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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
After three months we put out to sea in a ship that had wintered in the island—it was an Alexandrian ship with the figurehead of the twin gods Castor and Pollux. We put in at Syracuse and stayed there three days.
From there we set sail and arrived at Rhegium. The next day the south wind came up, and on the following day we reached Puteoli. There we found some brothers and sisters who invited us to spend a week with them.
And so we came to Rome. The brothers and sisters there had heard that we were coming, and they traveled as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us. At the sight of these people Paul thanked God and was encouraged.
When we got to Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself, with a soldier to guard him.
Acts 28:11-16
This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
After their ship ran aground, stranding them on a foreign island, the 276 people who had been traveling to Rome had to expect the worse. They had avoided dying at sea but now faced the prospect of dying on dry land as they went ashore in Malta with no provisions and little to no survival skills.
But God hadn’t brought them to where they were for no good reason. For as we have seen in the first eleven verses of Acts 28, the final chapter in this book, the Lord used Paul to put His power on full display, first protecting Paul from the bite of a viper before placing healing power in His apostle which was used to heal the father of the chief official of the island and then all the people who came to Paul afterwards. Miracles happened that had never been seen before by the islanders and I am sure more than a few committed their lives to the Lord.
Thankful for all the Lord had done for them through Paul, we read in yesterday’s message how the people provided Paul and his traveling counterparts with all the provisions they needed, topped by a new Alexandrian ship they could use to get to Rome.
God had blessed the Maltese people and in return, they provided things He had blessed them with to make sure His purposes could be carried out. It’s a cycle He repeats over and over and over again, and has done so for the ages.
So Paul and the other 275 people with him got back out to sea and the scriptures tell us that the first port they pulled into was Syracuse. No, they didn’t sail to the United States because Syracuse, New York is inland. This Syracuse was on the east coast of Sicily and we know Sicily is an island just south of Italy so Paul and the others were close to where they were heading.
The scriptures tell us they spent three days in Syracuse before departing and sailing north to Rhegium, a town that was on the east side of the Sicilian straits where they stayed overnight. The next day, we read where they were blessed with a favorable south wind that allowed them to reach Puteoli.
Where is Puteoli?
Well, if you know where Naples is in the south of Italy then you’ll have an idea of where Puteoli is for it was located within the Gulf of Naples on the southwest coast. Again, Paul and the rest of those onboard the Alexandrian vessel were making daily progress toward arriving in Rome. But before they went there, Luke shares that there were “some brothers and sisters” (code for fellow Christians) who invited them to “spend a week with them”. Once again, the Lord blessed Paul with the gift of hospitality.
And with that, Paul and the others went to Rome and their arrival was not a secret. We know that because the fellow Christians in Rome had heard Paul, Luke, and the others were coming so they traveled from “as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns” in order to meet the new arrivals and welcome them to Italy’s capital city, the heart of the Roman empire.
Now Paul had gone through a lot to get to where God wanted him to be. There had been challenges every step of the way and the apostle had to not only be tired but a little anxious over what was ahead. He had appealed to Caesar, the Emperor over the most powerful empire in the world. No one man possessed more power and authority in earth than Caesar. So imagine how much he was blessed when he was greeted by so many brother and sister Christians upon his arrival. We know his feelings because the scriptures tell us that he “thanked God and was encouraged”.
Friends, this is what fellowship does to a believer. We all want to be uplifted and valued. We want to know that others care about us and are willing to give freely of their time and love for us. We all need to feel supported.
I’m sure Paul felt this and so much more. He knew there were people who were pulling for him and keeping him in prayer. He would need this as he was taken into custody and again, placed in what amounted to house arrest. For we read that although Paul was allowed to live alone, he was always watched by a soldier, a member of the palace guard. Paul talks about the impact he had on his sentries in the first chapter of Philippians, a letter written while Paul was going through his Roman captivity.
What would happen to Paul now that he was under custody in Rome? Would he ever get to have an audience with Caesar?
We’ll answer those questions in our final few devotions as we finish our study of Acts and then head to Paul’s epistle to the Romans.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
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