Amen. You may be seated. Perhaps you've heard a saying or a variation of a saying that goes something like this. Nothing good in life or nothing worth doing in life comes easy. You ever heard that saying or something like that? Maybe another one if you're especially you're in a sports realm. You're going to have to expect pain to play the game. If you've ever been part of a collegiate sport, maybe in high school or maybe some capacity, you know that in order to win the championship, you're going to have to suffer. You're going to have to be disciplined. You're going to have to live for a time doing some very hard things. If you've ever had a coach, then you know what I'm talking about. I think coaches are born with a desire to make other people hurt for a long time in order to possibly win. That's kind of the idea that we're getting at this morning. Another way of getting at the idea this morning that I think is maybe a little bit more gripping is the story of something that happened in 2003, and maybe you remember this. There was a young, experienced climber who had gone to Utah to go climbing in the canyons. Beautiful country, beautiful part of the Southwest America. And he was climbing down this canyon back in 2003 when his His arm got pinned against an 800-pound boulder. The boulder shifted as he was on it, and it pinned his arm, and he was stuck. For five days, five days, this young man was trying to get his arm unstuck, and he could not do it. And when the cold, horrible realization came to him that if he was going to survive, he was going to have to take drastic measures, he pulled out his pocket knife. And he did the only thing he could do, and he amputated his arm. After he had done that, he rappelled the final 60 feet to the canyon floor, hiked five miles out until he could find someone, and he was saved. He's still alive today. Now, the reason why I tell you that is not to tell you about the triumph of the human spirit, though certainly that would be part of it, but to tell you that sometimes when we're looking at salvation, when we're looking at a rescue in this young man's life, a physical rescue, and what we're gonna be talking about, an eternal rescue, sometimes, and dare we say, in the economy of God, it's all the time when we're talking about God's salvation it's always going to include a measure of pain. That in order to be rescued, it's going to hurt for a time. It's not gonna be easy. And may you never hear that from this pulpit, that your life will just get really easy if you just pray a prayer and follow Jesus. That is a lie. It's not true. And it's not what Scripture calls us to. Now, what we're going to say, what Scripture says, is that in this life, there is by necessity hardship. And let me just say this one final thing before I give you the theme for your notes this morning. I think this is one of the most misunderstood theological truths of our churches today. It's deeply misunderstood because it's deeply anti-cultural. I don't know about you, but I don't want, normally, at least in my humanness, to listen to someone tell me, life's gonna be hard. Because I know that. I've lived enough of life. I know that life is difficult. So churches are not wanting to say, look, there's gonna be hardships, and here is the purpose of the hardships. Instead, they're gonna wanna say something that's a little bit more palatable. And as a result, we have people in our churches who have no idea what the Bible has to say when their spouse gets cancer. There's no understanding of a good God who can allow cancer. There's no understanding of how a pastor friend died last weekend and he's leaving behind a wife and four little children. There's no comprehension of what to say to a family like that. Why? Because we have neglected a significant theme and river throughout scripture that in order to save you, you're gonna have to hurt. And there's gonna be trials and there's gonna be hardships. So this is the theme of our text and our sermon this morning. God fulfills his promises through pain and suffering. We could even say God fulfills His promises of rescue, of salvation, through pain and suffering. The title of the sermon is God Saves Through Suffering, and it's certainly what we see in our text here this morning. I don't know about you, but I just sense that I need to go before the Lord one last time in prayer, and then we're just gonna jump into this, and we're gonna work our way through a lot of verses, okay? So let's pray, and then let's consider God's word. Father, this is a weighty task this morning to talk about pain and suffering in your plan, and the goodness of that. Because all of us know the hardships of this life, and for many of us, especially for some of us who carry some deep, deep burdens, deep wounds, deep scars, it's nearly impossible for us to accompany the word goodness to it. It's nearly impossible for us to accompany the word salvation, and it seems impossible that God is not only a part of it, not only ordained it, but is using it for our rescue and for our good. So Father, please give me the words to say this morning so that the words are not coming from me, but from the Holy Spirit. Will you help us all to think rightly, to consider what your word says? We ask this in your name, amen. We're going to have two primary points this morning. The first is going to be more contextual, though it's going to be moving us to the broader theme this morning. But the first main point is going to be Paul's perilous journey. And as you read Pye read to us earlier, there's a lot of context here, right? This is a significantly long narrative, and I know that it was long, I know it took a long time to read, but it's because it's telling the story of what's happening, and we remember what's happening here in this narrative description that Paul is on his way to Rome. He has left Caesarea, where he was on trial, and they're sending him to Rome. Felix, Festus, and King Herod Agrippa, they couldn't figure out what to do with him. He's appealed to Caesar. Send him to Caesar. I do think there's some important things for us to just briefly see at the very beginning. This is the fourth time in the Book of Acts, to count it, four times, that we're seeing Paul have significant travel narratives here. We've seen three other accounts of Paul traveling across the Mediterranean, and you likely remember those. That's the first, second, and third missionary journeys told to us in Acts 13, 16, and 19, respectively. Now this is obviously a very different travel narrative in the sense that on the missionary travels, Paul was going by his own volition. He was going out of his own accord to these cities to proclaim the gospel, whereas now he's a prisoner. But there's also a lot of similarities between Paul's missionary journeys and now his prison goings. And that is that none of it was done in a vacuum. None of these travels, whether free as a missionary or in prison as a prisoner, was done outside of the body of Christ. So we could say this, God leads believers and blesses those who trust in him. Paul had this way of going with others and following along with the church and being encouraged by the church in order to bring about God's good purposes. And what we're going to see, even in the midst of a really hard situation, God's going to bring about a good end through the use of other people and through divine guidance, God is going to bring about his purposes. So keep that in mind. So let's consider the root here. The root that we see, especially here in verses one through 13, we could kind of break this first section down to the root, and we consider kind of what's going on here. Notice that before we get into the places that they go, notice how there are some people that are a part of this narrative, and I think it just is helpful for us to keep in mind who's here. Notice in verse one, we're given the first person plural pronoun we. That's significant. That happened in some of the middle teen chapters of Acts. Luke started to use this first person. We are doing this. It's no longer just them, but it's we are doing this. So we know that Luke is here. Perhaps Luke was also a prisoner. More than likely, Luke was just accompanying Paul. Isn't that amazing? That Luke, who's deciding to follow the Lord, he's willing to go on a prisoner ship, likely to be treated like one of the prisoners that he's accompanying. But he's not alone. Notice how in verse 2 we're told there's another person who's accompanying. Aristarchus. We're told he's a Macedonian of Thessalonica. This is not a new person. If you look at Acts 19.29, this is the first time that we're told of Aristarchus. He was in Ephesus, and when the crowd was wanting to kill Paul, because he was speaking against the idol, the god Artemis, before they got Paul, they got a man Gaius and a man Aristarchus. That's the first time that we see this man. He's already been with Paul in chapter 20, verse four. Aristarchus leaves Ephesus with Paul. We're gonna see Aristarchus again later in the New Testament. You can look this up on your own, Colossians 4.10 and Philemon 24. In both places, Aristarchus is there with Paul in prison in Rome, and Paul is saying, hey, he's saying hello to these different people. He is my beloved. He is helping me in the midst of being in prison. The whole purpose of what we should see here is that Paul is not alone. If you're like me and you think of Paul, we normally think of a one-man band, don't we? We think of Paul as this super Christian, that he just went off and did what he needed to do the way that he wanted to do it, and God just did amazing things through him. And while part of that is true, he wasn't all by himself. Here you have a man, Aristarchus, who few will ever know his name, and yet he was essential to the task. He not only shared in the joys and the celebrations of the ministry, but he shared in the sufferings of the ministry. I wonder what would it look like if Christians said, you know what? Let's be other-focused, other-minded. I want to help share your burden. That's what Luke and Aristarchus are doing here. Maybe they're not on trial, maybe they're not prisoners, but they are taking on the prisonerhood of Paul in order to encourage him for the task that God has given him. I wonder, what would it look like if Christians lived that way? That we're gonna take on the hardships of another brother or sister in Christ? There's one more person here that's listed here by name. In verse one, we're told, in my text, it's an Augustan cohort, or maybe in your text, it's an imperial regiment. He's a centurion, and he's called Julius. Notice how Julius is sprinkled throughout the story. I'll just make quick mention of this. In verse three, we're told that Julius likely did not think that Paul was a big threat, so he treated Paul with consideration, this is verse three, and allowed him to go to his friends and receive care. You could look forward to verse 11. that even though Julius did not think that Paul was a significant threat, he still didn't believe that Paul knew what he was talking about. So in verse 11, the centurion Julius listened to the boat captain, to the sailor's advice rather than Paul's warning. But something entirely shifts, as we'll see this morning. By the time you get to verse 31 and we see the centurion again, he's now following Paul's advice. And we won't get to that for another couple of weeks, but he has been won over to Paul. He has recognized that what's in Paul is God, given and God-directed. So much so that if you look to all the way to verse 43, When they crash, when they run aground, and the soldiers say, let's kill the prisoners so none of them can escape, in verse 43, it's this man Julius, the centurion, who says, no, no, no, no, no. Paul has been the one who has known what he's talking about. Let's keep them alive and bring them ashore. So the significance here is, all the way back to verse one, this man named Julius, who is seemingly an insignificant character, is going to be divinely used by God to bring about God's perfect plan of fulfilling His promise to bring Paul to Rome. It's amazing, isn't it, how God is using unusual people, a Roman centurion on an Alexandrian ship, Yes, God's going to use even this man to bring about a very, very good end. Well, the last of verses 1 through 13 is just the route, or the specific way that they went. And we have a map that, if we could put that up there for a second. I know that's very, very small. I'm just going to kind of walk through just where they went very quickly so that you'll be able to see it. If you start on the right-hand side and see the red line that follows, that's the route that they're going. Starting out on the east side in Caesarea, they're going to go north a little bit and then go west. Let me just walk through these verses. If you look at verse 3, We're told that they go north from Caesarea to Sidon, which is in modern-day Lebanon. So they go just north, not too terribly far, but that's where Paul was able to be encouraged by some Christians. In verse 5, notice how they struggled but eventually arrived at Myra. That's going to be south of Turkey there, in modern-day Turkey. If I was smart, I would have had a laser focus so I could be able to follow along, but I forgot to bring that. They board an Alexandrian ship, and then in verse 7, they go to Nidus, and then eventually they arrive on the south part of the island of Crete, verses 7 through 8. And you'll notice that Crete is on the right middle side there. That's where they're going to eventually get to. In verses 9 through 13, though, they have to make a significant decision. It's not a very good time of year to sell west of Crete. So they're in the relative comfort and safety of the Cretan island, and Paul says that they should stay in the place called Fair Havens. in Crete. That sounds like a good place to stay. But yet, as we just mentioned, Julius, the centurion, decides, no, I'm going to listen to the captain of this ship, of the Alexandrian ship. And so in verse 13, they think that they have found their window of opportunity, and that is exactly the way that you should read it. They think that they are finding a small window. It's a big chance, and they know it. They think they can sail west, going all the way to Italy, Sicily, and you'll see the island of Malta, which is eventually where they will get to. And so when you finish verse 13, there should be a sense of uncertainty and tension. What's going to happen? Is Paul's warning going to come true? Let's not keep going because it's going to get bad. Or is Paul not going to be true? What's going to happen? Well, this moves us to verses 14 through 20 called the storm. In verses 14 through 20, we see that Paul was absolutely right because, of course, God was Absolutely right. And as soon as they leave the safety of the island of Crete, there is a significant storm. I think this is significant here in verse 14. We're told that there's a violent rushing wind, a violent wind. And the word here is ukilo, or this idea of the northeastern wind. So it's north, it's pushing east, it's pushing away from where they're wanting to go. Now, I'm more interested in the Greek word that's translated as violent wind. If in your text, in verse 14, it says violent wind, that's a significant word. That word in Greek is tufanikos, which when we translate that into English, the word that we have gotten from that is typhoon. That's the Greek word here. It's hurricane-like forces on the Mediterranean Sea. And that happens, by the way, on the Mediterranean Sea. There are significant storms that can come on a ship and just devastate a ship. And we certainly see that happening. We see a typhoon-like situation here. And now with that in mind, look at the rest of these verses from verses 16 through 20. In verse 16, more or less, they stop trying to fight the wind. They've gotten to a point where there's just, you can't fight it anymore. It's just so strong. This is a devastating storm. Notice how in verse 17, they're just trying to keep themselves afloat at this point. And then in verses 18 and 19, things have gotten so bad. This is not good. They start throwing their cargo overboard. Now I don't know if you've spent any amount of time as a sailperson or on a boat, but generally if you're a commercial ship, the whole point of being on the ship is taking cargo from point A to point B. That's your money. That's how you make money. What are they doing here in verses 18 and 19? They're literally taking their money and tossing it overboard. You should be seeing how extreme the situation is. They will still have wheat on board, but a lot of their cargo they're throwing overboard. But it doesn't stop there. Notice how we're told that they should throw the ship's tackle. Now, if you're a fisher, fisherman or fisherwoman, you might think of tackle as your fishing gear, right? That's not quite what this is. It is gear, it is equipment. We don't know exactly what type of equipment it is, but we do know this, it was very heavy and it likely involved steering the ship. So not only are they throwing their money away, but they're throwing what steers them, what guides them. They are getting so desperate that they're willing to say, it doesn't matter where we go, it doesn't matter if we even lose money, we need to save ourselves. That helps us understand verse 20, then, doesn't it? In verse 20, the storm is so bad. For days, they can't see the sun, they can't see the stars. That's a bad storm. And we're told, from then on, all hope of being saved was gradually abandoned. Might not seem like that significant, looking at the size of the Mediterranean, but I can assure you, this was death approaching this boat. And every step of the way, as they tried to more drastically save themselves, the less and less hope they had of being saved. which you should be seeing here through verse 20, is the hopelessness and seemingly insurmountable-ness of this situation. There is no hope. Now, pastor, you might say, what does this have to do with me? I'm glad you asked. I think what Luke is starting to tell us, and he's only going to broaden this theme out from this point on, but I think what Luke is trying to tell this, you'll see us in your notes, is God's kindness often is hidden until there's seemingly no hope. Let me say that again. God's kindness, that's an intentional word, God's kindness often is hidden until there's seemingly no hope. I think Luke is wanting us to see how desperate this boat is. I think he's wanting us to see that there is no hope. If you think of a parallel, think about on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus and his disciples on the boat. You remember that story? Remember what happened in that story? They're tossed around. The disciples are panicking. Oh my goodness, when nothing is going to be saved, we're going down and Jesus is sleeping. God's kindness is hidden until there's seemingly no hope. Friends, that's the story throughout Scripture. You cannot read your Bible without the realization that God almost always, almost always brings his people to a desperation point where there's no hope except for him, and then brings salvation. Do you want me to just approve this to you very quickly? Do you remember the story of Daniel? When does God save Daniel? Is it when he's in the king's court? When the threats of being thrown into the lion's den? But no, Daniel, you won't have to get to do that. God saves Daniel not from the lion's den, but in the lion's den. You hear the difference? He didn't save him from fear. I'm sure Daniel was afraid. He didn't save him from shame, there was shame, but he saved him from destruction in the midst of suffering. See that? What about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Right, I'm just going through my VeggieTales here, VeggieTales stories. When did God save Shadrach, Rakshach, and Benny? He saved them not from the fire, but in the fire. See that? in the midst of suffering. They're to the point where they say, look, we believe God's going to save us, but even if he doesn't, we still will trust him. Well, guess what? God let them into the fire. He brought them into the fire and then brought them out of the fire. What about Moses and the Israelites? You know, remember when they come out of Egypt? When does he save them by parting the Red Sea? When they are terrified because they're trapped and Pharaoh's coming at them, sword drawn. And he says, I'm gonna finish the job I should have done when you were my slaves. They're seeing him and their backs are against the Red Sea and they're panicking. Where's God? He's coming at the very last moment. God's kindness is to remove yours and my pride in our own abilities. Oh man, this is where it really gets practical. God's kindness is to bring you and me to a place where we say, I can't do this. I have no way out. Pharaoh's in front of me, Red Sea's behind me. I can't get out. I'm stuck. I'm going down for the last time unless God, you save me. That's what Luke is demonstrating to us here. So friends, I love this point. That's a weird thing for me to say about something I've written, but I love this point because it's already moved me and my spirit. Listen to this. Great trials produce great reliance upon God's great sufficiency. The reason why I've put it this way with three greats is because I don't want to diminish the hardship that is in your life. You are enduring great trials. I will never try to diminish that. If you come and talk to me, I will never tell you, just get over it. It's not that big a deal. That's never what Christ did. That's never what Paul did. That's never what Peter did. You have great burdens. I'm not diminishing your trials. Paul, here in verse 20, they had great trials and great suffering, but the greatness of the trial is intentional to demonstrate to you the greatness of God's sufficiency and how great God is bringing out of you a reliance and trust in Him. Do you see this theological truth that's all throughout scripture? Because if you do, it's going to shift your focus. So let me warn you here. What I'm putting before you, it's a line in the sand. You're gonna have to cross the Rubicon here. Because you now no longer can view the hardships of your life with a woe is me perspective and think that's okay. No longer can you say, I just got a bad deal. Bad hand. No, friends, what I'm telling you that the Bible is telling you is that God is kind to give you great trials so that you say, I can't do it. And therefore, God's great sufficiency works through your life to demonstrate his awesomeness, his power, his sovereignty, his goodness, his mercy, and his grace. So the question's going to be, now that you know, how will you respond? Which perspective will you have when you endure trials again? Let me just demonstrate to you what this looks like in a Pauline epistle. You know this, but there is a time in 2 Corinthians where Paul had a thorn in his flesh, right, a great trial. You know this passage, we've used it many times. Jesus said to Paul, my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. I've read that so many times to so many of you. And that is such a necessary thing. God's grace, sufficient for you, power perfected in weakness. But look at how Paul responds. Paul says, I will rather boast about my weaknesses. What a fool, Paul. I don't know about you, but I've never seen on social media somebody post about how weak they are. I've never seen somebody go to the gym and say, I couldn't even begin to lift that amount of weight. Have you seen that post? I always see people saying, look at what I just did. I'm boasting in my power. But Paul says I'm boasting in my weakness. What? Why? Why would you boast in your weakness, Paul? Ah, so that, a purpose clause. What is the purpose of boasting in weakness? So that the power of Christ may dwell within me. Do you see? Great trials, thorn in your flesh, brings out a great resilience, a great reliance upon a great sufficiency of God. And so Paul says, when God said, I'm not gonna take your thorn away, and when my grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in your weakness, Paul says, I'm gonna boast in my weakness because that's how the power of God is within me. So then he goes on to say this incredible thing, I'm well content my weaknesses with your insults, with distresses, persecutions, difficulties. For Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I'm strong. Wow. I wonder if God's people got a big dose of that right now. Let's be strong in our weakness. Let's be strong in the sufficiency of Christ. John Piper would put it this way, God's design for suffering is that it should magnify Christ's worth and power. Let me say that line again. God's design for suffering, it's purposed, it's his that he's giving, is that it should magnify Christ's worth and power. This is grace. Because the greatest joy of Christians is to experience Christ magnified in our lives. Let me just ask you a very quick question. Is that how you're viewing your sufferings in your life? Is that how you're viewing the sufferings of your past? Do you see Christ as sufficient to not just overcome them, but to be working through them so that you rely solely on Him? I think that's a powerful thing that Luke is teaching us here. But he doesn't stop there. He keeps going. In verses 21 through 26, we see the promise of painful salvation. And so I've been trying to build up to really this point, that there's going to be pain, and in the pain of the suffering, God is doing something through that. He's doing something in your weakness. But I think here in verses 21 through 26, we'd rather leave this part out. If you're like me, I would prefer verse 21 to go something like this. After they had abandoned all hope, God, because he loved them so much and because Paul and Luke and all of these people, they're trying to serve the Lord, they're trying to do good things, God had mercy on them and he sent them a Mediterranean cruise liner. Wish that was what verse 21 said? And they saved them in the midst of the storm, and Paul lounged on his way all the way to Rome. He was bathing out on the sun deck, okay, et cetera, et cetera. That's the idea that I'd like to see here in verse 21. That's what I'd like to see going forward, but that's not what we see. No, we see a continuation of some really hard things, and it's about to get harder. Before we jump into that, I want to just say a quick word on this significant thing. Paul's going to tell them that he received a word from the Lord. We're not exactly told those words of the Lord in the moment. It's not that we see the idea of this angel coming to Paul and hear that conversation and then hear him tell the other people this conversation. But we do know that he received a word from the Lord. And I want to preemptively say something. I wanna preemptively warn not to think this way. Well, if God only spoke to me, then I too would have assurance. I too would have confidence in the midst of my suffering. I mean, if an angel came to me in the middle of the night and said, hey, next week is gonna be really hard, but God is gonna bring you through it, then I too would have confidence in him. I want to be very clear that if that's your temptation, then hear this. God's word is just as clear to us today as it was to Paul. Okay? God's Word today is just as clear to you as it was to Paul. And we could expound on this a ton, but think to John 1. Jesus is considered and called the Word of God. In verse 14 of chapter 1, the Word becomes flesh and what? Dwells among us. And then John says, that's what this is. Everything that I'm telling you is to help you know the Word of God. So I just want to encourage you. You don't need an angel to come in your sleep and to tell you, you'll make it through the cutbacks at work next week. Okay, I'll be all right. You'll survive your children being really, really stinky this week. Okay, I'll survive it. You have the Word of God that's written to you, Christian. This is Jesus's words to you through the Holy Spirit. Be strengthened in that. And of course, you could look to 1 Peter 1, which says that though the grass withers, the flower fades, the word of the Lord endures forever, and this is the word that was preached to you. So the word of God is just as clear to us today as it was to Paul. Well, what is the word of God that's told to Paul? Notice how we're told here in verse 20. They have no hope, and verse 20 says there's no food. They're getting short on food. I've noticed those two things often go together. When there's no food, there is no hope. And instead of going, well, you know what? I told you guys so. If we'd only stayed at Crete, none of this would have happened. I don't think that that's how we should read verses 21 through 26. I don't think that's what Paul's doing. Instead, what Paul is doing is to say, hey, I just want you to remember that God was speaking to me and he's still speaking to me, so you should listen to me now. I think that's what he's trying to do here in verses 22 through 26. God is the one who's guiding Paul. That is really significant because notice how he tells them to take courage. Look at verse 22. Yet now I urge you to keep up your courage. Look at verse 25. Therefore, keep up your courage. Is Paul just a masculine man? Let's be courageous. Let's be men. Or is there something deeply important about that word courage? This isn't gonna be on the screen, but in your Bibles, look back at chapter 23, verse 11, just very, very quickly. You might remember in verse 11 of Acts 23, Jesus makes a promise to Paul. You remember this? I've referenced it quite a few times since then. In Acts 23, 11, this is what Jesus said to Paul. Take courage, for as you have solemnly witnessed to my cause at Jerusalem, so you must witness at Rome also. What's the same word? Take courage. Now, come back here to Acts 27. What's Paul saying to them, these sailors, and the people that are with him? Take courage. God's promised we're going to be safe. In one sense, this is the very best possible news, because Paul is saying here, and it shouldn't be too hard for us to get there, he is saying, this isn't my word. Don't take the word of the prisoner Paul, take the word of God. God is saying, don't worry, I'm gonna bring you through this, you will be safe. I think that's what's going on here by this idea of take courage, that God is going to fulfill his word to his people through Paul, they're going to be safe. Now, if it ended with verse 25 of just take courage, God's going to bring us through. We're not going to die on the Mediterranean Sea. I think that we could be okay with that. But then verse 26 comes, and this is one of those pesky verses that we just wish we could take scissors and cut it out, but we can't do that. And verse 26 brings all of this together. God has promised to Paul, and Paul is encouraging these men to take courage, don't be afraid, God will bring us through, there is salvation, but Oh, those pesky little butts. Verse 26, but we must run aground on a certain island. Now, I want to make sure very quickly before I bring us home to a final point where I hope is going to tie a bow on this. I don't know how familiar we are, as I mentioned earlier, of being on the sea, but this is one of the worst possible things that you can imagine if you're a boatsman. You don't have to think about being on a boat for very long to think, it's good to be on the boat, bad for the boat to sink, bad for the boat to capsize, bad for the boat to crash. In fact, if you're on a boat, it's the last thing that you do. Only in the most extreme situations would you scuttle a boat, let it run aground. That's the worst possible thing that could happen. Now, I don't have a lot of experience on boats, but I do have a decent amount of experience on small crafts. I'm talking about canoes and kayaks. Very different than what I think Paul was on here, but I told Sadie I was gonna share an embarrassing story about me, and she made sure that I am the brunt of this story, so I'll tell you a little story that I think, at least in my mind, was what came when I was thinking about verse 26 here. It was a few years ago, Sadie and I were kayaking on Lake Michigan, just outside of Chicago. And guess what? It was in March. So it was cold, okay? I mean, it's a windy city for a reason, right, Danita? It's a windy city. Windy, cold, and it's cold water. It's coming out of winter. And so we're in one of those tandem kayaks. Now, I don't know if you've seen Sadie and me stand next to each other, but we are not the same build. We're not the same size, and this was some years ago, so I had even more weight to me. And so in a tandem kayak, you probably know where I'm going with this. Let's just put it kindly, the weight distribution was not exactly equal. I'm not saying that the front of the canoe was up out of the air, but it just was not exactly the way that it should have been. So we're a couple hundred yards out from shore, just enjoying life out on the water. But you know what happened, don't you? Some waves came, I don't know if it was the wind or some boat that thought it would be fun to capsize us, but we rocked, we rolled, and then we dunked. I was able to get Sadie, to help Sadie back on the boat, but I couldn't get back on it, so I had that long swim of shame to the shore, and I didn't even make it to the shore because this lifeguard in a rowboat thought that I needed help, and I had the shame of a life, this teenage girl, actually, row out to me and say, here, I'll help you, as though I'm drowning, and I wasn't, but I had to get on, and That was a really embarrassing situation. And if you had told me before we went out, hey, you're going to have a lot of fun, but you're also going to capsize, I think I would have said, no, I don't know if I want to do this. That would not have been in my plan. That would not have been something that I would have desired to happen. That's the idea of verse 26. I imagine that in verses 22 through 25, these sailors are saying, yes, we're gonna be saved. All right. And then verse 26, but also we're gonna run aground. Oh, that's kind of a mixed bag, Paul. We kind of like some of it, but we don't like all of it. Here's the point. I think that in this narrative description of this travel, of what's happening to Paul and the people with him, is this. God's salvation always includes pain to make you like Christ. I haven't left myself very much time, so I wanna use my words very carefully here. Without exception, without exception, God's salvation in your life must include pain. Do you remember, Christian, back when you were saved? Do you remember that moment when you were given new life in Jesus Christ? Hopefully you remember the sweetness of that, how you could just, things just seemed new to you. There was hope that you never had. But do you remember the horrible realization before that of your sin? You should. That should have been painful for you. Has there been a moment in your life where God, like the master surgeon, as you were then saved, and you're all right, I wanna be gung ho for Jesus, and then all of a sudden, you start reading God's word, and the habits that you'd formed, the thought processes that you had developed, you all of a sudden realize that's not the way of Christ. And all of a sudden, the surgeon of God cuts out, the sin of your thinking, the sin of your desires, the sin of your value system, and it was painful because that had been your identity. Do you remember that, Christian? Because you should. Has there been a moment in your life where somebody loved you enough, maybe a spouse, maybe a child, maybe a Sunday school teacher, pastor, deacon, or just a friend, to say, hey, I love you a whole lot. I'm seeing something in your heart, and the way that you're doing things doesn't seem like it's like Christ, and I wanna help you with this. Has someone ever had to say some hard words to you that you see it's out of love, but it's cut out? It's forced you to deal with something that you didn't wanna have to deal with? You should, Christian. The way of Christ is always the way of pain. Now, why is that? And this is what I wanna make absolutely clear. If you're like me, I'd rather live a comfortable, easy life. I'd rather go home, kick up my feet, and just enjoy life and everything around me. Why does it have to include pain, pastor? I'll just say this very quickly. Painful death is the price of sin. Spend some time in Genesis 3. If you're struggling with this, spend some time in Genesis 3. Genesis 1 through 3, I think, would be helpful. Genesis 1 and 2 is perfection. Everyone that's created, that's Adam and Eve, are in perfect relationship with God. No problem, no pain, no sin, nothing. But then sin enters in the first couple of verses of Genesis 3. We're given the curses, breaking of relationships, sweat of the brow, enmity between husband and wife. Verse 19 of Genesis 3 says these words. This is one of the curses to Adam and to all of humanity. By the sweat of your face, you will eat bread till you return to the ground. That's the language of death. Never before had that ever been said. You came from the dust, you weren't gonna return to the dust until Genesis 3. Because from it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. The language of death enters when sin enters. That's why Romans 6, 23 parallels this by saying the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Friends, until you realize and recognize that because you are a sinner, and that because what you have brought into this world by virtue of your sinful condition, by necessity means there must be pain to remove the curse of sin on your life. If you don't understand that, then what do we do with Jesus? What do we do with Isaiah 53 in verse five? Listen to the language of death and pain and suffering. He was pierced through for our transgression, that's the language of pain. He was crushed for our iniquities, that's the language of pain. The chastening for our well-being, that's the language of pain, was upon him, and by his scourging, being beaten, We were healed. Why? Because of your sin and because of mine. There has to be pain. There has to be death before there can be salvation. And it's in God's great salvation through Jesus Christ that brings us through to eternal life. The Christian life is not trying to be away from pain, but it's saying, God, you are gracious in the pain to make me more like Christ. The trials of today, tomorrow, and going forward are meant to make you more like the Christ who suffered so that he might give eternal life to you. The language, the purpose of life is so that you might suffer to have life in Christ and to trust in him as a child. Let me close with one application. One application, and I'll say it in two ways. If this is all true, ask yourself this question, Christian. Will you trust God's promise of salvation when your life runs aground? Will you trust God's promise of salvation when your life runs aground? I don't know what that might be, what that might look like, but are you going to trust his promise of salvation to make you more like Christ, to trust in the sufficiency of Christ in the midst of that? And let me say it another way, because that question focuses on your heart for your life, but then just write this above it or beside it. Will you help others do this? Will you help others in the church trust in God's promise of salvation when their life runs aground? Will you do this in your life, commit yourself in your life, and will you commit to help others when their life has run aground to see what God's doing there? A church that's blessed, comes together, unified in the spirit of the Lord, and says, you know what? Things are hard, but God's doing something great through this. Friends, let's be that church, individually, corporately, who sees God's goodness and his perfection in saving us through suffering. Let's pray. Father, in many ways, this is a sermon that I'd rather not preach, In many ways, it's a truth I'd rather not have to think on, and yet it's in your word for the perfect reason of making me more like my Savior, Jesus Christ. Lord, will you work in us to make us more in the image of your Son? Will you help our hearts to desire what your heart desires? Will you bless each person here Will you encourage us through the faith? Will you help us to encourage one another and to live lives changed with a new perspective, viewing our lives through the lenses of Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection? Lord, please do a great work in this church. In your name, amen.