SAIL INTO THE EASTER SUNRISE

The great Bible shipwreck story provides more information about seamanship 2000 years ago, than any other historical record.  Read [ Acts 27 ].  Dr. Luke who wrote the third gospel was on board the ship with the Apostle Paul and kept a log book of events during a terrible storm that caused the ship to be wrecked on the island of Malta.  Today tourists there are taken to see St. Paul’s Bay. 

The story of this voyage is a picture of the voyage of life.   Sailors know that the sea can change from calm to storm in a very short time, and so it is as we sail across the sea of life.  We never know what might happen from one day to the next!  Our bodies are the boat we sail in and we’re all in the same boat!  We can be here today and gone tomorrow!  Eventually the wave of death will wreck our bodies which will disintegrate. 

In the light of this gloomy fact wouldn’t it be wonderful if the all the newspapers this Easter carried this greatest and most glorious headline, “Death conquered at dawn!”?  Happily because God sent Paul to carry this wonderful news about the resurrection of Jesus to the heart of the Roman Empire, He promised that all 276 passengers on the ship would be saved.  Paul therefore became a picture of our Saviour the Lord Jesus.

It was dawn when Paul’s ship ran aground at, “a place where two seas met.”  One day our bodies will be wrecked where the sea of time meets the sea of eternity!  If we have taken Jesus on board as the, “Captain of our Salvation” [Hebrews 2:10] and served Him obediently, our souls will sail on into the sunrise of eternal happiness.  But if we have been disobedient the captain will sentence us to everlasting punishment.  [ Matthew 25:46 ]