Acts, 26:1-32

We've got lots to cover. A couple things. I want to tell you about the connection between the Apostle Paul and Santa Claus. But first we want to cover the questions here. All right. Questions from last week. This is chapter 26 that we looked at there. So a couple of questions on page 3 of that handout.

Why is it that the Lord did not send an angel to deliver Paul as he did for the Apostles and for Peter earlier in Acts? What did you come up with on that? Why didn't the Lord just say, hey, I'm going to send an angel, I'm going to break Paul out of this trouble, and just put him on the highway to spiritual growth and prosperity? How come the Lord didn't just do that? Ah, okay. Yeah, Barbara? Yeah, yeah. And you know, I think James put it pretty well.

It was translated various trials in James chapter 1 verse 2 That word various is the Greek word poikilos, and we get our polka dots Okay from that and and you know big ones little ones purple ones yellow ones the truth I mean we'll have a trial and one you know it might be five minutes another might be five years another might be a lifetime and and all kinds all sorts and And, you know, various ones. And so that's why, you know, we look at Peter's situation, it isn't proper to simply take a cookie cutter and say we're all supposed to get that. Okay?

Because the Lord's the one who writes the prescription. The Lord's the one who knows what we need. And to try to count on, oh, this happened with Peter, therefore it's got to happen with me, is really important. Something else along that line that's critical, a lot of Christians will kind of not be clear in their thinking and they will do something saying that they're acting in faith. Well, sometimes they're claiming faith in something that the Lord hasn't promised. So this would be another key example. If Paul was sitting there in the prison saying, I am in faith, no, the Lord's going to let me out. Well, why is that in faith? It's claiming something the Lord hasn't promised. So anyway, just a key perspective there on what faith is. Question number two.

What do you think of Paul's defense? Did it succeed in showing him not guilty before Agrippa and Bernice and Festus? And why didn't Paul just remain quiet as the Lord himself had done before Pilate? What else did Paul's testimony accomplish? What do you see there? Paul spoke before Agrippa and Bernice and Festus, and remember this was an informal hearing, this was one not that they were going to make a decision at, but that Agrippa and Bernice were to provide Festus with some advice, some input on what their perspective would be. What do you think about that? What do you think of Paul's defense there?

How did he do? They did say after he was done with his speech that he didn't deserve death or imprisonment. Okay, yeah. And so they did conclude that. It's interesting. Did Paul just defend himself? No, he went beyond that, didn't he? Paul went beyond just defending himself. He both left them with the conclusion, this man does not deserve death. He also presented gospel truths in his presentation as well, and laid those out. So it was more than just, this is a defense, this is also something where, matter of fact, what was the response of Agrippa?

He was mad. What? Paul was mad. Was that? Yeah, there were two responses, one of them is, Paul, you're out of your mind, and it's interesting, he got that response, but there was also another response, and what was that? Not, no, that's not correct. No. Pardon? Yeah, in other words, if you look at it, one response was Paul was mad, another response was he hadn't done anything wrong, and there was one other response. Yes, Katie? Yeah, yeah, it's just, you know, you're moving fast, but you almost convinced me, you know, to be a Christian. So, interesting. Yeah, Art?

Yeah, and if you look at it, his whole purpose was in doing that. He had apparently presented a sufficient case that they didn't see him as guilty, but certainly went way beyond anything in the way of just trying to lay out a defense, if that was his purpose.

He was certainly in this trouble because of his intent for the gospel. And the Lord had acknowledged that. An angel had appeared to him and acknowledged that. But it's interesting, while the Lord appeared to him and an angel appeared to him, he was still in prison. Very interesting, huh? The Lord performed miracles to reveal things to him that were encouragements and to let him know you're going to go to Rome, but didn't get him out.

Now, I have to tell you about the Apostle Paul and Santa Claus. There is a connection, believe it or not, and the connection is this. This is a map of Paul's third and fourth journeys, the fourth journey being the one to Rome that we're about to look at here today.

The third journey he passed by Myra, which is a coastal city, actually not quite on the coast. We'll see a map that shows a little more detail. It's actually a few miles inland, and there's another port that is really the access point there, but they're kind of like twin cities. Anyway, you see Paul on his third journey went past Myra. As a matter of fact, this map is sort of generalized.

Some think he may have been close enough to actually see it because they tended to hug the coastline a lot of times. So he may have actually seen Myra previously, but he definitely went to Myra on his fourth journey on the way to Rome, and that's where they switched ships. Okay, so anyway, here's Myra. Now, Paul had likely passed by Myra on his way back, I mentioned that, and then he did stop. There's Myra that's on the lower point, and you see how Myra is a little bit inland, and there's another smaller port. Andriache is the smaller actual port, and then Myra is a twin city just a few miles away.

Then, given that Paul had a direct and indirect part in establishing the churches in Ephesus, and Ephesus is over on the upper side there, and in Colossae and Laodicea, those are just north of Myra, you see, located. And then city in Antioch, up in the upper right. Paul indirectly founded the church in Myra as well, not because he went there, but because of secondary contacts, just like Colossae and Laodicea and Hierapolis. Those are cities that we don't know that he ever went to, and yet there were churches established there. So at any rate, Myra is one of those places where there was a church established and secondary evangelism and teaching going on there. More than two centuries later, there was a man named Nicholas who was appointed bishop of Myra. Now, the establishment of bishops as people being over an area is actually not biblical. Bishop, the word is overseer, as it's translated in the New Testament. And it's basically equivalent to elder, pastor, overseer. It's used all synonymously.

But nonetheless, he was appointed bishop. He was among those who were in prison. There were ten Roman persecutions up until the time of Constantine. And he was involved in the tenth one. He was imprisoned, but not killed. Some of the believers were. And oddly enough, that was a time when they had so many Christians in prison that they didn't have enough room for the real criminals.

But and he was among them and Diocletian was the Emperor so then that was a that was a very severe and extensive persecution After Constantine declared Christianity legal in 312 and then he the he declared it the official religion in 313 Nicholas Was one of those bishops who took part in the Council of Nicaea that was in 325 so he was among about 300 bishops that went to that council and And that was where they made a doctrinal decision about the teaching of Arius. Arius taught very much what is believed among Jehovah's Witnesses today. The Father is God was the teaching, Jesus was a man, and the Holy Spirit is a force. So then that's basically the summary teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses. Anyway, he was among those who corrected that. and voted against that teaching.

Records have it that he died on December 6th. Interestingly enough, the historians argue over whether it's 341, 343, or 345 AD. So real sure about the day, not just so sure about the year. From that Saint Nicholas, we have relatively little that's actually certain.

There's a lot of strange legends, like he tried to drop some, there were some poor young women, and he tried to drop some bags of gold down the chimney, according to one story, and they went down the chimney and ended up in the stockings that were hanging, anyway, crazy stuff, okay? So there's lots of legends, and then since about the mid-1800s, it's turned into this reindeer and supersonic sleds and all sorts of crazy stuff. And he went from a fellow who was probably small in stature, never saw snow unless it was up in the mountains somewhere far away. Now it's all these North Pole things and all that.

Anyway, it's gone a little crazy with the mythology that's been added to it, but that's the connection between St. Paul and Santa Claus. With that, grab your handout for Chapter 27, because there's a lot in it. You might have noticed that it's five pages. And there's a supplement page on the back, which I'll explain in a little bit, too. That's kind of an extra.

Here's the deal. We heard at the end of chapter 26, Paul doesn't deserve death, right? He's crazy. He almost convinced Agrippa to be a Christian, but he doesn't deserve death. So, here's the decision. Off he goes to Rome. And what happens is they put him under this centurion, Julius, and we know nothing else about Julius except that he was the centurion that went with them. We get some indications along the way, and even early on, he was kind to Paul. And there were others that showed good hospitality in spite of some of the difficulties as well.

One of the things to keep in mind, taking a ship in those days was kind of a risky business. They didn't really have passenger ships. What would happen is you would have ships carrying mixtures of cargo and passengers. So the accommodations for passengers were not great. If you're thinking carnival lines, forget it. None of that. They didn't have midnight buffets or anything like that. It was kind of tough going. And then also think about this.

Because you've got sailing ships in places where things are, you know, sometimes stormy over the winter, a lot of times most of the guys just, hey, we're not traveling. Because you have so many uncertainties, you know, you can't go in, here's our published schedule. You can't give anybody weather reports, you know. My wife used to work, while I was going to engineering school, she worked at a place that did weather routing for ships. And they would give forecasts and recommended routes, and depending on the people's insurance or company policy, they could or could opt not to follow the recommended route.

Sometimes there were some sad stories because they didn't. But they just didn't have anything like that here. You know, you see whatever comes and you know that this is the bad season and beyond that you're pretty well stuck with whatever comes upon you. No way to really know when somebody's going to show up. They're supposed to show up here, I think, you know, and you wait around.

And so instead of coming up and having some way of making arrangements, it's just you catch something when you can. And if you have to winter somewhere for three months, that's what you do. So at any rate, it was a pretty wild affair. And so you'd catch whatever you could. And sometimes, just like we have to do with flights now, you might have to take two or three legs to get to where you want to go.

And same thing back then. They would have, the biggest record we have of Numbers of passengers, 276 was the number on this ship that was carrying grain. The record number that we have from that year is there was one ship that went down with 600 people. So they actually did have ships that were fairly substantial and sometimes did carry a lot of people. I can't imagine Some of the conditions that they must have traveled under but anyway that's what the history records, okay Now One of the things that was noted in the past is there are places in Acts and we're about to embark on the last one Where dr. Luke uses we and us Repeatedly and he uses it all the way to the end of chapter 28 basically And so you see this is a lot of first person.

He's keeping some kind of record of this whole process all the way along. And one of the things we know is he's going to in some places record some extraordinary details. There's even a couple of words we're not quite sure what he meant. But he records some extraordinary details here.

Here's Paul and Julius. And there's also Aristarchus, who we see mentioned, and we've got on page two a listing of other places, Colossians and Philemon, a couple of other books where he's mentioned. And Dr. Luke himself. And Dr. Luke's also mentioned in Colossians. Now, this fellow Julius that's taking them showed them some real kindness. And it's interesting, the word that Dr. Luke uses is philanthropos. What do we think of when we hear that word? A philanthropist or philanthropy. We think of someone who gives generously to some particular charities and whatnot. Yeah, Tom? Yes, yes, there we go. A spendthrift with a vision. Yeah. He was kind to Paul and to those who were with him. We do have one question. Paul is being taken along as a prisoner. How would Dr. Luke and Aristarchus, who as far as we know were not prisoners, how would they be taken?

How would they get on board? What's that? Yeah, they would have to pay their own fare and go basically as free people along on the same trip. And this was something you had to kind of stay right close to Julius and Paul to make sure you do it because again, you can't go to some general ticket office and get some nice scheduled stuff. Are they going on that one? Good, we better grab it because it was that kind of a thing. You couldn't count on schedules and you couldn't count on, you know, hey, I'll call ahead on my cell phone or something, okay? No way.

All right, so then, this is on approaching the island of Crete, Dr. Luke noted the ship was going to the leeward side of the island that is protected from the wind. They'd go to the leeward side because you get this wind and you get some protection from the intense wind by having the island in the way. And some parts of Crete, by the way, are pretty high mountains, thousands of feet up.

So anyway, on the leeward side, the little point that he makes mention here is Salmoni. And Salmoni is a Phoenician word. It means a refuge from wind exposure. Isn't it interesting? Here's this place and they took it as a refuge and that's exactly what the Phoenicians had called it. The Phoenicians had been doing shipping in the Mediterranean for centuries. So that's how they'd established the name.

You've got a map there and I think some of it may be a little tough to Read clearly I tried to do what I could to bump up the contrast and whatnot But it's I think got some good notes in terms of what happened at certain places Okay The other thing we notice is that there's reference to it being the day after the fast and that's the kind of an alternate name among Jews for the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur you heard of both of those and Given, we know this, we know that Felix got booted out and Festus got put in place in 59 AD.

It seemed fairly shortly after that, that this decision was made to send Paul to Rome. Therefore, based on the Jewish calendar, that would put the day of Dr. Luke's note at October 6th, 59 AD. So here's a point where we actually have something fairly well nailed down in terms of the date. So, good connection to history there. Now, Paul, a few different places in this account, speaks up.

And one of the places that he speaks up, I think I made note of it here, Acts 27.10. He makes some statements there, and one of the points that I think is critical for us to look at, his first kind of public statement, he says, I foresee that we're headed for trouble. Appears more to be from his general experience.

Just having been on a number of ships. We have the accounts and acts But but it seems that Paul did some ship traveling like from early on possibly even Taking a ship rather than always by land going between Tarsus where he was from and Jerusalem even that would have given him some experience early on But as he is telling them, I think we're headed for trouble, it's likely based on his just extensive experience traveling on ships and looking at things and saying, hey, this isn't good. Bad, bad story. So we shouldn't necessarily look at it as prophetic, but just a human experience observation.

Because one of the things that he does later on is to kind of modify that because the Lord tells him directly later and he makes note of it. The Lord tells them directly that we're all going to be okay. Everybody's going to make it through this. And then He tells them that.

So that's somewhat of a refocusing and more specific prediction, if you will, of what's going to take place. Okay. Now, oh, one other thing. It talks about, and different translations will carry it across a different way. There's a fellow who is a pilot and there's a fellow who's an owner's representative. Some of your translations may say, you know, captain and different things. The way it would work is this.

If you had grain ships coming from Alexandria to Rome, because Rome was about a million people at this point in time. It was, by the standards of that time, definitely the largest city in the Roman Empire. And the need for grain was so great that the Roman government said, we will have, kind of as almost a public utility, we will have grain ships come in, even during winter when it's high risk, and they would guarantee payment for the sake of the people running the ship who were a private business. They would guarantee payment and it sort of made it privately owned but with some public interest in it.

So what you had was a pilot and you also had a ship's owner or owner's representative. And the term that Dr. Luke used could be either. Either the owner of the ship or an owner's representative. Okay? And so then But you had this other impact and that is you also have a centurion on board and he's got a Roman citizen that he's got to get to Rome and you can't abuse that.

So the way it worked was this. Everybody gets a say in this and they would have at certain times like a ship's council. What are we going to do next here? Especially when you've got, you know, things are so difficult. So you have a ship's council and get people together.

We hear of Paul's input. That's where he's saying we're headed for trouble, okay? And so you'll have the pilot, the guy who's steering things. You'll have the owner's representative. Paul, as someone with experience sailing, is also giving his input.

But you also, because of the way it was set up, where the Roman government would pay for the grain, even if it didn't make it, that made them take risks they otherwise wouldn't take. But the centurion legally had veto power over that decision. He could say, no, I'm on board and therefore as a representative of the Roman government of rank, I say we don't go. He could do that. And so that's why you see, you know, Paul's, they're able to speak as a Roman citizen and basically being accompanied by Julius. That's why you see Julius being a part of the conversation. because you end up having this group decision with the centurion having veto power because it's a Roman public utility, if you will, okay?

Because that grain was so important. The Roman government says even at the risk that we might lose the grain, we'd rather have them continue to bring it rather than to go through periods of starvation here during the wintertime. All right. So that explains that.

One of the other things that's interesting comes up, Acts 27.14. They have a typhoon coming. The way it works is some of the islands there have really tall mountains and there was a mountain somewhere around 7,000 or 8,000 feet and one of the things that happens is you get winds going up there, rising, and as they come down it has an accelerating effect. Back in the days when people had cars with carburetors, it was a carburetor effect where you get a very high-speed jet coming down off the mountain.

Nancy and I saw that in Carson City, where we lived. By the way, that was a Jeopardy question. What's the windiest city in the United States? Carson City. And it's because of that same effect. You get the wind coming over the mountains, and when it gets pulled down with a rapid drawdown, huge increase in velocity.

And that's what was happening here. So here are these guys. They're traveling on the ship trying to get on the protected side. And then they get right behind this place where it's coming over the tops of these rough mountains. And a larger, more extensive storm is apparently moving in as well. Well, this just nailed them. It hit them hard. And those kind of winds can hit suddenly.

Anyway, the term that Dr. Luke uses there in Acts 27.14 is a urakilo. And for centuries, a lot of people, you know, were wondering, what's that? Oddly enough, it's a mixture of a Greek and a Latin word. And some people, even in the latter part of that time of skepticism, said, you know, Luke's smoking something. I mean, he's making something up. Okay. And this is goofy, crazy term.

Well, then they found one of these wind roses where it shows north, south, east, west, and then this exact same term inscribed in the stone on the ground in a city in North Africa there. So, at any rate, it's apparently been confirmed. It was a real term, and as a matter of fact, it was a rare term, one that we had no other confirmation of until that time, but Dr. Luke used it. So it was a valid term, and it was a term that subsequently has been confirmed in more ways since. Now, as the going gets rough, now people start getting rather tense. You even have an incident where the ship's crew starts lowering the lifeboat.

And they're ready to jump in that thing and cut off and take off because they're scared of what's happening. And so Paul saw that and says, unless those guys stay on board, you can't survive. And so the Centurion had them, you know, cut the thing loose and make it so the guys couldn't leave. So anyway, enough treachery. They get into this thing.

Another thing that they did, and it was apparently something that was done fairly often, the ships in those days, you'd have planks that would be held to framing members this way. And when you'd get into rough waters, the risk was that the forces would start buckling and pulling on the planks. And so what they would do is they'd tie ropes around each of the structure areas, and they'd call that frapping. And so they would wrap around the underside to pull the planks in and to give them some additional strength to keep them from buckling and breaking loose from the framing. So Dr. Luke describes that as well. At a few different places they mention, Dr. Luke mentions, and the Greek word is anchoress, our word anchors. And so there's several places where that's been brought up there.

Now, then they start throwing the grain overboard. This is the same thing, by the way, you read early in the Book of Jonah, where they start throwing the cargo, throwing the grain overboard, get it light. Now, why would they do that? I mean, this whole thing is to get the grain there, right? Why would they start throwing the grain overboard?

What's that? Freeboard. Yeah. In other words, you got this thing, you got 276 people on board. You got all this grain and cargo and the ship's down in the water. When you start getting big waves coming up and the ship's tipping, you don't want water coming in in big amounts. So what do you do? You're going for all the freeboard you can get. You want to get that boat as light in the water as possible. So you start ditching everything you can, and the grain is of course heavy. Lots of it, way down there.

So dumping that stuff, even though that was the idea, they were supposed to bring grain, that was, hey, we're trying to survive here, and so dumping the grain. Now, I don't know in that instance whether Rome's going to cover that. Maybe they did. But in this instance, it wasn't a question of what Rome wanted. It's, are we going to live through this? So they start dumping stuff. So anyway, here are these guys out there. Paul speaks up to them and says, hey, you know, the Lord's going to get us through this. We're all going to make it. The Lord told me. All of us.

Do all of them know how to swim? No. 276 people on board, not all of them know how to swim. You've got some that would swim ashore, and you have others that would grab planks or anything else that's floating. as the ship started to break up. Because what happened is they started heading in towards land and they were coming in to what's now called St. Paul's Bay. And looking at, it's interesting, the first written record we have of it is in like the Middle Ages that it was called St. Paul's Bay. But studying the geography and other records it appears to be a fairly good identification that that's probably where the pulled the ship in. So, one of the things they do, and it's interesting, different interpreters look at it different ways, a little tough to know.

They got rid of the anchors, whether they just dumped them overboard and were dragging them, or whether they dumped them overboard and cut the rope just to get, again, get as much as you can out of there. And think about it, what Tom said, the freeboard, if you're heading for shore and you're just trying to get in before the ship breaks up, you want to get in as close as you can, right? So you get rid of everything you can in these anchors. Can I get a picture? Yeah, you get a picture on the bottom of page three.

These anchors would be a big piece of stone, sometimes with either a hole in the middle like you see this one, or they'd sit there and cut a groove in the middle of a longer piece of rock. So one of those configurations would be typical. And they'd sometimes have several of them in order to get the job done. Well, what Luke describes is they just dumped them over and some people even get the idea that they went and just cut the rope just to get those things out because they wanted to just fly into shore and get as close as they could before the ship just totally broke up.

So that's what we see happens there. And then Finally, the Centurion was calling the shots at the end there. Basically, it sounded like the crew was jumping, everybody was jumping, and the Centurion was kind of calling the end shots. And one of the things that we think of, well, what's this Centurion? He's probably a land military officer. What's he doing calling the shots?

In our military, we have divisions, the Navy has their hierarchy, and we've got the Army, they've got theirs, and the Air Force has theirs. In the Roman Army, you didn't have separate divisions. It was all looked as one thing. So you maintain the same rank, arrangement, and authority, whether you're on land or stepped onto a boat.

So he was sitting there calling the shots, saying this, and this, and this, this happens, this happens. directing what would happen as well as having veto power up to that point. So it's interesting what Dr. Luke records, and he's apparently sticking close to Julius because he's the one that's got Paul, and he's recording Julius is calling the last shots before this ship is ready to completely break up. Then they were all on board 276.

One quick point here. There were other prisoners besides Paul. We aren't given numbers or names for any of them, but other prisoners who were on board. Paul is the only one that we have specifically identified. And initially the soldiers were planning on killing all the prisoners. And a couple of things. One is that would have been normal practice. You just kill all the prisoners. Why would they not want to kill Paul? Why would he be an exception? Roman citizen, okay? One, we see that Paul is a Roman citizen, and just killing a Roman citizen, you're going to end up in deep trouble, like death penalty.

The other thing is that we notice that Julius showed philanthropos to Paul, so he seemed to favor him in the various activities. So both of those things together, the guy said, nope, we're not doing that. And it also confirmed what Paul said would take place. All of us will make it safely to shore. The other point was this.

According to Roman law, if you were a soldier and the prisoner for whom you were responsible got away, you received that prisoner's penalty. So the safe thing to do is what? Kill him. Because otherwise, if that prisoner gets away, You're the one held responsible, and whatever the penalty is, it might be death, because the decision hadn't been made. Whatever the penalty was, you'd get it. So if he was supposed to spend a year in prison, you would too.

So the soldier's reaction was not extraordinary, but because of the extraordinary circumstances of Paul being a Roman citizen and also having a favorable relationship here with Julius, and my inclination as I read through the account is that Julius is getting more and more favorable towards Paul. He's saying, hey, this guy has given us some valuable direction. In fact, the first direction I heard, I should have listened to. You can imagine him thinking. He gave us warning about this before it happened. So anyway, Julius prevented the killing of all the prisoners.

And everybody got ashore here. And that's how this chapter ends. What we read in chapter 28 is how they were received by the natives who were there. And we get this interesting guy, Publius, that we'll read about next week, who receives them. OK. I can't believe we got it all. All right, let's take a look at the questions. And then I got the supplement to talk about here. First question we've got there on page four.

Paul had assurance from the Lord himself that he would get to Rome before he was even sent to Caesarea. In this account we read about Paul speaking up at one point to give a warning apparently based on personal experience. Later when he spoke up it was to give encouragement based on the word of an angel sent from the Lord. Since the Lord had been given assurance in Jerusalem that Paul would make it to Rome, why did he bother speaking up to the others these times that are recorded?

Could he just have said, hey, the Lord's going to get me there, I'm not going to worry about it. Right? So I'm going to give that some thought. And the second question, in verse 21 Paul said, you ought to have followed my advice. And so my question is, is Paul doing an I told you so? Or is there something else going on there? There's a supplement, page 5, for your handout.

And one of the things I want to make note of, we don't really know for certain who is the author of Hebrews. I have my own favorite, I'll call it a studied guess. I think it may well be Barnabas, and two reasons. just in summary one is there's a lot in it about the Levitical practices of the temple and the sacrifices and whatnot and Barnabas we learned earlier in Acts was a Levite. Second reason is because Barnabas was from the island of Cyprus which of course being an island has lots of port activity and the book of Hebrews from the second chapter to the thirteenth chapter has lots of nautical that is shipping terminology throughout the book, scattered throughout it, numerous places. And so we have some of them brought forward here.

Here's Hebrews 2.1.

For this reason we must pay much closer attention, that's prosecco, and that's the word used to fasten an anchor. We need to fasten an anchor on this, folks, okay, from what we have heard so that we do not drift away. And that was not the idea that you would be you know, tied up to the port and then drift away. It was more used of a pilot who missed the harbor. Okay? Missed the harbor. Interestingly, and then in chapter 3, but Christ was faithful as a son over his house, whose house we are if we hold fast, katecho, which is the same word that Dr. Luke uses in Acts 2740 there, our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end. By the way, that firm is also another one of those nautical terms. I just didn't make note of it.

Hebrews 3.14 there, for we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast. Here's katecho again. The beginning of our assurance firm until the end.

So what's interesting as he goes through this, he keeps talking in terms of the Levitical practices throughout Hebrews, and especially as you get into about chapters 9 and 10. And then he also keeps salting the whole thing with nautical terms, with shipping terms. And so that's a very interesting combination. The Jews themselves were not real well known for their shipping involvement, but this was written in Greek and may have involved Jews that had more exposure to nautical terms, to shipping terms.

For the sake of time here, I'll skip down to Hebrews 10.35 Therefore do not throw away this is what they did with the anchors they tossed them overboard do not throw away throw something overboard similar to Ek Bolin in Acts 27.18 don't throw away your confidence don't toss it overboard like they did with the grain and the anchors and the cargo don't chuck it that's what he's saying And just like the grain, did they have any hope of recovering the grain? No. Or the cargo? No. And that's what he's saying is don't pitch it. This is too valuable. Hold on to it. So he uses the shipping term to do so. Let me go down to 1320 there.

Now the God of Peace who brought up from, that's Anago-ek, That term was used for loosing the ship from its moorings. You have the ship tied up to the pier. The ship tied up to the pier. And they would say Anago Ek would be the description of untying the ship from the moorings on the pier.

And so that's what he would use here. Now the God of Peace who brought up from the dead, the Great Shepherd, he unloosed Christ from the moorings of death. That's what he's saying in shipping terms. And anago is the term that Dr. Luke uses four times in the book of Acts there, chapter 27. So real interesting, this connection in shipping terminology gets woven throughout. Okay. I've been yakking and talking. Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Baffled? Anybody drowned yet? No? Okay. I think it's fascinating. Here's Dr. Luke writing We. So he's going through all this crazy stuff. And it's interesting, his being by background a medical doctor, his attention to technical detail is interesting.

Some of it in prior years was something that a lot of people were puzzled by, especially words like that Eurakilo, where we can't find any evidence that this word is used by anybody else. Even the word Philanthropos, that's the only place it's used in the New Testament. So he uses some unusual terms, and a lot of people were puzzled by them. for quite some time. But it's interesting, I mean, he writes us and we, and you see a lot of little details there. Details that wouldn't come out. And we'll see something real interesting this next week that's along that line. Sorry about the St. Paul and Santa Claus. I just thought you'd find that interesting. Okay? Let's pray.

Lord, as we look at this, we can see that in the midst of great difficulty, in the midst of circumstances that would cause any of us to be terrified. And certainly the crew was terrified enough that they were ready to bail on everyone else. In those circumstances, we can count and trust on you. And we thank you for that confidence, that great confidence that we can place in you. In Jesus' name, Amen.