Acts 28 Round Two: God's Plan is Like a Rollercoaster

Shipwrecked on Malta, bitten by a snake, and still healing the sick—Paul’s road to Rome is anything but smooth, and that tension is exactly where purpose takes root. We walk through Acts 28 step by step: the kindness of strangers, the shock of a sudden bite, the surge of hope as Publius’s father is healed, and the practical provision that sends the crew onward. By the time Paul reaches Rome under guard, the mission hasn’t dimmed; it has sharpened. He gathers local Jewish leaders, reasons from the Law and the Prophets all day, and faces a mixed response that echoes Isaiah’s warning about hardened hearts.

What stands out is how faith thrives without ideal conditions. House arrest becomes a platform for hospitality. Opposition becomes a chance to clarify the gospel. For two years Paul proclaims the kingdom of God and teaches about Jesus Christ “without hindrance,” proving that barriers often become the very boundaries where courage learns to speak. We also pull forward the historical context after Acts: Nero’s Rome, the fires, the scapegoating of Christians, and the martyrdom of Peter and Paul. What looks like a crushing loss becomes a catalyst—the message spreads faster, the church grows stronger, and the empire hears a different kind of power.

We call this living in Acts 29. The Holy Spirit still empowers ordinary people to carry good news into ordinary rooms and extraordinary storms. If your journey feels like a roller coaster—twists, dips, and moments you didn’t choose—you’re in good company. Hold your seat. Take the next faithful step. Watch how God turns setbacks into scenes of grace. If this journey encouraged you, follow the show, leave a rating, and share it with a friend who needs fresh courage today.

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The More We Dig. The More We Find.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage For Acts 28
• 0:42 Roller Coaster Of God’s Plan
• 1:42 Calls To Engage And Reflect
• 2:22 Shipwreck Survivors Land On Malta
• 3:12 Snakebite And Unexpected Healing
• 5:10 Provision And Voyage Toward Rome
• 6:05 Welcome In Rome And House Arrest
• 7:13 Paul Meets Jewish Leaders
• 8:12 Morning-To-Evening Gospel Persuasion
• 9:15 Division And Isaiah’s Warning
• 10:05 Two Years Boldly Preaching
• 11:20 Faith Like A Roller Coaster
• 12:06 History After Acts: Nero And Persecution
• 14:25 Gospel Spreads Despite Suffering

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. Every day, we take one chapter of the Bible, dig deeper, and discover that the more we dig, the more we find. You can find out more at the BibleBreakdown.com. Now let's grow in God's Word together. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. Your host, Pastor Brandon. Today is the day. Acts chapter 28. We are going to finish this with a just a bang. And to me, this chapter is a small capsule of what has been happening in the life of Paul for the past while. And if I were to give this a title, it would be God's plan is like a roller coaster. God's plan is like a roller coaster. We're going to get into that in just a moment. But as always, if you like what we're doing here, make sure you like, share, and subscribe to us on YouTube. Make sure you're leaving comments. Let us know how you're engaging with God's Word. Make sure if you're doing the podcast thing, you are my favorites. And make sure you're leaving us a five-star review. Also go to our Facebook group. Let us know how you're engaging with God's Word. And don't forget at the end, you're welcome to click off as soon as we end talking together. But I encourage you every once in a while just to let the music play for a moment and just talk to God about what you have just encountered in His Word. And today we're going to finish off with a bang. I don't know if you're much of a roller coaster writer. I I don't really ride roller coasters a lot, but I have ridden them a lot. And one of the things I've noticed about every roller coaster is they're all always intended to get you just beyond the point of throwing up. You know, I don't know if that's your experience, but mine is always, I think I'm good, I think I'm good. And then finally there's one loop or one up or one down that before like, oh, that's the one. That's the one that almost got me. But it's always in, it's always there to kind of, it's meant to be fun, but it turns out to be a little bit more frightening or whatever. I don't know how that is for you, but it's always unexpected turns along the way. But there's also always a finish line at the end of it. And that has been the journey with the Apostle Paul. Ever since he got struck down uh by God on the on the road to Damascus, his journey has been one of ups and downs. Now it's taken years. We're we're reading this over the course of chapters, over the course of a few days. This is years and years and years of Paul's life. But now we're gonna see the end of Acts, and then at the very end, I'm gonna tell you what happens in the rest of the story. But to kind of catch you up with what's going on, remember they're on their way to Rome, and as they're on their way, they experience a lot of trouble with this sailboat that they're in, and finally it just runs aground and breaks apart, and they have to just drift their way onto this island called Malta. So complete total shipwreck. The ship is a complete loss, and now they are going to try to just gather themselves together because they've still tried to get to Rome. And so that's where we pick up. If you've got your New Living Translation Bible, reading chapter 28 of the book of Acts, let's kind of finish this story strong and see what God's Word will say to us today about God's plan being like a roller coaster. So here we go, verse one. All I can say is poor Paul. Once we were safe on shore, we learned that we were actually on the island of Malta. The people of the island were very kind to us, and it was cold and rainy, so they built a fire on the shore to welcome us. As Paul gathered an armful of sticks and was lying them on the fire, a poisonous snake, driven out by the heat, bit him on the hand. The people of the island saw it hanging from his hand and said to each other, This must be a murderer, no doubt. Though he escaped the sea, justice will not permit him to live. But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and was unharmed. Now, can we just pause for a moment? Go, Paul, poor Paul. He is on his way to Rome, he is in a shipwreck, he has to drift his way to shore, and now Paul gets to get bitten by a poisonous snake. Can we just say, if luck were a thing, Paul doesn't have any of it? I don't really believe in luck. I believe that people uh go through life and good things happen, bad things happen, people get blessed, all this kind of stuff. But if if luck were a thing, Paul's got zero. In other words, Paul, don't you ever, sir, don't you ever take on a game of chance because you'll lose. Either that or you're the luckiest human being to have bad things happen. I just gotta say that. Paul, uh uh, mm-mm. Just keep him away. He needs to be in a padded room somewhere so he doesn't hurt himself or anyone close to him. But here we are. Verse six the people waited for him to swell up and suddenly just drop dead. Nice people. But they had waited a long time and saw he was fine. And so they changed their minds and decided he was a god. So, verse 7 near the shore where they where they had landed was an estate belonging to Publius, the chief officer of the island. So he welcomed us and he treated us kindly for three days because Mr. Snake Bitman didn't die. As it happened, Publius' father was ill with a fever and dysentery. Paul went and prayed for him, and laying his hands on him, he healed him. Then all the other sick people of the island came and were healed. As a result, we were showed honor. And when it came time to sail, people supplied us with everything we would need for the trip. It was three months after the shipwreck that we set sail on another ship that had wintered at the island, an Alexandrian ship with twin gods as its figurehead. Our first stop was Syracuse, where we stayed for three days. From there we sailed to Rejuum. A day later the south wind began blowing, so we followed the following day we sailed for the coast of Petule. There we found some believers who invited us to spend a week with them, and so we came to Rome. The brothers and sisters of Rome had heard that we were coming, and they came to meet us at the forum of the Apean Way. Others joined us at the three taverns, and when Paul saw them, he was encouraged and thanked God. When we arrived in Rome, Paul had per had permitted to visit his own private lodgings, though he was guarded by a soldier. Now, what's amazing about this is Paul had never been to Rome. Now he had written to Rome before, that's where we now get the book of Romans, but he had not actually been there yet. And so he gets to go there and he gets to see that a church had already been established there, most likely by the couple Priscilla and Aquila. And so now he's there and he has these other believers and he's permitted to go and be with them. He just has a Roman guard with him as well. Verse 17. Three days after Paul's arrival, he called together the local Jewish leaders. He said to them, Brothers, I was arrested in Jerusalem and handed over to the Roman government, even though I had done nothing against our people or the customs of our ancestors. The Romans tried me and wanted to release me because they found no cause for the death sentence. But when the Jewish leaders protested the decision, I felt it necessary to appeal to Caesar, even though I had no desire to press charges against my own people. I asked you to come here today so that we could get acquainted, and so that I could explain to you that I am bound with this chain because I believe in the hope of Israel. The Messiah has already come. They replied, We have had no letters from Judea or reports against you from anyone who has come here, but we want to hear what you believe. For the only thing we know about this movement is that it is denounced everywhere. So a time was set, and on the day a large number of people came to Paul's lodging. He explained and testified about the kingdom of God, and he tried to persuade them about Jesus from the scriptures. Using the law of Moses and the books of the prophets, he spoke to them from morning until evening. Some were persuaded by the things he said, but others did not believe. And after they had argued back and forth among themselves, they left with the final word from Paul, the Holy Spirit was right when he said to your ancestors through the Isaiah, through Isaiah the prophet, Go and say to these people, When you hear what I say, you will not understand. When you see what I do, you will not comprehend. For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and their eyes, and they have closed their eyes, so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me, and so that I can heal them. Other words, he's saying, You jokers are stubborn. That's what he's trying to say. So I want you to know that the salvation from God has also been offered to the Gentiles, and they will accept it. For the next two years, Paul lived in Rome at his own expense, and he welcomed all who visited him, boldly proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ, and no one tried to stop him. And so, as you can see, when the chapter begins, he is bitten by a snake, then he doesn't die, then he makes it to Jerusalem, then he talks to the Jewish people, but then he gets to talk to people, and it's just up and down, up and down. But all along the way, he is being faithful with what God's called him to do, and God uses him to make a difference. Can I tell you that is exactly what God does for all of us? Can I just be honest with you as a fellow Christian? If you became a Christian so that your life would be easy, you would never have a problem, and everything would go your way, I got really bad news for you. Often that's not our story. But often what is our story is that our life will look like a roller coaster. We'll have good days, we'll have bad days, we'll have a whole bunch of days in between. But what I can promise you is that God will always be with you, and that your life will be a great adventure because God is with you. And that is how Acts chapter 28 and Acts in general ends. What I want to tell you now is I want to give you the rest of the story so you kind of know what happens. So as things kind of go, we we don't really know for sure if Paul was ever actually able to speak to Caesar. Um there's there's some information there that maybe he was, but we don't really know for sure. But we do know what happened was is Paul was in prison for a little while in Rome. Then he was allowed to be on house arrest for a while. So he was kind of free, but not really free to leave Rome. He was he was there. But then according to history, what happens is then you have a guy named Nero who was the emperor. And Nero, under a lot of different suspicion, while he was the emperor, Rome burned. I don't know if you ever heard of the thing that that Rome burned while Nero played the violin. Well, there's no there's no uh evidence that Nero was actually in Rome at the time, but we do know that it was entirely possible that he might have done some things that caused Rome to catch fire and literally burned down large portions of Rome. Well, when it burned down, Nero needed a scapegoat. He needed to blame somebody for what had happened to Rome. So he blamed the Christians. And because he started to blame the Christians, who by the way had nothing to do with it, he then looked for the figureheads, the leaders of Rome, and the leaders of Rome, or leaders of the Christians at Rome at the time was Paul. And at this point, Peter had likely come back to Rome preaching the gospel. You remember later on what would happen is Paul would preach the gospel in the city of Rome, and he couldn't speak Greek very well, so he had a young uh Roman translator named Mark who would translate for him. And at some point, Mark went and wrote down all of those different sermons, and we now have the gospel of Mark. So Paul and Peter are in Rome after the fire, and they have now the uh Nero has put the blame of the fire on the Christians, and so he arrests the Christians. And so that's why Paul goes back into prison again, but this time he's executed. Peter, because he was not a Roman citizen, was crucified upside down. Paul, because he was a Roman citizen, was given a mercy, and the mercy was he was beheaded. Now, someone asked me one time, because of Paul being who he was, was he given a proper, you know, moment where he could be honored in this? And the answer is no. Because at the time, Paul was not considered to be a great man, he was considered to be a leader of a of a small group of people that had burned down Rome, even though he they didn't actually have anything to do with it. And so, no, he would have likely just been taken outside of whatever uh prison cell he was in, uh told to bend over and then beheaded mercilessly. But little did they know that the gospel was so much bigger than any one man. And so, even though persecution began, and that's where you hear the stories of people being put in the Roman Colosseum and people being Roman candles, which what that means is they would literally light people on fire and let them burn to light up the evening, all these things started to happen. What would happen though is it galvanized the Christians to say, we must preach the gospel, we must preach the gospel. And so the gospel began to spread because of this, and within just about a hundred years from that time, it would go from being people trying to to squash Christianity but where it would become the national religion of the entire Roman government. And so God was just getting started in the book of Acts, and we are now part of the rest of the book of Acts because as time continued to go, and even though the church has begun to change, we're still living in Acts 29. And so let me pray for us, and we'll be done for today. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you, God, that we're still living in the book of Acts. We're living out Acts 29. And Lord, throughout history, there have been good moments, there have been moments of persecution, moments of tragedy, and moments of triumph. But God, as we end the book of Acts today, I pray that you'll help us to remember that we're still living in the book of Acts. None of this has ended, God, but you're continuing to move through your church to reach the world. And I pray we will take our part in history to be the book of Acts for this generation, living out your will in our world today. In Jesus' name. Amen. One more time. Let's read this together. Acts chapter 1, verse 8. It says this Jesus said, You will receive power when? When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth. I pray that you will realize that we live in the book of Acts today. We get to be the example of the book of Acts, the church for our generation. So let's go out today and every day and live it well. I love you. I'll see you next time for the next book, the book of Judges. Nope, the book of Joshua.