1 Timothy 1:12-17

Church, as you think about summarizing the message of the Bible in one short sentence, how would you summarize the Bible?

If someone said to you, What is Christianity?

and you only had a couple seconds to answer them, what would you say?

What would your answer be?

It's important for us to be able to give short answers that are true and compelling.

We know from 1 Peter that we're to be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is within you.

But it's interesting sometimes, it's hard to articulate some of the most important truths.

Maybe you've had that experience.

I remember hanging out with some friends, and I was talking to a guy, and I just said, hey man, what you know, those couples were sitting around the table, and I said, What is it about your wife that you you love the most?

And he kind of like chuckled like it was a trick question.

I said, No, no, it's not a trick question, just what is it about your wife that you that you love the most?

And he kind of chuckled and he said, I her personality, I guess.

Now I'm sure if I gave that brother like five minutes to think through and to articulate and put together, he can be genuine, he could have a genuine answer that was compelling and true, right?

But just in a moment, caught him off guard.

Now, before we kind of dog on this guy, it's good to remember that we are quick to forget.

We can be slow to give an answer for the hope that is within us.

So as you think about how you would summarize the Bible in one short sentence, it's thankfully that the scriptures give us that answer.

Let us read together in 1 Timothy chapter 1.

1 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

We're gonna begin in verse 12, and we're gonna read through verse 17.

I think the bulletin says through 20, but we're gonna um we're gonna stop at verse 17.

I think I thank him.

This is Paul writing to Timothy.

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service.

Though formerly I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.

And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith, with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might believe in him for patience, as an example to those who were to be who are to believe in him for eternal life.

To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen.

When we open God's word and we approach Scripture, we're looking, or we should be looking for some structure, some flow, some key cohesive thought.

And we know Paul in his writings was very logical and his flow of thought.

But these verses here, they feel kind of mixed up and piled up, and they're saying the same thing several different times repeatedly, and it's kind of confusing.

What I would argue, though, as we look at this structure, at the center of this passage is the answer to the question, how would we summarize the Bible?

That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

See, verse 15 is the center, it's the glowing center of this passage, that Christ Jesus has come to save sinners.

And that is the summary of the Bible.

That is the summary of the gospel, the good news that Christ has come to save sinners.

But it's interesting, and I'd mentioned it's kind of sandwiched together because if you pull back in each direction, verses 14 and then 16, you begin to see, or sorry, yeah, 13, the second half of 13 and then 14 and 16.

You see Paul is talking about how he received mercy.

13, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.

Verse 16, but I received mercy for this reason.

So you have the centers, the good news that Christ came to save sinners, and then Paul is saying how Christ has shown him mercy.

And then we pull back another layer, verse 12 and verse 17, and you see Paul praising God, worshiping God.

So you have this kind of sandwich together in the center.

Jesus saves sinners.

Praise God.

He's shown us mercy.

Let us worship him.

So this amazing declaration, then the realization of mercy, and then worship.

The main idea this morning is that Jesus came to save sinners and to transform them into worshipers.

My points are simple and I hope compelling.

One, Jesus saves sinners.

Two, like you and me, and three, now we worship him.

Now, as I was preparing and reading this passage, one of the first things that came to my mind was, why is Paul writing this to Timothy?

Why?

Timothy knew Paul really well.

They traveled together, they worked together for a long time.

Why is it that Paul is writing to Timothy about these things?

He would have heard the conversion story many times.

He would have heard Paul recounting how he was persecuting the church and how he was on the road to Damascus and Jesus comes and meets him there and blinds him, and how he repented and Christ redeems him.

Timothy would have heard this many, many times.

So why is it that Paul is writing to Timothy?

You know, ink and paper are a precious commodity.

He's spending time telling them about his conversion.

Why is that?

Well, if you remember from last week, the first part of chapter one, what's going on in the church in Ephesus?

What's happening there?

Well, there are people who are seeking to be teachers of the law of God's word, but they do not understand what they're teaching.

They're seeking to be people who are following the law, but they don't even understand the law.

The false teachers are not looking to the person and work of Christ for salvation, but to these myths, the genealogies, the speculation.

So what does Paul do?

This brilliant Pharisee who persecuted the church, who watched over the stoning of Acts and Steve.

He chapter 7.

What does Paul do?

He tells them the gospel.

He tells them of his own sin and God's power to save him.

Not myths, not genealogies, not speculation.

He's telling them, he's reminding them, and reminding Timothy, Jesus saves sinners.

Now, if you've grown up in the church and you've been around for a while, that's kind of like a no-dah, of course.

We know that.

Is there anything kind of more that we can find in 1 Timothy?

Isn't there some other thing we can expound on than other than this basic Jesus saves sinners?

I tell you, there is not.

It does not get more glorious for you or for me than to understand this reality.

That Jesus Christ has come to save sinners.

This is why Paul wrote to Timothy that Jesus saves sinners.

Again, the challenge here isn't understanding it.

The challenge is not understanding this passage or understanding this doctrine or what's going on here.

The challenge is believing it.

See, the problem with the guys and the first part of Timothy that he's talking about, these false teachers, it wasn't that they didn't kind of couldn't wrap their minds around this Jesus person.

Or they couldn't wrap their mind around sin or what it meant to miss the mark and to fall short of God's glory.

It wasn't that they did not understand, it's that they did not believe this to be true.

So again, the challenge of the Christian faith is not understanding.

I'd submit to you, the Christian faith, it's it's it's logical, it's rational, it makes sense, it holds up under intense scrutiny, and it just plain makes sense.

But again, for most people, that's not the problem.

The issue is believing it.

See, the beating heart of the gospel, the center of the good news is this that Christ has come to save sinners.

It's important that we remember this, that we think through Christian virtue.

When you think about salvation, that Christ has saved you.

You can think about the virtues of being joyful, having new desires, a hunger for righteousness that you didn't have before.

Now you're walking in love and you're being patient with people.

And these are all things that this interior change, this subjective change that has begun in your life.

It's not because you've now put your faith in God that the change is there.

God has changed you, He's changed you, and so that's a result of His work in you.

You see the difference there?

It's important that we understand this.

It's easy for us to think the gospel is purely subjective.

It changed me.

This happened in my heart.

I'm a changed person because I put my faith in Jesus Christ.

The reality is, God has come to you.

He has, you are a sinner, he has saved you, he's redeemed you, he's put a new heart in you, taken out your heart of stone, taken out your your unbelief, taken out your your the heart that was an enemy of God that hated God's ways.

And he put in a heart of flesh.

He gave you new desires, he changes you.

This is the reality.

This is what salvation does.

Now, it bears fruit in righteousness.

So if you're a believer, you're going to change your behavior, but that's not, you're not saved because your behavior has changed.

Your behavior is changed as a result of Christ's work for you.

It's all downstream.

The new desires, the walking in obedience to God's word, the change of your heart to love, that now your aim is love, as verse 5 said from last week, our aim is love.

These things have changed because Christ has come for you.

He's done a work in your life.

Not as a result of you coming to him for salvation, but as a result of him giving you faith to believe in him for salvation.

This is the work of Jesus as he's come to save.

See, he came as a man, he humbled himself, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross, atoned for your sin.

He took on your sin.

And again, he removed your heart of stone, removed your heart that was against the things of God.

He granted you faith.

So before there was a glimmer or a flicker of faith in your heart, before there was a glimmer or a flicker or any kind of just spark for the things of God in your heart, he had begun to work.

He came for you, he saved you.

It's interesting how important it is to understand this sequence.

That when Paul is saying, listen, I was following all the law, I was living in a certain way, but then Christ came for me.

He interjected himself into my life and redeemed me and said, You will now follow me, you will serve me, you will worship me.

And this is the greatest act of love that God could do for us.

Interject himself into our life.

That we would trust him, that we would walk in obedience to him.

To those who do not know Christ or to those who don't understand how Christianity works, this might sound ridiculous.

Crazy.

It's interesting when you think about how other religions view this exchange of behavior.

Well, if you behave this way, then God will act this way to you.

If you do these things, then these things will follow.

All the other religions in the world, you follow the leader's teachings, and that's how you are saved.

If you're a Muslim, then you follow Muhammad's teachings, then you're saved.

If you're a Buddhist, you follow Buddha's teachings, and then you're saved.

If you're Mormon, you follow Joseph Smith's teachings, and then you're saved.

But here in the Bible, in Christianity, you don't follow Jesus' teachings hoping to be saved.

If you're following his teachings, if you're desiring to follow him, it means he's already begun to do a work in your life.

Because the very desire to follow Jesus doesn't come from within you.

It comes from him.

He interjects and comes to you.

So when Christ comes to save, he enters into your life, begins to change you, that you may follow after him.

What a glorious truth to understand the reality of the gospel.

So if you if you're here and you've like, man, I've heard that Jesus saves before, and I think I believe it.

I've heard these things before.

I want to encourage you and I want to challenge you.

Do you understand the glorious reality that Jesus Christ has come to save sinners and to save you?

And that if there's anything good going on in your life, if he has brought hope and joy and salvation to you, it is not because you kind of examined the way and the pros and cons of following Jesus.

You did not kind of set up a scale and say, I think it's going to be best for our family if we do this.

I think in the long run, mostly eternity, this is going to be the way to go.

That's not what happened in your life.

If you're a faithful follower, if you love Jesus, it's because he has brought life to you.

He has come to save sinners.

We're not saved because of Christ's work in us.

We're saved because of Christ's work for us.

I want you to hear that again.

We are not saved because of Christ's work in us.

We are saved because of Christ's work for us, on our behalf.

He stood in our place.

He bore the wrath that we should have borne from God the Father.

He then imputes his righteousness unto us.

And from that place of being saved, being right with God, we then walk in obedience.

We then live out the truth of the gospel.

Jesus is at work in us because he's come to save.

He's come to save people like you and like me.

We are sinners.

John Newton died in 1807.

He was a captain of a slave ship for many years.

He invested in the slave trade.

I don't know if you've ever heard of John Newton.

Um, God convicted him of this and saved him, and he repented and began to follow Christ.

And he would go on to fight against the slave trade, and and uh he would write a hymn that maybe you've heard before called Amazing Grace.

Anyone heard that one, right?

So he dies, he's dying, and on his on his deathbed, he famously said, although my memory is fading, I remember two things very clearly.

I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great savior.

I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great savior.

Now we know obviously this kind of thought, this framework wasn't original to John Newton.

I would argue he sees it all over Scripture because it's all over Scripture.

And this is the same thing that Paul is saying in verses 13 and 14, and in verses 16.

So he talked about Christ coming to save sinners.

He says, and I am the foremost.

I have sinned egregiously against God, and yet he has shown me mercy.

Verse 13 Though I formerly I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, an insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.

And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

But I received mercy, this is verse 16, for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, as the worst sinner, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who are to believe in him for eternal life.

Paul was guilty.

He's talking in verse 13 about this ignorance.

But he knows he's not innocent or guiltless because he's already talked about how he's acted arrogantly.

He's listed out his sins.

Formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, insolent opponent, blasphemy, and Paul would have known this based on Leviticus 24.

The penalty for blasphemy is death.

So Paul's saying, I'm a blasphemer, I was a blasphemer against God.

I deserved death for my sins.

I persecuted the church.

As I mentioned, he was there an accomplice to the stoning of Stephen in Acts chapter 7.

Acts 7 · chapter mention

He put Christians in prison.

He destroyed or sought to destroy the church as it was growing.

And he was an insolent opponent.

In the Greek, it implies that he's a violent man.

Paul was violent in his efforts against God, but he received mercy.

How kind, how gracious is God to show mercy.

Mercy and grace and love overflowed in abundance.

This language that Paul's using should sound familiar to the church, especially to Timothy as he's reading these things.

Because we know in Ephesians 1, verse 7 and 8, that Paul's saying to the church in Ephesus, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness for our trespasses, our sins, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us.

Ephesians 1:7

He lavished on us.

God was kind to Paul.

And he has been kind to you and me as well.

He's been very kind.

Ephesians 2, beginning in 1 through 5, says, And you are dead in your trespasses and sins.

In which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and mind, and were by nature, this is our nature, children of wrath, like the Rest of mankind.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace have you been saved.

It's by grace that you have been saved.

So God was kind to Paul, this wicked sinner.

And he was kind to him for our sake, for the sake of the church.

Here in God, by saving Paul, this wicked sinner, he shows us, and he's showing Timothy how amazing and merciful God is.

He saved Paul, the blasphemer, the persecutor, this violent man, so that he could display his perfect patience in him.

He saved them to display God's patience and his goodness and his mercy to them.

It's amazing when you think about the life of Paul and the Lord used him mightily, but think for Paul's sake for a moment.

I heard someone speaking about this recently.

Imagine does Stephen have a widow or children?

They would have met Paul.

This is the man who ever saw my husband's martyrdom or my father's death.

And now he's in the church?

Now we're supposed to listen to him talk about the things of Jesus.

Imagine Paul's going to visit a church and there's someone there who meets him.

You know, you put my brother in prison.

He died in prison because of you.

You realize what you've done?

You've destroyed my family.

And now we're going to hear you proclaim Jesus?

Yes, because that's the power of the gospel.

So if Jesus Christ could save Paul and use Paul to display his patience and his mercy and his goodness, surely he can save whomever he wants.

Surely there's no one who he cannot save.

And surely there is nowhere else to turn for salvation.

So we do not turn to genealogies or myths.

We turn to Christ.

So again, why is Paul writing this to Timothy, who knew all these things?

To remind him the power of the gospel, to remind him what it means when he says that Jesus has come to save sinners.

He's come to save sinners like Paul and like you and like me.

No sin is greater or stronger than God's mercy.

Has God has He shown you mercy?

Has He revealed to you the truth of the gospel?

Have you come to know Him as your Lord and Savior?

Then let us worship Him together.

Jesus saved sinners like you and me, and now we do worship Him.

You know, last week I was speaking about worship, and I made this point that we are made to worship.

We're hardwired to worship.

We can't not worship.

We're going to worship.

I don't mean just music, like worship music.

That's just a small part of our worship.

Worship is an attitude, it's a posture of the heart that is looking to God, obeying God, rejoicing in God, delighting in God.

Genuine worship flows out from hearts that have a visible, tangible kind of reaction for the things of God.

We love Him.

We're going to worship Him.

We're going to follow after Him.

Paul begins these passages about worshiping God.

He begins with this worship to God in verse 12.

He concludes it by worshiping God.

What a beautiful symmetry there.

Worshiping God.

Look what God has done.

Look what God has done in my life.

Look how good God is.

I pray that as you think about your own testimony and what God has done in your life, that this same kind of symmetry kind of bears out as you're telling others.

God is glorious.

Praise God.

He saved me.

He was merciful to me.

God is a savior.

He can save people.

He saved me.

Let's worship Him together.

How amazing God is for saving us.

Don't you long to worship God more fully?

I hope that in the midst of your living in the flesh and living in a broken world and things aren't as they should, that you feel this longing inside you to worship God more fully, to be full and complete in your worship.

That is our hope and that is the promise that as Christians, we will go on leaving our brokenness in this broken world to worship God forever.

That is our greatest good.

That is our greatest delight.

You can find no greater satisfaction.

You will find no greater joy, brother, sister, than worshiping your creator, than worshiping God.

See, the thing is, God is made us to worship Him.

He's not intent to just receive our kind gestures, to receive our good thoughts or our good intentions.

He is here to be worshipped.

See, the aim that the false teachers had is going to be corrected by their worship, by worshiping their creator.

Those who are zealous to teach and make a name for themselves, they will be humbled.

That's the aim, that's Paul's goal, that they will be humbled and truly turned to Christ for salvation.

But oh the danger.

For those who are apathetic, for those who are not zealous for the law, and they're not zealous for grace either.

They're apathetic, they're asleep to these things.

They're the ones who hear and are hearing about God's amazing grace and his love for them.

Who come by, shake the preacher's hand.

It's a good sermon.

Thanks for that.

But they don't care to evaluate their own condition, to take stock of where their own soul is.

They just move on to whatever's next on their agenda.

They have not been worshiping the creator God, they've been worshiping false gods.

And for so long they are numb and apathetic.

They would rather watch Netflix or watch the news than open God's word and see what it has to say.

Oh church, let us guard ourselves against becoming false teachers.

That is wrong and bad.

But let us also guard against indifference to God's mercy.

Some of you look to the law to save you.

You've crossed your T's, you've dotted your I's.

You give 10% of your income to the church.

And it's it's gross income, right?

Before taxes, you do that.

You attend, you serve, you keep your nose clean for the most part.

And now you're looking around and compared to everyone else, you're doing okay.

You're above average.

I want to encourage you, repent.

The law, your behavior, your own righteousness cannot save you.

And some of you are in danger.

Because if you're honest, you're not really looking at anyone to save you.

You might genuinely think that you're a Christian, but you rarely read the Bible.

And your sin doesn't seem to bother you much.

And worshiping God is something that you reserve for Sunday mornings.

Now, maybe for most of us, we're kind of in the middle.

We're not in one ditch or the other.

We're not uh false teachers and we're not really apathetic.

But I just give you a warning: be mindful.

You have a tendency to be pulled one way or the other.

This isn't a thing where you kind of set the course and then you just put it on cruise control and it's straight, and you're gonna get there eventually.

You will, if you're not vigilant and diligent, end up in one ditch or the other.

You'll become a false teacher looking to your own righteousness as some kind of credit for who you are and why you should be saved, or you'll be apathetic, not really caring.

Yeah, you show up on a Sunday morning and maybe you give and you serve.

But your heart isn't for God.

When you hear that Jesus comes to save sinners, you think, well, that's good.

There's a lot of sinners who probably need to be saved.

Instead of thinking, I'm the sinner who needs to be saved.

I'm a sinner last week, I'm a sinner today, I'm a sinner tomorrow, I'm the sinner who needs to be saved, I'm the sinner who needs to understand the gospel and who needs to understand God's mercy and truth and cling to Him.

I am that sinner.

So don't be the false teacher.

And don't be apathetic toward the things of God.

So, how do we keep from doing these things?

How do we keep from being lukewarm and apathetic?

How do we keep from being behavior-driven for salvation or for some kind of approval?

Church, we look to Christ.

We remind ourselves who Christ is, what he has done.

We teach each other.

Look to Christ.

Don't look to your own righteousness, don't look in your past to what the Lord has done before.

You look to Christ.

You trust in Christ.

Look how amazing He is.

Let us, church, look to Him and worship Him and enjoy Him forever.

Let's pray.