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Now dangerous, because the fast was now already gone by. Paul admonished them and said unto them, Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the lading and the ship, but also of our lives. But the centurion gave more heed to the master and to the owner of the ship than to those things which were spoken by Paul. Verse twenty: And When neither sun nor stars shone upon us for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was now taken away.
When they had been long without food, then Paul stood forth in the midst of them and said, Sirs, you should have hearkened unto me and not have set sail from Crete and have gotten this injury and loss. But now I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For there stood by me this night an angel of the God whose I am, whom also I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul, thou must stand before Caesar, and lo, God hath granted thee all them that sail with thee.
Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer, for I believe God that it shall be even so as it has been spoken unto me. Howbeit we must be cast upon a certain island. That's thirty: And as the sailors were seeking to flee out of the ship and had lowered the boat into the sea under color as though they would lay out anchors from the foreshit, Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, except these abide in the ship, you cannot be saved. Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the boat and let her fall off.
And while the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to take some food, saying, this day is the fourteenth day that you wait and continue fasting, having taken nothing. Wherefore I beseech you to take some food, for this is for your safety, for there shall not a hair perish from the head of any one of you. When he had said this and had taken bread, he gave thanks to God in the presence of all, and he brake it and began to eat. Then they were all of good cheer. Chapter twenty eight, verse seventeen.
And it came to pass that after three days he called together those that were the chief of the Jews. And when they were come together, he said unto them, I, brethren, though I had done nothing against the people or the customs of our fathers, yet was delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans, who, when they had examined me, desired to set me at liberty because there was no cause of death in me. But when the Jews spake against it, I was compelled to appeal unto Caesar, not that I had ought to accuse my nation of. For this cause, therefore, did I entreat you to see and to speak with me.
For because of the hope of Israel, I am bound with this chain. Verse twenty three: And when they had appointed him a day, they came to him into his lodging in great number, to whom he expounded the matter, testifying the kingdom of God and persuading them concerning Jesus, both from the law of Moses and from the prophets, from morning till evening. And some believed the things which were spoken, and some disbelieved. And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word. Well spake the Holy Spirit by Isaiah the prophet unto your fathers, saying, Go thou unto this people and say, by hearing you shall hear, and in no wise understand, and seeing you shall see and shall in no wise perceive.
For this people's heart is waxed gross, their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed, lest happily they should perceive with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart, and should turn again, and I should heal them. Be it known, therefore, unto you that this salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, they will also hear. And he abode two whole years in his own higher dwelling, and received all that went in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, with all boldness, none forbidding him.
God give us understanding of his word. On Tuesday last, we began the study, the study of the last major section of Luke's history. We discovered that there were five parts to that last section, and on Tuesday we studied the first of them. This was the account of Paul's journey from Ephesus, uh, to, uh, the beginning of Paul's journey from Ephesus to Rome, and in particular, its first major stage from Ephesus to Jerusalem. In that first part, we came across two major stories.
The way that the citizens of Ephesus defended their religion. Their religion, we discovered, was a form of nature worship. Nature worship that took with them the ceremonies of Artemis, the virgin mother goddess. And then we considered also Paul's appeal to the elders at Ephesus, as he pleaded with them that they should be steadfast and persistent in their protection and defense of the church. Yesterday we went on to consider the three central parts of this final section of the history, and found them to be altogether taken up with Paul's defense of the gospel.
The defense that at heart was basically the same, because the crucial issue was the issue of the hope of Israel, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. But as Paul defended the gospel in the different centers, in Jerusalem, in Caesarea, before the high priests, before the Roman governor, we discovered that he had to defend that gospel, uh, in three different contexts. So that as we read the story today, we are invited to judge the gospel, first of all, by its respect for the human conscience.
Secondly, we may judge it by its respect for the civil law and the governments which Paul would teach us are set in place by God himself. Thirdly and finally, we may judge the message of the gospel as we hear Paul defend it by the quality of that glorious message that it has not only for the Caesars of this world, but for every man, woman, boy, and girl. Now today we come to the last part of this famous last section of the Acts of the Apostles. Once more, it is concerned with a journey, Paul's journey.
The journey that he now had to take from Caesarea to Rome for the purpose of defending the gospel before Nero Caesar, to whom he had appealed as the only hope of getting justice in the civil courts of this world. The main story in the course of this journey to Rome is, of course, the tremendous storm that wrecked the ship on which Paul and his fellow passengers were traveling, and came within an hairbreadth of drowning the Apostle Paul himself, sinking him to the bottom of the Mediterranean before ever he had a chance to defend the gospel before Caesar at Rome.
You will see, therefore, by Luke's own sense of proportion, that in this last section we are back with nature once again. Not now with Mother Nature, life-sustaining and protecting and producing her young, with all the wonderful mysteries of nature that surround the birth and the upbringing of the young of animals and the children of humans. Mother Nature, with all her wonderful instincts and processes, nature which the Ephesians deified and worshipped under the name of Artemis.
We are back with nature, but now with impersonal nature and her gigantic forces, heartlessly regardless of human life. Mindlessly cruel when she cares to put herself into one of her moods. Amorally destructive. No good, my good friend. In all the kindness of your heart, you've gone to help Widow Jones and mend her electric toaster, but you forgot to turn the electricity off at the mains, and you put your hand on a live wire and got a shock that nearly killed you.
No good protesting to nature, look here, this isn't fair. I was doing my best to be moral and help the widow in her affliction. Nature cares nothing for your morality. The bank robber who's extracting his millions and knows about electricity gets away with it un- unharmed. Nature, amoral, always potentially lethal. The nature that makes human beings look pathetically puny, against which great forces nonetheless, humankind must struggle just to survive, pitting brain and brawn against nature in an unequal contest.
What then shall we make of this story of nature's storm that nearly wrecked Paul and his missionary endeavor. Some would have us treat this story as a detailed allegory. And as they hear Paul saying to the throng, sirs, you should have listened to me and not gained all this loss, they say, what a vivid picture it is of the ship of Christendom, the bark of Christ, that neglecting Paul's advice as set forth on dangerous sea seas and transgressing his commandments, uh, have come to wreck and ruin.
So that, uh, Paul, though now in glory, has a right to chide us through his writings, as you should have listened to me. Uh, take heart, we shall all get at last ashore, though the church is in ruins on bits and pieces of wood and other of the debris of a once beautiful Christendom. Well, it may be that Luke intended us to read the story as a great allegory. For my own part, I think that must at least be a secondary reading of scripture, and we shall have problems enough this morning if we content ourselves with reading the story at its most literal and basic.
Paul after, after all, wasn't going on a joy ride, a cruise for the recovery of his health, though God knows he sometimes needed it, on the sunny and balmy waters of the Mediterranean in a tourist liner. He was going in chains on a smelly old corn ship, though to be sure it was one of the great modern inventions of the Roman's world, and uh, was trading, taking the corn supplies from Alexandria in Egypt to feed the hungry mouths of the proletariat in Rome. He was going in chains, but he was going as an ambassador in chains.
Oh, the dignity surrounds that little figure on board that ship, as you and I would believe and know to be true. Divinely appointed ambassador for Christ to the court of Nero, emperor of Rome, accredited to Nero's court by the Lord of the universe. The journey was of exceedingly great historical importance. The fact then that nature was allowed to put on one of her storms and nearly sink God's ambassador to the bottom of the Mediterranean surely raises a number of questions.
When Paul did eventually get to Rome, we're told that he spent his two years before his hearing preaching the kingdom of God, the kingly rule of God. What, we ask, has the kingly rule of God got to do with nature's storm that nearly destroyed God's own ambassador. We welcome American ambassadors in London, of course we do.
We also notice the style in which they normally arrive. American ambassadors don't normally get souped up on the coast of Western Ireland like drowned rats, on the way to, uh, to give in their credentials at the Court of St. James in London. And if they did, we should quietly, though we should be so polite we wouldn't mention it, we should quietly think very curious things about the power of the American nation. Was it a way for the ambassador of the sovereign Lord of the universe to be treated by nature on his way to Rome?
You will observe that in all the long detailed accounts of the storm, there is no miracle. From the moment they boarded the doomed ship, to that cold, wild morning it broke up on the shore of Malta, there was not one. No divine power calmed the sea. As once, some years earlier, the sea had been calmed. The blessed figure of our Lord rose in a storm-tossed boat amidst his frightened and scared disciples.
And said, peace, be still. And nature recognized her Lord and was calm. No miracle now. All the passengers were saved, but only after two weeks of agonizing suffering and fear, and a final inglorious, hair-raising scramble from the wreck, through the surf, onto the safety of shore. There comes the obvious question. Psalm eighty nine verse nine reminds us that God is the creator and controller of nature, who rules over the surging sea, and when its waves mount up, stills them.
And why did not God's kingly rule order the Mediterranean to give his ambassador in chains a smoother passage? As I ponder those things, I ask Luke's permission to turn aside a while, and your permission too, if you'll permit me. Some teachers have grasshopper minds, and I more than others. Let's turn aside to consider nature as she is, and the w- wonder of her, in spite of all her moods, as she is.
You'll see, the record of two thousand years of missionary endeavor is, surely, that God has not significantly changed the basic way that nature works in order to facilitate the spread of the gospel. Yes, of course, there have been miracles. What a marvelous story they form. And we may observe that nature herself, the universe, is not everywhere a fixed and predetermined system. The great scientist Karl Popper used to say that in the working of the universe, you will find systems that are like clocks and systems that are like clouds.
There are systems that are intricate and massive, uh, mechanisms that are, so to speak, predetermined, like a clock is predetermined. Once one cog moves, all the others move irresistibly. There's nothing you can do about it, unless God intervenes by a miracle. There are other systems in this physical universe that are more like clouds that seem not to be predetermined in their movements, so that if a butterfly waves its wings one sunny morning in Singapore, when it gets up and decides to have a stretch and wave its wings. The motion of the air thus produced can alter the cloud systems eventually that control the weather in America.
And said Professor Polkinghorne of Britain recently to the nation, that simple fact of observation of the way God has organized nature's systems, some like clocks and some like clouds, leaves open the fact that God is prepared to take us seriously. It is not mere wishful thinking to suppose our prayers can have an effect. No, sure they can have an effect. But God has left open, even in the running of the universe, systems that are not predetermined. And we have the enormous privilege of coming to God, the transcendent Lord, as responsible servants to their master, for making our requests known.
It was not a stupid childhood fantasy for Mueller on his transatlantic liner to kneel with the captain and pray that God remove the fog to facilitate Mueller's arrival at a meeting where he felt he must preach. And then, of course, we must never forget the ministry of angels. That is not necessarily miraculous either, is it? That's the normal working. They are servants sent forth to minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation. Granted that we do not always see them, perhaps never see them.
We are to take our Lord's words literally, that when it comes to little children, the angels have immediate and constant access into the presence of the king. Their angel doth always behold the face of my father, which is in heaven. The phrase is a delightful phrase, is it not? In an ancient eastern court, ordinary ministers were only allowed to enter the inner sanctum of the king's presence when they were summoned to do so. However urgent they felt their business to be, they must wait till they were invited to come in.
But there were some ministers who had the privilege of entering the king's apartment at any instant during day or night, and if need be, to wake his majesty from sleep because their business was urgent. And the description of such ministers in the ancient world was that they beheld the face of the king. Oh, what a lovely thing it is. It's not Mother Nature merely concerning herself with little children. Their angels have ever and always immediate access, day and night, into the presence of the sovereign of the universe.
Of course, there are some who say that his satanic majesty has a hand sometimes in the weather patterns that impede God's work. And they who say so, quote, do they not, the first chapter of the book of Job, where Satan was given permission to raise up trouble against Job, when God found it right that Job's faith should be tested. And one of the results of that was there came a whirlwind and demolished his house in an instant, in an instant.
It's possible, isn't it? That if the universe is in some part an open system, malevolent powers, good on times, subject to the inscrutable wisdom of God, be allowed to have part therein. Then, of course, it would be altogether faithless of us to forget the possibility of sheer miracle. If angelic ministry be ordinary, then surely from time to time God has done sheer miracles, the extraordinary, for the sake of his people and his work.
But miracles are not normal, are they? By definition. The norm is that God has let nature go on working even since Pentecost, as nature has always worked. Part of me says, I'm glad it's so. What a thrilling thing nature is, isn't it? What a... It is an unequal struggle, but the struggle of mankind against the forces of nature is a marvelous story. How it has had the effect of developing mankind and bringing out his latent ingenuities and possibilities.
What a tremendous school God put the infant human race in, didn't he? As he pointed out, there was gold in them there mountains over there, if you followed the river down out that way, round Eden and out. Or when the Israelites came to their promised land, he pointed out the same, there was metal ore in the hills, and the Israelites took the hints and got working at it, and what marvelous development of the human character and ingenuity has been the result. Would you have had it otherwise? Mankind early learned that there were ways of dealing even with the potentially lethal forces of nature. The same wind that blew your house down could be harnessed, if you knew how, to drive the sails of your windmill, to grind the corn for you and give your wife an afternoon off instead of having to grind it herself.
The same winds and tides, currents that stop your passage across the sea could be harnessed to serve you and take you where you wanted to go if you had the gumption to invent a ship and a sail. The power of gravity that keeps us human beings rooted to Earth, and in particular to America, can be used to sling your space probe away from Earth to whatever planet you want to go to. Oh, I'd love to go if I could be sure of getting back.
What a marvelous history, and it is only a tragedy that the whole story has been tarnished by human sin and arrogance. What a marvelous thing it would have been if man had never sinned, growing up like a child with his father, and had learned all about his computers in the school of God, and had been trained happily with God one day to take over the universe that God has created. Nature as she is. God has not altered her significantly, has he, in order to facilitate missionary work.
Nature is always unforgiving. Electricity will cook your dinner or incinerate you, regardlessly. And the missionary that jumps off the pinnacle of the temple will find that God hasn't altered the law of gravity. Christians though we are, we still have to remember our place. Foolhardiness in the face of nature is not faith. Nature has not yet been subdued, let alone tamed.
Modern aeroplanes with their radar can crash in fog, can't they? Sophisticated ships still have their backs broken in storms that take man's great inventions and throw them like straws in the wind. And if that be so, we should be wise, should we not? Particularly as servants of the Lord, to face realistically the terms on which God's servants go out to evangelize the world.
We may rely upon his fatherly control, his providential control of nature, on the ministry of angels, on the reality of prayer and its answers, on the possibility of miracles, but we have no guarantee. We have no guarantee that no missionary, no genuine missionary at least, will ever be drowned. We have no guarantee that no missionary will ever die in an air crash. We have no guarantee that no missionary will ever die of malaria or hepatitis.
It would be unrealistic of us, wouldn't it, to suppose that because we have devoted our lives to the Lord and go forth to serve him in dangerous places, we have a guarantee that we shall never perish in one of nature's storms or be starved to death in one of nature's famines. Ah, but we have a guarantee. Let nature put on her most furious face. Our guarantee is this, not that God's love will save us from ever experience nature's lethal powers, will save us from tribulation, famine, death, or the deep.
Our guarantee is this, that neither height nor depth, nor any creative thing will be able to save us from the love of, is able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And therefore, as we watch Paul go out and step on that path that nearly sounded in the Mediterranean, we remember his words. It was only a year or two before that he had written them.
I am persuaded that neither life nor death, nor nature of any kind shall be able to separate me from the love of God. And he went through the storm, and there was no miracle. What brought him through and all the passengers with him was, as we shall see, his steadfast faith in the love of God. We therefore notice with interest that in the course of this whole episode, Paul intervened four times to make an explicit statement.
Let us briefly consider them. The first was the appeal he made to the captain and owner of the vessel before they left Crete. Verse, uh, nine and ten of chapter twenty seven. Paul admonished them and said of them, Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much, much loss, not only of the lading and the ship, but also of our lives. His words are a war- were a warning to them and a warning to us against taking undue risk.
You will notice here, Paul doesn't, uh, say to the captain and the owner, as he overhears their conversation, that they intend to leave the, the safe harbor in Crete and risk sailing at this time of year to get a com- better harbor. He doesn't say, yes, gentlemen, you see, I'm a missionary, and nothing ever could happen wrong to me. I'm a missionary on the Lord's service, commended indeed, and, uh, you see, aha, no storm, oh, take any risk you like, it will sound good when I report it at the next missionary report meeting. No, no. They warn these men against taking foolish, undue, and unnecessary risks with nature.
So I must enter a caveat at once, mustn't I? You can't get through life without taking some risks with nature, can you? The honest, hard-working farmer who sows his seed at seed time has got to take a risk, hasn't he? Nature might follow that with a drought that rots his seed in the ground before it has a chance to germinate. That's part of life. Columbus, or was it Ericsson, would never have discovered America, would he? Whatever you think of that, uh, if he hadn't have been prepared to take gigantic risks with nature.
And we English are always grateful for Columbus because all this might have been going on without us, and we wouldn't have known about it. But Columbus discovered it all. And Livingstone would hardly have pioneered Africa, would he? Oh, marvelous man. Without taking risk. Oh, what the story of those noble men and women who have taken colossal risks in their pioneer work and said with Paul, I count not my life dear unto me. Rather, I take the risk and if need be, perish under nature's powers, and multitudes go down to the destruction of a lake of fire.
And all the wonder of the little children that have shared the risks, all unknowingly, along with their missionary parents. Risks must be taken. And faith indeed seems to thrive sometimes on taking risks for God's sake. But there is difference, isn't there, in taking calculated risks on the one hand and sheer foolhardiness on the other.
And one surely has to weigh up these individual situations, and in the calculation there will come the question, the weighing of the immediate goal to be aimed at and the comparative worth of the desired objective. To leave the security of a winter port in Crete, when every bit of nautical knowledge and know-how said that that was foolhardy to put to sea in those ancient days. At that time of year, you were courting almost certain disaster to take that risk with nature, simply to get a more comfortable hotel and a better harbor to spend the winter in.
That was not faith, was it? That was foolhardiness. Soldiers mustn't complain if they have to be in the trenches and their socks get wet. Who's saying, mummy always told me I had to wear my socks, and I'm not prepared to get my socks damp in case I get a cold. Soldiers must be prepared to be sacrificed. The soldiers are not supposed to commit suicide. Are they? The aim must be to survive in order to spread the gospel. Paul spoke a second lesson.
He said, uh, it was when now for many a night all hope had been lost of ever being saved. Now nature had made a mock of all their endeavors. The more expert they were, the more they knew about seas and tides and winds, the more certain they were that the next wave might send them all to the bottom. Nature terrified them with their own expert knowledge, and all hope had been removed that we should, they should be safe.
You know, it's questions situations like that, isn't it? When we are up against them, that raise the profoundest human questions in our hearts. We may not be standing on the deck of a ship that seems to be thundering in the Mediterranean, to stand by a baby's cot, sick with malaria, and to reach that awful spot when all hope has been taken away. And nature seems to be doing her worst, regardless of our prayers and entreaties, regardless of the expertise of the doctor.
It raises questions. Oh, how fortunate we are to have the answer that the atheist doesn't have. Is there a purpose beyond nature? Is nature the whole stage upon which the drama of our life is worked out from end to end, or is nature one temporary and sometimes rather unstable stage on which we play out a little of the drama until we are called to a more glorious stage to finish the story amidst the joys of an unfading and eternal world.
Oh, thank God for the answer that came clear that morning through the mist and a driving sleet of the Mediterranean. Serve, I believe God it shall be. For there stood by me this night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve. Marvelous words. We may take them to our own hearts this morning. The God whose I am. There is the story of a God who came down from heaven.
No Artemis this falling down from heaven, no mere force of nature, but divine power linked with divine grace that came down to our planet and faced death and shed his blood and bought us eternal. On him who loves me now so well, what force my heart shall sever? Shall life or death? No. I am his forever.
The God whose I am, the God whom I serve. Well, that night the angel had been commissioned to report to Paul that God had a purpose to send him to Rome to witness for the gospel's sake to Nero's seat. Because God had that purpose, not all the powers of nature or hell combined could destroy Paul before he had completed his service. And for the sake of Paul and his service, God was prepared to save not only the crew, but all the other passengers.
Yes, I believe that story. Why do you suppose God bothers to maintain this planet Earth in all its outrageous sin and rebellion against its creator? Why does God bother to protect humankind? Why hasn't he long since allowed nature's powers mindlessly to destroy the planet? As perhaps one day they will. The reason why is this, that God had a plan and a work for the redemption of mankind, a people to be bought. And he waited the long centuries and maintained the planet till his Lord, his son, our Lord came.
He maintains it still. It waits the coming of its Lord and sovereign, and God will uphold it. And God upholds all the machinery of the stage, the governments and its powers, in spite of their turmoil, that the ship and the messengers of Christ may complete their work before the Lord comes. Paul was not always so certain, was he, that his work was going to be carried through. In the epistle to the Philippians, he says he's not, uh, sure indeed which way he'd like to go himself.
He'd rather prefer to go home, perhaps. To the elders at Ephesus, he confessed he didn't really know what lay ahead of him. The Holy Spirit was warning of trials and imprisonments. The likelihood was, the possibility was he would be killed in Jerusalem. He wasn't always filled with certainty that the particular job he had in mind was so much the will of God for him that not even nature's storms herself could destroy him before he finished. Nor can we claim that certainty always, can we? Some of us may have to go home with some dear project that we set our hearts on, not yet complete.
But we may draw from this, uh, happening the certainty that if God does have a work for you, whether you be Paul or John or James Smith, then not all the powers of nature or hell combined will destroy you until God's purpose for you and your work has been complete. God's weather, so said the old farmers with whom I used to work when I was a farmer's boy on the land in England. God's weather cannot hinder God's work.
From that, uh, confidence, you will see what turn things took. The fact that the angel has announced in the name of God that none should perish, that Paul and all the others should get to shore safely, did not carry the implication that God would send a battery of angels and miraculously transport them to the shore. No angelic helicopter came, no angelic chairlift. What was the secret that they managed to get to land and were saved? Faith, but not the faith that sits down and twiddles its thumbs and wait for a miracle to happen.
It was faith that gave Paul the confidence, the spirit, the psychological strength to cope with the situation. And he took command of the ship. It was he who saw what the old crew in their moment of panic were about to do, to abandon ship and save their own skins. But it would have been impossible to bring the ship to shore without those skilled seamen. It would take every drop of nautical knowledge they had when the morning dawned to steer that ship through the raging sea and through the breakers up as far as they could to the shoreline. No mere amateurs or lay people could have done it.
You needed those sh- those, uh, seamen. And Paul, who saw it clearly, took command of the situation with the absolute certainty that God was going to save them, yet he must use the means to be saved and see to it that others did as well. Faith is not unrealism, is it? Just sitting down and say, I'm sure God is going to do something. We must learn courageously to use the powers God has given us and the expertise, whatever it is. And so Paul advised the captain, and the captain stopped the crew from going. And then just before morning broke, and they had to take that dangerous, uh, tactic to abandon ship and somehow try to get through the raging surfs of the land.
Paul stood up and said, be of good cheer, you have not eaten food for a fortnight. Understandable, wasn't it? I suppose down below the galleys were all awash, and who of them would have had stomach to eat anything? But now they needed food. Now wasn't the time to fast. For no angels would come miraculously to transport them. They'd need every ounce of energy they had to scramble through the surf to safety. Now be of good cheer, he said, and take some food, and they ate their colleagues cornflakes, and it was part of the secret that they got safely through to land.
It is faith that gives us the strength not to give up in panic or in childish, wrong, supposed dependence. It's faith that enables us to take master of our psychological condition, to overcome our fears and to strain every nerve, to do everything within our powers and expert knowledge to command the situation in the interest of God and his work. They got to shore on that occasion.
It's no guarantee, is it, that we shall always get to shore, not at least the shores of this worldly planet. There will come situations, public or at home, when we've struggled against nature. It's instinct, isn't it? When nature threatens us on the one hand, with our lives, it's natural to struggle, surely. For some of us, one day, nature will win. Ruined nature will sink in years.
But as we go down, having lost our last battle with nature. Oh, thank God. We go down in the confidence that the final victory is ours. For the blessed Lord is risen. Therefore, be you always steadfast and immovable, abounding in the work of the Lord, for you know your labor is not in vain in the Lord. If you don't make the shore of some Malta on this planet, thank God you'll make the shore on that eternal world where there is no sea.
When Paul got to Rome, he called the elders of the local Jewish community. Pray notice how the book of Acts ends. Called the leaders of the Jewish community, first of all, to explain to them what might have been troubling their hearts seriously. You'll see he had called the elders of the Christian church at Ephesus, hadn't he? In the first part of this section. Now, in the last part, he calls the elders of the Jewish synagogue. He gets ten marks out of ten in my book for that. The only reason he was in Rome, humanly speaking, was because Judaism had treated him in a most abominable fashion.
He could have been free. The Roman authorities had seen he was guiltless. But the Jewish communities in not a few cities, and finally in Jerusalem, with malice deliberate, had hounded and persecuted him, would have murdered him many a time if they could. And it was to escape their perverted intrigues that he had to appeal to Caesar. That was why he was here. It was no tea party going and standing before Nero Caesar. If he was your only source of justice, you had cause to be anxious. The Lord will deliver me out of the mouth of a lion, says he.
But he called the elders of the Jewish synagogue to explain what he was doing. I've come, he said. You see, I could have been free. Unfortunately, our elders in Jerusalem spoke against me. So I was obliged to appeal to Caesar, and I had to go in to put my case to him. I want to assure you, gentlemen, he says, I shan't be telling any tales about you. Not that I have anything to accuse my nation of, oh marvelous man. He at least wasn't the wellspring of anti-Semitism. It was when the Christian church joined up with the world under Constantine that the church started to influence the government to bring in laws that cancelled the laws that hitherto had protected Judaism.
Under the influence of the laws, the Roman emperors changed them until, hand in hand with the church, they started to persecute the Jew. What a sorry story. But it didn't begin with Paul, in spite of what some Jews say. In spite of all their persecution that obliged him to appeal to Caesar to save his life and the testimony of the gospel, says he, gentlemen, not that I have anything to accuse my nation of. Marvelous. A man like his Lord, when he was persecuted, reviled not again, and when he suffered, he fret not, but loved his Jewish people still.
He appointed them a day to come and see him, and he explained the gospel to them. Some believed. Alas, the majority rejected it. And they left as with a broken heart and tears in his eyes. He rehearsed to them Isaiah's prophecy, that seeing they shall not see because their eyes are blind and their hearts heavy. What was it that Israel didn't see? The prophecy Paul quoted to them comes, of course, from Isaiah chapter six. When King Isaiah died, Isaiah had a, King Uzziah died, Isaiah had a vision of the king.
And as we close our study, I would like to draw your attention to him, to a beautiful feature of Acts history that runs like a watermark through its very structure. Acts is in six parts. They fall into two halves, three in one part and three in the other. The first part, early in its course, has Peter talking about the Lord Jesus. He was raised from the dead, this kingly son of King David, and saw no corruption. How was that? Well, said Peter, the scripture had said that he should not see corruption, and it was impossible, therefore, for him to see corruption because the scripture had said he would not see corruption.
But there was a deeper reason. Well, let us now recall in these dying moments of this talk the words of a psalm, Psalm sixteen it is, and it pictures Messiah speaking and telling us these sentiments and thoughts and exercises of his holy heart as he faced Gethsemane, Calvary, and a grave. I have set the Lord always before me, that I should not be moved. Blessed man, every moment of his life had he served God unswervingly. Never a moment had he ever taken his eyes off the blessed Lord, his father.
I have set the Lord always before me, perfect, sinless, devoted son of God. Therefore, I shall not be moved. We cannot say that ourselves, can we? This morning we revel in him who could say it, and for our sakes, won our redemption. I shall not be removed, for thou would not leave thy holy one in Hades, neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption. And he's saying this, that our planet Earth may not be physically stable, but thank God the universe is morally stable.
See that devoted life of God's Holy One. The term means the devoted one, absolute in his obedience to God the Creator. If God has allowed that holy body to see corruption, then you might have concluded that the universe is morally unstable. But no, it is impossible. At the beginning of the second half of Acts, Luke has Paul dwelling on the same theme. What guarantee have we that the blessed Lord Jesus will never return again to corruption? We have it in the words of Psalm, and then in the words of Isaiah.
I will give you the sure mercies of David, the loyal, absolute, steadfast covenant of mercies promised through David. Put the two together. The devotion of Christ to his Father and the devotion of God responding to his Son, absolute, stable, and eternally indivisible. And God raised him from the dead, never to see corruption again. All this poor old planet, it's not all that stable, is it?
They have earthquakes still that kill us. But thank God the universe is morally stable, for the God that behind it has honored the perfect devotion, obedience of our blessed Lord. He is raised from the dead and enthroned in glory. The end of the first half of the book comes in chapter twelve. It is a gruesome little story of a king, Herod, who tried to ape God, allowed himself to receive divine honors, and was eaten up on worms and died. He did see corruption. And all us proud monarchs that attempt to defy the living God shall see corruption.
But how does the book end? With Isaiah's prophecy. And if you have eyes to see it, behind the prophecy is the wonderful vision. I saw the Lord high and lifted up. Mine eyes have seen the king. The Apostle John saw it and wrote it in his gospel. And you too see it, do you, Mark? Oh, my brothers, my sisters, keep your eyes on the blessed Lord. Let nature do to you what she will. Oh God, open our eyes to see the king high and lifted up. For one day, you shall be with him.
We see Jesus made a little lower than angels for the suffering of death, but we see him crowned with glory and honor. And in a few years, you shall be with him. No longer the victim of nature and her powers, you shall reign with Christ. For the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne shall lead you to life's living waters, and God shall spread his tabernacle over you. The sun shall never hurt you again. The moon shall not injure you. The day will be past when nature can put on her moons and destroy you.
You shall reign eternally with Christ in glory. My brothers, my sisters, in all your toils, trials, and your difficulties, keep your eyes on him. See the king in his glory, and you will be forever, in the fullest sense, safe. The Lord bless his word for his name's sake. Our God, we thank thee that thou hast given to know us to know thee as we live in this far off planet.
We thank thee for the good hope that thou hast put in our hearts, that this planet is only temporary. We rejoice to have the honor of serving thee here, in a world where thy son was crucified. We praise thee for the good hope and the certainty of thy word, that when thy work is done, we shall reign with Christ on high. Oh, we bless thee for what thou art doing, and that eternal work given into our hands, which being done here shall outlast this temporary planet and adorn the eternal city of God for everlasting ages.
Give us ever to see the blessed Lord and to keep him before our vision until at last he comes or we go home to him, for his name's sake. Amen.
