Following is a presentation of Grace Covenant Baptist Church, West Monroe. Well, tonight we're going to take the next step in our discussion in Acts related to reaching the ends of the earth. You remember that we had said a couple weeks ago that this little series to kind of finish out the book of Acts was related to Paul's headed to Rome, and that his going to Rome was, at least in some measures, maybe in the Jewish economy or whatever, going to the ends of the earth. Kind of similar to Jonah. You know, when Jonah decided to run from God, he went to Tarshish, which was in Spain. And Paul wasn't headed to Spain, but he was certainly headed to Rome. And Rome would have been seen as the uttermost parts of the world. You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the world. So we're here in the last section of the book of Acts in chapter 27 and 28. And we're dealing with reaching the ends of the earth. the uttermost parts of the world. Now, as we started this kind of ending series, we talked about gospel storms and we talked about a missional church. And tonight I want to talk about the hope of the gospel. You know, gospel storms being those circumstances in life that just kind of throw people out of whack and they have no source of stability. And those gospel storms open the door for a missional church to really reach people with the truth of the gospel. And so last week we talked about what really is a missional church. What does that mean to be missional? And so tonight, based on those two messages, I want to talk about the hope of the gospel. And we'll see here in Acts 27 that Paul and the sailors, by the account that Luke gives to us, about 276 souls on board on this ship. So that's not a small ship. These people have lost all hope. There is no hope for them. They've tried everything they know to try. They've done everything they know to do. And life has just taken them to a place where they have no hope. They've abandoned hope. We've seen that each week. We've looked at this text that they've abandoned hope. And these weren't just weak-minded people. These were sailors. These were folks that were very set in their way of thinking, very set in their beliefs and the belief in their gods. And so these were not lightweights. But they found themselves in a circumstance that, at least in some measure, was of their own making. We looked at that, that they shouldn't have gone, but they did. But more than it being kind of of their own making, whether it was or whether it wasn't, they're in a spot where they just are hopeless. They have nothing. And what's so, I guess what is so important for me as we consider this time tonight is that though we may not be on a ship, and we may not be in the Adriatic, and we may not be chained to a centurion, though we may not be on our way to appear before Caesar, before the highest official in all the land, many of us, and even church folk, live much of our lives without hope. You know, our hopelessness comes to us in the form of illness, injury, bereavement, loss of job, loss of hopes and dreams for ourselves, or maybe the loss of hopes and dreams for our children. Maybe our children are not living up to the expectations that we had put out for them in our mind. Maybe it's not our children. Maybe it's our grandchildren. Maybe it's our great-grandchildren. Maybe the failing is not in profession, but maybe the failing is in our children who have not raised their children or who are not raising their children. And so now as grandparents or great-grandparents, we are having to raise grandchildren because our children have basically just not shouldered their responsibility. And so there's hopelessness, at least in that area of life. Again, I am shocked at the number of grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, who are raising not their children, but their children's children, or their great grandchildren or their nieces or their nephews. I mean, you wouldn't, I mean, here locally, Monroe Western Road, we've we have lived in a bubble for so long, thinking that that would never happen here. And the whole time it's crept in and it's rampant. Um, there's hopelessness related to that. And so tonight as we look at this text, I want us to maybe not necessarily be just looking at the lost, although hopelessness is true within the lost, and we're going to at least initially for each point couch it in that direction, but Look at this as being a lost condition that might be a certain circumstance or situation or event within our own lives, even as church people, where maybe we have the salvation of our souls eternally, which we ought to be thankful for, but maybe there's a circumstance in our life that we kind of forget about our salvation. We forget about the gospel of Christ in that area of our life. And I think if we will stop and be honest with ourselves, and as we look in the mirror of Scripture, then we can begin to see, okay, in this way, and some of the points that we'll cover, you know, I really am searching for hope in the things that I know in this area of my life. Brother Rusty, I love Jesus. I've been saved, but in this area of my life, I have no hope. Let us not just run too quickly and say, this is just lost people and miss the message. Because really what we're dealing with is reaching the ends of the earth with the hope of the gospel. All this comes to us from Acts chapter 27, starting at verse 27, reading down to verse 38, which says, when the 14th night had come, We were being driven across the Adriatic Sea. About midnight, the sailors suspected or sensed that they were nearing land. So they took a sounding and found 20 fathoms. That's about 120 feet. A little further on, they took another sounding, and again, they found 15 fathoms. That's about 90 feet. And fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down the four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come. And as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship and had lowered the ship's boat into the sea under the pretense of laying out the anchors from the bow, Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved. Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the ship's boat and they let it go. And as day was about to dawn, Paul urged them all to take some food, saying, Today is the 14th day that you have continued in suspense and without food, having taken nothing. Therefore, I urge you to take some food, for it will give you strength. For not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you. And when he had said these things, he took the bread, and giving thanks to God, in the presence of all, he broke it and began to eat. Then they all were encouraged and ate some food themselves. We were in all 276 persons in the ship, and when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, throwing out the wheat into the sea. The hope of the gospel. The first thing I want us to kind of consider tonight as we're looking at the hope of the gospel is this, that the lost search for hope in things they know. The lost search for hope in things they know. Or, as believers, when we have forgotten about Christ or forgotten about God in a particular area of our life, and at least in certain circumstances we're wandering aimlessly, we might say we're lost in those circumstances, we look for hope in those things that we know too. There is familiarity in the status quo, right? The more things change, the more they stay the same as the old saying, you know, we don't like things to change. I don't think any of us really like things to change. Because there's security in knowing what's happening and what's going to go on and how it's going to play out and all that. And as we interact with the world who is outside of Christ, and we interact with those who are found in Christ but have not trusted him in certain circumstances of his life, or as we are being confronted with those truths in our own life, we tend to look for hope in the things that we know. In our text, it says this, when the 14th night had come, as we were being driven across the Adriatic Sea, about midnight, the sailors suspected that they were nearing land. You see, what's happening here? The thing that was known or what they thought they know was based on their trajectory, based on their trajectory. Trajectory is just that, you know, we've been going north for a certain amount of time and we're about to hit Arkansas, right? Or we've been going south for a certain period of time and we're going to run into the Gulf of Mexico. Ken and Judy last week as they went down south, you know, if you had to continue to go south for another two hours, you're looking for the ocean. Right? It's your trajectory. You're going a certain direction for a certain period of time, and though you don't know exactly what's out there, you can't see it, you have a sense that this is where this thing ought to be. Right? Now that, that's pretty vague in and of itself. But these guys had been going for 14 days. The wind had been blowing a certain way. The ship had been basically going in a certain direction. I don't think they ever lost sight of the direction in which the ship was going. They just couldn't control it, right? You remember that? They just tied themselves to the ship and was riding it like a bull. They were just going. Doesn't mean they didn't know where they were going or the direction, the general direction they were going. They just couldn't control it. But you know, that's true for a lot of people in life. When we're dealing with a hopeless situation, we can't control the situation. We're just riding, we're riding this boat out. But we have an idea of where it's going. And those ideas of where it's going means that maybe health doesn't get better. That loved one who has passed away is not coming back. There's difficulty and pain and suffering and struggle that's going to occur as a result of the death of somebody. I'm not going to go back to work at that place. I've lost my job. Maybe I don't want to go back there, but at least we know we're not going back to those familiar places if we've been there for a while, those familiar people, that familiar income. We know the trajectory is taking us in a particular direction. And so a lot of people look for hope in the things they know, but what they know is based on just simply trajectory. This hope that we're talking about here that people are trying to find and the things that they know is also based on experience. It's not only based on trajectories, it's based on experience. Because at midnight they suspected that they were about to hit land, they took a sounding. They just basically measured the depth. They would have a piece of rope that had knots tied in it at certain intervals, equal spaces, that would have a weight on the end of that rope. They would throw that rope overboard, and whenever the rope quit going down, they would count how many knots was between where they were holding the rope when it stopped and the weight at the end. Incidentally, they would also, measure speed the same way, that's where we get the term knots, right? You heard that nautical term, so many knots. If I remember correctly, a knot is about equal to a mile and a half an hour. So if you've got 30 knots, it's about 45 miles an hour. What are we talking about here? We're talking about experience. Again, these were not inexperienced sailors. These guys knew how to sail a ship. They knew when they couldn't sail the ship and that they just had to hang on. And so, they were operating off of experience. They were trying to find hope in the circumstance in experience. Now, you say, Rusty, how do you know that? Well, because they were suspecting that they were going to get it, they're going to be getting close to land. They're not seeing land because it's still nighttime. But you know, you know what happens to water when you get close to land? It gets real shallow real quick. And so they're taking these depth measurements hoping to find that they had come into the shallows and that they could get off the boat. Well, obviously 120 feet, 20 fathoms, and 90 feet, which is about 15 fathoms, which is about 90 feet, that's not close to land. 90 to 120 feet of depth is not close to land. 90 feet is a nine-story building. 120 feet's a 12-story building, roughly. They weren't close. Isn't that interesting that they were looking for hope in their experience, and guess what? There wasn't any. Because their experience told them that they were not actually, their trajectory was not as far as long as they thought it was, and their experience taught them that they were probably in worse shape than what they really wanted to admit. You see, that's what happens in a lost condition when we're trying to find hope in the things that we know. Number two, though, because we're trying to base hope upon those things that we know, in a lost condition, we base that hope on what we can do. I originally had written my little note here that the lost base their hope on what they can do, and that's true. The lost do base their hopes upon what they themselves can accomplish, but the reality is is that even church folk do that when we're not following Christ in whatever circumstance we're facing. We place our hope in those things that we can do. Well, I think I can get a job pretty quickly. I know so and so over at this company, and I've always kind of wondered what it would be like to work over at that company, and so I'll call my buddy over there and see if maybe I can get on over there. So my loss of a job is not that big a deal, because I think I can gain employment, you know, pretty quickly. Or my loss of a job is not that big a deal. Or, you know, this illness that I have that prevents me from working for a time, you know, I've got some savings, I've got insurance, you know, I've got disability, and so I can live off of those resources for a period of time. And some of that might be just good planning, but I think we've all been there where in one moment we're panicking because we think we've lost our job, or we have lost our job, and in the next moment the panic is either minimized or done away completely because I remember I got this nest egg sitting over here. Right? You see what I'm saying? Now, the nest egg may only last you a month. It may only last you a week. But in some measure, our panic is lessened because we know we have some money set aside or we have an insurance policy that will take care of some of this. And our hope is not in that Christ is gonna use this circumstance to grow us, to strengthen us, to do whatever he's planned for us. Our hope is in, oh, I'm gonna be okay for a little bit because I've got some money. Or hope coming to us in what we can do. We take the advice of a friend and we go see a certain doctor who's supposed to be a specialist in this area where I'm ill or I'm injured. My hope that Christ is gonna use this to grow me or Christ is going to provide for me in this moment, either through divine intervention or intervention through the doctors and that this illness is not gonna be debilitating, I don't put my hope in that. I put my hope in that this doctor can diagnose what the problem is and give me a regimen that'll fix it and I can get back on my feet very quickly. You see, there's the lost. base their hope on what they can do. The text tonight says, in fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down the four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come. Throw out the anchors and pray. And that's just a description of so many people today. They realize that the ship is going someplace they don't want it to go. They see land. They sense that they're fixing to run into a wall. They're fixing to run the boat up on dry ground. And what do they do? Well, their hope is in, this is a last ditch effort. I'm going to just throw these anchors overboard, and I'm going to pray for daylight. And initially, they prayed for daylight. We'll talk about that in just a minute. They prayed for day to come. You see, they were putting their hope in the things that they can do. When we face the lost, does this all the time as a matter of life, and as Christians, we do this when we're facing lost situations, when we're lost in our circumstances. We look for hope in those things that we can do. Which leads me to number three tonight. That the lost look for an escape when they have no hope. Church people look for an escape when they get lost in their circumstances. We've all been there. We've all been there. The text tonight says, and as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship, why are they seeking to escape? Well, because they threw the acres overboard and they're praying for daylight. But in the middle of praying for daylight and worried that this isn't going to really work and the the absolute abandonment of hope, they're executing an escape plan. The sailors were seeking to escape the ship and had lowered the ship's boat into the sea under the pretense, under the lie, of laying out the anchor from the bow. Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved. Did you hear what Paul said? Unless those guys that are trying to get away from the boat right now, trying to escape, unless they get back in the boat, you're not saved. You won't be saved. Now why is that? Because last time we looked at this, God had told Paul that everybody was going to live. But you have to stay in the boat. We'll get to that in just a minute. The hopelessness that we face when we're trying to escape, we try to escape because of fear. Did you notice that basically these sailors who had tried anything and everything they could think of and were out of options literally were abandoning ship? I'll pull off of a line out of Hunt for Red October. Jack Ryan is standing in the shower thinking about how Ramius is going to get his men off the nuclear submarine. And he said, how do you get men, how do you get people off a nuclear submarine? How do you get people to want to get off a nuclear submarine. Y'all remember that line, that scene in that movie? Did you see the movie? Okay. And in that moment, the movie seems to represent that Jack Ryan realizes that what Ramius, what Captain Ramius is gonna do is he's gonna stage a false nuclear catastrophe, a meltdown on the ship, and he's gonna convince all the sailors that are on the submarine, you gotta get off. What makes a sailor wanna abandon his ship? Fear of it sinking, or in this case, fear of it, you know, nuclear contamination or whatever. And it just doesn't happen with sailors, it happens with all of us. When we get afraid, we either wanna fight or flight. That's the phraseology, fight or flight. And if what you've been doing is fighting and you can't fight anymore, you only got one other option, and that's get out of town. And hopelessness produces this fear. Hopelessness when we when we have, at least in our own estimation, no other option. Now doesn't mean we actually have no other option. And we'll talk about some reasons why in just a second. But at least in our mind in that moment, in our the lostness of that circumstance, we see ourselves as having no other option. And so what do we do? We leave. We try to get in the boat and get out. You know, that happens in churches all the time. When people, for whatever reason, believe that whatever's happening in the church that they disagree with, they have no other option. And so what do they do? They leave. I think, at least in some measure, there is a degree of hopelessness that is coming about as the result of a lostness in the circumstance, being lost in the circumstance. Hopelessness is deceiving. They had lowered the ship's boat into the sea under the pretense of laying out the anchors from the bow. And, of course, everybody goes, oh, yeah, I can see the deception. Careful now. Careful now. Yeah, they had deceived everybody else into thinking that they were going to go put anchors out on the bow when in actuality they were trying to leave in the little boat. But place yourself in this circumstance. They're in a boat big enough for almost 300 people plus cargo. That's a pretty good sized boat. They're in the middle of a storm that has been blowing for 14 days. The storm and the wind is so bad that They've thrown all the rigging overboard. They've already thrown a lot of the cargo overboard. They've realized they can't control the ship, and so they have lashed themselves. They've tied themselves to this ship for 14 days, and the ship is just going where it wants to go. Right? Y'all with me? And now you're going to get in a little boat and think you're going to do better. Do you see the self-deception? Yeah, they were deceiving others by this plan they concocted, but the real deception that hopelessness brings is it puts you in a spot which is worse than the first spot you were in. It really is out of the frying pan into the fire. That little boat was not any safer than the big boat. They were just trying to get away. Fear was driving them to do that, and fear, this hopelessness is deceiving. Hopelessness also clouds your vision. Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, unless these men stay in the ship, you can't be saved. Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the ship's boat and let it go. It clouds your vision. It clouds your decision-making process. Hopelessness takes you to a place where you don't make good decisions. Where you begin to excuse the warning signs. I haven't done a lot of counseling in this area, but I recognize, I guess, some of the traditional methodology, the traditional thought processes, and this came home to me a couple, maybe two months ago, as we had a young lady at the school who had been preyed upon by somebody online. She got so sucked into the story that this predator was weaving, and he cut her loose from all of her sources of stability, all of her sources of reason. And he had, in essence, caused her to go into a season of being lost within her circumstances, and she was hopeless. She had no hope. And her hopelessness was not only causing her to deceive herself into thinking that she was going to be better off if she met this guy over in Ukraine, I think is where he was. And she was actually leaving the country to go meet him in Ukraine. But she also, this hopelessness had clouded her vision. It had clouded her decision making process. She was trying to escape. She's trying to get out. And what I love about this, and this is where we begin to see the gospel, the hope of the gospel, really counteract hopelessness, is if Paul had not said something to them, men would have been lost at sea because they were in the little boat. the man who left in the little boat and left others on the ship probably would have started some sort of disagreement among those that were left on the ship, and that might have been deadly. And if nothing else, if they left the ship, then they would have perished, and so the promises of God would have been rendered null and void, and so it just gets all messed up, you see? And so Paul, who is not hopeless. Paul has hope. He has the gospel hope. He is the messenger of gospel hope. Doesn't go to the centurion and say, oh, don't worry about it. It's all okay. It's all good. God's got it. Paul goes to the centurion and to the soldiers and says, look, you got to get those guys back on this ship because if you don't get them back on this ship, you're not going to live. Now Paul's going to live because he's going to Rome. He knows he's got it. But the guarantee of the centurions and the other men living was based upon obedience to what God had said. And it seems to be from our previous text what God had said was, don't worry about getting off the ship. You're going to lose the ship, but everybody's going to live. And in essence, if you stay on the ship, you're going to be OK. but hopelessness had clouded their decision-making process to where either they didn't believe it or they had forgotten it. And so instead of staying in the place, staying in the center of God's protection, even though it looked like it was fixing to fall all apart, instead of staying there where God said, stay here, I've got you covered, they went outside of God's covering and were trying to do it based on what they knew and what they could do. And that is a picture of us in hopelessness every day of the week. instead of staying in the center of where God says, I've got you covered. You're protected here. Our vision is clouded. Our decision-making process is clouded. We're deceived. We're deceiving other people. We literally run outside the tower. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run into it, and they're saved. The stupid run out of it and suffer peril, harm. And we all, in hopelessness and fear, have our judgment clouded. That's why we, and I say this again and again and again and again, to all kinds of people, lost people, saved people, mature people, immature people, people that have been around the church forever, people who don't even know what the church is. I give this piece of advice to all of them. You need to be in the consistent fellowship of a Bible-preaching, Bible-believing church. The lost need to be in the consistent fellowship of a Bible-believing, Bible-preaching church. Because that's the ship that God has said, there will not be one of you lost in that ship. But you gotta stay on the ship. Which leads me to number four in our text tonight. Only the gospel gives a hope that will last. That's pretty straightforward, don't you think? Only the gospel gives a hope that will last. In our text tonight, it says, as day was about to dawn, Paul urged them all to take some food, saying, today is the 14th day that you've continued in suspense and without food, having taken nothing. Therefore, I urge you to take some food, for it will give you strength. For not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you. There's a couple things that I want to highlight here in terms of gospel hope. Now, before I start talking about this, I want to just tell you that there is a surface rendering of this text. In a minute, we're gonna be talking about it, things started to get light, that the day started to break, dawn started to break. Okay, there's a surface understanding of that in the narrative of the story. It was getting light, right? But there's also a high definition metaphorical application of this as well. And that light is a motif within Scripture which means truth and enlightenment and understanding. That make sense? So we're gonna talk about light, we're gonna talk about food, we're gonna talk about some other things. So there's a, yeah, there's a sense in which they ate bread, But really in the gospel, it's not bread, man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. It is the bread of life. Christ is the bread of life. So we're going to approach this from a literal perspective, but we're also going to approach this from a figurative perspective too. And I don't think we're going off out in left field to do that. So, only the gospel gives hope that will last. The first thing I want us to see is that seeing things in the light. When we're dealing with gospel hope, we begin to see things in the light. The text says, and as day was about to dawn, see, all of what we're about to talk about happened at daybreak. And you've been there. It's always darkest before the dawn. It's always coldest before the sun comes up. It's always worst before day starts. Those last waning moments of nighttime are some of the darkest, coldest, loneliest times of the day. But then the sun comes up and dawn breaks, day breaks, and you get a new perspective on everything. It's no longer dark. It's no longer cold. You see you're no longer alone. So loneliness goes away. In the light, everything changes. And so It was dawning day, but what was happening here is through Paul, the gospel hope was dawning in their hearts. The light came into the world, and the men loved the darkness rather than the light. Everyone who knows God and loves God runs to the light so that their deeds may be exposed. That's the prologue of John's gospel where John is comparing the Lord Jesus Christ to the light. Christ Jesus was the light who came into the world. And so the gospel hope helps us see things in the light. Now, sometimes seeing things in the light means we see our sinfulness and our wickedness. We see how we've wandered so far away from God. We see that we're in the lostness of our circumstance because we've not trusted God in this area of life. But in seeing that in the light, there's always the opportunity for repentance. There's receiving the sustenance that you need. As the day was dawning and things were getting light, Paul urged them all to take some food, saying, today is the 14th day that you have continued in suspense and without food, haven't taken nothing. They took the sustenance that they needed. Now, in the circumstance that they were in, because of fear, because of anxiety, because of maybe just sheer opportunity, they hadn't eaten anything for four days. I mean, 14 days, excuse me. They've kind of been on a forced fast for 14 days. And if you've ever gone 14 days without food, you know, you're incredibly weak. At a time when you really need all of your faculties, all of your strength, all of your stamina, because of lack of food, you don't have any of that. You literally have been broken down to an elemental form where you're at the closest point to where you realize you have no power. And that's exactly when the gospel takes hold. The sustenance they needed, they ate bread, we'll see in just a minute, Paul, and I love the imagery, Paul took the bread, he blessed it before them all, and he broke it. And he ate. And we could say, and he gave to them and they ate. Does that sound familiar to anybody? How about when the Lord fed the 5,000? How about when the Lord instituted the Lord's Supper with His disciples? The Lord Himself took bread and He blessed it, thanking God in the presence of them all, and He broke it and He gave it to them. The sustenance that they needed was bread in the moment, but the sustenance that they needed was the bread of life. And that is where gospel hope comes from in receiving sustenance in the bread of life. The encouragement to lay hold of that hope. They received encouragement to lay hold of that hope. Paul said, therefore I urge you to take some food for it will give you strength. Have you ever talked to somebody that just has been beaten by life so badly that they, number one, don't have hope, number two, don't believe they'll ever have hope, and number three, wouldn't latch onto it if it was standing right in front of them. You ever met somebody like that? Have you ever been in a circumstance where you're lost in your circumstances, and in that circumstance, you don't have any hope, you don't think you're ever gonna have any hope, and you wouldn't latch onto it even if it bit you on the foot? Until somebody comes and encourages you to lay hold of the hope. Jesus said, come unto me all of you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Jesus didn't deny in any way, shape, or form that we were heavy laden and that we were weary and we were tired. But in that singular statement, Jesus encourages us to lay hold of the hope that is only found in the gospel. And he does that because when we're tired, when we're weary, when we're broken, when we're beaten by the world, we're beaten by life, when we have no hope and the world has told us that we'll never have hope, we're in a spot where we don't normally reach out and grab onto hope unless somebody encourages us to grab hold of the hope. and that gospel hope, which is the only hope that lasts, when it is brought by those whom God has called already, and they're being witnesses of that hope, then we encourage others to lay hold of that hope. And the last thing I want us to see under this heading on hope is the unchanging promise of hope. For not a hair is to perish from the head of any of you. That's a promise that God had made to them when he appeared to Paul in the vision. That's a promise that Paul was reiterating to the men in this most desperate hour, because the hope that the gospel brings doesn't change. It doesn't change in its mandates, and it doesn't change in its promises. All of those who will repent and believe the gospel will be saved. Again, not only is that in the New Testament again and again and again, in its various forms, it's in the Old Testament as well. Paul said, if you will come back in the boat, if you will take the sustenance that you need in the light that is being given to you, you will not perish. It is, in other words, exactly what the Gospel of John, what the Apostle John says in that most famous of verses that we all know, John 3.16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever should believe in him, all of those who believe, will not perish but have everlasting life. The light has come into the world. The bread of life has come into the world. We have been encouraged to grab onto that hope, and the promise is in grabbing onto that hope, you will not perish. Then lastly tonight, number five, the hope of the gospel truly changes our perspective. The text in this last section says, And when he had said these things, he took the bread, giving thanks to God in the presence of all. He broke it and began to eat. And they were all encouraged and ate some food themselves. We were in all two hundred and seventy-six persons in the ship. And when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, throwing out the wheat into the sea. they listened to the words of Paul. Some of them had not listened to Paul previous, right? Paul had said, guys, if we leave, this ain't gonna turn out well. Not gonna turn out well at all, and they went anyway. Perhaps whenever that southern breeze blew, Paul would have said, look guys, I'm telling you, this is not the right time, and they went anyway. And then now, now, After these 14 days, Paul says, trust me, because none of you are going to perish. The gospel hope changed their perspective. Now I'm not saying, and please understand me, I'm not saying that all 276 persons on this ship received salvation. We know, according to this text, that all 276 persons on the ship survived the sinking of the ship. They didn't drown. They were saved from physical death. Some of them may have been saved from the second death. But the illustration that we're using here is that in trusting God, the hope that the gospel brings, our perspective changes. We go from being ones who deny the gospel, don't want to hear the gospel, don't like the gospel, to being ones who at least entertain gospel truth and then ultimately embrace the gospel fully. We go from ones who don't want sustenance, don't need the gospel, to feeding upon the bread of life. See, when he said these things, he took the bread and he gave thanks in the presence of all of them, and they began to eat. There's also a change in our outwardness of the gospel, our outward expression of the gospel. There doesn't seem to be any indication that they were upset with Paul for undertaking this prayer and breaking of the bread and all of that. Was this the first time they'd seen Paul pray? Probably not. Is this the first time they'd seen Paul eat anything? Probably not. It was the first time that in the public praying and eating, breaking of the bread, they accepted what was happening. You know, maybe for no other reason than, hey, our gods haven't worked and maybe this God of Paul will come through for us. Maybe that was it. But there was an acceptance of the openness of God within that circle. And the hope of the gospel changes our willingness, our boldness in public square to express the things of God openly. And then those who were not encouraged prior to that point were encouraged, and there were material decisions that were made related to their encouragement. It says, and then they all were encouraged and ate some food themselves. There was a change of heart and a change of material actions and attitudes related to the hope of the gospel. You know, that's key in our ministering the gospel, being missional, as we talked about last week. That's key in looking for those fruits of repentance in the lives of people that we talk to. Are they making material decisions based on what they say they believe? Let me say that again. Are they making material decisions based on what they say they believe? I know a lot of people who say they believe things but don't make material decisions based on what they believe. That's a little bit of what I'm facing in some other circles of my life right now. Not here at the church, but in other places. People say they believe things, but they don't make material decisions based on what they say they believe. The hope of the gospel changes our perspective to where we begin to make material decisions based on what we say we believe. And then lastly, when they had eaten enough, they started throwing, they were lightening the ship, throwing the wheat overboard. The wheat was probably the primary cargo of the ship. We've already seen where they were throwing cargo overboard. These ships would carry a primary cargo, and then they may, where they had space, they would carry a secondary cargo, right? And for a lot of these ships, the primary cargo was grain. And the way they would, sometimes the way they would haul this grain is the ship would just be a big open hold and they would just fill the hold up with grain. So there would be a hole, there would be a portion of the ship, not individual containers, but the ship itself was the container that they would just pour the wheat or the grain into. and then they would have cases or bags or pots or whatever of other things, a secondary cargo that would be maybe on the decks or in other parts of the ship. Now we've already noticed that in other parts of the story that they had already started to throw the cargo off. That would have been the secondary cargo. That would have been the things in pots or in bags or in crates. The secondary cargo wasn't as valuable to them as the grain. The grain was the primary cargo. That's where the money was to be made. And the point that I want to make here is that the hope of the gospel shifts our perspective from financial or tangible things to intangible things. In essence, what was happening here, they were lightening the boat by throwing the wheat overboard. They were in this holding bin in the bottom of the ship with probably whatever it was they could find to scoop the wheat with, and they were scooping the wheat and throwing it overboard. They were just kind of broadcasting it like you would broadcast it out in a field. They're just taking pots and jars or shovels or whatever they can find, and they're just scooping it out as fast as they can get it out. And what they're doing is they are releasing the primary cargo. They're releasing that thing that is most valuable to them. And the hope of the gospel changes our perspective to where we jettison those things that are most valuable to us materially for the promise of Christ himself. Now, I don't mean to say that we, you know, burn our houses and destroy our cars or all that. I mean, I'm not, I'm not being anti-material goods. I'm just saying that in this circumstances, we're looking at the gospel storm that's come on them and the work of the missional church in the midst of this storm that is delivering the message of the hope of the gospel, that that material decision, that perspective that's changed, that belief that results in material decisions, leads us to jettison those things that are temporal, those things that don't matter. those things that may at times be idols to us, those things that may stand in the way of our relationship with Christ. You could make an argument that the wheat that they're now jettisoning, that they're throwing overboard, was the very thing that put them out in the ocean to begin with, because they were trying to get to where they were going to sell the wheat. And so the hope of the gospel confronts us in those areas, and it It causes us, it moves us, it drives us to make real decisions. And it's only the hope of the gospel that does that. And so as we're considering reaching the ends of the earth, we have to reach them the hope of the gospel. Does that make sense? Well, let's pray and we'll be dismissed. Father, we praise you, Lord, for the day that you've given to us and continue to thank you for all that you've given to us in this day. And we thank you especially for the hope of the gospel. And we pray, Father, that as we have surveyed this text, that you will cause other things to sink deeply into our hearts and our minds, and that you will show us in very sharp relief those areas of our life where we're not trusting in you, we're not trusting in the hope of the gospel, we're trusting in other things. And Father, help us to make a material decision to abandon those things and to trust you fully and completely. We thank you for Paul. Again, we thank you for his life. We thank you for all that he endured for our sake. We pray, Father, that you would give us the grace to endure those things that we're enduring that you've called us to endure for the sake of those who come after us, that we might be salt and light to the world. We love you, Father. We praise you. We thank you. We continue to ask these things always in your name. Amen. Well, Lord willing, we'll see you guys next week.