Acts 27:42-44

Storm Survivors

Introduction

“In the early morning hours of 15 April 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean, four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The largest ocean liner in service at the time, Titanic had an estimated 2,224 people on board when she struck an iceberg at around 23:40 (ship's time)[ on Sunday, 14 April 1912. Her sinking two hours and forty minutes later at 02:20 (ship's time; 05:18 GMT) on Monday, 15 April, resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people, making it one of the deadliest peacetime marine disasters in history.” There were some who survived, in life boats, and others on the broken pieces.

As I come to church Sunday after Sunday, Wednesday after Wednesday, service after service, I see people whose lives are a shamble. I see people whose lives are a mess. I see people whose lives are jacked up. I see people who are going through pure hell. And the sad story is they don’t know what to do. They have no survival skills. People whose marriages are crumbling...whose families are disintegrating...whose children are cursing them out and have become ridiculously rebellious. People dress up and put on a new dress, hat, shoes, or not. Some put on a happy face. Some sing joyful songs, but behind all of these masks, their lives are broken pieces.

The purpose of this sermon is to encourage us to survive on broken pieces. Make use of ANY & ALL of GOD’S RESOURCES!

I. The Storm

a. In the previous chapter, we know Paul has had words with King Agrippa and Festus. Preaching always seem to have gotten Paul in trouble. Therefore, Paul was put on a ship of Adramyttium to Italy.

b. The context says in vv 1-14, “And when the south wind blew softly, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, loosing thence, they sailed close by Crete. 14 But not long after there arose against it a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon.”

i. An ancient term for a northeastern storm, what modernist call Levanter, a typhoon whirlwind or hurricane blowing in all directions.

c. Storms are inevitable…you will have some cloudy days.

d. They come on all of us (the just and the unjust)

e. It was good weather, and then they came from ALL directions.

i. Look at Paul in the Storm

1. Calm, cool, and collective, good counsel

2. Prophetic power (10, 21-26)

3. Loving, thankful, and hopeful

4. “Thou will keep you in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee…”

II. The Shipwreck (39-41)

a. A shipwreck is a destruction of a ship sometimes caused by a storm.

b. The rudder was a board to guide the coursing of the vessel. When storms got too strong, the rudders were hoisted out of the water.

c. Some people are shipwrecked…

i. In their religious faith…life has thrown them a curve ball and they have given up on God and life.

ii. In their moral habits…shipwrecked of a godly conscience…drifting further and further away in the wrong direction towards destruction.

iii. In their spiritual life…decline and disappearance of spiritual life in the soul…the thrill is gone… (David said, “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.”

III. The Survivors (42-44)

a. They started out with 276 people.

b. Cannot give up on hope.

c. God can work through human means

d. Some could swim, and some could not

But the centurion did not say SWIM or DROWN, he said, ‘SWIM or GRAB A PLANK!”

GOD HAS PUT IN US SURVIVAL SKILLS!

e. OTHERS SURVIVED ON BROKEN PIECES…

the planks, debris, broken pieces - GOD’S PROVISION EVEN IN STORM...

f. They started with 276, and they all made it!

IV. The Unsinkable Ship

At the time of the sinking of the Titanic, one of our great American preachers was in Belfast, Ireland.

The Titanic had been built in Belfast, and there was a great local pride over the mighty ship. She had been heralded far and wide as “the unsinkable ship.” Sixteen members of the church in Belfast, all skilled mechanics, went down with her.

The mayor said that Belfast had never been in such grief as that which came over this terrible tragedy. When the news finally was verified that the gallant ship was certainly lost, so deep was the grief that it is said strong men met upon the streets, grasped each other’s hands, burst into tears, and parted without a word.

The visiting American preached the Sunday after the tragedy in the church to which the sixteen members who had been lost belonged. Not only was the building packed with peoples but on the platform were lords, bishops, and ministers of all denominations. In the audience, many newly-made widows were sitting and orphans were sobbing on every side. The great preacher took as his subject “The Unsinkable Ship.” But he did not apply that term to the Titanic which on her first voyage had gone out into the Atlantic and crashed into an iceberg, carrying her precious cargo of human lives down to watery death.

No, the preacher’s message was about that other “unsinkable ship”—the frail boat on the sea of Galilee, unsinkable because the Master of land and sea was asleep on a pillow in the hinder part of the vessel.

Thank God He still lives and rides the billows and controls the storms, and when the children of men take their only true Pilot back on board, we will ride out the present storms and He will bring the vessel through to the fair harbor of our hopes.

Paul Lee Tan, Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations: Signs of the Times (Garland, TX: Bible Communications, Inc., 1996), 502.