Paul gets caught in a hurricane.

After leaving Sidon, Paul is taken south around Cyprus and then North to Myra. 4-6

It is during this part of the trip that we start to get a glimpse at the struggle that awaits Paul in his journey to Italy and Rome.

Remember, Paul is simply a passenger on this voyage.

He has absolutely no control of his day to day life.

He must go where and when he is told.

If you’re looking at your Bible maps and thinking that taking a southern route to get to a northern destination seems odd, you’d be right.

Verse 4, though tells us though, that the winds were contrary to the ship.

The normal way to sail would have been to go around the north of Cyprus.

But, try as they might, the winds would not permit them.

So, they end up having to take a route that would take longer.

I’m sure all of the sailors and soldiers were frustrated.

This detour meant that they would be away from home and land longer than they wanted.

I’d be shocked if someone didn’t say, “why don’t things ever go our way?”

Maybe someone else said, “why does everything have to be a struggle?”

This is only the beginning of the struggles in getting Paul to Rome.

After they land in Myra, the centurion finds another ship and transfers Paul and his company to them.

This ship, based out of Alexandria, was a corn ship.

It was a large vessel, capable of carrying up to 276 passengers.

Fun fact: 220 years after Paul visited Myra, a preacher named Nicholas would become famous for his work in Myra.

I’m sure the centurion thought that by changing ships things would get better.

This bigger ship would surely be less susceptible to the sea as the previous smaller vessel.

With this change they could expect better results than what they had previously experienced.

Up to this point, they faced inhospitable conditions that forced them to take a detour.

They had to go a much farther way to get to the same destination.

But, things will be better now because we have a new ship, a bigger ship.

This change of equipment, this change of crew, this will make the difference in their fortunes.

As the centurion and his prisoners leave Myra, their hope for change was short lived. 7-9

Immediately, verse 7 tells us that they struggled for every inch of westward progress.

The winds were, again, against them.

The new, bigger ship creeps along sailing slowly for many days.

They were making such poor progress that they once again had to choose a longer, southern route.

They sail under the island of Crete.

And find a port to stop at called the fair havens.

This doesn’t sound like a bad place to stay.

If you said to me, “hey would you like to go spend a day at the Fair Havens” I would assume you were talking about a resort or something.

Verse 12, though, tells us that this was not a good place to spend the winter.

The geography of the port meant that there was little protection from the winter winds.

Staying here would mean an uncomfortable winter.

And winter was soon approaching.

If you look at verse 9, Luke tells us that they were moving so slowly that it was now already the middle of October.

So, talk begins among the sailors about leaving the fair havens.

They don’t want to have to endure discomfort.

They needed to push forward.

They weren’t going to make it home before winter, that was a foregone conclusion.

They wanted to find a place that was more comfortable.

They had acquired a bigger ship and a different crew, but it had not improved their situation.

Conventional wisdom was failing them.

Their circumstances were not improving.

If anything, they were getting worse.

While nothing they tried had worked, the sailors and centurion were unwilling to consider a different opinion. 9-12

Paul speaks up to the sailors and centurion with an admonition.

He warns them that he perceives things will not work out well if they try to push forward with their journey.

The Bible doesn’t say that he had received any divine revelation.

Perhaps he was basing his counsel off of the very unfavorable conditions they had faced to that point.

Either way, Paul, foresees great peril for the ship, its cargo, and its passengers if they try to continue on.

Paul was not the only voice to state an opinion.

The master and the owner of the ship expressed a different opinion than Paul.

The other passengers on board also held a different opinion than Paul.

None of them wanted to stay in the fair havens during the winter.

Ultimately, though, it was the centurion’s decision.

As a corn ship, the centurion was viewed in higher position than the owner of the vessel.

Julius had been courteous to Paul in the past.

This is probably why he even allowed Paul to speak a word on the matter at all.

Julius did not think enough of Paul, though, to heed his word over the owner of the ship and the majority of the other passengers.

The majority opinion seems to be confirmed in verse 13.

A south wind began to blow.

Everyone that had been in favor of resuming their journey, supposed that “they had obtained their purpose.”

They had been right.

The inexperienced preacher-prisoner had been wrong.

They felt justified in their decision.

Any thoughts that maybe Paul had been right were washed away by the warm air blowing in from Africa.

Unfortunately, it did not last long.

In verse 14, Luke records the onset of a tempestuous wind called Euroclydon.

Euroclydon is a typhoon.

The Mediterranean still sees these storms.

The peak season for these storms is from September to January.

These storms can have sustained winds up to 110 mph

It’s a hurricane-type storm that captures the boat and negates any good fortune they thought that they had achieved.

The description of this storm is disastrous.

So rough were the seas; so strong were the winds, that the ships steering mechanisms were useless.

Rather than waste their strength and risk destroying the ships rudder, the sailors are forced to give themselves up to the will of nature. 15

They evidently had a form of a lifeboat that almost got away from them.

After “much work” they were able to save it. 16

The pounding waves were battering the boat, so much so that they threatened to break it in pieces.

The sailors and passengers have to undergird the boat to try and keep it together. 17

This was done using large ropes.

They would be guided under the ship to try and tie it together.

After letting the boat drive with the wind for so long, they became afraid that they would be cast onto a sand berm so they stripped the ship of its sails. 17

Finally, they had no choice but to cast the ships cargo overboard to lighten the load. 18

For many days they remained stuck in the storm.

Throughout all of this, you’ll see Luke saying “we.”

It was all hands on deck.

Though Paul had protested and Luke had seemingly no say in the decision to sail, they fought beside everyone else to save the ship.

I’m sure that everyone of those sailors would trade their current situation for the contrary winds that had slowed them down.

I’m sure that the centurion, the owner of the ship, and the majority all wished that they had listened to the lone voice that warned them of the consequences of their decision.

All of that was too late.

There was no detour they could take, and it didn’t matter how big of a ship they were in.

This storm seemed like the one that would put all of them under.

They were all without hope that they would survive this storm.

After a long time of silence, Paul gets the attention of his fellow-travelers. 21-26

He rebukes them for not listening to his counsel previously.

Say what you want about “I told you so’s...” but they would not be in their current situation if they had listened to Paul.

They were unwilling to put up with some discomfort by wintering in the fair havens, but how uncomfortable were they now that they had ignored his advice?

Paul doesn’t just speak to point out the obvious.

Besides, it’s not like he has any joy in their current situation.

But, he does offer them hope.

The storm was big.

It was bigger than anything they had faced.

It was bigger than their attempts to save themselves.

But, it wasn’t big enough.

It wasn’t too big for God to reach into and speak to Paul.

It wasn’t too big that God couldn’t save these men from their own mistakes.

Paul tells them that God had sent his angel to him in the night.

The ship would be lost.

The lives of every person on board would not be.

God has a purpose for Paul and their bull-headedness would not prevent that from happening.

Paul tells them to be of good cheer.

They might not have believed Paul.

Paul believed God.

Paul tells them that they will be cast on an Island.

The ship would be lost as a consequence for their disregard for counsel.

God would miraculously save their lives, though, from a storm that should have killed them.

Sure enough, after 14 days in the storm, the sailors begin to see signs that they are getting close to land. 27

They begin taking soundings. 28

Sure enough the water was getting shallower.

They were getting close to land.

The men start to panic. 29

They cast out the ships anchors, hoping to stop it’s movement.

They longed for the sun.

Though Paul had given them hope, you could almost say that things had to get worse before they got better.

Several of the sailors prepare the life boat which they had saved earlier through much work. 30

Paul tells the centurion that if the men leave the boat, they will not be saved. 31

This is the point of testing.

The majority opinion was to make for the lifeboat.

Last time, the centurion had ignored Paul for the majority.

This time, he listens to Paul.

They cut the lines and let the lifeboat fall off the ship. 32

They were now totally committed to Paul’s way, which was really God’s way.

They now had nothing to fall back on.

As the morning of the 14 day rose, Paul implored them all to eat something. 33

They had been fasting for two weeks, so dire was their situation.

He reminds them that they will all be saved.34

Paul publicly thanks God, I’m sure not just for the food.35

They all ate and were of good cheer. 36

Once they had gotten their fill they threw out the leftover food that they had on board. 38

With the light that filtered through the storm, the men spied the shore of a distant island. 39

Though they didn’t know the island, they found a spot of shore-land and decided to try and beach the ship on the shore.

So they raised the anchors, disconnected the rudder, and raised the sail.

They didn’t quite make it to shore, though.

The ship became stuck and began to break apart from the force of the waves. 41

Everyone had to act quickly.

They had to get off the ship fast before it broke apart.

The Roman custom in this circumstance was to kill the prisoners lest they escape.

The soldiers prepared to quickly dispatch with their training when they were stopped by Julius. 43

Julius commands everyone, soldier, sailor, and prisoner to swim for the shore. 43

Into the see they plunged.

Those that could swim, did.

Others held onto boards and pieces of the ship to get to the beach.

One by one every single one of the 276 people on board made it to the shore.

For the first time in 14 days, they were not being tossed by the sea.

For the first time in 14 days, they felt like they were safe.

From the time that they had left Sidon to now, Julius and his prisoners had faced one problem after another.

They had tried almost literally everything humanly possible fix their problems.

Instead thing had progressively gotten worse and worse.

When Paul had made a suggestion about staying somewhere uncomfortable instead of continuing to press forward, they rejected his counsel.

As result, the inconveniences and discomfort of the past looked incredibly tame compared to the violence and danger of the typhoon they ended up in.

On the way though, they learned that the majority isn’t always right.

On the way they learned that man’s ideas and attempts to fix his problems don’t always work.

Through great pain and consequence, Julius and his crew learned that it’s always better heed godly counsel.

Even when godly counsel means discomfort, it won’t be comparable to the discomfort of ignoring it.

Sometimes our lives feel kind of like this trip through the Mediterranean.

Things never seem to be going our way.

We try to work around the resistance that comes against us.

We try to take a different path hoping for better results.

We think that if we can just escape our current set of circumstances we will have smoother sailing.

We think that if we can replace the people in our lives, we will have less issues.

We think that if we had better things, we wouldn’t be so dissatisfied with our life.

Over and over again we try to overcome our circumstances with our own abilities and ingenuity.

Sometimes we are able to make slow painful progress.

Sometimes we are just spinning our wheels.

And then, God sends us a godly counselor to help us avoid the pain and futility of living a life of our own design.

The position of these counselors are varied.

It could be a trusted Christian friend, family member, preacher, or even a stranger.

Godly counsel usually has some form of discomfort tied to it.

We too often are unwilling to undergo the discomfort required to heed Godly counsel.

Instead we push forward with life according to our plans and methods.

As a result we end up driving ourselves into a greater mess than before.

What if Paul could have given the sailors the choice between winter at the Fair havens vs sailing through Euroclydon?

What if you could see the end results of your decisions?

What if you could see the results that your decisions are having on your family?

I think we would choose the discomfort of following God’s counsel over the tragedies of following ourselves.

No matter how big of a storm that you have gotten yourself into, God is bigger than your storm.

A man asked his fellow believer how he was doing.

The man answered, “I suppose I’m doing well under the circumstances.

To which the first man answered, “When you place your hope and confidence in God, He can keep you above the circumstances.”