I invite you to open your Bibles to Paul's epistle to Timothy, verse Timothy, chapter one, verse 12. Paul says, 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, 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 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 receive mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. This is God's holy word. You may be seated. I can't tell you what an honor and privilege it is to speak to you this morning for a number of reasons. One, I've respected this seminary and this institution immensely, immensely. Dr. Piper, I remember listening probably 10 years ago to some of your messages that you did here on the book of Genesis. I've appreciated the ministry of Dr. Master and Dr. Morales. So to come here and speak at this institution is just a real honor and privilege. And there's another sense where whenever you get to speak to future ministers, That is an incredible opportunity because I'm a military man and it's like when you're speaking to future ministers, it's like you're addressing the future officers, not just the enlisted folk. You're addressing the guys who are going to go out and lead. So this is just a great honor for me. And I was just thinking, what can I do for you to be of help and be of service? And right now I'm preaching through the Gospel of John. But before I preached through the Gospel of John, my father-in-law, who's also a minister, gave me some really important advice. And he said, you should really consider preaching through the book of First Timothy. You should really consider going through First Timothy with your congregation, because it dresses elders, deacons, the role of women in the life of the church. It addresses false teaching. It addresses your job responsibilities as a minister of the gospel so that people can understand what you are supposed to be doing. So I took that advice to heart. I preached through First Timothy, and God used that in remarkable ways in our church. to establish a baseline. Paul says that the church is to be a pillar and buttress of the truth. And so God used that series for our church, but he also used it for myself, as the preaching of the word always does. And this is one of those sections that really gripped me as I was going through 1 Timothy, because Paul lays out his own ministry, how God had worked in his own life, in his own ministry, as he's speaking to Timothy. You remember the context. This is more than likely after the book of Acts ends, after Paul's Roman imprisonment. Paul probably went on a fourth missionary journey. You remember he sent Titus to Crete and he sent Timothy to Ephesus. He's writing to Timothy in Ephesus and he's writing Timothy to address certain issues. And he gives this really biographical statement And I've entitled this message, a ministry of glory, a ministry of glory, because look how, how Paul really sums up his ministry in verse 17. He says to the keen of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. So when he thought about his own ministry, he ultimately ended with God. He ultimately ended with transcendence. He ultimately ended with God's praise. He ultimately ended with doxology. And that's my heart. That's what I want for myself. And Lord willing, that's what I desire for every gospel minister, is that our ministry is ultimately defined as we think about it and look back about how God was lifted up in it. and how, in our own experience, we're able to praise God through it. And so that's my heart this morning. And I just want to look at several principles that Paul lays out that are really part of this ministry of glory. And the first one is this. that it began as a ministry of power, a ministry of power. If you look at verse 12, he says, I thank Him. So Paul says, I thank Christ. I worship Christ. I praise Christ. Why? He says, who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord. That one phrase, who has given me strength, One Greek word in dunamo, you know the word dunamo, the prefix in means power that is put in. So Paul's saying that Christ had put power in him, that Christ had placed power through him. So the meaning is emphatically this, that Christ alone is the one who has provided the strength for Paul throughout his ministry. You hear that? that Christ alone empowered and strengthened Paul throughout his ministry. Remember when Paul was dealing with the thorn in the flesh and he prayed, he said, Christ, please remove this from me. And Christ's response was what? My grace is sufficient for you. So the Lord Jesus had constantly infused Paul with power, courage, bravery, grit, all the graces and strength needed for ministry. And so that's Paul's confidence. That's when he wrote in the Roman prison in Philippians, remember he said Philippians 4.13, This is that verse that you see on everybody's letter jacket talking about their, you know, their, their basketball game or whatever they're talking about. But Paul said, he's not talking about those things. He's talking about enduring suffering and difficulty. He said, I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Same word in Dunamo that he had been infused with power. And then after he wrote this letter to, um, 2nd Timothy, he said this, this is 2nd Timothy 4.17, in describing his experience with the trial before Nero, he said, the Lord stood by me and strengthened me so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed. There's one other place that I know of that he uses this same word. One time there was a Baptist church down the road from where I lived in Kentucky. I understand there's a Baptist church here that has the same thing. They had a gym in the church and I would go to the gym and lift weights and over all the bench presses, they had a big sign up on the wall and it was Ephesians 6.10 and it said, be strong in the Lord right over the benches. So same word, totally totally miss the meaning but it's be strengthened it's have that strength put into you Ephesians 6 10 and this is what Paul realized is that if you're going to do ministry it has to be in the power of Christ has to be the power of God We don't have the capacity through personality to do anything. And I see so many preachers. I was watching one last night sitting in bed, and it's just glibness. It's trying to be cool. It's trying to win by personality. And Paul would have none of that. It was through the power of God. that the ministry went forth. Paul says, 2 Corinthians 3, 5, not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God. And furthermore, Paul says that this power that Christ gives us for ministry is given so that we can carry out whatever he appoints us to. And I find that I I found that so comforting look what he says here, he says. He says that this strength is given to him, verse 12, because he judged me faithful. So Christ judged that Paul would be faithful. And he says, he appointed me to his service. So this apostleship, as we know, Paul claimed over and over again, this is an apostleship from Christ. Christ is the one who put me here. You think about Ephesians 4.12, that he gave the apostles, the prophets, The evangelist, the pastor, teachers for the works of ministry were all appointed to certain works. And what Paul is saying is that Christ is the one who gives the strength for that work. And that's an important thing to remember if we are going to be engaged in a ministry of glory for what purpose? To know that the surpassing greatness belongs to him and not to us. So that's first, that it's a ministry of power, Christ's power. Second, we need to remember that it's a ministry of mercy, a ministry of mercy. And what I mean by that, you know, mercy, you can think about the word pity. That's what I think of when I think of mercy. It's that, it's that God, God pitied us. Uh, ministry, even though we work so hard for Christ and we do so many things, we can never have a sense of entitlement in ministry. You can never have a sense of entitlement. As soon as you have just that fleeting thought of entitlement, I deserve this. You're on a very slippery slope. Paul never had a sense of entitlement. Paul says this, 2 Corinthians 4, 1, he says, therefore having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We do not lose heart because we don't deserve this. We do not deserve to be in this room. This is a grace and a mercy from God. This is a mercy. And there will be tough times in your ministry, very tough times. Gossip, slander, people leaving your church, all these things. And you will remember that this is a merciful thing because we don't deserve to be in this position. And Paul never got over that. Look at verse 13. He says, though formally, I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, an insolent opponent. So he describes himself with three qualities, three qualities. Can you imagine sitting Paul down in an interview room and saying, Paul, why do you deserve to be an apostle? What's your what's your job description? What qualities do you bring to the table? And Paul describes, well, I'm a blasphemer. I'm a persecutor of the church. I'm an insolent opponent. OK, you're qualified. You're qualified for the job. But I mean, let's think about this. In Paul's life, he was blasphemous. That means to speak irreverently of Christ or to use the name of Christ as an expletive before Agrippa in Acts 26. Paul said, I punish them. I punish the Christians often in the synagogues, and I try to make them blaspheme. I tried to make the Christians blaspheme. He was like those killers at Columbine High School that held a gun to people's head and tried to get them to renounce Christ. He said, I was a persecutor of the church. And the word persecutor is somebody who pursues. He says, I was a hunter of the church. I hunted down Christians, Acts 22, 4. He says, I persecuted this way to the death, bringing and delivering to prison both man and woman. He says in 1 Corinthians 15, 9, I am unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted, I hunted the church. And then he says that he's also an insolent opponent. Greek word, hubristes, Paul uses the same word, Romans 1.30, to describe the type of sinner who calls evil good and good evil. He says, that's what I was. I was a person that called good evil. and evil good. So this is, you remember, this is Paul's passion after he saw Stephen martyred was to hunt down blaspheme and hurl insults at the church. And Paul says, but, but, one of those great buts, I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief. And by this, he means that he didn't realize that Jesus was the Messiah. That's what he means when he says, I acted ignorantly in unbelief. I didn't know that he was the Messiah. I know he claimed that, but I didn't have that realization that he was indeed the Lord. Acts 26, 9, he says this, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. So he was sincere. It's not that he wasn't sincere. He just didn't believe. And obviously, it was this act of mercy that he received. is talking about the Damascus Road experience when he was on his way north to Damascus to deliver believers over to bondage. And Christ appeared to him and he fell off his horse, stricken blind. And Christ said to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who is it, Lord, that I'm persecuting? It is me. Jesus. And the Lord Jesus gave him instructions to go into Damascus and to wait for Ananias. Remember he told Ananias, Acts 9, 15, go for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and before Kings. But during that whole thing, during that whole thing, Paul says a spiritual transformation in his heart took place. a spiritual transformation in his heart took place, not just a physical thing with his eyes, but a spiritual transformation. If you look at verse 14, he says, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me, the grace of our Lord overflowed for me. The word overflowed is a word that's only used once in the entire new Testament. Hooper Planozzo. I looked it up in the lexicon before I came. It means to experience extraordinary abundance. to experience extraordinary abundance. So Paul's saying that in that experience, I encountered an extraordinary abundance of the grace of God in my life. You think of John 1 16, where John says, from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. It's this picture of an endless supply of grace that just endlessly bubbles up and overflows. Paul says in Ephesians 1 7, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches. of his grace. Well, what did this grace do? How did this grace manifest itself in Paul's life? Look what he says. He said, it overflowed for me with the faith and the love that are in Christ Jesus. You see the connection between faith and love. The faith and the love that he had for Christ Jesus are a direct response to this overabundance of grace. And that right there is reform theology in a nutshell. It's that God's sovereign grace meets you and changes you. And you become somebody who was once a blasphemer to someone who loves Christ. It's as Thomas Chalmers said, that expulsive power of a new affection. that the grace comes in your life, changes you from the inside out. If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things have passed away, the new has come. And that grace met him, it changed him. And as a result, he had faith and love for Christ. So that's a ministry of mercy. And you never get over that. You never get over the fact of what Christ has done in your life. Third, very simply, this is very simple stuff. It's a ministry of the gospel. It's a ministry of the gospel. Look what Paul says next, verse 15. He's saying, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. Whenever Paul uses that phrase, the saying is trustworthy, I think he uses it five times in the pastoral epistles. It always precedes a profound truth, always. And then he says, what I'm about to say is deserving of full acceptance. It's incontrovertible. You can't deny what I'm about to say. It should be accepted by all without reservation, without hesitation, without any doubt whatsoever. For example, if we were to think, July 20th, 1969, Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong walks on the moon. Do you deny it? Of course not. Nobody denies that. Can't deny that. Or for example, Orville Wilbur Wright, in the state I'm in, in North Carolina, invented the airplane. Now, you can deny that man can fly, but it's true. People are flying above us right now in airplanes. Or another example, Texas barbecue is the best barbecue, beef brisket. Incontrovertible, you can't deny it. You see what Paul's saying? He's saying this is a fact that must be accepted by everyone. And this is it. And this is really the gospel in 10 words. He says that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. That statement is both historical and theological. Historical in the sense that it talks about Jesus of Nazareth, the man, Jesus. but theological in two senses. One, that he came. He says he came. That means that he was preexistent. He existed before the incarnation. And secondly, that he came on a specific mission. He came to save sinners. He came on a mission to save, not just to show us how to live, not just to preach, but he came to save. And this reality of the truth of the gospel is, as you know, the center of Paul's ministry. For all of his theology, and we need to get the theology right, he never got over the simple truth of the gospel. Romans 1 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation, to the Jew first and to the Gentile. The gospel is the only truth in the world that can transform lives. That's it. It's the only truth that can deliver someone that is a slave to their sin and make them a slave of righteousness. There's nothing else. There's nothing else. And so that's why Paul says, I can't be ashamed of it. The Greeks think it's ridiculous. The Jews think it's ridiculous. But I will not be ashamed of the simple truth of the gospel. And when you look at, I know there's some church history guys in here. When you look at the ministers that have been incredibly effective, in their ministries. There's most often been an evangelistic component to their ministry. I'm doing some studies right now on Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel. And if you know anything about Lloyd-Jones, every Sunday night, Every Sunday night, he did evangelistic messages right there in the heart of London. Spurgeon would often do the same thing. Spurgeon said, you need to also continue to preach the gospel to believers. He said, the believer loves the gospel like they like sugar in their tea. Throw in an extra lump. Throw in an extra lump of the gospel. But the gospel, it really is the center of gravity. Lloyd-Jones, I'm trying to remember when his wife Bethan said this about him, but she said, you really won't understand my husband until you first understand that he's a man of prayer and an evangelist. That's who he is. We often think of him as an expositor, but she says, no, you need to, you need to first understand that he's an evangelist. And so what I'm saying is to have a gospel of our ministry of glory, the gospel really needs to be the center and heart of everything you do. Never assume it. Keep, keep, keep proclaiming it. So, First, it's a ministry of power, Christ power. It's a ministry of mercy. Never forget it. It's a ministry of the gospel. And then fourth, it's a ministry of example. It's a ministry of example. There is a reason why God calls individual ministers to go to their churches. And it's not just to be a Bible encyclopedia, it's to be an example and a shepherd to the flock. And that's why Paul goes over in the pastorals, the qualifications for an elder, because the elder is to be an example to the congregation of what a godly man is supposed to be. And their wives are to be examples of what a godly woman is supposed to be. But what's interesting here is Paul talks about his example, not in terms of his qualifications, in terms of character qualities, but in terms of the work of grace that God had done in his life. So he's saying that the explicit work of grace that God had done is to be an example to the congregations to other believers, so on and so forth. Look at verse 16. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. that word foremost, Greek word protos, it's where we get our English word prototype. He's saying, I'm like the quintessential sinner. I'm the prototypical sinner. If you want to know what a sinner look like, I'm your guy. That's what he's saying. And he's saying, one of the reasons why Christ showed mercy on me, Christ showed mercy because I was the prototypical sinner. I was the foremost sinner. that Christ might display to sinners who will eventually believe His perfect patience and grace on me. to those who will believe. Peter says this, 2 Peter 3, 9, he says, the Lord is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. So Paul is this example of God's remarkable patience, grace, and mercy. And you have to think that there was a sense, especially in the early church, or people said, if God can save that guy, then he can save anybody. That's the point. If God can save that guy, God can save anybody. When I was a student at Texas A&M, There was a guy on campus named Paul Terrell, about 6'5", kind of cowboy type individual. He was the life of the party in a good way. He had a huge personality. Everybody loved this guy, but he was kind of just laid back, loose. And when I was at A&M, it was right in the middle of the Iraq-Afghanistan war. And one day without telling anybody, Paul just went and signed up for the Marines. And I mean, it stunned everybody. Everybody's like, wait, Paul Terrell signed up to go into the Marine Corps? And as a result of that, all these guys on campus started signing up for the Marine Corps. And the thought was, wow, Paul can do it. Man, why can't I do it, right? That's similar to what Paul's saying here. God can show his grace on me and show his perfect patience on me. Then anybody can be transformed by the gospel. So here's the point in all this. Don't underestimate your testimony of grace in your own life before your people. I'm not saying brag about yourself or self-aggrandizement or anything like that. I'm saying people knowing your story of how God rescued you, saved you and brought his mercy to you is a powerful witness to your own people, powerful witness to your own people. And that's part of your example, part of your example. is them knowing that you too, you're not the chief shepherd, you're an under shepherd of Christ, and that you too have been saved and have been met by his mercy and grace. And all of this leads to the final point. And this is where I wanted to end with you. And that is that it all culminates in this ministry of glory, that it's all for the praise and glory of God. Paul ends with this reality of the transcendent God, this doxology. And that's really my heart, my passion. As I said to you at the very beginning, we need to get people to the character of God. And I saw that y'all were doing a conference on that. I can't commend that enough, but we have to get people to the character of God. That's the, That's the goal of our ministries, is the honor and glory of God. And really, Paul describes here God's transcendence. I remember one time watching this R.C. Sproul video, and he just drew, as he often would, a line on the blackboard. And he said, this is God's transcendence. We often think that God is a bigger, better version of us. But if you look at this line, God is the only being above the line. And everything else that we know is below the line. Everything else, angels, heaven, earth, time, space, stars, humans, oceans, everything else is below the line. God is the uncaused being. He's always existed. He's pure being. He's spirit. He's eternal. He is omnipotent, sovereign. And that's why Paul says, look at verse 17. He says, to the keen of the ages, this age and the age to come, the one who is sovereign over all of reality. He says to the keen of ages, immortal, that means incorruptible, immune from decay. Paul says 1 Timothy 6, 16, God alone has immortality. He says invisible, that God is above the line. He's not in time and space. He's spirit. As Jesus told the woman at the well, you can't go somewhere on the dark side of the moon and see God. God is outside of time and space. He is the only God. He is the exclusive God. There's not some type of demagogue as the Gnostics taught that share some type of duality with God, that God is the only one who is all powerful. Everything else is created. God alone is uncreated. And he says, to this God be honor. That means the weightiness of who God is on our lives, the respect that we owe to God and glory, the praise that is to him. He says that is to him forever and ever and ever, amen. It ends with the glory and honor of God, not our own glory, not our own glory, the glory and honor of God. And that's how every one of our ministries should end. May Christ be remembered and we be forgotten. And didn't George Whitfield say that? I want to close with a little story about a Baptist. I'm a Baptist and maybe somebody that you might not know about. But there's a guy in, oh, he's dead now, but I grew up in his shadow in Dallas. His name was W.A. Criswell. Has anybody heard of W.A. Criswell? W.A. Criswell, just a titan of a preacher and really held the line in Baptist circles on the issue of inerrancy. Uh, he was, he was a defender of biblical inerrancy and, and, and biblical truth. And he came to first Baptist Dallas in 1944, 1944. And, uh, at that point they only had 5,000 members. And what he did when he got to first Baptist Dallas is he said, I'm going to preach through the Bible. from Genesis to Revelation. And the deacons took him aside and said, you can't do it. You don't do this. You'll kill the church. And he said, watch me, watch me. And when he finished, not that this is a metric for success, but there were 26,000 members at the church when he finished. I, when I was going through my, uh, My grandparents passed away, and I was going through their stuff, and I found a file in the filing cabinet. And it was notes that my great-grandmother had taken on the Book of Revelation from First Baptist Dallas. I had no idea that they had even been members of the church. But I found those notes and was going through them and was just thinking about his ministry. One other little anecdote. My father-in-law went to Dallas Theological Seminary. Dallas Theological Seminary. And they asked Criswell to come and preach in chapel. And so he came and he opened up his message and he said, you know, I like you Dallas seminary guys. You're very scholarly. You know, he had a booming voice. I'm not doing injustice, but he said, you're very scholarly. You know the Greek and the Hebrew, but you know what your problem is? You don't have fire. You lack fire. And just basically excoriated them for, I guess what he felt was a lack of unction. But here's where I'm going with this. Here's where I'm going through this. At the very end of his ministry, very end, this is what he said. He said, I've preached Christ my whole ministry, but I've never touched the hem of his garment. I've never touched the hem of his garment. So it was that. love of Christ in that sense of mercy that he'd experienced at Christ's hand that propelled him. Well, similar to Paul, you see, it's Christ's power, Christ's mercy. It's the gospel as the center. It's his spirit filled example, an example of grace. And it's a ministry of glory, a ministry of glory. And may it be for us as well. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do pray that we would be faithful, that we would be faithful to carry out our ministries as faithful servants. We thank you, Lord, for the mercy that you've shown us, what mercy it is. And we pray, Lord, that that the gospel would be center and all that we do and that everything would ultimately end with your honor and your glory and the praise of your grace. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.