This morning's message is called busy, Broken and blessed. And I'm guessing that
many in this room or many watching along online have found themselves in one of
those first two categories. With the busyness of life, it's easy to feel
overwhelmed and even alone when the calendars are full and you start your day
with a to do list that at the end of the day almost feels longer than than the
day began if you had one of those days or weeks or decades. Not only do you feel
like you're on a hamster wheel like this running, it's like you get off one
hamster wheel and then you get on to another one, right? And then you got
another one. So you're on the wheel for work and then you get home and you're on
the wheel for home, and then you got the wheel for chores and then finances and
health and, and we're trying to do all the things all the time and we go to bed
exhausted, ready to do it again the next day. I want to encourage you if you're
in that busy season, this message is for you. But along with busy, I know
there's a lot of people who just showing up today is a win. Right, you're
battling brokenness. Maybe you're in a season of life where you're battling. The
guilt and shame from from choices that you made. Maybe those choices were made
recently. Maybe you thought to yourself, I thought I'd be further along. I
thought I'd be different. I thought I'd be healthier. I thought I'd be stronger.
Maybe weren't choices from this last week, maybe it was last month, last year,
last decade, and you still struggle with this feeling not good enough. Maybe the
brokenness does not come from your own choices but from the choices of others.
Those can be difficult. Because now you have to wrestle with the consequences
and the ripple effects of what other people have done. Or maybe you're wrestling
with the brokenness of some loved ones in your life. And that can sometimes even
feel more challenging because you have no control over that. Or maybe life was
going along just fine, but you received an email or a phone call that changed
everything. You experienced a a betrayal or you got a diagnosis. And you find
yourself struggling. I wanna encourage you that today's message is for you.
Because it is possible, even if you're busy, even if you're broken, to at the
end of the day, understand and experience and share blessing with the people
around you. So if you're taking notes, I encourage you to write this down, that
your significance is greater than your storm. Your significance is greater than
your storm. Having been a pastor for about 20 years now, I've had several people
over those years often ask me, John, how can you have faith in the middle of a
storm? Now full transparency, they don't use that language because that sounds
churchy, right? Instead, they say something like, how can there be a God? When
my child has cancer. Or how can there be a God? When I was betrayed How can
there be a God? When I lost my house. Lost my job. How can there be a God and
you fill in the blank, right? And here's the truth. That is both a good and a
difficult question. So when people ask some version of that question to me,
typically I receive that. I don't try to refute it cause it is, it's a, it's a
real struggle. But what I try to do is then offer what I believe to be a deeper.
A more powerful and actually a more practical and personal question. And it's to
flip it. You see, it's easy, not easy, it's common to ask the question, how can
you have faith in the middle of a storm? I think the deeper question is this,
how can you get through a storm without faith? See, when a storm rolls through,
it impacts everybody. No one is immune to storms. And so when the storm rolls
through, I, if you do not have faith, I don't know how you get through. But what
I've seen over the last 20 years is time and time again. I've walked with people
who have gone through the toughest. Storms imaginable and yet somehow they not
only survive but they actually come out stronger. And you wanna know the common
denominator in that? Is that when they get through that and they say, how did
you get through that storm? The only response they have is God. And so if you
have somebody in your life, this is, how can you have faith in the middle of
your storm? Or you are asking that question. That's a good question, but I
encourage you to go a step further. And ask what I think is a more powerful
question, and that is how can you get it through your storm without faith? See
that's what I think we have in scripture now today we wrap up our study of the
book of Acts we've spent much of the fall and spring walking through this book
in several different series. And today we're gonna see a story of somebody,
Paul, who we've been studying his life. Going through a storm and how he
responds. Now his example is not exactly our story, but it is in fact an
example. And so when we see his real life historical example of what happened.
Not only can we see how he responded, but we trust that the same God of Paul is
the same God for you and I today, and he gives us a template or encouragement
that we can move through together. Now as we are finishing up the book, I wanna
go back to the very beginning and highlight the fact that it was written by this
apostle named Luke. Luke is actually in the story we're gonna talk about today
because he uses pronouns like we, that they are together, so he's in the
shipwreck together. And so he's writing, he wrote the Gospel of Luke. He also
wrote Acts and he's writing to this gentleman named Theophilus demonstrating all
that Jesus did. That's Luke and all that God is still doing that's Acts. And so
he's writing this here and the key verse for all of Acts is found in Acts 1:8
that says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and
you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and to the
ends of the earth. So that one verse gives us the theme of the book as well as
the structure of the book. So the theme of the book is that as Christians, we're
called to live by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be the presence of Christ to
the people around us. So are you living a life on your own? Are you living a
spirit filled life where the Holy Spirit can work through you even through those
storms and difficulties? Are you living by the power of the Holy Spirit to be
the presence of Christ? In other words, can you show people? Can you share with
people? Last week Pastor Dave shared there that Paul in every situation saw that
as an opportunity to share his story and to share God's story. So are you living
a life that is lived by the power of the spirit to be the presence of Christ to
the people around you? And then we see this played out. So in Acts chapter 1
through 7, we see that the gospel was taken to Jerusalem. Then a few chapters
later, we see that it was taken to the broader area of Judea and Samaria. And
then the last couple in the last section there, chapters 10 through 28, a
majority of the book is how the gospel spread early on to these other areas in
Providences and really went to the the edge of the known earth or known world at
that time, the major player, uh, Rome. And so it's a key verse, it's a personal
verse, but it also gives the structure of the Book of Acts. And so here we find
ourselves at the very end. Paul's in prison. For causing a riot, for preaching
the resurrection of Jesus, that faith and power comes through Jesus and the Holy
Spirit, not through government, not through religious systems. So he gets thrown
in prison. He's on trial, stands before Festus. He stands before Felix. He
stands before Agrippa and all this time he says he's just sharing his story. God
saves, God saves, God saves. And then he gets this word in Acts 23:11. He says
that you're gonna stand before Caesar in Rome. And so he kind of get passed
along because people don't wanna, uh, deal with them and so they say, OK, you
know what, let's just send he's a Roman citizen, let's just send him to Rome. So
they're getting ready to leave after a long time in prison. So we pick up our
story here in verse 9 of Acts chapter 27 says, since much time had passed and
the voyage was now dangerous because even the fast was already over and so like
a Jewish festival, Paul advised them saying. Sir, as I perceive that the voyage
will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also
our lives. But the centurion paid more attention to the pilot and to the owner
of the ship than to what Paul said. And because the harbor was not suitable to
spend the winter and the majority decided to put out to sea from there. And on
the chance that they could somehow reach Phoenix, a harbor of Crete, facing both
southwest and northwest to spend the winter there. There you have it, folks, the
very first Phoenix snowbirds. Isn't that great? The context of our story is a
group of people trying to spend the winter in Phoenix. Different Phoenix, but
here they go. So Paul gets this word, whether it's from wisdom or from the
spirit saying, hey, this is not gonna go well for everybody. So he's a prisoner,
trying to speak to the captain, like, hey, we shouldn't do this. I say, have you
seen Phoenix in the winter? It's nice. We're gonna go. They go and let me just
tell you, it's not gonna go well. They're gonna get blown off course. In fact,
they're going to get blown 500 miles off course. And here Paul's no, I'm, I'm in
prison. I'm supposed to go to Rome. That's, that's the destination. And now all
of a sudden I'm on a 500 mile detour. But here's what I've come to know. That
some detours are just God's divine redirections. If you've lived in the Phoenix
Valley for any length of time, you've come to have disdain for construction on
our main highways. Right? I mean, in some ways, it's like, great, yeah, more
people are coming. But then there are other ways you're like, more people are
coming. You know what I'm talking about? Come on, you've said that. And no
greater place do you have that feeling than in a packed car on a road that added
construction. I don't know who started um Bob's barriers, but like, man, they
gotta be making a ton of money, right? Because it seems like we have
construction we're gonna go from 5 lanes to 1, right? And then like that seems
smart and they're like, oh, construction's done and then the next mile, right?
And then or you or the worst is when they're working on the highways and oh it's
closed today. Just go on a detour. No one has ever come about an unexpected
detour sign of like, yay. Like, ah, It's congested. It's not. I have somewhere
to be. It's gonna take longer, right? Sometimes life is filled, not sometimes,
pretty much all the time, is your life is going to be filled with unexpected
detours. Places that you did not expect to be. But it helps us To come to see
life's detours is is not a detour itself, but rather a divine redirection to
where God needs you to be. I've experienced this over and over and over again in
my life. I mean, in college playing basketball, tore some ligaments in my knee.
It was actually during that detour, the re the retooling time like habilitation
time that God actually called me in the ministry. I think about the fact that I
had 2 or 3 different jobs fall through that ultimately letting me down to
Orlando at a church where I was working there for years, where we made some
lifelong friends, we had, um, our two boys down there. I went to grad school
down there and saw some impact. On the more serious side, like after our first
child was born, we had the difficulty of walking through back to back
miscarriages. And that emotion that feeling I would never wish on anybody. But
looking back on it now, if those things hadn't happened, we wouldn't have. Our
second son Carter and because of difficulties that went with that, we wouldn't
have been open to adoption. In foster care, which now ultimately led us to our
daughter. I think about the fact of coming out here or or being called the plant
and all the different detours our church has happened even this building we
weren't looking at this building we were looking at another facility that God
closed that door but then lo and behold when we came into this space that one
year later we did a Christmas Eve service that had so many people that we
wouldn't have fit at the other space. And so time after time after time
something we thought was inconvenient and a detour, I realized looking back on
it like no God was just moving us where we needed to go. So they're blown 500
miles off course. And we continue our story, we pick it up here in verse 20. It
says, and when neither sun nor stars appeared for many days, it was 14 days, in
fact, 14 days of a hurricane level storm. So a small tempest lay on us, uh, lay
on us, and all hope of being saved was at last abandoned. Even the boat people
are saying that we have no chance. Even the people designed and their career is
centered around the ocean and the sea, those people are saying we have no
chance. Verse 21, and since they had been without food for a long time, Paul
stood up among them and said, men. You should have listened to me. They weren't
it wasn't even Paul's fault that they were in this storm. You know how
frustrating that would be? You ever been in a workplace where you say, guys,
don't do this, and then your company does that and then it happens, you're like.
But now they're in this storm, they're 500 miles off course. The rain's coming
down, the waves are going crazy, but he changes his tone. He says, you should
have listened to me. We shouldn't have set sail from Crete and incurred the
injury and loss. But yet, now, I urge you take heart. For there will be no loss
of life among you, but only of the ship on pause there. That's still a big loss.
Can we just be real for a second? If someone said, hey, you're gonna make it.
But you're gonna lose your house. You're gonna make it, but you're gonna lose
your 401k. You're gonna make it, but you're gonna lose the marriage. You're
gonna make it, but you're gonna lose. Something. So this was a loss. This was
difficult. But he says verse 23, but for this very night, there stood before me
an angel of God, to whom I belong and whom I worship. And he said, do not be
afraid, Paul. You must stand before Caesar. And behold, God has granted you all
those who sail with you. He says so take heart. So take heart, man, for I have
faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told. And Luke, who's with
him, says there are 276 people on board. They go and say, hey, take, take some
food cause it's you're not gonna eat for a while. You're not gonna lose your
life. Some of you are in this room and you've lost a lot. A lot. But don't lose
heart in the fact that you actually are still here. In this room or watching
online right now in this moment. So he has his word from God. People start to
believe him. We can pick up our verse here verse 41. story continues, but
striking a reef, they ran the vessel aground and the boat stuck and remained
immovable, and the stern was being broken up by the surf. Oh my goodness, can
you imagine this? So, so Paul has been a prisoner. He's been beaten up, passed
from one prison to the next. He says, don't set sail. It's not gonna work. It
doesn't work. Now he's caught in a storm for 14 days. It's freezing. The waves
are crashing down. Now the boat gets stuck. So can't move and just get wave,
wave, wave, wave. Can you imagine that? I can. You know why? Because on a less
serious note, I got hit repeatedly with waves. Let me talk to you. I was leading
a, a youth trip in Ohio. We went to an indoor water park kind of like we have
Great Wolf Lodge out here, and I was, I'm, I'm a little bit of a large person,
OK, till 65. I was a little bit less of a large person at the time, but it
didn't help me out. So those that know me know that I love sports and I'm super
competitive, uh, but if you put something under my feet. It just I just become
dangerous at that point. I mean last time I went skiing I ran over a child. You
laugh, the child did not. Um, that was not a made up thing and I felt bad. So
all the students were like, Pastor John, you gotta try this surfing simulator.
I'm like, no, I don't. Like, no, it's awesome, and the kids are getting on,
they're doing all these moves and like, all right, all right, I can do it. I
fell for a teenage peer pressure. And I was not a teenager and I said, all
right, I got this. And I go, and the little teen worker, I had like a death grip
on the collarbone like, don't let go like, OK, I got this I got this. OK, I
pushed back and it's, it's the surfing simulator, right? So the water's going,
right? I'm like, oh, I haven't fallen. Oh, hey, I looked up like, hey, I got
this boom face plant. Here's the problem. I was not heavy enough to go through
the water, but I was not light enough to be pushed out of the water. So what
felt like 30 minutes. I just sat spinning in the surfing simulator as people
just laughed and laughed, and like the workers like, do we go in? I don't know.
Is he safe? He's flailing. Like, I don't wanna get pulled in. And it was
probably like a minute, but I'm just getting spun and water's just hitting my
face over and over again. And eventually, I just kind of slowly drifted off to
the end, and I've never been on a surfing simulator since. So here they are in
the boat. The boat is stuck, it's just getting broken up. They're just getting
pounded. Some of you, on a more serious note, have actually been in that or
maybe are in that right now. And you're like, man, the waves just keep coming
and coming and coming. The soldiers didn't know what to do because if they. Let
the prisoners escape, they could lose their life. So they actually say on here
like, oh, maybe we should just kill all the prisoners and then we can escape.
But the centurion now who understands that Paul's a man of God and starts to
follow him, he says this here, it says that wishing to save Paul says no. He
kept them from carrying out their planties he ordered all those who could swim
to jump overboard. The first and make it to land and for the rest on planks on
the pieces of the ship so that they would all be brought safely to land. And all
276 people were ultimately saved. I want you to notice something at this part of
the story. That even in the wreckage. God gives you a plank to hold on to. And a
promise that he's holding you. You might have lost the house. You might have
lost. The jam. Might have lost the marriage. But God's gonna give you a plank,
something to hold on to. And more importantly, a promise that's gonna hold on to
you. And our social media culture today. Everyone's trying to get a platform.
But sometimes God doesn't give you a platform, instead, he gives you a plank.
Just something small to cling on to. But to help you survive. You see, even in
the wreckage, God is still working. And Paul knew that he was gonna be OK. Why?
Because God's word is stronger than the wreckage. And you got one glimpse, one
moment, one account, one opportunity here, 11 relationship, one friend with an
encouraging word. Somewhere in your life, no matter how bad the wreckage, I
wanna encourage you that God's gonna give you a plank. That's gonna help you
survive. And more than a plank for you to hold on to, he's gonna give you a
promise that's gonna actually hold you. And understand that God's with you even
in the middle of the storms. So they wash up on the shore 500 miles from where
they're supposed to be 500 miles. They don't even know where they are. We
continue our story in Acts 28:1. Says, and after we were brought safely through,
we then learned that the island was called Malta. They didn't even know where it
was. No one's trying to go to Malta. Have you ever been on Malta? Have you ever
been in a place where you found yourself asking God, how did I get here? I had a
plan for my life. I had a future for my life, and now I'm 500 miles away with
people I don't even like. Grabbing hold of a plank in a place I don't even know
the name to. The word Malta actually means refuge or escape. They didn't know
who the people were, so they didn't know who the people were sometimes they
would call them barbarians just meaning unknown. But they had the native people
here, it says in verse 2, the native people showed us unusual kindness. For they
kindled a fire and welcomed us all because it had begun to rain and it was cold.
Now it's raining. Imprisonment, storms, 14 days at sea, a wreck, you barely make
it to shore, and now just it starts raining again, and it's cold. At least we
got a fire. What does Paul do? Well he's like, you know what? I could sit back,
I could say I told you so. We're cold. Let, let me just help, right? Let me just
do the little thing. Right, it shows humility, it shows service. I'm just gonna
gather some sticks, you know, I'm not too good to start a fire. I'm, I'm just
gonna help, right? He does the humble thing, he does the caring thing and notice
what happens. Watch this. And he gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the
fire, and a viper came out and fashioned on his hand. Are you kidding me? He's
been imprisoned, he's in a storm that wasn't his fault for days and days and
days for people who wanna kill him, he saves them, they get to the land on a
plank, it starts raining again. He's like, Oh, at least we got a fire. I'm gonna
help out, put this away, and a snake comes out. He's not just bitten, it's
hanging from his hand. Some of you have experienced that too. Like, really? Now
And this happened. I was trying to help and this happened. What does he do?
Verse 4, when the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they
said to 10, no doubt this man's a murderer. Right, you ever, you ever gone
through something difficult and the person well meaning people. Come back, like,
what did you do? Right? They're like, God works for good. Like So they say,
though he escaped from see justice or referring to the goddess of justice, it's
like it must be judging him. Some like how we would think of like lady justice,
right? Like, oh clearly God doesn't want him to. Survive. But then he says, he,
however, goes Taylor Swift, and he, he shook off the creature into the fire and
he suffered no harm. He goes out, throws him back in the fire. Notice the change
of the community, the culture in one moment, verse 6. They were waiting for him
to swell up and suddenly fall. Not that they weren't helping him. They're like,
let's see what happens. Right? It's the celebrity meltdown. This is interesting.
Let's see, let's watch. So they go, but when he waited a long time and saw no
misfortune to come to him, they changed their minds and instead said he was a
god. They went from demonizing him to idolizing him. Isn't that our culture
today too, right? We just like, they can do nothing right. They can do nothing
wrong. They're like, wow, this is crazy. I was like, no, no, no, it's not about
me. Here's the thing I want you to notice from this part of the story. It's one
thing after another, one thing after another, one thing after another, and yet,
Paul remains consistent. What does that teach us? It shows us that getting bit
hurts. But staying bitter is a choice. You might get bit. Getting bit hurts. But
staying bitter is a choice with what you do after that. And we know he doesn't
stay bitter because of what happens next. There verse 7, he says, and now in the
neighborhood. Of that place where it lands belonging to the chief man of the
island, his name was Publius. Who received us and enter entertained us
hospitably for days. So, here they go in a land, they go to the pub, OK, on the
house of Publius, and they go here and it says it happened verse 8. And it
happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery, and Paul
visited him and prayed, and putting his hands on him, healed him. And when this
had taken place, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came
and were cured. They also honored us greatly, and when they were about to set
sail, they put on board whatever we needed. Did you catch a small detail there?
What did Paul do to bring about healing? He prayed and what he put his hands,
the same hands that were bitten. Prayed and brought healing. The scarred hands
of Paul were used to bring hope and healing. What that should tell you and me is
that through Christ, no matter how bad you're hurting, no matter how much you've
walked through in the storms, and the valleys, and the scars that you have in
this life, that you can bring hope and healing to our world that desperately
needs it. Next week, Easter Sunday, we're gonna look at the Easter story through
the eyes of Thomas. Who wanted to see the scars of Jesus to believe. I want to
encourage you that scars. Might describe your past. But they don't determine
your present. And they do not decide your future. That through Christ Even when
we're hurt, God can use you to bring hope and healing to a world that
desperately needs it. See, it wasn't that Paul needed Malta. It was that Malta
needed Jesus. I don't know the resolution of whatever storm you're in. It's,
it's not just believing Jesus and, and, and all bad things go away. It's bigger
than that. It's, it's, it's that believe in Jesus and you will have the faith to
not only get through the storm, but be blessed and bless others because of it.
So he set sail, eventually makes it to Rome. And then we get this verse that
ends the book. Verse 30 and 31, he says, and he lived there two whole years at
his own expense, so he's on house arrest, chained to a guard, but people can
kind of come and go and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of
God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without
hindrance. And it doesn't say what happens to Paul, just kind of ends, and Paul
goes on and keeps preaching. Seems a little anticlimactic. Right? Like I'm
thinking we're gonna get this like. My name is Paul Maximus Meridius, takes off
his helmet before Caesar, you know what I'm saying? Like I have a picture like,
give us like this conclusion, but it just kind of ends. Church tradition tells
us. That he would get released for a little bit. Keep preaching and planting
churches, but then he would get arrested again and ultimately executed. In fact,
You can go visit like the burial site, there was like one of the largest
churches in. Italy, the 2nd largest church in Italy, is built around the
believed burial spot. Of Paul after his execution. But we don't have that in the
story, it just says and he kept preaching. Why? Because I don't think A is over.
See, the gospel of Luke tells us what Jesus did. The Acts of the apostles tells
us what Jesus is doing. And the reality is, God's not done. That you and I are
included in the story. And so while we see from Paul's example, we know this to
be true, that your significance is greater than your storm. That whatever
hardship or season or struggle that you're in, we have people that wanna walk
alongside of you in community, but understand this that your significance is
greater than the storm that you're in. But if you wanna be theologically
accurate and go deeper than it, it's not about you. Paul's actually not the main
character of Acts. Jesus is. And that same Jesus is alive. That's why we're
celebrating Easter Sunday, resurrection Sunday. If Jesus is alive, then we are
alive through the power of the Holy Spirit and the same God that worked and
saved and healed and served and worked through the life of Paul can work through
your life and mine. So it's not just your significance is greater than a storm,
it's actually God's significance is greater than a storm. That's how we know
that even if you're busy, even if you're broken, that it is possible. To be
blessed and to bless others. In just a moment, we're gonna celebrate those go in
public with their faith getting baptized. Living out the challenge that I wanna
offer you. And that is, are you living by the power of the Holy Spirit? To be
the presence of Christ to the people around you. Whether in a storm, whether
they're clinging to a plank, whether they're bitten by a snake, whether they're
feeling attacked, whether they're feeling broken, whether they're feeling
overwhelmed. Can you still Declare the goodness of God. Pocket And you and I can
And we can do it now. And we can do it today. Will you pray with me? Dear
Heavenly Father, just thank you for your son. Thank you that He has the power to
calm storms. But God just As you were with Paul. In his storms on the way to
Malta. God may you be with us in the middle of the battles and the struggles
that we face right now. May we give our stories and our storms over to you. That
we can celebrate your goodness, your power right in the middle of it. Who will
look for ways to share our story and to bring hope and healing to a world that
desperately needs it God help us to know that our significance is greater than a
storm because your significance is greater than the storm. We lift this church,
this community up to you and your sons, and we pray amen.