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Pastor Thom Keller: It's tempting to see something in the Bible and say, "Now boy, that's interesting. It happened that way. I bet it happens that way every time." Do some people get sick because of sin they've been involved in? Sure. Is sometimes that just a natural consequence of the sin? Why does somebody's liver go bad from drinking? Is that God's specific judgment on them? No, it's what alcohol does to the liver.

Are there sometimes where God does judge somebody because of their sins? Sure. Does it always work that way? No.

Guest (Male): We're prone to make judgments even though we often don't have enough information to make an informed one. If we do make a judgment, we'd be wise to proceed with humility and not dogmatically.

In today's study, the Word will serve to help us in this regard. In the closing chapter of the Book of Acts, we find the Apostle Paul shipwrecked on the island of Malta. We'll not only be reminded about absolutes and judgments, but also that the will of God will never lead you where the grace of God can't keep you. From Calvary Chapel Lebanon, here's Pastor Tom Keller.

Pastor Thom Keller: Acts 28, verse 1: "Once we were safe on the shore, we learned that we were on the island of Malta." Now if you remember, they get into a storm and for 14 days they're blown across the sea. 14 days, no stars, no ability to find out where they are. For 14 days, they're driven before the wind.

And again, in this day, they didn't know the earth was round. They still thought it was flat. There was an incredible superstition about the sea. Men of this era were terrified of the ocean. They lived in terror of it. So not having any stars to guide them, they may have very well thought they were going to go off the end of the earth.

So there was a lot of fear. It says that the storm raged unabated for many days. The Bible says no sun, no stars, no hope. On the 14th night, they sound for land and they discover that they're getting closer to land. They see this island. They decide to go for it. And they think maybe they can get between the rocks as they come to this island of Malta.

The soldiers want to kill all the prisoners. There are 276 men on board this ship, most of them prisoners probably going to Rome to be used as fodder for the gladiator games. And so some of the other guards on the ship want to kill these prisoners so they can't escape. And the commander, in wanting to try to save Paul's life, forbids them to be killed.

And so they say, "Swim if you can swim. Hold onto a piece of wood, get to shore." And when it's all over, all 276 men make it to the island. They come to this north side of Malta. This is not the typical side of the island that they would have come to. This is typically where they would have landed because of the winds and the way the island was or is. But this is known as St. Paul's Bay, beautiful Mediterranean inlet.

So that's where we pick up today. They land on this island of Malta. And it says in verse 2, "The people of the island were very kind to us. It was cold and rainy, so they built a fire on the shore to welcome us and warm us. As Paul gathered an armful of sticks and was laying them on the fire, a poisonous snake, driven out by the heat, fastened itself onto his hand. The people of the island saw it hanging there and said to each other, 'A murderer, no doubt. Though he escaped the sea, justice will not permit him to live.' But Paul shook off the snake into the fire and was unharmed. The people waited for him to swell up or to suddenly drop dead, but when they had waited a long time and saw no harm had come to him, they changed their minds and decided that he was a god."

Now some of your Bibles say that the barbarians on the island instead of the people of the island. And that "barbarian" comes from the Greek word, which is "barbarian," but it was "barbar." And to the Greeks, they understood that if anyone that didn't speak the beautiful language of the Greek spoke, their language sounded like "barbar, barbar." So whenever you use the word "barbarian," understand that's the root where it comes from. It really meant anyone that did not speak Greek to them.

And it says that this snake comes out, actually a viper, attaches itself to his hand. The bite is extremely poisonous. In fact, of all snakes and vipers, this is the most poisonous of all snakes. So this snake attaches itself to Paul's hand, and the people are there by the fire watching this.

Now remember the setting. The people of the island invite them. They're very kind to them. But they had a real motive to be very kind because there are 276 people, the vast majority who are prisoners being taken to Rome for execution. So be nice to people like that, right? You be nice.

But this snake jumps on his hand and they all sit back and they say, "Oh, a murderer, no doubt." Although he escaped, the justice, God is seeing to it that justice is inflicted on him now by this snakebite. In fact, it's interesting but the Jews actually believed that this was an absolute. The Jews had a belief that said that those who deserve to die by fire—again, there were certain sins that the punishment was to die by fire—they said that those who deserved to die by fire and escaped that punishment would either fall into fire and die or would be bitten by a serpent and die.

So this idea that a snakebite was really God bringing about justice was an absolute to the Jews. If you remember, the disciples came to Jesus and asked Jesus about a man who was born blind. Remember what he said? They said, "Jesus, was this man born blind because of his sins or the sins of his parents?" Right? There wasn't even a third option. They weren't asking Jesus why was this man born blind. They said, "Jesus, why was this man born blind? Was it because of his sins or the sins of the parents?" It was automatically assumed that if somebody was born blind, it was because somebody sinned. If someone had a physical infirmity, it was because somebody sinned. It was an absolute.

And here is a significant lesson that we can take from this: not to ever draw absolutes out of the Bible where there are no absolutes. It's tempting to see something in the Bible and say, "Now boy, that's interesting. It happened that way. I bet it happens that way every time." No, it doesn't happen that way every time. Some things do. But it's very dangerous to draw absolutes. The Jews did that.

Do some people get sick because of sin they've been involved in? Sure. Is sometimes that just a natural consequence of the sin? Why does somebody's liver go bad from drinking? Is that God's specific judgment on them? No, it's what alcohol does to the liver. Are there sometimes where God does judge somebody because of their sin? Sure. Does it always work that way? No.

And that's where we get in danger when we start looking at people and judging that because of an illness, because of a problem, because of something going wrong, they must have done something wrong and deserve that. Don't ever let your mind go there. It is not an absolute in the Bible. And we have no right even to speculate the cause of someone's problem, especially not to judge or to say it's probably because they did this or probably because they did that that God is judging them.

And we need to keep our mind from going there. We all have a tendency to do that. There's something inside of us that just wants to kind of slide across that line and say, "I wonder, I bet." Don't let your mind go there. On the other side of this equation, please don't ever let anyone tell you that the reason that you're sick or the reason that you're not healed is because you don't have enough faith. That is a lie.

Remember Paul had a thorn in the flesh that he wasn't healed of. Paul healed all kinds of people, yet he wasn't healed himself. Did Paul not have enough faith? That's ludicrous. It's just a perfect example in Paul's life how God in some situations can accomplish a greater good by allowing an illness than by healing it. God's desire is to heal all people, and one day he will when we get to heaven. There are going to be no missing legs, no broken arms, no infirmities in heaven. None.

But down here, I believe God wants to heal every emotional infirmity. That I do believe. But physical? See, when we start thinking that God can only accomplish good by doing it the way we think, we make ourselves God. And we take him off the throne and refuse to allow him to have a plan different from ours, a plan that will be better than ours.

I have known so many people whose faith has been shipwrecked by getting into this cycle of being told, "If you just had enough faith, God will heal you." Then they're not healed, and then where do you go with that? You either turn away from God or you get angry at God. But you're not left not impacted by that. You're impacted.

And one other point on this: if you ever hear anybody say that, "I know God wanted to heal me, but he didn't, and it must be my lack of faith," please come to that person's rescue. Tell them. Tell them the truth that God can heal anyone, anything, but there are some times where he can accomplish a greater good by not doing what we think would be best because that is his best. Critical.

Well, this snakebite, it jumps on his hand and they think he's going to die. All these people whisper. And instead, when he doesn't die, they think he's a god. And again, a lesson here is how fickle is the approval of man. How quickly what people one day say good about us, the next day can turn to not such nice words. If you ever wonder if that's true, read the life of Moses. One day he's a hero, the next day he's a rat. It's the way life goes. We see this with sports stars, don't we? One day they have a great game and everyone's hero. Three games later, everyone hates them.

And again, there's a lesson here. Years ago I went to my father—this was after a problem happened unrelated to me once. And I went to my father and I said, "I never asked you this question. Maybe I shared this before, I don't remember. I never asked you this question. I said, is there anything about me that you think I need to change? That I should work at changing?" And I thought he'd say, "No."

He said, "Yeah." And my dad's a very wise, factual man. He said, "There is. You care too much about what people think about you." He said, "Tom, sometimes you just have to do the right thing when you know it's the right thing and not worry about what people think."

And that's really true. And see, if we try to get into this game of pleasing people, you're going to just run into the fickle nature of man anyway. You're going to please them one day, they're going to hate you the next. Moses, you're not going to do better than Moses. I'm not going to do better than Moses. So why try to please? It's a dangerous trap.

Verse 7: "Near the shore where we landed was an estate belonging to Publius, the chief official of the island. He welcomed us courteously and fed us for three days. As it happened, coincidentally, Publius's father was ill with fever and dysentery. Paul went in and prayed for him, laying his hands on him, and healed him. Then all the other sick people on the island came and were cured. As a result, we were showered with honors, and when the time came to sail, people put on board all sorts of things we would need for the trip."

Again, it says they had fever and dysentery. Some believe that this illness was known as Malta fever, which comes from a microorganism found in Maltese goats. It may have been, but it's referred to as this special fever. And it says that they were all healed. In this instance, every person was healed. God gave Paul great favor on this island. Many times, the healings that God did were to validate that the Gospel was real, that the one preaching the Gospel had a valid message.

Jesus said that the reason he'd been given the gift of healing was to validate his claim that he was the Messiah. It was for a season. It was for that period of time for him to prove that he was who he said he was. But today, many times where we find that the great miracles take place, where the great healings take place, is in countries and lands where people are going in and evangelizing.

And we've shared this before, so we come back and say, "Well, why not in this country as much? Isn't God that interested in healing people in this country?" Well, again, the reason is the Bible says that they will know we are Christians by our love. That love is to be the evidence that we are who we claim to be and that our message is from God. It's the most convincing argument that exists under heaven: the love of the body one for another. Where there is no body, where there is no body of believers, God uses the second best, which is the miraculous.

And again, if you really think about that, we say, "Boy, I'd really like to see some miracles. That would really wow my friends and prove to them that this Jesus is really real." And we say that, but at the end of the day, how will that change their life? They go home with a picture in their scrapbook and wait for the next time they can take another picture of something like that. No, see, love is what changes people. And on this island, God gave him that ability, that gifting for this period.

Verse 11: "It was three months after the shipwreck that we set sail on another ship that had wintered at the island, the Alexandrian ship with the Twin Gods as its figurehead." They were very superstitious. They were terrified of the sea. So they would have figureheads on all of their ships representing different gods that the shipbuilder would have put on that ship.

On this ship, it was the figurehead of the Twin Gods. Some of your translations or the footnotes say they were the gods Castor and Pollux. And Castor and Pollux were the patron saints of seamen and voyagers. They were the sons of Jupiter, the god Jupiter, and supposedly had the power to save men from danger at sea. So the ship that Paul would have been on would have had somewhere on the ship the heads of these two gods. And so they're on their way to Rome.

Verse 12. They're on this ship, these two gods as their figurehead. I bet Paul had a big problem with those gods being up there. Maybe he put sheets over them at night and in the morning they pulled them back off.

Verse 12: "Our first stop was Syracuse, where we stayed three days. From there we sailed across to Rhegium. A day later a south wind began blowing, so the following day we sailed up the coast to Puteoli. There we found some believers who invited us to stay with them seven days. And so we came to Rome. The believers in Rome had heard we were coming, and they came to meet us at the forum on the Appian Way. Others joined us at the Three Taverns. When Paul saw them, he thanked God and took courage. When we arrived in Rome, Paul was permitted to have his own private lodging, though he was guarded by a soldier."

They go to Syracuse, then Rhegium, and then Puteoli. And it says in verse 14, "There we found some believers who invited us to stay with them seven days." Now it reads like they stayed there for seven days, which is interesting if you think about it. There are 276 men in this party. And so they're on their way to Rome. Centurions, soldiers, guards, they get to this town, they come across some believers, and the believers say to Paul, "Hey Paul, would you stay seven days?" "Sure." And all 276 stay for seven days. Who's running this expedition? Really, who's calling the shots? Isn't that interesting? They all just park there just waiting until Paul says to go. Then they go.

And there's a lesson here. Leadership is not a position. Leadership is influence. John Maxwell says this: leadership is influence, influence is leadership. There are people that are in positions of leadership that really aren't able to lead because they don't have influence. There are people that are not in positions of leadership that have the ability to lead because they have influence. And although Paul was not in a position of management, he had influence. And 276 men for seven days stop and wait while Paul spends time with these men. Just interesting.

Now they come to Rome in verse 15. They come to the forum. Some believers in Rome had heard we were coming and they came to meet us at the forum on the Appian Way. The Roman Empire, remember, was 120 million people strong. 120 million people. Just about half of the population of the United States. Of the 120 million, half of them were slaves. The Roman Empire ran 3,000 miles east to west, 2,000 miles north to south.

The city of Rome itself had one and a half million people, and again, one-half of that population were slaves. North of Puteoli as they come into Rome would have been the port for the Roman navy. So as Paul—they come up here from Malta, up through Syracuse, Rhegium, up into Puteoli, Appian Forum, Three Taverns. They're now inland here at this area. They're inland and walking toward Rome.

These believers traveled nearly 50 miles to greet Paul. And Paul had not been to Rome, but he had written a letter to the Romans several years before, and so they knew him through that letter. They walked 50 miles to see him. And it says that they're at the forum on the Appian Way or Via Appia. The Appian Way today, it's really called Via Appia. If you remember from Jerusalem, the Via Dolorosa, the way of the cross.

And this was Via Appia. In 312 BC, a senator, Appius Claudius, who was the head of the public works department for Rome, commissioned this Appian Way, this road to be built. By the second century AD, this road was 500 miles long. It was known as the queen of roads. And this is a road that they took back to Rome.

Now it says that they rested at Three Taverns. They went through this area. Three Taverns was about 33 miles from Rome and actually was where three roads came together. The Appian Way and another major road came together at this point. And it was named Three Taverns really because there were three stores there. There was a general store, a blacksmith shop, and a house of refreshment, a place of lodging and food and drink. It's really the real term is Tres Tabernae, which really means three shops, not three taverns. Three shops.

Verse 16 says that when he arrived in Rome, he was permitted to have his own private lodging, although he was guarded by a soldier. This is not the fate of the other 276 or less prisoners. They didn't get to stay in their own house. There's no doubt that either Festus sent a letter ahead with Paul or sent ahead of Paul saying this man is not a danger. Don't treat him like a common criminal. In fact, we couldn't even find charges to bring against the man.

Or the Centurion that brought him interceded on his behalf, told him what he had done. And because of that, they let him stay in a house. But he was still in chains. And the procedure was it would have been the soldier's left hand, giving the soldier his right hand free, would have been chained to Paul's right hand. And he would have spent all of his waking time that way.

Guest (Male): Pastor Thom Keller giving us the Apostle's travelogue as he makes his way to Rome. What happens now that Paul's finally in Rome? For the answer, join us next time as we conclude the Book of Acts, right here on Study the Word.

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Here in the month of November, we're pleased to offer you a book by D.L. Moody we think you'll benefit from. It's called "Your Victory in Jesus." If you're a Christian, you have victory, and that victory was secured by Christ at the cross. But the question that remains is: are you living in victory? Join D.L. Moody as he explores true victory and start to experience the overcoming life ruled by Christ instead of fear. For a gift of any amount, we'll send this your way with our thanks. So call today: 717-507-7862.

Or you can write to Study the Word, 740 Willow Street, Lebanon, Pennsylvania 17046. You're invited to worship with us here at Calvary Chapel Lebanon, where Tom serves as pastor. Visit ccleb.com for our service times and see what's coming up at the church there too. When you get a chance, download our free Android app. Search "Calvary Chapel Lebanon" in the Google Play Store. Thanks for studying the Word with Pastor Thom Keller. We'll dig deeper into the Book of Acts with Thom next time. We hope you can join us.