The Counsel to Kill – Acts 27:39-44

I didn’t count them, but I have more than a dozen books of wise and witty quotations.

Some of those books are limited to statements from single authors like Spurgeon, Tozer or Vance Havner.

Some are entirely religious, some are meant to be funny, and some come from the classics.

I’ve gone through periods in my ministry when I was referring to those books in preparing every sermon.

And then at other times I’ve avoided them for six months or a year at a stretch.

This morning, I took the biggest one from my shelf, “Forty-thousand Quotations” by Douglas, and looked up the word “duty.”

There were no less than ten pages of quotations, beginning with one-liners to full paragraphs.

I think that the shear volume of material shows the importance of the subject of “duty.”

It’s not only important that people, especially Christians, understand “duty” and what their duties are;

It’s also important to know that it’s not as simple a subject as one might guess.

We have an illustration of that complexity here in these verses.

Didn’t the sailors have a duty to their wives and children to save themselves and to return home?

Couldn’t it be argued that they were doing their duty in trying to escape that sinking ship while it was still anchored out there away from the rocks of the island?

Perhaps, but that duty was considerably smaller than the immediate duty that they had toward the ship and the passengers on that ship.

Once the ship was stuck fast and remained unmovable, with the waves ripping the stern apart, everyone on board had a duty to cast themselves into the sea in an effort to escape.

And then there was the duty that the guards had towards their prisoners and to Rome.

Their written orders were to bring those prisoners to trial or execution.

In the event that they couldn’t complete that task, whether written, spoken or silent, their next duty under Roman law would have been to kill those prisoners if it appeared that they would escape.

So their counsel to kill the prisoners was within the realm of their duty.

But Julius, who was bound by that same responsibility, refused to permit the soldiers from doing their duty.

“Willing to save Paul, (he) kept them from their purpose.”

(Incidentally, the words “counsel” and “purpose” are the same in Greek.

Reversing those words, verse 42 could lawfully read:

“And the soldiers’ purpose was to kill the prisoners ….

But the centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them from that purpose.”)

Despite the duty that the Centurion had to keep the prisoners from escaping, he was governed by one or more higher duties.

It was a higher duty to bring those prisoners to Rome, than to execute them out on the high seas.

But he may have also seen an even higher duty in sparing the completely innocent servant of God.

Clearly, there are levels of duty and responsibility.

And first and foremost “we ought to obey God rather than men.”

Peter and John could have been speaking to any of us instead of the Sanhedrin, when they said,

“Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.”

Julius may have been indirectly disregarding one duty by keeping his men from killing the prisoners, but at the same time he was maintaining higher and more important duties.

The matter of duty and responsibility is complicated.

For example, the phrase and motto: “For God & country,” is referring to two separate and unequal things.

History may record that a man served his country well,

but we need to be more interested in what the Lord thinks, than what the president thinks.

So it was the counsel of the soldiers to kill Paul and the rest of the prisoners.

Let’s think about that counsel for a few minutes.

From where did it come?

I’ve already suggested that they probably felt it was their duty to shed a little blood, but it was more than that.

They were soldiers, trained in the art of war; trained in the art of killing people. That is what soldiers do.

I get just a little riled up listening to the parents of our soldiers over-seas.

It’s not that I don’t understand their fears or their griefs when they have lost a child who was a soldier.

Those emotions are real, and they have to be addressed.

But it needs to be remembered that in many cases those parents urged their kids to join the military.

And those children signed up for a variety of reasons – and not one of them was conscripted or drafted.

And from boot-camp on, those soldiers knew that a major part of their job was to prepare to take people’s lives at the risk of their own.

That is what soldiers do, as heinous as you or I might think that is.

Of course, we don’t know the background of any of those soldiers under Julius’ command.

But many of them, not only were trained to kill, they had probably already killed prisoners and enemy.

Their swords had tasted blood and so had their souls.

It’s not my place to say that they were blood-THIRSTY, but at the very least, they were not revulsed by it.

We aren’t the least surprised to hear that this was their counsel and purpose.

Nor are we surprised at all the violence, murder and mayhem around us in our world today.

Not only do so many kids have access to it on the TV and more graphically in the movies.

But they actually participate in the slaughtering of their neighbors through video and computer games.

I fully understand parents who refuse to permit a TV into their homes,

but from what I have heard, many computer games are a hundred times more poisonous than TV,

because the kids go from viewers to participants in the slaughter of others.

The modern military actually uses fancy video games to train their soldiers to kill.

This sort of entertainment and training makes them quicker to say, “kill them lest any of them escape.”

The “slaughter mentality” can easily become a part of the human psyche.

Another contributing factor in this counsel, could very well have been Satan.

I am not a conspiracy theorist like a lot of Christians.

I don’t see Communists or Islamic terrorists under every rock.

I don’t see U.N. troops on the back of every country road-sign.

And I don’t have any scriptural authority to say that the Devil planted this idea in the heads of his children, but at the same time I think that it is possible.

Was it true that an angel of God visited Paul while he was on board that ship?

Isn’t it true that Paul was the most important servant of God in the world at that time?

Aren’t the epistles that Paul wrote while incarcerated in Rome of great importance to us today?

Isn’t it likely that Satan would have been delighted to bring the career of this great servant of God to an end?

I wouldn’t be quick to say that some demon or that Satan himself appeared to Julius’ second-in-command.

But just as Satan put in the heart of Judas the plan to betray Christ Jesus, he could have put into the hearts of those soldiers the suggestion to kill the prisoners.

Just as an angel of God visited Paul, an angel of Satan could have visited some of his soldiers.

And if he did, I’m sure that along with the wicked idea, were implanted the rationalistic justifications.

Assuming that this actually happened, Satan’s primary concern was Paul.

But look at the collateral damage: the others who would have been slain.

Does Satan care about such things? Not in the least.

But assuming that this is true, please be sure to recognize that Satan’s plans cannot overcome the will of God.

It may be the will of Satan to kill Paul, but God has said that he would go to Rome to preach the gospel.

Then there was the addendum that not a single person on board that ship would loose his life.

Let Satan plan and plot, rant and rave, God’s will will be accomplished, and Satan is doomed to ultimate defeat.

Another lesson to be learned in this is that because of Paul, all the prisoners were spared.

“And the soldiers’ counsel was to kill the prisoners, lest any of them should swim out, and escape.

But the centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them from their purpose; and commanded that they which could swim should cast themselves first into the sea, and get to land:

And the rest, some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land.”

Out of concern for Paul, Julius commanded that no prisoner be slain.

Yesterday, I replayed the Bible in my head as best I could, looking for similar kinds of things.

Some of these come closer to Acts 27 than others, but think about these:

“Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” and was saved from the destruction of the wicked.

Were Noah’s three sons also children of God?

There is no proof that they were, although I would like to hope so.

But if they were not, we see that God saved them from the storm because of their father.

And Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees because of God’s call and God’s saving grace.

At what point did nephew Lot become a servant of the Lord?

Didn’t he leave his idolatrous homeland and become exceedingly rich on the coat-tails of Abraham?

Then there is that famous conversation between Jehovah and Abraham in Genesis 18: “And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know. And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.”

From there the argument went to twenty people and then to ten.

“Lord, wouldn’t you spare Sodom if there were ten righteous people there?”

Apparently the Lord would, but there weren’t ten righteous people in Sodom, and it was destroyed.

Both Jacob and his brother Esau were blessed by God, because of their father.

“And the LORD appeared unto (Jacob) the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham’s sake.”

And then there was Jacob’s son Joseph: Genesis 39 – “And Joseph was brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hands of the Ishmeelites, which had brought him down thither. And the LORD was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that the LORD was with him, and that the LORD made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him: and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand. And it came to pass from the time that he had made him overseer in his house, and over all that he had, that the LORD blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; and the blessing of the LORD was upon all that he had in the house, and in the field.”

How often did the Lord test Moses, by saying that He was prepared to destroy Israel?

Of course there was more to it, but God spared the nation because of a few righteous souls like Moses.

There is the wonderful story of David and Mephiboseth.

II Samuel 9 – “And the king said, Is there not yet any of the house of Saul,

that I may shew the kindness of God unto him?

And Ziba said unto the king, Jonathan hath yet a son, which is lame on his feet.

So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem:

for he did eat continually at the king’s table; and was lame on both his feet.”

How about the woman of Zeraphath who fed the prophet of God and never ran out of food in the midst of the famine, because he was under her roof.

I’m sure that if we put our heads together we could come up with a dozen more examples like this.

God’s blessings are so abundant and His grace is so superabundant,

that when He opens up the windows of heaven and pours out His blessings

that there is not often room enough to receive it.

Those blessings spill over onto people who were not the primary beneficiaries of that divine kindness.

Oh, how gracious our Saviour is.

And this brings us back to the subject of duty.

Paul and Jonah were in the same boat, so to speak.

But one was willingly headed toward his duty and responsibility, while the other was running from it.

The mariners from Joppa came dangerously close to losing their lives, because of Jonah’s rebellion.

But the mariners and soldiers from Rome were never in any real danger, even though they might have thought so.

The difference was in the righteousness and willingness of the saint of God to do his duty.

Abraham said, “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And (the Lord) said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.”

I hope that you can see this point:

If we are not righteous, we have no right to expect God’s blessings.

And as children of God, and as righteous by the grace of God, we should expect to see God’s abundant blessings spilling over onto those around us.

However, if we are not the servants of God that we ought to be, then not only is there a very good likelihood that we will be drowned, but so could those around us.

The United States has prospered under the blessings of the Lord because in the past there has been a good percentage of righteous people among her citizens.

Today that percentage is running very, very small, and it appears to be getting smaller.

And those who may actually be children of the Lord, are not living righteously.

How long will the Lord continue to bless this ship and all its passengers?

If the Lord should close the windows of heaven, will it be because we are more like Jonah than Paul?