Thank you for the opportunity to come and to bring God's Word this evening. If you have your Bibles, if you would, turn to Paul's first letter to Timothy. We're looking at 1 Timothy 1, verses 15, 16, and 17. Remember, as we come to God's Word, this is His holy Word, His infallible Word, His inerrant Word, His authoritative Word. When we read God's Word, we must remember that this is that Word that God has inspired and has given to us. So let us give it our attention this morning. 1 Timothy chapter 1, verses 15 through 17. Hear now the Word of God. It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience. as an example for those who would believe in him for eternal life. Now to the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, the honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. And may the Lord bless the reading and the hearing of his word. If you would join me in prayer. Father, we come to your word this evening. We ask, Lord, that your blessings will be upon your word. Father, we cannot come to your word as if it is the mere word of mortal men. It is your holy word. We would ask this evening that you would pour out your spirit upon us, that we would come to your word. We would have a right understanding of it. You would illumine our minds that we would handle this word rightly, that you would be with me, that I would handle it rightly, I would proclaim it rightly to the glory of your name, that we would see Jesus Christ in your word, and you would be with your people this evening, Father. May they profit from your word to the glory of your everlasting name. I do ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. And when your pastor asked me if I would come this evening and preach, I sent him the sermon text, but I made that request that we sing Amazing Grace during the service this evening. And part of the reason for that is because the hymn Amazing Grace has come up under a lot of hard times, we would say, over the last 100 years. I remember a few years ago, a lady in our congregation who announced very proudly, very eagerly, with great excitement during a Sunday school class one Sunday, she said to me, she said, Roman Catholics are now singing Amazing Grace. So she was very excited about this. She has several Roman Catholics in her family, and it gave her some sort of a glimmer of hope, I think. as to their salvation. But I found out later on, I was listening to the testimony of a man who had converted. He was a minister now, a Protestant minister now. He converted from Roman Catholicism and he said that he used to sing Amazing Grace in the Roman Catholic Church, but it was not the version of Amazing Grace that we just sang now. It was not amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, but rather it was amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a soul like me. In some cases, it's been changed to that saved and strengthened me or that saved and set me free. It seems that no one wants to be a wretch anymore. Now, John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace, would of course disagree with changing that word, so would have John Bunyan. John Bunyan entitled his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, obviously borrowing that title from our passage this evening. Jonathan Edwards would have disagreed with changing that word as well. Most people remember Jonathan Edwards, of course, for Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. If you've never had the opportunity in any of Edwards' works to read his sermon entitled, Pardon for the Greatest Sinners, that will give you a true sense of Edwards and his preaching and his desire to make the gospel known. Pardon for the Greatest Sinners is based upon Psalm 25, verse 11. For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity, for it is great. So apparently David would have disagreed with changing that word. So would the Apostle Paul. In verse 13 of this chapter, he is sort of given his own autobiography. He calls himself there a blasphemer. He is one who intentionally misused and dishonored the name of Christ. He calls himself a persecutor, one who is openly hostile to the Church of Christ. And he calls himself a violent man, essentially a bully who used prison, who used threats of death against the people of God. And he says, yet I was shown mercy. The grace of our Lord was overflowing in abundance to sinners like me. And Paul may have been a wretch, but Christ was a greater Savior than all his wretchedness. And Calvin pointing to Paul here, John Calvin says that he who had been a fierce and savage beast had been changed into a pastor. The wolf had become a shepherd. What is this gospel? This gospel that is able to transform savage beasts into shepherds and wretches into sons and daughters of the living God. That is what I want us to look at this evening because in this passage, Paul summarizes the gospel for us in a single statement, in a concise statement, but he also shows us the glorious effectiveness of this gospel in his own life. And then he also concludes by showing us the response to this gospel that should flow forth from every Christian. First, the statement of the gospel, except it's such a simple statement that Paul gives to Christ. Jesus came into the world. to save sinners. Now, we may be tempted to take that, and I'm sure it has been done, but take it and put it on a t-shirt, hang it on a banner outside the church, put it on the church sign, put it on a bumper sticker. And yet we do not want to trivialize or overlook how truly profound it is. I would say it's perhaps one of the most profound, if not the most profound statement in the New Testament. One of our members is actually here this evening. I don't want to embarrass him, but whenever someone comes into membership of our church, I often ask, and I begin calling it the elevator question. The elevator question is, if you were on an elevator moving between floors and you had perhaps 30 seconds to summarize the gospel to someone riding on that elevator with you, what would you say? You ask the person this question because you get down to the heart of the matter. You get down to the heart of the gospel. And what I tell people, you can't go wrong if you quote scripture. First Corinthians 15, Paul says it is of first importance. Christ died for our sins according to the scripture. Christ was raised from the dead on the third day according to the scripture. That would be a good answer to the elevator question. Acts 16, the Philippian jailer, Paul says to him, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. It's a good answer to the elevator question. Well, 1 Timothy 1.15. would likewise be a good answer to the elevator question. And think about what this statement is saying. It is about Jesus Christ. It is about Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Son of God, the promised Savior of the people of God. And He has come into this world. It speaks of the incarnation. The Word became flesh. The Word came and dwelt among us. And He came not just to live, but to die and to rise again. And it speaks of His love. What has our Lord Jesus Christ done in this great salvation? He has left the glories of heaven. He has left the glories of heaven because of God's great love for His people. And this statement is about sin and salvation. It is a gospel. It is good news for sinners. In fact, if you read it in the original language, the word sinners is emphatic in Paul's statement here. Christ came to deliver sinners from sin and its consequences. Sometimes people will talk about this. They'll talk about Christians like this. They certainly talk about pastors like this. Pastor, why all this talk about sin? Why do you talk about sin so much? And I'll ask you, isn't it instructive to us to see that in one of the most beautiful statements about the gospel in the New Testament, Paul not only mentions sinners, but he underscores that word sinners for us. Oh, you're not a sinner. Well, don't you know that's who Jesus Christ came to save? You may want to rethink that if you don't think you're in need of this Savior, Jesus Christ. Remember many years ago, some of you remember, some of you are too young to even remember this, but the TV show, The Waltons, that used to come on. And I never watched it when I was a kid, but when I was a young adult, I would watch it in syndication. And there was one episode when a traveling revivalist came to Walton Mountain. He came to the town, he had his tent, and they were trying to get all the people in the town to go there. And one of the Walton kids, and I can't remember which one, it wasn't John Boy, but one of the Walton kids would not go. And his mother kept badgering him, and finally he said, the reason he didn't want to go, he says, I'm not a sinner. I'm not like those others." And this is the Waltons. This is a wholesome show. But he said, I'm not a sinner. Right now at Midland Park. I've been preaching through Luke chapter 5. A couple of weeks ago I preached on the passage of the calling of Levi and the complaint that was held. Levi held this great party and invited all of his friends to come and to meet Jesus. And then the Pharisees and the scribes began to complain. Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? And they don't learn the lesson there, because in Luke 15, the same thing is happening all over again. The Pharisees and the scribes begin to grumble, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them. Yes, that's the point. And we are all sinners who need to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. I know you're not probably familiar with the Associate Reform Presbyterian Church, but one of those historical distinctives which I know you would identify with is the free offer of the gospel. The gospel is to be preached. It is to be proclaimed to all creatures. Preach that gospel. That is what fired the ministry of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine. It is to be extended to all people everywhere without conditions. Where did this statement of Paul, though, come from? What is the origin of this simple statement? Paul's not making it up on the spot. It actually appears to be a summary of the words of Jesus recorded in the Gospels. For example, Matthew 9, 13, Jesus says, I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Or Luke 19, 10, The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. John 12, 47, Jesus says, I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. John 18, 37, Jesus speaking to Pontius Pilate says, I have come into the world to testify to the truth. This truth of which is being spoken of here, and this points to the trustworthiness of this statement. It's interesting that Paul attaches that to this statement. It is a trustworthy statement. It's a statement that is true. It can be trusted. It's something you can believe in because it is absolutely true. It is a faithful presentation of the good news of God found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, in most of this chapter, Paul has been warning Timothy as he is ministering there in Ephesus. He's warning him about false teachers. They were proclaiming strange and speculative doctrines. And one of the words he uses for this strange teaching is the word myth. And myth can be defined in different ways. It has nuances of meaning. But if there's one basic thing that you can get it down to when you look at the word myth, It's something that simply is not true. The gospel is true. The message about Jesus Christ is true. This is not a fairy tale. This is not Star Wars. Little children, when your parents teach you about Jesus Christ. They are teaching you the truth. When they pray with you, when they read the Bible to you, they are telling you the truth. And God, by His great providence, has sought fit to place you in a household where your parents will tell you about this trustworthy statement about Jesus Christ. Listen to them. They are telling you the truth, but there's more to it. There is an acceptance of this statement that must come with it. Paul says this is deserving of all acceptance. It's not just information. It must be accepted. It must be embraced wholeheartedly. It must be completely held and clung to by us. We must believe in what this trustworthy statement is. Philip Rykin tells the story of a woman who is joining a church And she was called to come before the elders of that church, and she was supposed to give her testimony about her faith in Jesus Christ. And she sort of said all the right things, and she gave the information correctly, but there was something hollow in what she said, something that wasn't quite right. And so finally, one of the elders asked her, do you believe that when Jesus was dying on the cross, that He was paying the price for your sins." She was taken aback. She said, I have never thought about it that way before. It was just a set of facts to her. But that question from that elder led to her conversion. She realized that she had not trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ. And she came to believe in him and to put her faith in him. It's a trustworthy statement, but it is an effective statement. There is an effectiveness of the gospel that that flows from it. And Paul sort of holds himself up as the example here. We read here of Paul the sinner. And the end of verse 15 really is remarkable because Paul calls himself the chief of sinners, the foremost of sinners. And we want to think, surely, Paul, you are exaggerating. You are exaggerating when you say that. Maybe you're engaging in some sort of false humility. Surely you can look at one of the Herods They're more wicked than you are. What about one of the Roman emperors? What about Nero? What about that Judas Iscariot who betrayed the Lord? Surely they were worse sinners. But this statement fits well with what Paul says about himself elsewhere. First Corinthians 15.9, he says, For I am the least of the apostles and not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God. Ephesians 3.8, where he speaks of the grace of God that had been given to him, he says, it was given to me, the very least of all the saints. And what Paul is saying here is simply that he is the worst kind of sinners. If God was going to pour out his wrath on anyone, Paul says, it was going to be me. Remember, Paul had been a Pharisee. It was customary for the Pharisees to essentially divide the world up into two kinds of people. There were the righteous, themselves, and there were sinners, everyone else, the Gentiles. the tax collectors, others. More specifically, though, a sinner was someone who did not keep God's law. But Paul says that's true of all of us. Romans 3.23, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And Paul says, I am the worst one. But even I received mercy. This is Paul's way of saying, if anyone can be saved by this grace, by this gospel, by this Savior Jesus Christ, if I can be saved, anyone can be saved who trusts in Christ. And there is something very practical in what Paul says. We are in the spiritual position where we cannot at least begin to think like Paul, then something surely is not quite right. If we say, I am a better Christian than he is, surely that person over there, she's a worse sinner than I. If we can say that, then we've missed the point. It's not about comparing ourselves to others as if God grades on the curve. Jesus gave that parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector to show us as the Pharisee who compared himself to others. How righteous I am. I'm not like these others. I'm not like this tax collector over here. That is the mark of self-righteousness. We are looking at ourselves when we do that. But if we are in Christ, we will see his purity, we will see his holiness, we will see his righteousness, and we will see that this thing called sin is serious business. It is an offense against God, and it makes us guilty before God. And we will cry out like that tax collector in Jesus' parable. God, have mercy on me, the sinner. He says, literally, God, be propitious to me. God, turn aside your holy wrath from me. Sinner. If we see Jesus in all of his glory and all of his holiness, it will be as if we are the only sinner in the world. Our guilt before God then will be our greatest need, and it's then that we will see that in Christ Jesus we have the only remedy, and that He is the only Savior in the world, and we will flee to Him who is the Savior of lost sinners. Now, what could be more practical than that? What could be more practical to you spiritually than to know that your sins are a staggering offense against God? but that His overflowing grace has made the perfect provision. the only provision in Jesus Christ. Now, let's admit it. We are often thin-skinned people. We are often easily offended by others. If someone cuts you off in traffic, you are offended. If someone doesn't eat your bean soup at the potluck dinner, you are easily offended. If someone defriends you off Facebook, you are offended. These things do not even begin to register in comparison with the offense of sin before our holy God. But there's one more thing about this statement of Paul that must not be overlooked. He does not say, when I was known as Saul of Tarsus and I was a Pharisee persecuting the church, that is when I was the chief of sinners. He says, I am the chief of sinners. Sin is still a reality that he wrestled with. Even though he could confidently say that Christ had atoned for his sins, he understood sin was still something he wrestled with in this life. This is why we can never get away from hearing the Gospel, that Christ Jesus came to be Paul writing as a converted Christian in Romans 7, the end of Romans 7, wretched man that I am who will set me free from this body of death. Thanks be to God through Christ Jesus Christ our Lord. And if you ever want to see any sweeter words in all of scripture, just read down to the next chapter. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Paul is the sinner, but Paul is also the example, the example of grace. And he said it in verse 13, that he was shown mercy and that it is so wonderful. He says it again in verse 16. He says, I found mercy. And when you see the word mercy here, think of it as a verb. I was mercied by God. God poured out this mercy upon me. And this mercy that was shown to Paul was for this reason. Even though I am the very worst kind of sinner, this was so that Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example of those who would believe in him for eternal life. Paul is like this visible example held up before us of what God's grace can do for a sinner. It is so that no one who is sitting here this evening in this room might think, surely this gospel is too great for me. I've done some bad things. Surely Jesus Christ would not dare show mercy to a sinner like me. Surely the gates of heaven are shut tight against one such as I. No, dear friend, not if you come to the Lord Jesus Christ. He will wash away your sins, and you stand there in your filth, in your unrighteousness, and the Lord Jesus Christ comes, and He covers you with His perfect righteousness. You are able to stand before this holy God because Christ deals with your sins, and He deals with your unrighteousness. He is the perfect Savior. And so ask yourself this evening, dear friend, are you a sinner? That this trustworthy statement is for you? This gospel is for you? Is Christ calling you to himself? And this gospel is for you. And O Paul's, he sings here a chorus to us of Christ's great patience towards sinners. Now, wasn't that the promise of God in the Old Testament? When God shows his nature and his mercy, as the brother said earlier, his persistent mercy toward Israel, toward sinners here, In Paul's letter, did he not show us that in the Old Testament, Exodus 34, 6? The way he revealed himself to Moses, the Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth. Or Joel 2.13, now return to the Lord your God for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger. abounding in loving kindness and has said and in covenant mercy and relenting of evil. And we see more of the same in the New Testament. Romans 2 4. Do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? 2 Peter 3.15 says that we are to regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. And this then is the great effect of the truth of the gospel in the life of the Apostle Paul. His heart had been changed. His heart had been changed by the sheer grace of God, the sheer mercy of God. And now he sees Jesus Christ and that name that he once blasphemed, that name that he once persecuted. It is the most precious name there is. He sees in Christ a Savior who is full of mercy. He sees in Christ a Savior who will save even the chief of sinners. And so he responds to this gospel. And our response to this gospel must be like Paul's response in verse 17. It is to break out in worship. This is a doxology he gives in verse 17. It is a word of glorious praise toward God. That is why we come to worship God. We hear the gospel and we want to sing to him. We want to praise him. what he has done. We hear God's promises. If you want to hear how simple we can wrap our brains around this idea of worship, God speaks to us. He speaks to us in his word. We hear God's promises. We respond to God's promises in prayer, in song. We worship Him. He is the sovereign reigning God, the unchangeable and incorruptible God. He is the perfectly holy God who dwells in unapproachable light. He is the only God. And it is this God that we will give honor and glory to forever and ever. And we see His glory there in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God. And so let me ask you, dear brothers and sisters, when you hear these promises, these promises of salvation which are given to us in God's holy word, when we hear of this wonderful statement of how Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, does that cause you to rejoice? Does that spill over into your singing, into your prayers? Do you sing for joy for what Christ has done? When you go to the Lord at night, do you pray and thank Him for what He has done, never forgetting His great salvation? Now, we like to sing psalms in our church. I hope you like to sing psalms as well. I love that, an amen for psalms. the Psalms are full of Christ. They are full of Christ, and they should cause us to praise the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I preached a few weeks ago on the paralyzed man who was healed in Luke chapter 5, and Jesus does something that's unusual for us. He doesn't heal the man to begin with. He first tells him, your sins are forgiven, which of course provokes outrage, at least from the thoughts of the Pharisees around him. And then Jesus does heal him. He tells him to take up his stretcher and to go home. That man went home glorifying God. You go home this evening glorifying God. You wake up tomorrow morning glorifying God. That should be us, we who have been washed clean in Christ, who have been covered or the precious righteousness of Christ. If that is true of us, we cannot help but rejoice. We should leave God's house of worship every Lord's Day like that healed, paralytic man glorifying God. Well, these are wonderful promises in this wonderful statement. But what do you do if you are struggling spiritually this evening? And one of the things you do is you go back to the promises of God, to the assurances of God. Go back to a verse like this. You're struggling with sin. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Ask yourself, am I a sinner? Am I living in this world? Am I trusting in Christ? Well, he came into this world to save sinners just like you. Now the Apostle Paul was a wretch. He calls himself a wretch in Romans chapter 7. John Newton was a wretch. I'm sure you know he was a slave trader. He was condemned. 1 Timothy 1.10, this very letter condemns man stealing, the kind of slavery he was involved in. He was a blasphemer like Paul. In fact, Newton earned a nickname when he was younger. He was called the Great Blasphemer. By his own admission, Newton said that from the time he was a teenager, the only time he spoke the name of Jesus Christ was as a curse word. And even this worst kind of sinner found mercy in Jesus Christ. And he would write, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Newton would live to be 82 years of age. Near the end of his life, he began to get forgetful. He began to lose his memory. And one of the things he said was, my memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things. That I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior. Thanks be to God that he saves not good people, but wretches. For Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. And Jesus Christ is able to even save the chief of sinners. Amen. Rodney, would you begin us in prayer? And if several would lead us, and then I will close for time. Our Father in heaven.