Risk, Reward, Rome, & Resolution

Children’s Sermon

Illustration of Water, Grease, and Dawn

Scripture

Acts 28:30-31 - Paul lived in the apartment he rented for two full years and welcomed all who visited him. Freely and with total confidence, he kept preaching about God’s Kingdom and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Engage

When I was a kid, my parents and I used to watch the TV Nightime Soap Opera named Dallas. Before I visited Texas and ultimately moved here, everything I knew about Texas I learned on Dallas, lol. I remember once we came to Dallas for a wedding in about 1984…when I was 10 or 11, and the wedding was somewhere around downtown. In the parking garage of our hotel, I saw a real life Ferrari like the one Magnum P.I. drove. I thought, wow, everything really is bigger in Texas! I also learned on Dallas a tad bit about San Angelo as one of the recurring characters, Clayton Farlow, was from San Angelo.

Anyway, the show Dallas is most famous for one character, J.R. Ewing. Liar, Cheat, Womanizer, Scoundrel…yet it was hard not to love that character so brilliantly portrayed by the late Larry Hagman. Dallas is also famous for one of the great all-time TV Cliffhangers, when JR was shot at the end of the season finale March 21, 1980. This show and this cliffhanger were quite the sensation. Jimmy Carter joked he’d have no problem funding his presidential campaign if he knew who shot J.R. Eight months later, when the killer was revealed on November 21, 1980, 76% of all TV’s that were on were watching Dallas…an estimated 83 Million viewers. The killer turned out to be the character Kristin Shepard, who was portrayed by Mary Crosby…incidentally the real life daughter of Bing Crosby, one of the greatest voices who has ever lived.

Cliffhangers aren’t just for TV. I’ve had cliffhangers in my life…I don’t know what’s happened to several people where I wish I did know…AND, the Bible has cliffhangers. Jonah ends with Jonah sitting on that hill hoping for the destruction of Nineveh…AND, Acts ends with Paul standing trial in Rome…what happens to Paul after that? We simply don’t know.

Another great old TV show I used to love is Unsolved Mysteries, hosted by the great Robert Stack…the voice, the trenchcoat, it doesn’t get much better. That show covered real-life cliffhangers, mysteries that had not been resolved.

Encounter

Well, friends, through Christ, unsolved mysteries will become resolved demonstrations. Unsolved mysteries cause frustration but when Jesus reveals all, we’ll see his love and care for the world demonstrated. We’ll see illustrated truths of God’s goodness, faithfulness, and love. Paul’s life to this point has demonstrated Jesus as the truth and his journey to Rome demonstrates it as well. We don’t know what happens after Rome, but we can TRUST in the Lord who loved him and be assured he joined Christ however and whenever he died.

But, we’re going to backup a bit…how Paul gets to Rome is quite a story in itself. Up to this point, Paul’s been through a lot…He’s been in Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch, Arabia, all over Asia…and back and forth. But now he’s appealed to Caesar. So, to Caesar in Rome he has to go.

Here’s a map of their journey that I’ll leave up. They use a couple of different ships, ultimately catching a grain ship headed from Lycia to Rome. 276 souls are on board that boat along with the cargo and necessary equipment. This journey is a sort of climactic spiritual battle and functions as the climax in the book of Acts. Paul commands respect on the journey and takes on a position of leadership even though he’s a prisoner. With so many people on board, there would have been little to no privacy. It would’ve been a diverse mix of all sorts of people. It was risky sailing the Mediterranean toward Rome anytime after the middle of September through the rest of winter, but Rome needed a regular supply of grain originating from Egypt, often referred to as the bread basket of the Roman Empire…so, due to the financial rewards that accompanied the risk taking, merchant sailors were often willing to take the risk.

Paul and his companions make it to Crete in October. Crete, remember, where a church existed and was the home of Titus. Crete where our own Benny Jenkins lived for a year. Taking off from Crete in mid-October was really taking some considerable risk, as they soon find out. Paul strongly advised them against it, but they went anyway.

Obviously such a journey would be meticulously planned and the captain and crew would take every reasonable precaution to try and ensure safe delivery of their passengers and cargo…but they hit a two week storm. I can only imagine a glimpse of the horrors this must’ve entailed. Violent tossing and turning, sea-sickness without relief, the unknown of total darkness and the terror of near darkness during the day. Misery and fear would’ve reduced all the passengers…soldiers, slaves, prisoners, tradesman, apostles, all of them to the same condition. Adversity is a leveler of people! Appropriate, perhaps, because Paul is THE main catalyst to leveling Christians in their churches. Remember his famous writing in Galatians 3:28 - 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus…HE MEANT IT, AND HE HAD A CHANCE TO LIVE IT RIGHT HERE IN THIS STORM.

The crew decide to jettison a good deal of the cargo to make the ship lighter and faster on the water, hoping to sail out of the storm. They also throw much of the ships equipment for sailing, loading, and the like overboard as well. The outlook was bad, bad, bad. Luke says in 27:20 that they lost all hope of surviving this ordeal....ah, but God!

What happens next is recorded in 27:21 and following:

Common English Bible Chapter 27

21 For a long time no one had eaten. Paul stood up among them and said, “Men, you should have complied with my instructions not to sail from Crete. Then we would have avoided this damage and loss. 22 Now I urge you to be encouraged. Not one of your lives will be lost, though we will lose the ship. 23 Last night an angel from the God to whom I belong and whom I worship stood beside me. 24 The angel said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Paul! You must stand before Caesar! Indeed, God has also graciously given you everyone sailing with you.’ 25 Be encouraged, men! I have faith in God that it will be exactly as he told me. 26 However, we must run aground on some island.”

After his little I told you so, Paul encourages his shipmates. And he TRUSTS in Jesus!

They shipwreck within the sight of land. The ship and cargo and obliterated…but everyone either swims or floats to shore. All 276. I hope you can pause for a second and realize the impossibility of this…Impossible, except for God. Folks, God can make the impossible possible…He does it every day.

So, they soon find out they’ve crashed on Malta. They first build a fire to try and warm up…Paul, helping, has a snake strike from the sticks he’s gathering and bite his hand. Again, everyone no doubt figures he’s a goner. Yet, God. Not once does Paul show a single effect from the snake bite. Here’s a google image of Malta today…notice the name of one of the bays, St. Paul’s Bay!

The time on Malta is not wasted…Paul heals the father of a leader on the island and heals everyone who comes to him. This was the birth of the Christian church on Malta, where, naturally churches still exist today. They winter 3 months on Malta doing all kinds of good and then sail and land just north of Naples. Then they travel by land to Rome.

Archaeologists believe they’ve found where Paul lived during his two year house arrest in Rome, though I couldn’t find a picture of it. I hope to see it in person someday.

After his two years and his trial, we simply don’t know what happened. But we know and trust God was faithful. Some claim Paul was martyred in Rome but there’s no real hard evidence of this. It’s possible he was killed in the persecution of Christians following the great fire of Rome in 64…which Emperor Nero blamed Christians for, though he might have actually ordered the fire himself. Some also claim, including Clement (an early bishop of Rome), that Paul cleared the trial and went on to Spain.

Regardless, this zealous man led a remarkable life of discipleship…practicing an iron like faithful obedience.

And, someday, all the unsolved mysteries of the Bible, and of our lives, will become resolved demonstrations of God’s great love and care.

Empower

Faithful obedience…Paul’s core belief, and the challenge for us, is this: As we believe the gospel and discover its life-transforming power, we become a small but significant working model of God’s new creation…Heaven on earth, you can say. We are like Poems, NT Wright says, in which God is addressing his world…and, as poems are decided to do, or as these drops of Dawn do to the grease, we break open new ways of looking at things…and spark our minds, and the minds of others, to imagine a different way to be human. The way of being human God designed us to be…and, ultimately, we will be in his presence for all eternity.

May it be so!

Pray!