The text this morning will be in 1 Timothy chapter 1. Still in the beginning here of our series here, considering Paul's letter to his young apprentice, his desires and passions for the church there in Ephesus where Timothy was ministering. And we get his heart for the church and the things that ought to characterize the church. Many of you are perhaps old enough to remember radio columnist Paul Harvey. America listened to Paul Harvey for nearly 50 years. And growing up in Metro Detroit, Paul Harvey was a household name, a daily feature on WJR. I did construction work for my uncle for several summers through high school and through my college years. And I remember all of us breaking for lunch each day and listening to Paul Harvey and the rest of the story. It was a combination of history and mystery. He would talk about some well-known person, place, or event without actually giving the name, describing and playing out the various aspects of what made this person, place, or event significant. And only at the end would he tell you the person, place, or thing that he was actually talking about. And then he would say, and now you know the rest of the story. Good day. Or something like that is his little moniker. Around the time that Paul Harvey was beginning his broadcast of the rest of the story, author, aspiring author named Alex Haley was writing his novel, Roots. And he said, gave a saying that is very memorable, probably one of the quotes that Haley is most associated with. He said, anytime you see a turtle on the top of a fence post, you know he had help. Right? You know there's more to the story if you see a turtle on top of a fence post. The Apostle Paul here in 1 Timothy says something similar. He acknowledges that he is a well-known ambassador for the gospel, a world-renowned international figure within the religious world. spokesman for the gospel, commissioned to the Gentiles, a person of great notoriety within Jewish culture, sent out to reach non-Jewish peoples throughout the known world. Paul acknowledges that. He acknowledges that he's a person of some reputation. He acknowledges that he has a place of tremendous influence But Paul wants them to understand how he got on that fence post. He wants them to understand and know the rest of the story. Turtles can't climb fence posts and Paul could never have accomplished what he did apart from the grace and mercy of God. So let's look here, 1 Timothy 1, verse 12, hear the word of the Lord. 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 the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. God add his blessing to the reading of his word. Now, some have suggested that Paul just was sort of carried away with emotion. He starts off on a tangent here. You know, he'd been pretty tight in his instruction to Timothy. He had some very specific concerns. And then he just decides to sort of take a break and just tell a little bit about his story. as if this was a tangent, a sort of digression from his main point. But, of course, it was anything but that. Paul shares his story for a very specific reason. It fits in perfectly to illustrate and reinforce what he's been trying to tell Timothy in the church in Ephesus. You remember he had talked here about the church being the family of God. A lot of family terminology here in Paul's letter. We see it even in the opening verses where he identifies Timothy as his true child in the faith and he talks about grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father. And then he uses this very interesting terminology in verse 4 where he talks about the fact that the church had been given a stewardship literally household responsibilities. They had been given a certain charge, a certain task in terms of how they were to conduct themselves in the household of God. So this terminology is resounding throughout Paul's letter. And Paul is very concerned that the church lives like the family of God. I'm concerned that my kids live as representatives of my family, of my household. And Paul was concerned about that for God, that people would conduct themselves in a way that would reflect the values of the family of God. And specifically, he focused on love. He talked about how love was sort of the preeminent quality that was to mark the people of God. We ought to be committed to one another. We ought to be in a position to serve one another, to sacrifice personally for the other person's good. not necessarily having warm feelings towards one another, but we ought to act in love, a willful determination to love and to serve others. This is the mark of God's children. It should be the mark of God's children. So this has been very passionate, a great passion for Paul, and something he's been reinforcing right here at the outset of the letter. Before he talked about anything else, he wanted to talk about this issue. And there were a number of things threatened to get the church off track. There was the tendency to focus on lesser things, not necessarily bad things, but to lose sight of the main thing, their main calling, their main characteristic that they were to embody as members of the family of God, as children in the family of God. So he's calling them back to this. And one of the other big problems was some Some aberrant teaching regarding the law. Some of the influential people in the church have been promoting the law in inappropriate ways. And we're talking about the law of Moses, right? Moses went up on the mountain and God inscribed his law on the tablets of stone and given it to the Jewish people. This was God's unchanging moral standard. And some had been promoting the law in inappropriate ways. This was part of the root problem in the church. Some had been promoting the law as a means of works righteousness. If you do good enough, if you observe these particular tenets, then you will earn standing with God. And this was a big problem for Paul. It had led them down a path of pride and self-deception. And so Paul wants them to understand the relationship between law and gospel. And I've given you just a brief summary statement here of what Paul's been talking about up to this point in the letter. He clarifies that the law was intended to expose our sin and lead us to the gospel of God's grace. The law was never intended to be something that would allow me to feel smug, to feel confident. As Benjamin shared in his testimony this morning, that he came to recognize that no one was good but God alone. that we've all fallen short of the glory of God. We might be able to take some comfort in feeling like we are a little bit better than someone else, morally speaking. But the standard is not someone else. The standard is God. And we have all fallen short of the glory of God. Paul says you've got to get this straight. You can't be going around feeling smug about your law observance. You need to understand that the only thing the law does is make you realize how sinful you are. And it drives you to God and His grace. It drives you to the gospel. And this is where Paul now embarks on his own story, right? Paul says, let me illustrate. Let me show you how this works, okay, in my own life. Again, he talks about how he was an influential apostle in Christ's service, but it wasn't always that way. He says, let me tell you the rest of the story. Let me tell you how God brought me to this place. And as Paul will make clear here, it is the story not just of Paul, but it is the story of every genuine follower of Christ. Paul's going to connect the dots. so that we don't just think, oh, that's Paul's story. But we realize, no, that must be my story. If I am going to be a genuine follower of Christ, we must get a handle on grace. So three things that surface here that we must never forget. We must never forget how we got on the fence post, right? Let's never forget the process of redemption. And the first thing we have to recognize is that we are sinners deserving of judgment. We are sinners deserving of judgment. Paul identifies himself here as a lawbreaker. He says he was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent opponent. Just to think in the context of the Ten Commandments, the briefest summary of the law, Paul was a blasphemer, which means that he had spoken against God and against God's representative, God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul's life had been devoted. Before he came to Christ, he was a persecutor of the church. He was persecuting believers and speaking against Christ. He was a blasphemer. He had broken the first portion of the Ten Commandments. He had sinned against God. And then in saying that he was a persecutor and an insolent opponent or literally a violent man, he imposed harsh punishments on believers, treated people cruelly. And in that, he had broken the second part of the Ten Commandments. So as Paul talks about the law and the law bringing us to an awareness of our sin, he comes and just says, you know, I'm a lawbreaker. I mean, this is Paul who had so many accomplishments. He was a religious leader. He was known for his law observance. He was meticulous about the law as a religious leader in Israel in the first century. But he knew that even the greatest of his accomplishments still left him a lawbreaker. Jonah. You'll remember the prophet Jonah received a call from God to take a message to the Ninevites. And Jonah did not want to go. I mean, the Ninevites were like his sworn enemies, the enemies of Israel. Ninevites had done horrible, horrible things. You look at the types of violent practices and torture that had been practiced by the Assyrians and those tribes in the north. And Jonah hated the Ninevites. He was not going to go and share anything about God with the Ninevites. And it's very likely that some of Jonah's own family members, some from his town, had been apprehended, enslaved, killed by these people. Somehow, in that whole process, Jonah managed to distance himself from the Ninevites. He began to see the Ninevites in one category and he and the rest of the people of Israel in another category, right? And that was a problem. Because at the root, Jonah and the Ninevites were both sinners before a holy God. And Jonah had to be brought to that point, painfully so, to realize his own need of grace. Anna and I were talking, my oldest daughter is a sophomore in college and last year she declared major but sorting through all of that and one of the admissions counselors or the guidance counselors said, don't feel so bad if you're undeclared, even just undeclared in your mind. They listed the percentage. I don't remember the percentage. Anna, do you remember the percentage? How many people changed their major in college? He said, at least you know you're undeclared. He said there's about 60% of people that are undeclared. They just don't know it yet. And that's kind of that way when it comes to our sin. Sometimes we can be self-deceived. We can think we're something that we're not. We can think we're better than we are. We can distance ourselves from other people who are really overtly sinful and somehow think that we are okay. Paul here comes to the realization that for all of his religious accomplishments, he was a lawbreaker. He was a sinner deserving God's judgment. We must each come to that place. Secondly, we must receive the offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. Paul goes on to say that he received mercy. God did not give Paul what he deserved. And beyond that, God gave Paul what he didn't deserve. That's grace. God looked favorably on Paul because he acted ignorantly and in unbelief. The sense is here that Paul was living in self-deception. He didn't see his sin for what it was, and when he was confronted with his sin, he responded. He said, I am a sinner. He acknowledged his sin when he was made aware of it. And he turned in simple faith to God. That is what is involved in receiving God's grace. Paul would go on to say here, verse 16, that he was an example to those who were to believe in Christ for eternal life. This is the response. This is the means by which I Participate in God's grace is by simple belief, by turning, by casting myself on Christ. Jesus says it like this in Matthew 5, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who come with their hands upturned, who come as beggars, realizing they have nothing to offer. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Those are the ones who will gain entry into God's kingdom. Those are the ones who will experience salvation. We all stand condemned, deserving of God's judgment because of our sin, and yet there is the offer of mercy and grace. And there will be those who will experience God's judgment, those who are presented with the offer of grace and reject it and turn away from it. Have you seen the show Undercover Boss? I think that's the name of it. I've only seen it a couple of times, but it's kind of an interesting sidebar on reality TV. The boss of these really affluent, full businesses, you know, puts on the apron, or the, you know, the the work uniform or whatever it is, and and pretends to hire in at like the lowest level of his company. And he comes in alongside these other workers, and he's working with the managers in the local stores and in the warehouses and doing the dirty work that all of his employees are doing. And he begins to discern how these people are doing, how they do their job. And some of them go above and beyond. And when the show is over and he reveals himself and identifies himself, then there's these great scenes of commendation. Wow, I was just so impressed. No one else around, and yet you continue to work diligently. And he would affirm them and encourage them. And then there's these brutal scenes People are just, you know, so off base and not doing any of their jobs and treating customers rudely and dropping products on the floor and kicking them under the shelves. And then you have this scene where he sort of unveils himself and these people hear it from their boss. And I was thinking about that with Paul here, you know. Paul did not exactly have a great resume. He had persecuted Jesus' people, Jesus' church, openly opposed the work of God, and yet the boss, Jesus, comes and offers him a prestigious position in his company. that God is willing to offer mercy and grace for those who will humbly receive it, for those who will turn from their sin and come to Him in simple faith. So we must recognize that we're sinners deserving of judgment. We must receive the offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. And third, we must respond to His call of service. We must respond to His call of service. The text makes it very clear that when God calls us to salvation, He calls us to service. Yes, He called Paul to eternal life according to v. 16, that Paul was saved eternally. He was not under the condemnation of God anymore. There was no threat of hell and separation from God. But He also gave Paul an assignment in the here and now. It wasn't just about future security, it was about a radical change of orientation in Paul's life. It was about a new purpose for living, a new assignment. He talks about it a little bit there in verse 12, that God had appointed him, assigned him to his service. And then he describes a little bit more about the sort of transformation that took place in verse 14. And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. God poured out his grace on Paul, and he also poured out faith and love on Paul. He gave him the faith to believe. And he gave him the capacity to love and serve others. These are not natural propensities. We don't do these things on our own. They go against the grain. And God has done a work in his followers, done a work in those who have genuinely come to salvation and poured out his faith and love, the faith and love of Christ into the hearts of his followers. Paul was not compelled or forced into service by some outside entity. He was impelled and inspired and motivated by the grace of God. Chuck Colson was special counsel to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973. He was one of the main offenders in the whole Watergate scandal. Because of his harsh and manipulative ways, he had become known as Richard Nixon's hatchet man. He did Nixon's dirty work. He was the one trying to cover things up behind the scenes. He served seven months in Maxwell Prison in Alabama, and it was during that time that Colson became a believer and an ardent follower of Jesus Christ. and the changes were dramatic. He established prison fellowship, what would become an international ministry to prisoners. And he launched Breakpoint, a daily radio broadcast which focused on the development of Christian worldview, helping believers think Christianly. See, the gospel accomplishes something like that. It doesn't mean you're going to be having an international ministry, but it does mean that there should be a radical change of trajectory, that your life should be marked by a commitment to the gospel, that you should be motivated by the faith and love that have been poured out into your heart. That ought to take and be manifested in very clear ways. Remember where Paul started with all of this. He wanted them to fulfill their household responsibilities. to love one another. And now Paul says that as part of the salvation event, we are endowed with Christ's faith and love. A true Christian is marked by these things. We have a number of people that are being baptized on November 1st. And one of those individuals said to me, my new life begins on November 1. That's pretty good theology. This idea of death to self and being joined to Christ in His life, a new life. And I think Paul would say to that, Amen. We understand not only that we are great sinners, we understand that we need to receive the offer of salvation through Christ and we also must respond to the call to service. And notice here in verse 15, Paul moves beyond his own personal story, declares that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Right? So Paul's telling his own story. And then you see that transition? It's not just Paul. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. His desire is to save you and me. Not just Paul. This is his mission. The mercy that was shown to Paul is available to each one of us. Paul's story can and should be your story. God saved Paul. Paul says this in verse 16. God used such a radical example in salvation, taking someone who is his bitter enemy, who is opposed to his redemptive plan. He saved somebody like Paul so that Paul would be a poster child for grace. No one would be able to say that they were beyond the reach of God's grace, that they had too much baggage. No situation was too extreme. No sin too great to be forgiven. No one too far gone. No lost causes. None. God chose Paul, the enemy of the gospel, and redeemed him by his grace. And he can do the same for you. If you're here today, apart from salvation in Christ, if you're here today recognizing your sin, that you're under the judgment of God because of your sin before a holy God, Understand this, that grace has been extended to you. If you will turn from your sin and turn to Christ in simple faith, casting yourself completely upon Him, you can experience what Paul experienced. Paul becomes very overt in verse 16. He uses a Very interesting word, he says that he was to display God's perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. Paul is a template for how we should respond, an outline, a sketch. Paul's story helps us understand how salvation works and what it looks like and how we can experience God's grace. Paul is a prototype. for what our lives ought to look like, for how we ought to see our own lives, and how we ought to respond to God's grace.