided that we should sail for Italy, they delivered Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion of the Augustan Cohort named Julius…
3 The next day we put in at Sidon. And Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him leave to go to his friends and be cared for. 4 And putting out to sea from there we sailed under the lee of Cyprus, because the winds were against us.
9 Since much time had passed, and the voyage was now dangerous because even the Fast was already over, Paul advised them, 10 saying, “ Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives.” 11 But the centurion paid more attention to the pilot and to the owner of the ship than to what Paul said.
14 But soon a tempestuous wind, called the northeaster, struck down from the land. 15 And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along.
18 Since we were violently storm-tossed, they began the next day to jettison the cargo. 19 And on the third day they threw the ship’s tackle overboard with their own hands. 20 When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned.
21 Since they had been without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and incurred this injury and loss. 22 Yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. 23 For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, 24 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.’ 25 So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told. 26 But we must run aground on some island.”
30 And as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship, and had lowered the ship’s boat into the sea under pretense of laying out anchors from the bow, 31 Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.” 32 Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the ship’s boat and let it go.
41 But striking a reef, they ran the vessel aground. The bow stuck and remained immovable, and the stern was being broken up by the surf. 42 The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners, lest any should swim away and escape. 43 But the centurion, wishing to save Paul, kept them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and make for the land, 44 and the rest on planks or on pieces of the ship. And so it was that all were brought safely to land.
The Origin of Storms
Luke tells us at the beginning of this 2 week voyage the winds were against them, and 1 week into it the winds had picked up and had become dangerous. At which point Paul warns them that if they continue on there will be great loss of the ship and possibly their lives. Yet, they continue on and within a day or two they find themselves caught in a full blown hurricane. This eye-witness account Luke gives us tells us 3 things about the origin of the storms we face.
First, it tells us that some storms are cause by circumstances beyond our control. No one on this ship caused or could have prevented this storm from coming. It resulted from warm air and cold water which produced a low pressure front. There wasn’t anything they could have done to stop it.
In our lives it’s the medical diagnosis you didn’t see coming. It’s the loss of a job you weren’t prepared for. The untimely death of someone you love. It’s those moments when life hits you hard. As Pastor Donnell talked about last week, in those moments we need to see Jesus by our side speaking a better word to our hearts. But that’s not what I want to focus on today, you can listen to the podcast from last week. What I want to look more closely at is the other two origins of storms, because I think this is where many of us are looking for answers.
The second origin of our storms is the choices we make
There was plenty of warning for these guys to know better than to set sail. They could feel the wind. They could sense the atmosphere. Paul told them it wasn’t going to end well, yet they kept going. And Luke tells us the reason why.
In Acts 27:11
But the centurion paid more attention to the pilot and to the owner of the ship than to what Paul said.
We know they are on a ship carrying cargo and fishing tackle, which means it’s a commercial vessel and to stay put would have cost these men money. It would have cost them their jobs. It would have cost them their status within their culture, and like in the movie The Perfect Storm, their greed and pride and insecurities drove them to make an incredibly foolish decision. There are 276 people on this ship, and yet the decision to sail into the storm is made by 2 men. Men in a position of power. Men with a cultural advantage over the other 274. Men who were blinded by that power and instead of seeing the others as men who also had families and homes, and you know probably didn’t want to die, they saw them simply as a means to help accomplish their own end of making money and maintaining power. The pilot and the owner made a choice motivated by greed and privilege and in the end they lose the very thing they had put their hope in
We would probably never like to admit it, but I’m pretty sure at some point in life we have all made a choice like this that has lead us into a storm as well. It could be the comment you posted on Facebook from the safety of your computer, and it didn’t matter who it hurt because you had a point to make and an identity to defend. Or, it could be your response to that person’s post that you knew wasn’t going to bring about reconciliation, but you had a point to prove and an identity to defend as well.
Maybe it’s that thing you said to your spouse when you felt hurt or rejected, or that financial decision you made because you thought that material thing would make you feel all better even if it brought stress and pressure to your family. The point is this, when we let our fears and lusts and pride lead our decision making you can rest assured we are sailing our ship right into the heart of a hurricane…and we’re taking others with us. Our kids, our spouses, our friends, our church family, people who bear God’s image will always be affected by the choices we make.
The third origin of our storms are choices others make that affect us.
Paul and the others were carried into this storm because of a choice made by 2 other men. This tends to happen far more often then we would hope. The children we support at Casa Vallado in Central Mexico, they didn’t choose for their parents to abandon them. My friend who’s homeless, he didn’t choose for his wife and daughter to be killed by a drunk driver 10 years ago. You may not have chosen for your spouse to leave you. You may not have chosen for your boss to pass you over for that promotion. You may not have chosen for that person to make that comment that you felt robbed you of your God-given dignity.
None of us chose for white supremacists to hold a rally in Charlottesville, or for that guy to drive his car into a crowd of people just because they didn’t agree with his ideology, and yet it has caused a storm, not just in our nation, but within the hearts of many people of all colors in our church community. It has caused fear, anger, self-preservation, people pulling back from much needed conversations.
We didn’t choose for those things to happen, but now we find ourselves in the midst of hurricane winds. But, here’s what we need to remember. Regardless of where the storm originates, Jesus is still on the throne. Every storm that happens is because God has either caused it or allowed it. Yes, it is the consequence of a choice you made, or a choice someone else made that affected you, but God was not caught off guard. He is allowing those storms because through them He is working out something far greater than we could ever imagine.
Paul got that. It’s why he could write things like Philippians 4:11-13 and 2 Corinthians 12:10, which says, “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Paul understood that God had used his choice to persecute Christians to bring him to a place of becoming a Christian. He saw that through all the persecution, imprisonment, and assassination attempts on his life, God was demonstrating the surpassing worth and glory of Jesus in Paul’s life. Paul knew that even though the trials he was enduring were at the hands of other men, God was still standing as the Sovereign Lord over every storm, and that’s why in the middle of this storm, Paul can stand with confidence and peace and say:
Acts 27: 22-25
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 been told.”
Paul is saying this to the very men who got him into this situation, to the very men who have treated him unjustly. To the very men who, from a cultural perspective, he should have resented and hated. He knew that though other men had gotten him into this situation, it was the Lord of Creation that was going to see him through it.
What carries the children of Casa Vallado through their storms? It’s the women who care for them. It’s knowing there are people in Austin who pray for them, sacrifice their money for them, who visit them in their time of need. What has helped my friend walk through the storms of losing his family and the alcoholism that ensued? It’s our CHI Street team who prays with him, cries with him, teaches him about the Gospel, and he actually just checked himself into a 3 month rehab facility because someone from Mosaic helped to make it happen.
And what can carry this church, and maybe even our nation, through the storms of racism and prejudice? It’s a people coming together, regardless of age, background, ethnicity, or language, saying to one another you are not alone in this storm because I am with you and God is with us.
Yes, the waters may be rough, the winds may be strong, but God has given us the opportunity to weather this storm together and to come out on the other side as a people through whom the world can see the majesty of our Great God and Savior, Jesus the Messiah.
But, what does it take to accomplish that? It takes…
The Power of Friendship
The first people we meet in this story are Paul, a Jewish, Christian, prisoner, and Julius, a Roman, Gentile, Prison Guard. Two people who are at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. Two men who should have hated one another. The more culturally advantaged Roman Gentile and the more culturally disadvantaged Jewish Christian.
Something to point out is that this story is taking place during the reign of Caesar Nero. Nero was infamous for his cruelty towards Jews and Christians. He ordered Christians be fed to lions for sport. He had Christians crucified and then set on fire to be used as lamps at his wild parties. This is Rome’s “Commander in Chief” as it were and so Julius, as a soldier in the Augustan Cohort, would have been immersed in that cultural mindset. He would have been trained to hate Jews and Christians alike.
And Paul, having been a Pharisee most of his life, would have grown up hating Gentiles as well, especially men in the Roman military. They were his oppressors. They were the enemy. And yet, apart from Julius’ poor decision to agree to sail into the storm, throughout the rest of this story we see a bond of friendship between Paul and Julius.
We read in Acts 27:3, “The next day we put in at Sidon. And Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him leave to go to his friends and be cared for.”
This was unheard of in that day because if a Roman Guard was put in charge of a prisoner and that prisoner escaped then that guard would lose his life. And yet here, we see Julius giving Paul leave to go visit his friends. Whatever happened prior to this point that established this friendship it was powerful enough to cause the one who is in the place of cultural power to place his life in the hands of the one who had been culturally oppressed.
However, we also see the one who had been culturally oppressed, Paul, returning from that visit to ensure his oppressor, Julius, would live. We see him praying for, encouraging, protecting, and looking out for the more culturally advantaged, Roman Guard, and when the ship was going down, and the other soldiers sought to kill the prisoners Luke tells us…
Acts 27:43
But the centurion, wishing to save Paul, kept them from carrying out their plan.
These soldiers know if the ship wrecked and the prisoners escaped they were going to have to pay the price with their own lives. So, and catch this, these Roman soldiers, say to themselves, it would be better for those people who are inferior to us to suffer and die then for us to have to give up our lives and suffer.
Here’s their dilemma. If they let the prisoners live and the ship wrecks, would the prisoners choose to escape knowing it would cost the soldiers their lives? They were faced with the fear that if they gave that kind of power to the people they had oppressed, those people might use that power to retaliate? Faced with that choice the soldiers decide it’s too risky to give those men that kind of power, and instead they decide killing them would be the safer choice.
Well, all the soldiers except for one…Julius. But, what was it that Julius saw that these other soldiers didn’t see in that moment. Julius saw Paul’s heart towards him. You see, just months before being placed on this ship, Paul wrote this in his letter to the Corinthians.
2 Corinthians 5:14-17
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Paul did not respond to Julius or treat him like any other prisoner ever had. There was something different in how Paul treated his oppressor and that changed things. Julius realized Paul saw him as a fellow man who was just as broken and just as much in need of God’s grace as he was. He saw Julius was a man who had grown up in a broken culture that had taught him that certain people should be treated a certain way and he was just doing what he had always known to do.
And Paul didn’t hold that against him. Instead he loved him. He served him. He spoke to him as a fellow human being. Paul didn’t see Julius as he was, he saw him for who God had intended him to be, a new creation, an image bearer of God. In response to that treatment, Julius’ heart was softened towards Paul. He no longer saw Paul as his prisoner. He no longer saw Paul as less than. Julius saw Paul as his fellow man, a man worthy of respect and honor and trust.
Because of Paul’s love for Julius and Julius’ response to that love, They were able to look past the color of each other’s skin and see into the content of each other’s character. They were able to move beyond the cultural labels and barriers and presuppositions, and literally place their lives in each other’s hands.
Then Right at the climax of the story, when Luke has us on the edge of our seats wondering if they’re going to make it he tells us about something going on at the back of the boat.
Acts 27:30-32
And as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship, and had lowered the ship’s boat into the sea under pretense of laying out anchors from the bow, Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.” Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the ship’s boat and let it go.
As the ship is breaking apart and everyone is doing all they can to make it through, the sailors, the only guys who know how to sail the ship, decide they are going to sneak away in the lifeboats and leave everyone else to die. Picture this, You’ve got a pilot and an owner who got everyone into this mess trying to protect their investments and they cultural standing, seeing others as a means to accomplishing their own ends. You’ve got the sailors trying to sneak off the boat to save their own necks and leave everyone else to perish. And in the midst of all this selfishness and hate and prejudice stands a Jewish Christian Prisoner and a Roman Gentile Guard looking to serve and protect and rescue one another.
And in the end, it is their care, concern, and dare I say love for one another that ends up saving not only themselves, but everyone else on board, even those who sought to leave them for dead.
Which brings us to the last lens…
The Heart of Salvation
What motivated Paul to treat his cultural enemy as his dearest friend? What motivated Julius to treat Paul, not as someone he was superior to, but as his equal? It was Paul’s understanding that “Unless you stay in the boat, you can’t be saved.”
Let me explain what I mean.
In verse 20 it tells us that the people on this ship had lost all hope of being saved after 3 days without seeing sun or stars. In other words after 3 days of being submerged in total darkness, with all hell breaking loose they had given up hope of their situation ever changing. Then in verse 24 Paul stands in front of them all and says God has promised to deliver us. God has a plan in the midst of this storm and that plan is to carry us through because He has a greater purpose waiting for us in Rome.
Paul tells them, unless you stay in the boat…Unless you trust in God’s deliverance. Unless you stand firm on the promises of God to not only carry us through the storm, but to actually use this storm to accomplish something even greater, something we would have never imagined possible, then not only will you be lost, but everyone on the ship is going to suffer as well. Julius, pilot, owner, soldiers and sailors, you must cut the life boats loose. You must stand in faith. You must trust that no matter how ferocious the storm might seem my God is more ferocious than that.
Now, how could Paul have that kind of faith, that kind of courage? It’s because over and over when Paul experienced storms in his own life he continually looked to Jesus, who in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the threshold of spending His own 3 days submerged in the utter darkness of death, about to face the most terrorizing storm any person would ever face, death on a cross and the loss of perfect relationship with His Father, knowing what was coming Jesus knelt down in the darkness of night and cried out
Matthew 26:39:
My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.
In other words, God there’s got to be another way out of this storm, there’s got to be a lifeboat I can escape in. Yet, Father, if staying on this ship and going through this storm is the only way for humanity to be saved, then Father cut the life boat loose and give me the strength to endure. After 3 days of utter darkness, lying dead in the tomb, Jesus rose up out of the midst of that storm and stepped out into a new Creation. Now, on the surface it didn’t look like much had changed. But beneath the surface God’s Kingdom had begun to spread.
The fact that you and I gather together every Sunday and throughout the week in community groups as black, white, Latino, Nigerian, Japanese, Uzbeki, Romanian, Iraqi, and on and on I could go, is proof that Jesus didn’t just weather the storm of sin and death, He conquered it and today He is putting the world back together again through His people. In light of that Truth, we, Mosaic Church, cannot only stare our individual storms in the face, but my prayer is we could also stare down the storms of racism and prejudice and hate that are threatening to sink the ship of our nation and say, “Father, cut the life boats loose. We’re not looking for an easy way out. We’re not going to run from this storm. We are going to stay on this ship together. We are going to trust God together. We are going to look to the resurrection power of Jesus and love one another as brothers and sisters in Christ regardless of what our culture tells us we ought to be doing. We are going to see God carry us through this storm together, and through us carry this nation through the storm and come out on the other side into a new creation.
The storm may be powerful, but our God is more powerful. So God we don’t need the lifeboats, we don’t need another option, we just need more of Jesus and more of each other. But, we have to stop looking for a way of escape when the storm threatens to tear apart the ship we’re on. We have to cut loose the life boat of self-preservation, and comfort and convenience. We have to cut loose the life boat of just sticking to people who look like us and think like us and talk like us, and we have to actually have the needed conversations with, and be willing to listen to the thoughts, experiences and perceptions of, those who are different than us.
We have to cut loose the life boat isolation and be willing to commit to being a part of this multi-generational, multi-ethnic, Gospel-centered community God has so graciously formed here at Mosaic. This is our ship. There’s a whole boat load of folks in this city and in this nation who need rescuing, so let us not abandon ship in their greatest hour of need. Let us cut loose our life boats and weather this storm together.
Brett