“28:1 After we were brought safely through, we then learned
that the island was called Malta. 2 The native people [1] showed us unusual
kindness, for they kindled a fire and welcomed us all, because it had begun to
rain and was cold. 3 When Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on
the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. 4 When
the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one
another, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea,
Justice [2] has not allowed him to live.” 5 He, however, shook off the creature
into the fire and suffered no harm. 6 They were waiting for him to swell up or
suddenly fall down dead. But when they had waited a long time and saw no
misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god.
7 Now in the
neighborhood of that place were lands belonging to the chief man of the island,
named Publius, who received us and entertained us hospitably for three days. 8
It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery. And
Paul visited him and prayed, and putting his hands on him healed him. 9 And
when this had taken place, the rest of the people on the island who had
diseases also came and were cured. 10 They also honored us greatly, [3] and
when we were about to sail, they put on board whatever we needed.” (Acts
28:1-10 (ESV)
So Paul ends up converting the island of Malta. The ESV
translates Luke’s “barbarians” as native people. In Greek a Barbarian was
simply a person who didn’t speak Greek. Here they still spoke a Phoenician dialect
closely related to Arabic, as was pointed out last week the inhabitants of
Malta are still strongly anchored in Catholicism, and their word for God is
Allah.
The conversion begins with Paul getting bit by a snake.
Today there aren’t any poisonous snakes on Malta, but we have no idea what may
have been there at the time. The people recognized the snake as being poisonous
and we have no reason to doubt that it was. The island is actually closer to
the coast of North Africa than it is to Italy, and there has historically been
a lot of trade between Malta and the rest of the Mediterranean, any number of
snakes could have found their way to the island through such trade, or have
been natural inhabitants that later died out from the island.
In any case, the people thought for sure that Paul would
die. But he doesn’t. This always brings
to mind for me passages like Mark 16. That the disciples would be bit by
snakes, and not be harmed was something that Jesus had alluded to during their
first missionary journeys also. And though there is much reason to believe that
Jesus was speaking figuratively of spiritual matters, there is also this sort
of concrete fulfillment of it. Missionaries to this day, as well as faithful
pastors, can relate many similar instances when death seemed imminent and yet
was overcome. Though my dad ended up going to a hospital for treatment, I still
remember when he was stung by a scorpion gathering firewood in Botswana, and
not realizing it had let venom work its way quite perilously into his system
before life saving measures were taken. There was something of chance related
to him getting the medical attention he needed in time, and the rest of us were
quite thankful for his survival. To see a fulfilment of Mark 16 in such things
makes much more sense than the practice of putting God to the test while
visiting the Ozarks. You don’t see Paul here doing any sort of “snake handling”.
He throws the snake into the fire is what he does. He doesn’t seem to have been
a St. Francis in the making.
When Paul doesn’t die the people go from believing he is a
criminal to believing he is a god, which in ancient thought didn’t necessarily
rule out being a criminal…. But here you
see a religious mindset common to all strata of class in antiquity. It was
largely the gospel that did away with what today we would call superstition.
But as society is doing away with the gospel as “the last of the superstitions,”
it seems superstitions of this type are coming in to fill the void again.
Today, people are spiritual not religious. And that isn’t just a pick up line.
It’s an actual description of society, where Christianity is seen as
superstition, but palm reading, horroscopes, crystal healing and so forth are
accepted more and more. The Maltese seemed very eager to do away with such
superstition in favor of Christianity.
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