You know, living up here in one of the most beautiful places and one of the safest places on earth, I really should have nothing to complain about. But I will anyway, won't I? So, it's the way of a human. My big bugaboo are visitors to the mountain. that are unprepared for the seasons. Now, we have the prairies with us today. They will not come here if the seasons are seasoning. And it is very, very delightful to have you with us. But located as we are in Southern California, we are surrounded by some 20 million people who have no idea on how to drive in the snow. And that's frankly, you know, right there. And while most visitors are aware that Lake Arrowhead can see copious amounts of the white stuff in the dead of winter, they are blissfully unaware that we can also get snow in the spring and in the fall, and I've seen it in the summer. I've seen snow every month of the year except July in the time I have lived up here. And one of the most famous snowfalls of all time, which I probably informed you of before, happened in July. the July 4th holidays of 1949 and they got a three-foot snowfall when nobody was prepared because it was a summer resort back then largely. So my pet peeve is those who find themselves on a snowy road and because they don't want to put on chains or don't know how to put on chains or don't have chains drive until their car stops in the middle of the highway. Which we've all had happen. They attempt to drive out of the mountains to the perpetual summer that's 21 miles down the hill. without realizing that the first half inch is the bad half inch of our snows up here. It is the most undrivable condition that we have. It is better to drive in deep snow than at the beginning of a snowstorm. So they drive till they stop, usually on an uphill section of road, bringing traffic to a complete halt while they either try to dig their way out or install chains in the middle of said road. Now, I would never, do that. I would never drive until I stopped. At least not anymore. Not since that first year that we lived up here. We moved up in 1979. Nobody had four-wheel drive cars back then. They just weren't common. My 1967 Firebird is technically a one-wheel drive car. That's what I was driving back then. One evening, Aaron and I wanted to see a movie down in Crestline. That was the only theater back then. We knew a storm was coming in, but we thought we could beat it. When we got out of the theater, it was sleeting and starting to turn to snow. I lived in Twin Peaks at the time. I thought that was close enough. No, Twin Peaks isn't close enough from anything. When we got to Grandview, there was maybe four inches of snow on it. And then we came to the road that led down to where we live. Now, you must know that back then when we moved up here, many of the roads in Twin Peaks were dirt. Grandview was paved, the highways were paved. County roads were paved, but things like ranger and iris and squirrel were dirt. And we lived on iris. Where the Legowees lived, there were no roads. There were logging roads when we moved up here, just to make me sound really old. But at least where we had to go was all downhill. That was the good part. And it was hard-packed dirt. Only the top four inches got muddy in something like this. And I was young and dumb and bulletproof. So I headed down to our house. And just as I got to our driveway, our driveway, there was a little steep part before, beside it, I started sliding and slid past our driveway. Just to show you how young and dumb we were, Aaron was wearing open-toed shoes, expecting a storm coming in. I slid past the driveway. It was maybe 50 feet back up and I said, Aaron, I'll just go around. And she said, oh no, just let me out here and I'll walk. And, no, no, you don't have the footwear for it. So, I said, we'll just swing down Clubhouse up to Twin Peaks and do it again and I'll just find a better place to park. We drive down, and somewhere near Clubhouse and Rose Lane, we could go no further, and there's still falling snow. The upshot of that is that instead of having to walk maybe 50 feet through snow and mud in open-toe shoes, we were now most of a mile away from our house, and we weren't going anywhere. And we took a shortcut. It was through the forest, you know, a muddy road, no flashlight, dark of night. Did I mention it was snowing? OK. So anyway, I'd like to say that I was never again unprepared for a winter's journey. But I was young and dumb for a long time. And as we look to our study in Acts 4 today, we look at a journey that is dangerous. And though they were prepared, there were some mistakes made. There was perhaps not They may not have been as young and dumb as I was, but there are things that are going to happen in our study and acts today that show a lack of preparation. Among those adverse circumstances, a late start to the trip to begin with, bad weather conditions on the way, poor decision making, and eventually, an end more traumatic than a hike in inadequate footwear. So we're going to go to Acts 27 today. And last week we did verses one through eight, and I will read those again so we know where we are, and then I will proceed from there. Acts 27. This is Dr. Luke writing. And a point that I made last week, it says, and when it was decided that we should sail for Italy, Luke has rejoined the missionary group, and he is writing from firsthand experience. And though it's going to showcase Paul all the way through, remember that Luke and Aristarchus, who was with Paul on his missionary journey throughout Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, They're along for the ride also. So what affects Paul affects everybody of that missionary team. It says, and when it was decided that we should sail for Italy, they delivered Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion of the Augustan cohort named Julius. And embarking on a ship of Andromithium, which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of Asia, and that's Asia Minor, we know it as Turkey, we put to sea, accompanied by Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica, The next day we put in at Sidon, and Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him leave to go to his friends and be cared for. And putting out to sea from there, we sailed under the lee of Cyprus, because the winds were against us. And when we had sailed across the open sea along the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, We came to Myra in Lycia. There, the Centurion found a ship of Alexandria sailing for Italy and put us on board. We sailed slowly for a number of days and arrived with difficulty off Cynidus. And as the wind did not allow us to go further, we sailed under the Lee of Crete off Salmoni. Coasting along it with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens, near which was the city of Lycia. Today we are looking at the next seven verses, 9 through 15. I'm only reading the last couple verses to give us context of what we're doing. Mainly we're just doing 9 through 14. It reads, since much time had passed, and what that means is much time in the port of Fair Havens. They got stuck there. The weather was against them. So since much time had passed, and the voyage was now dangerous, because even the fast was already over, Paul advised them, saying, sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives. But the centurion paid more attention to the pilot and to the owner of the ship than to what Paul had said. And because the harbor was not suitable to spend the winter in, the majority decided to put out to sea from there on the chance that somehow, This is sounding doubtful already, isn't it? On the chance that somehow they could reach Phoenix, a harbor of Crete, facing both southwest and northwest, and spend the winter there. Now, when the south wind blew gently, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, they weighed anchor and sailed along creek close to shore. But soon, a tempestuous wind called the Northeaster struck down from the land. And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along. So going verse by verse, verse 19 says, since much time had passed and the voyage was now dangerous because even the fast was already over. Here in Southern California, as you all know, we have something we call fire weather. Fire weather generally starts in mid-September and runs through November, mid-November usually. Sometimes it carries on into December. The same type of weather pattern affects the Mediterranean Sea. We're at roughly the same latitude as that. The winds change, generally blow down from the northeast just as they do here. Ours is a wind pattern known as the Santa Ana's. Theirs, well, I'll go on because we'll get to the name for theirs in just a second. After September 14th in the Mediterranean Sea, it was called dangerous weather, okay? For the sailors involved, after September 14th, it was getting dangerous to be sailing there. Dangerous weather, continued to the middle of November, and you might say, what happens after the middle of November? Does it turn nice again? No, they have a term for that. In Latin, it's called mare clausum. The sea is closed. That is what they said about the weather from November 14th all the way till March. It was so dangerous to sail in the Mediterranean that the Romans just said, the sea is closed. Wherever you are, find a place to park it. This is what they were trying to do here. They were in a harbor called Fair Haven. Sounds really good, doesn't it? Well, Fair Haven though it was a nice harbor, was open to the sea 180 degrees. It was just an indentation. It was not a closed harbor like the San Francisco Bay. But Fairhaven was going to get all of the wind, and it was going to get a lot of the seas. There were some offshore islands that served as a sort of breakwater, but it was not an ideal place to stay. In March and April, shipping would resume, but just as mid-September to mid-November, it was back into the dangerous season. So you have two months of dangerous season. You have three months of the ocean closed, and then you have two more months of dangerous season. There's five good months to travel in the Mediterranean. Now, the trip from Caesarea had begun in early fall. But the winds had already been against them, as we've seen. Sailing up the coast of Judea towards Asia, they were fighting headwinds the whole way. We saw that last week, that nearing Crete, the winds turned even worse. Fair Havens, the small harbor, was also near a small city. They had 278 people on board this ship. They were concerned that they would even find lodging for that many people in this small area. But to sail to a larger harbor and to a bigger city was 40 miles. Now, 40 miles doesn't sound that bad. We'll see how bad it can get. Luke points out that so late in the season was it that the fast was already passed. You know, Luke assumes we're going to know things that we don't know. And the fast he's talking about is the fast that precedes Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Yom Kippur is celebrated on the 10th day of the lunar month Tishin, which we also don't know, so I'll interpret for you, which in AD 59, because it's a lunar thing, fell on October 5th. So if dangerous season started on September 14th, they are a month into bad times on the Mediterranean. And they've got to find some place to stop pretty soon. It was really time to stop sailing for the winter. But as I say, Fair Harbor, though a decent harbor, was not the best place for them to spend the three months that the ocean was going to be closed. So a meeting was called. There's 278 people on board. The owner of the ship's on board. They have a pilot. The master of the ship is on board. The prisoners generally aren't consulted about whether they want to go on or not. But Paul was, because Paul had been found innocent in Judea of the charges that he was now going to appeal in Rome. So a meeting was called of the ship's owner and pilot. Julius Centurion called it. And at least some of the passengers were called to discuss their predicament. Now, Paul was an extremely well-traveled person and was included in this meeting because of that. And when I say he was an extremely well-traveled person, he'd done a lot of ship travel in his time. And so here's what he says to them. He says, sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be lengthy. I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives. The Greek word translated here for advised means strongly recommend. So Paul was giving a strong recommendation. In 2 Corinthians 11.25-26, Paul writes about what he has suffered as a missionary for Christ's sake. In these verses, he talks a little bit about his seafaring experience. He says, three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers. dangers from robbers, dangers from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers. Paul had been shipwrecked already three times, OK? He knows the part where he speaks. He drifted a day and a night. 24 hours, he drifted alone at sea after a shipwreck. He was sort of an expert on shipwrecks. I wonder how many people back then survived one. Paul knew as well as anyone the dangers that they were facing. Was he also getting a prophecy from God? Because later on in this sea journey that he's taking, he will get a message from an angel of God telling him what's about to happen. Scripture does not tell us that at this point he does get a prophecy, but he'd been shipwrecked three times and he could see things lining up that did not look good. Verse 11 says, but the centurion paid more attention to the pilot and to the owner of the ship than to what Paul said. Now, this is no real surprise. Julius, of course, would pay an awful lot of respect to a professional ship's master, a pilot. They weren't stupid back then. People had been sailing for thousands of years by this time. They knew what they were getting into. Besides, the owner of the ship was on board carrying grain contracted by the Roman Empire for the city of Rome. So they don't want to lose the ship. They don't want to lose the grain. The owner of the ship had that financial interest in mind. He wanted a safe trip. So these things are carrying a little bit of weight. And Paul, even though he was a seasoned traveler, did not have a financial interest in the trip, nor was he a professional seaman. So verse 12 says, And because the harbor was not suitable to spend the winter in, the majority decided to put out to sea from there on the chance that somehow they could reach Phoenix, a harbor of Crete, facing both southwest and northwest, and spend the winter there. The consensus was that they should leave Fairhaven when the winds were favorable. Now remember, we've just said that they had been there so long, waiting for the winds to change, that the Yom Kippur was passed. Julius, as the emperor's representative on a ship contracted to Rome, appears to have the final say in the matter. The ship will stay in Fairhaven only until favorable winds develop, and then set sail for the harbor of Phoenix. In fair weather, Phoenix was 40 miles away. In fair weather, it was no more than a day's sail, OK? In really good weather, in really favorable conditions, a good wind from the south, it could be done in half that time. Under perfect conditions, it was a three-hour tour. That's an ominous sign, isn't it? A three-hour tour. Verse 13 says, Now, when the south wind blew gently, Supposing that they had obtained their purpose, meaning they'd been waiting for south wind, looks good, little bit of wind from the south blowing them to the north and to the west. They weighed anchor and sailed along Crete, close to shore. So they awoke one day to what they saw as perfect conditions. That gentle wind out of the south was perfect for them, they thought. The harbor of Phoenix was almost due north, so they sail close to the shore. They're still not going to go out into the sea, but they sail close to the shore for about six miles until they had to swing to the west around a cape. It's called Cape Matala. So they come to a jut out, and they sail around the cape, sail west, and then turn back north things went south really quickly. Verse 14 says, But soon a tempestuous wind, called the Northeaster, struck down from the land. The tempestuous wind has an actual name in Greek. It's called Typhonikos, we get our word typhoon from this tempestuous wind. They were caught by a typhoon swinging down from the north. It blew from basically the northeast towards Africa. Exactly the opposite direction than they wanted it to be blowing. And then we have verse 15. And we'll be stopping there. We're actually going to pick up a little bit of 16 in a minute on the close. But in verse 15, it says, and when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along. Sailing ships can sail into the wind. As you all probably know, you're tacking about 40, not 40, 10 degrees off the wind. And you tack back and forth, and you can get there, but not in a strong wind. And not in, you can do it in a modern yacht pretty easily, but not in an old sailing ship. They were square rigged. They didn't have the sails we have now. They didn't have the good tillers we had. If the wind was too strong, you could not face the wind. The typhoon, if that's what it truly was, I mean, the word is translated, but we don't know if it was, you know, a typhoon is a hurricane. Typhoons are on one side of the world. Hurricanes are on our side of the world. It was so strong that there was no chance in beating into it. Neither could they make it back to harbor at Fair Havens. And they were stuck a little bit. Instead, they had to turn and run before the wind. It was the only hope of saving themselves. And that means sailing south. You know that I have a little bit of problem that Luke never tells me exactly what I want to know. And looking at this journey, in your Bibles, you might have the missionary journeys of Paul. And then it has the trip to Rome in mind. And it shows these lines of where he went. Neither wrong on where he went on his trip to Rome, because he didn't end up where my Bible's lines say that he ended. When I read about this journey, when I read about the ship being caught on a three-hour cruise, I immediately went back to that famous American documentary series, Gilligan's Island, and the S.S. Minnow. The enduring question that surrounds the story of the SS Minnow is, how could they get so blown off course on a sightseeing tour out of Honolulu that they could not be found for three years and 98 episodes? How can you get that lost? Well, I'll tell you. It happens here. As I say, Dr. Luke is brief and matter-of-fact about things I'd like more facts about. Here in verse 15 he writes that their ship was caught by the wind and driven along by it. But to where? He gives us the name of one island. It's Kata. Kata was six miles from Fairhaven. But that's where they stopped, and we'll look a little bit more at what they did to the ship, because they had to fix the ship, or they were all going to die. In verse 16, after they leave Codus, because it did not have a harbor, they just got in the lee of the city to shape up their ship a little bit. It says that they secured their ship and precautions so as not to hit the Sirtis. Okay, the Sirtis. Now, as I say, Luke probably, everybody probably knew where the Sirtis were and what Luke's talking about. The surges are shoals and shallows. They're off the northern coast of Africa, off of Libya. They were sailing in the northern Mediterranean. They're blown to Africa by this wind. The surses are known as a graveyard of shipping. If you get caught in those shallows and shoals, it's all over and you go down. So as soon as they leave Qadis, they're worried about the surses in Libya. The sailors among you, and I don't know if there are any, are probably sitting here and saying, well, why didn't they reef the sails and heave too? I guarantee you the sails were down. If you've got sails up in a typhoon, you either take them down or they're blown off your ship. But if you look, and I did look up the statistics, sailing under bare pole is what it's called, is when you remove, when you're sailing in a hurricane and remove all of your sails. The wind is still blowing on your ship and you can do 15 miles an hour in a hurricane with no sails up. Also, if you do this in modern sailing, you will leave your jib, your small front sail up to give you steerage way because you do not want to turn sideways to the ocean or you're going to capsize and everybody's going to die. So did they leave a sail up for Steerage Way, we don't know. But if they did, it would have been small. But they're being blown at 15 miles an hour, and the storm lasts 14 days. They're lucky they didn't blow out of the Straits of Gibraltar. Maybe they would have if they hadn't hit Malta, but we'll be looking at that too. Malta got in the way. So anyway, throughout Luke's account, the acts of the Apostles. We have seen God's sustaining hand preserving the Apostle Paul's life for the ministry that he had called him to. Miracles, both supernatural and everyday, have marked Paul's path from the Damascus Road to the shoals of Sirtis. And he has been sustained the whole way. This is another miracle. The fact that no one dies on this ship. Now I've ruined it. Now you're not going to want to read the end of the book. The fact that no one dies on this ship is purely God's sustaining hand. on Paul. By all odds, everyone aboard the ship should be dead, but not a soul has been lost. But in a larger sense, all of our lives are a series of miracles. Life itself is a supernatural miracle created and given to us by God himself. We are sustained by everyday miracles. You've heard me praying for travel mercies for us all. We do that often here in this church and in our prayer group, that God would protect on our travels at this Christmas season and for the New Year's, but God did... God's hand is guiding and protecting us every day just as it did for Paul and Luke and Aristarchus. But God did not just protect those three Christians. God's protective, sustaining hand is on all of creation, even those who don't claim him, who don't know him. The protection of Paul and Luke and Aristarchus also extended and encompassed the nearly 300 other non-Christians who are on that boat. And when we pray for travel mercies, as our people are traveling at the holidays, unnoticed is that the protective mercies we ask of God extend to everyone who shares the roads and the skies and even the seas. with those that we're asking protection for. God's everyday miracles cover even those who do not believe or recognize them just as they did those who accompanied Paul and his friends on this little three-hour tour up the coast of Crete. Everyone survived. God was gracious to everyone. People do not recognize the graciousness that God extends as a matter of everyday life for everyone. Every day you wake up and breathe is an everyday miracle from God. Let's close in prayer.