to it and think about it more and you just kind of keep on going and keep on reading. But every time I come across this section of Scripture and hear what the Apostle Paul is saying to Timothy, really about himself, it's striking to me. In this passage of Scripture tonight, I just want us to look and see, I want to see really Paul's thankfulness as he recognizes the grace of God in his life. the transformation that God has worked in him and then kind of how that flows out kind of at the end of this passage in his expression of praise as he testifies to the Lord's goodness and grace. And so I want to look at this text with you beginning there in chapter 1 verse 12. The Bible says there, and I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me because he counted me faithful. putting me into the ministry. Although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man, but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering as a pattern to those who are going to believe on him for everlasting life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God, who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. Paul writes here to Timothy, and in this few verses of Scripture, there is this outpouring of gratitude toward God. in paul's life he's he's really it seems uh... testifying to timothy he's reminding him of the goodness of god in his individual life you know a lot of times i think when we start thinking about the apostle paul if we're not careful for somebody that's been in church or read the scriptures a lot uh... we kinda wanna put paul into this this category of You know, Paul's the great theologian of the church, and that's true. Make no mistake about it. I mean, Paul writes the book of Romans. Paul gives us some of the strongest doctrinal truth that we have in the New Testament. And yet, if you look in the book of Acts, and you look throughout the letters that Paul writes to the churches, the thing that Paul does the most is to testify about his salvation in Christ. It was primary to him. Paul never got over that God had saved him. Yes, he was this highly intelligent man and God used his intelligence and that strength that he had for glorious things and for helping through the power of the Holy Spirit to shape the doctrine of the church. And yet, Paul again and again and again returns to the simplicity of the fact that he had been changed, transformed, saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. As he begins in this passage we're covering tonight, he begins with the expression of thanksgiving to Christ Jesus, our Lord. And then look what he says here. First of all, he says, our Lord who has enabled me. because he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry. Now, if you kind of just read that and maybe go to kind of our gut reaction understanding, we might look at that and say, well, because Paul was faithful, God put him into the ministry. That's how we might understand what that says. But we would really be kind of flipping what Paul is actually trying to tell us there. It wasn't Paul's faithfulness that somehow God looked at him and said, you're faithful, and so I'm going to put you into this ministry position. No, he's pointing to the fact that everything about him, he's going to get to his salvation, as I talked about a moment ago, he's going to get to that in a minute, and how that's all wrapped up in the grace of God. But even here, that's what he's talking about. He's pointing to the fact that he couldn't be and do the things that he's doing. He couldn't be who he is without the enabling power of God in his life. Without the grace of God at work in him. He's saying, God, Christ has enabled me. And again, sometimes we get to be real careful, because we think about enabling, people say that now, and it's like a weird term, he's enabling her, she's enabling him, and we think about it as a bad thing, like we're pointing somebody, or allowing somebody the opportunity to do something bad. But what Paul's saying is that Christ is the one who has enabled me, right? He has in fact made him faithful, he says, he counted me faithful. It wasn't—you could translate that to say, he reckoned me faithful, or you could just plain out say it, he made me faithful. That's what Paul's saying. He's saying, the Lord has enabled me because he made me faithful, putting me in the ministry. Paul is telling a young Timothy. Timothy who, for the man of his age, and there's a lot of guesses about exactly how old Timothy is, but most people think he's at best a middle teenager when he first encounters Paul. Timothy was a young man, and he's writing to Timothy, and he's telling him, you need to make sure to understand that even me, Paul, the great apostle, even me, the only reason that I am what I am is because Christ has enabled me, empowered me, strengthened me, and eventually, here in this text, saved me. It's all about Him. He counted me faithful. He made me faithful. He put me into the ministry. He made me that way to use me. If you're here today and you're a Christian, and you have any way, shape or form, and if you're a Christian I would say that it is, then that's being worked out in your life. That's happening not because you're just a Christian who's figured it out and you know how to do this and you're the one kind of stirring up this faithfulness in yourself and you're doing this and you're doing that. No. All good that comes out of you originates in Him, in Christ. It comes from him and from him alone. And so that's how Paul is kind of beginning this section. He's making sure that Timothy understands. The young man, can you imagine Timothy? Timothy's placed into some positions in his ministry. Paul puts him in some difficult places. He carries him along into difficult—he leaves him behind in difficult places. And he's putting him there, and he's telling Timothy, make no mistake, this is possible, not because of who you are, but because Christ can and will enable you. Paul tells him this. He says, he's put me into this ministry. He's made me faithful. He's enabled me. In spite of me, that's the next section. He's done all of this in spite of who I actually am in my own self, in my own flesh, in my own body, in my own mind. Look what he says. Although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man, Paul says, God's done all this. Christ has done all this. Christ has put me into this position of ministry. Christ has enabled me. Christ has counted me faithful. He's done all this in spite of who I once was. Again, he's continuing to show Timothy it's not about because if it had been about him, if it was rooted in who Paul actually was, Paul's telling him, make no mistake, this was who I was that entire time. This is me in my own, going my own way, doing my own thing with my own wisdom and my own understanding. Where does he end up in his own understanding? He ends up a blasphemer. He ends up a persecutor of the church. He ends up somebody that he calls himself insolent. He's a stubborn, stupid man, is how he's describing himself. In his flesh, that's who he is. And you say, well, the apostle Paul, really? Yes. And you too, apart from Christ. And me too, especially apart from Christ. A stupid, insolent man, a man who hated God. That's what blasphemers do, right? They blaspheme the name of God. They speak wickedness about the God of heaven. Paul recognizes, even in his fervent observance of first century Judaism, that he was not honoring God in that, that he was blaspheming the name of the one true God. He was a persecutor. And Paul says, this is who I was. I'm this now because of Christ, of who he is, because he's enabled me, because he's put me into the ministry, but this is who I am without Jesus. Friends, don't ever forget that. I don't care if you got saved when you were 7 or when you were 70. Okay? Before you knew Christ, you were an enemy of God. Before you knew Christ, you were counted as wicked and unworthy. That's who you were. Some people kind of, I think, I've been around this many times where somebody that's had a particularly rough lifestyle, they lived a certain way, they were involved in all manner of what we might look at and say that's just Crazy sin. I can't believe somebody could live like that. And we look at them and they come to Christ and we say, man, look at what God did there. Isn't that wonderful? And yes, it's wonderful. Praise God that they've been delivered. But then somehow in the same moment, somebody who might have come to Christ when they were a young person, eight years old, nine years old, whatever it was, but they were truly saved when they were young. Somehow, if you're not careful, if you start making it about you, you begin to look at that and you say, well, man, they were really saved from something. I don't know about me. And we somehow lose the miracle that, again, no matter when it was that you came to know Christ, no matter what you had done before you came to know Christ, that you went from being an enemy of God to a child of God, that you went from being a child of darkness to the child of the light, that you went from being a wicked sinner into a redeemed saint of God. Never lose the miracle. I don't care what your testimony is, you know, in its intricacies. Your testimony is that you once were lost and now you're found. Once were blind, but now you see. Paul, yes, he had been particularly wicked. Paul says, but look at what he says. He says, there was an insolent man there in the middle of verse 13, but I obtained mercy. because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. Paul says, look, all of this was true about me, but I obtained mercy. And again, if we try to just understand it in our language and not look at it a little bit more closely, when Paul says I did it ignorantly in unbelief, we would say, well, Paul's just making an excuse there. He could obtain mercy because he was ignorant. No, again, Paul is pointing to the grace of God. He's pointing to the fact that once God brought understanding to him, he obtained mercy. He says, look, I didn't have any understanding. I was ignorant. This man who knew more about the Old Testament, he probably could have recited the Pentateuch from front to back. The first five books of the Bible, Paul probably could have said it to you verbatim and more beyond that. He could have recited to you the laws of the Pharisees. This man of great learning about things that looked like godly things, he says, I was ignorant. I was without knowledge. I was in unbelief. But God brought to me mercy and with mercy understanding. Because God has done this, he has saved me. He has brought mercy into my life. Paul is laying side by side the truth of what it looks like to be someone who is in sin, and they're blinded by their sin, and they're ignorant because of their sin. They can't understand the things of God. They look at Christians and Christianity like a giant question mark in the world and say, what is going on with those people? You ever run into somebody like that? Maybe they're not even particularly hateful about Christianity. They're just like, I don't get it, man. Why do you care about what that book says? Why do you care? Why does it matter what this Jesus guy had to say? Why does it matter? And you try to explain it to them, you're kind, and you point them to the truth of scripture. But the reality is, until the Holy Spirit of God moved upon you, or moved upon me, we had no real true understanding of what it meant that we could be saved by Christ. And Paul's pointing to that truth, that we have no true understanding of what mercy is until we experience this abundance of mercy. You can't describe the grace of God to somebody, not really, you can try, you can't describe it to somebody who hasn't experienced it, who had been a sinner, who knew they were a sinner, a blasphemer, a persecutor, whatever title you would have given yourself in your sin, until they've experienced the grace of God and that mercy. Friend, it's hard to explain it to them, isn't it? You need to keep trying, you need to keep pointing them to it, you need to keep pointing them to the Word, because prayerfully, eventually, the Spirit of God will move their understanding. You can't do that, I can't do that, but God can. And Paul's pointing to that truth. He obtained mercy in spite of his ignorance, in spite of his wickedness, God showed him mercy. I love a passage of Scripture that's heavy in its discussion of both grace and mercy because it's the full spectrum of God working in the life of His people. Because grace, if you ever get taught the definition of grace in the Sunday school class, it usually goes something like this. Well, grace is unmerited favor, and that's true. God bestows his grace where he will for his own purposes, right? It's unmerited. He didn't do it because of who you were. He does it because of who he is at his own good pleasure. That's grace. But mercy, Sometimes we kinda wanna mix those two and act like they're the same thing, but they're not. They're similar, but they're not the same. Grace is that God bestows his gift of salvation upon you as he wishes, but mercy, mercy is the truth that God withholds from you the punishment that is rightfully yours. that God pulls back that, and instead you receive the grace of God, the salvation of God in Christ, and so you have now obtained mercy through grace. Paul wasn't pleading ignorance, he was acknowledging the work of God in him, transforming his understanding and working in him mightily in grace and mercy. It was all grace. That's what Paul was saying. It was all grace. That's what verse 14 says. And the grace of our Lord was what? Exceedingly abundant. Man, that's, what else could he have said? He could have said this is very, very, very, very abundant. Super abundant, amazingly abundant. Paul says it was exceedingly abundant. That's what the grace of God looks like. God doesn't hand out His grace and, you know, if I went up to somebody and I said, hey, you know, got one of them big, I like orange Tic Tacs, y'all like orange Tic Tacs, I like them. But if my wife buys them for me, I just shake 10 in my mouth at a time and they go away pretty quickly. But you go up to somebody and say, hey, could I have one of those orange Tic Tacs you got there? And they said, yeah. Now me, they tapped me out one. I'm kind of like, well, all right. I mean, I got a big mouth. Tic Tacs are little, right? Okay, thanks. I'm appreciative. God doesn't do grace that way. God didn't say, there's just a little bit of grace for you. No, that's not what the grace of God looks like in the life of his children. When God's grace breaks through, it is overwhelming. It's exceeding, it's abundant. How do we know? We know because of the same thing. If you're a Christian, if you know Jesus, the same thing that Paul's saying that's true about him, it's true about you. You were once lost and some decrepit sinner, and now you are a child of God. That's not a little bit of grace. That's an exceeding, abundant amount of grace. That's more grace than you could dream up on your own if you sat down to write about grace before you knew Christ. If you sat down and said, I wish somebody would show me this much grace, and you tried to lay it out and describe it, and you couldn't get to that much grace on your own, in your own head. It's unimaginable. That's the grace of God that Paul's talking about. That's the grace of God, friends, and it convicts me to even say it out loud. That's the grace of God that I forget about sometimes half the day. And I live my life like I'm just some old knucklehead walking down the road. I am, but for the grace of God. I heard somebody talking about C.S. Lewis the other day. And they were talking about how Lewis, which if C.S. Lewis were alive today, you know, most evangelical Christians wouldn't let him preach in his pulpit because he had some doctrinal problems, okay? He was an interesting guy. He had some great things to say, but doctrinally speaking, he had some things we would disagree with him about. That's fine. But he began to talk about how Lewis described that every person that you encounter, every person you encounter. They're not just an aggravation or they're not just a piece of joy in your life that day. They are just in their very being, they're one of two things. They are an eternally amazing picture of the grace of God. And it was described this way, I think. He said something to this effect, that if you could see somebody who's actually a Christian, if you could see them today, if I could look at you now and see you, in the way that you'll look in the kingdom of God and in the presence of God, I couldn't stand to be in your presence as that transformation was revealed outside of your flesh. I wouldn't be able to be in your presence. It would be shocking to me. It would be overwhelming to me. Every person you encounter is either that or they're eternally a picture of the rejection, hatred, and punishment of God. Nobody's just a person. They're not just a guy or a girl, a lady, a woman, a man or a woman that you just encounter in your day-to-day life. They are your eternal creatures that have embraced the grace of God or they have absolutely just despised it. And J.C. Ryle once said if we would recognize that, That kind of truth about our fellow man, it would change every second about the way we lived our lives. Because it's all grace. We say that, right? But for the grace of God go I. But we say it as a cliche. Paul said it as the most foundational reality of his life. And so should we. It should inform everything about us. He gave us grace with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Exceedingly abundant grace. Never get over the grace of God. Never get over the mercy of God, but also see the purpose of Christ's life that he's going to talk about briefly here, and also the purpose of the grace of God in our life that works out salvation. The reason that Paul says he was saved, and I think it's the reason that we were saved here in just a moment. Here's what he says. This is a faithful saying. Usually whenever Paul says that, the assumption by the theologians out there is that it's something that had worked its way into common vernacular in the early church. Maybe they sang a song that reflected it, or it was something that they repeated in some sort of what we might call like a responsive reading format. So he says, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance. He says that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief. However, for this reason, I'll go into that in just a moment. So, first of all, he tells us, why did Christ come into the world? To save sinners. Right? Now, we'll say, well, didn't he come into the world to glorify God? Yes. How did he glorify God? By saving sinners. Why did Christ come into the world? To show the love of God to mankind? Yes. How did he show the love of God to mankind? He saved sinners. That's how he does it today. Friends, make no mistake, Jesus Christ was and is in the business of saving sinners. I think the problem is, even from the pulpit to the pew, is that we have forgotten that Christ saves sinners. We've gotten so used to throwing rocks at one another. We've gotten so used to looking at those who are outside of the faith and they're living in a way that we don't agree with biblically and all of that. We've gotten so used to kind of making them kind of other in our mind and thinking, well, man, I don't want anything to do with that wickedness. You better have something to do with it and carry the light of the gospel into the darkness because that's what Christ came to do. to save sinners. That's what He's tasked us with being a part of through the Great Commission, making disciples of all nations. Christ came into the world to save sinners. It is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance. Paul says, don't forget it, remember it, accept it. That's the point. Obedience is wonderful, and there is much in the Word of God that speaks to us about obedience, and there's a lot of ways we're supposed to be obedient. But primary to the Christian is that we take part in the work of Christ as He seeks to save that which is lost. It was all grace. Christ comes to save sinners out of an abundance of grace and love, mercy, Paul says, accept this saying, don't ignore it. Jesus came to save sinners. And notice for just a second, I think Paul added this on to the end of his acceptable saying. He says, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. Hang on a second. Paul, the apostle that wrote most of the New Testament, he's the number one sinner? I kind of look at what I know of Paul's life and say, Paul, I believe I could take that crown. Is that our attitude, though? Do we think about that? Do we think that way about ourselves apart from Christ? That we're the chief of sinners? There may not be a sinner that's a bigger sinner than us. Heard a comedian one time talk about his daddy. He said, my dad was a grade A, number one cusser. He could cuss in a way that you couldn't even imagine. And I think, well, I've known some folks like that, and I've been folks like that. Paul says he was the chief of sinners. And you say, well, he's just, you know, Paul's just talking like a preacher. He's exaggerating a little bit. No, friends, this is how we should view our sin in light of the grace of God in our lives. This is the right perspective. That if you will look and you will observe the sin in your life currently and the sin of your life in the past that you've been forgiven of, and you can look at that and rightly understand that the gravity of sin is such that it'd be beyond your imagination because you're so well acquainted with your sin and I'm so well acquainted with my sin that I would look at the grace and the mercy and the glory and the purity of God and I would say, there's no way I'm the worst one that ever walked until Christ came in. Paul says, I'm the chief of sinners. Is that how we think, or do we think in the whataboutisms? Y'all know what I'm talking about. Well, yeah, I do this, or I did that, but what about so-and-so? What about Brother Allen? What about Brother Harold? What about this guy? What about that lady? What about her? What about them? What about them folks I hear about on TV all the time, all that nonsense they're doing? What about them? When we look at the blackness of our sin in the glorious light of Christ, it should do nothing except cause us to look at our own sin and fall before God if we've been forgiven and thanking Him for His grace and mercy and repentance if we have not been forgiven, whatever the case may be. And it should cause us to look upon those out there who are ignorant of the reality of their sin and it should break our hearts that they are ignorant and blind and that they desperately need the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to save sinners. That was his purpose in coming to the earth. But notice what Paul says, what Christ's purpose was in saving him, and I believe in saving you and saving me if you're saved. He says, however, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering as a pattern to those who are going to believe on him for everlasting life. What's Paul say? Paul says, I received mercy. Obviously he's talked about because of the grace and mercy of God. But the reason, the functional aspect of his salvation wasn't about Paul. It was that Paul, that Christ through Paul's life might show others that he might be a beacon of the grace and mercy of God for people to look upon and see that if he can save Paul, that is a long-suffering, patient, and wonderful God. That if he can save Paul, then there's a pattern there that I can see myself in. And I can say that if he came to Christ this way, then I can go to Christ the same way. That's what he says as a pattern. Friends, we shouldn't be ashamed of where God has brought us from. We should be willing to proclaim the realities of our salvation, the realities of our testimony, so that others might see and say, if God can save them, God can save me. Paul says, the reason I was saved wasn't about me. It was so Christ could show off in me. So I don't like the idea about Jesus showing off. Well, get over it. He's the only one that can do it without being presumptuous and arrogant. If you're here and you're saved, and you're living your life in any measure of faithfulness, Jesus Christ is showing off through you. He's showing, not just showing off to be flippant, He is showing off His mercy and grace in your life for all to see as a testimony of who He is and what He might do for them should they turn and repent. That's the functional aspect of Jesus saving us, is so that others might be saved, that the kingdom might grow, that the glory of God might be high and lifted up, that the gospel would continue to go out until the day of the return of Christ. And notice finally, and I'll finish up tonight, that this realization of the grace of God, the mercy of God, the salvation of God, the transformation that God has worked in Paul's life, all of that culminates in what? It culminates in the praise of God. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever, amen. I heard somebody say one time, why do y'all go to church every Sunday? I said, I'll do you one better. At my church, we go to church on Sunday night and Wednesday night, too. I said, why do you do that? Praise the Lord. Oh, you just do that because that's what they expect you to do. Well, sometimes when I'm not living right, maybe. Y'all are more spiritual than me. I know that y'all don't ever feel that way. Okay? Why do we do that? Why do we gather to worship? Well, we've been commanded to gather and worship, but why do we do it? It's because if we continually remind ourselves in our own private and personal devotional life, if we continually remind ourselves as we gather together to lift high the name of the Lord and remember who we are, He's high and lifted up and we are lowly before Him, spread out in thanksgiving before Him. If we do that, we should gather all the time and overflow with praise Praise is we're reminded every time about God's grace and mercy in our life. If you're not a person that, look, I'm not the most musical person that ever was, okay? I mean, I like my hymn sung at the tune of Honky Tonk and most of the time I'd rather listen to a podcast, okay? That's just how I am. Some of y'all are musical people and that's great for you. But I want you to know that praising the Lord, if you don't like singing to the Lord, if you can't get excited about praising God, and look, maybe you say, I don't really like to sing. Well, sing anyway. Why? Because He's worthy of praise. You say, well, that's not the only way to praise the Lord. No, it's not. Praise the Lord in obedience, yeah. Praise the Lord through the preaching of the Word. Praise the Lord through the study of the Word. Praise the Lord through the fellowship of the saints. Praise the Lord through the observance of the ordinances of the church, like baptism in the Lord's Supper. But whatever you do, do it all to the glory and praise of His name, because He is eternal. He is immortal. He is invisible. He is only wise. He is the only one that's wise. He is honorable. and glory is due Him forever and ever and ever. Meditate on the glory of God and the mercy of God in your life if you're saved and allow it to overflow in praise. You might just be driving down the road and just think for just a moment, oh my goodness, I'm saved. And praise God for that. You ever do that? I don't do it as often as I should, but my goodness. Let these truths not just be words on a page. I love the Bible, and we need to read it and understand it, but it is God's word to us to produce fruit in us. And in this case, the fruit is the fruit of praise for God's people for all of his goodness and mercy and grace. And it should motivate us. to let that pattern that Paul talked about be put on display in front of others so that his mercy and grace can work more and more and more and more. Meditate on these truths. Let them produce praise. Go out and live as a pattern to the glory of God for the salvation of souls because Jesus came to save sinners. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you for your word. I pray you'd use it in my life and the lives of those who are here. I pray that you would, God, just never let us get over our salvation, get over the grace that you've poured out on us, get over the mercy you've poured out, Lord, that it would be an ever-present thought in our minds, and that we would return that thought to you in praise and worship for all that you've done and all that you will do. God, help us. We're finite, we're weak, we're a needy people. We know that you have promised to be with us always and fulfill every need. Remind us of that. Turn us to you often, that you might be glorified in all things. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. God bless y'all.