Paul was a landlubber.
He was no more a sailor because of his many trips back and forth across the Eastern Mediterranean than I am an aircraft pilot because I have flown to South Carolina a couple of times.
But – just because he hadn’t been a cabin boy, cadet at Annapolis, or spent “two years before the mast,” that doesn’t mean that he hadn’t learned a few things about the weather and the sea.
I have often said that I’m of the opinion that Paul possessed a pretty good quantity of natural genius.
I think that he was headed to the top of the religious-political world because he was qualified to be there.
He was sent by his family from Cilicia to the University of Gamaliel, because he had the brains to sit at the feet of the greatest teacher of his day.
And the natural intelligence which he possessed made him quick to grasp and remember lots of things – far beyond the boundries of religion.
We saw a glimpse of that in Athens as he was speaking to the pseudo-intellectuals on Mars Hill.
He could quote Greek philosophers and poets as well as any Greek.
But in addition to his intellect, Paul possessed something even better:
Paul was a child of God, and as such he was filled with the Spirit of God.
I know that the Lord Jesus was speaking about something a little more specific than this when He said,
But the Spirit of Truth is the Spirit of all truth and all kinds of truth.
“Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage,”
Not only was he putting into words a fear which suddenly sprang within him, but he felt the urging of the Spirit to tell those men about it.
And in warning those people, the Lord gave him credibility which he will need later on in the voyage.
This evening lets think about the warnings of the God-fearing man.
And as we think about Paul, let’s not confine the application to apostles or other ministers of the gospel.
In this particular case, we could be talking about any Christian whose heart is sensitive to the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
The lost think that we are fools, not because we are stupid, but because we are Christians.
but if we gave up our love and service of Christ we would cease to be foolish.
In other words, we aren’t fools by nature; we are fools because of our religion.
Only a fool would spend all that money on expensive gasoline to drive to church several times a week.
Only a fool would give up a restful evening to hurry off to a prayer meeting at church.
Only the truly insane would pray in public.
Only a fool would rather talk to people about Jesus Christ than to talk about sports.
Most unbelievers think that Christians who behave in such ways as this are actually only prisoners.
They think that we think that if we don’t do behave like Christian fools, we’ll somehow loose our credibility with God.
We’re locked in; we have chains around our feet.
They have freedom, as libertarians, to commit whatever sin they want, but we are slaves to the Heavenly Dictator.
And as prisoners and slaves, the lost think that we must be ignorant people.
Anyone who doesn’t throw off the yoke of his spiritual Oppressor, must be a stupid fool.
Without a doubt we are ignorant people – to many things.
Ideally we should be ignorant and inexperienced in the ways of sin.
It would be wonderful if our children never knew the pain and misery of addictions and hangovers.
or the man who can hardly function because of the “partying” that he inflicted upon himself the night before?
There is something commendable in not knowing what movie won the Academy Award.
What advantage is there in known the passing statistics of some over-paid quarterback?
There are a lot things that the lost world knows that the Christian doesn’t know, but most of those things are NOT important and many of them would involve us in sin to know them.
Another misconception that the world has of the Christian is that we are meddlers and trouble-makers.
They said, “We have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.”
“We have determined that Christians, like this Paul, are pests within our society.”
The word “pestilent” from Tertullus’ statement in Acts 24 could be taken a couple of different ways.
“This Paul is spreading spiritual death like Typhoid Mary.”
Or Tertullus could have been calling Paul a simple “pest.”
A single yellow jacket, looking for a meal at your picnic is a pest.
But are the warmth and illumination of the sun shining around your picnic table pests?
Something which is a blessing would never be labeled “pestilent.”
Paul, the ignorant prisoner, the landlubber,
the man who wasn’t smart enough to get a real job and ended up being a preacher
had the audacity to tell the experts that the short sail from Fair Havens to Phoenice was going to end in disaster.
“Tell that fool to sit down and enjoy the ride.”
Contrary to the misconceptions of the unsaved …
In fact, when someone has recognized his sin and his need of the Saviour testifies to the soundness of his mind.
By definition, a fool is someone who is deficient in understanding.
One kind of fool says that “there is no God.”
Another kind of fool thinks that he can march up to the gates and Heaven and based upon his merits and his self-righteousness demand admission.
That is because he knows things which those unbelievers, who consider themselves rational, don’t know.
There is no more sane man in the world than the Christian.
No Christ-rejecting person is truly and completely rational.
Second, the Christian may know as much, if not more, about things in general as any non-Christian.
Just because Paul was a preacher of the Gospel, didn’t mean that he hadn’t read books on the art of sailing.
As far as I know Brother Kjeldgaard has never flown a WWII Spitfire airplane, but I have reason to believe that if he was asked to do it, he could.
And he had been at sea often enough to be able to recognize potentially dangerous weather.
Just because he didn’t have a PhD behind his name didn’t mean that he couldn’t be smart enough to know that sailing out of Fair Havens was potentially disastrous.
As a personal temple of the Holy Spirit,
Paul was in a position to know things that Julius and the captain couldn’t know.
I think that the Lord did that in order to lay the foundation for the later ministry of Paul.
Was it because he was right about this point, that Julius listened to him, when Paul said that the sailors were trying to escape the sinking ship and that they were needed on board?
Was it because of this prophecy and that prophecy that the preaching of the gospel was so successful once everyone safely reached Melita?
Paul was certainly not meddling when he expressed his opinion about this move out of Fair Havens.
It was likely that some people, especially the owner of the ship and its cargo thought so.
But there is absolutely nothing wrong with Christians expressing their opinion.
Why is it today that the wicked, the homosexual, the atheist, the Satanist and all the other “ists”
but the Bible-believer is told shut up?
And that takes us to a thought a step higher than bad weather and ship-wrecks.
Christians, because of the witness of the Spirit in their hearts and because of the Bibles in their hands,
and into the storms of sinful behaviour.
It is not necessary to possess Doctorates in Sociology to realize that not to punish criminals and other wicked behavior can only have a destructive effect on the futures of our children and grandchildren.
A familiarity with the newspaper combined with a knowledge of the Bible give the average Christian the means of making an accurate assessment of the condition of the world.
And when the Christian opens his mouth and utters his warning he should be heard.
There is something in the heart of everyone, including the Christian, which enjoys being able to say – however humbly –
“Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have loosed from Crete, and to have gained this harm and loss.”
I don’t think that any one here will observe the Great White Throne Judgment, shake his finger toward the condemned and say, “I told you so.”
I don’t think that any of us will be even remotely close to personal perfection to be able to boast in anything, but there will be a sense in which that should be a possibility.
But in order to enjoy that moment, we must be diligent in sticking our necks out today.