First Timothy 1 and our text for today is going to be verses 12 through 20. When I was in South Africa, God started putting back on my heart this passage in 1 Timothy 1 that I felt like last summer we gave just so little treatment to. And so for about a month since mid-September, I've been planning to preach this as this kind of one message that doesn't necessarily fit into a series. Paul's first letter to Timothy is considered a manual of church order. In chapter 2, for example, he teaches the church how he wants the church to pray and how he wants men to be the leaders in that prayer. In chapter 3, he explains the qualifications for church leaders. In chapters 4 and 5, he outlines some of the pastor's primary responsibilities and how the church should structure its benevolence. From just that little summary of the book's contents, you can see why many people say it's a book for ordering the church, rightly ordering the church. At the very heart of the book in chapter three, there is a little song. Many consider this poem to be a hymn. It's not clear if Paul composed it. He may have, or he may be quoting it from churches that sang it in their gatherings in the first century. But it's actually on this that we understand why church order matters. It's on this that the significance of church order rests. If you look at chapter three, verse 14, Paul says, in the middle of all of these instructions for church order, I hope to come to you soon, but I'm writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. And then Paul quotes this brief chorus. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up into glory. This chorus praises Jesus as the eternal God become human. After being crucified for our sins, he was raised to life and exalted to the right hand of God, surrounded by angelic praise, and the message of this glorified and enthroned Messiah is being proclaimed throughout the world and embraced throughout the world. That was already being sung about in the very first century, within a few decades of all of the events that it's describing. It's incredible. That song explains the truth that the church is to be the pillar and buttress of. The imagery, of course, is of a temple. Why is the church so important? Because the church upholds that message. Paul says the church is like the supports, like the pillars on the front of the building, or the buttresses on the side walls of the building that support this glorious structure. Again, the imagery is of a temple. If the church collapses, the gospel is not held up. This truth is not held up. If the church is disordered, then unbelievers can't find their way to the temple. They can't find their way to access the message that can reconcile them with God. That's why the church is so important. That's why order in the church is so important. I asked you to turn to chapter one, because this letter on church order begins with a reminder, a personal reminder of Paul to Timothy. Timothy was the pastor in Ephesus, and Paul says in verse three, chapter one, verse three, here's why I told you to stay in Ephesus. Paul says, essentially, in verses three through 11, Timothy, one of your primary jobs is to ensure the healthy teaching in the church. You need to silence people who are wrongly teaching the Old Testament law. They love the details of the law, he says, but they do not understand that the law is powerless to change the heart. And he says, they don't understand that the purpose of the law is to expose people's sin and to drive them to Christ. So Timothy had a tough job. Timothy's job is to use his authority to guard the teaching at the church in Ephesus. And then we come to verse 12, which begins today's passage. It's where Paul shares his own testimony about how he used to be a misguided religious zealot, completely ignorant of the gospel. Would you read with me beginning in verse 12? Paul says to Pastor Timothy, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service. Though formerly I was a blasphemer, 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 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. To the king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme. This is a text that always needs to shape our lives at the very foundation. The main point of this passage is that every Christian leader, like Timothy, and every Christian, like the church that Timothy pastored in Ephesus, should be marked by continual praise to God for the gospel. and by continual vigilance or caution, alertness, to never let it go. In what I explain, I am applying it to leaders, myself, I include myself in the applications, but I want you to understand that Timothy was to take this letter and not only internalize it, but also teach the church what was expected of him and of them. Everything Paul writes is with Timothy directly in view and the church indirectly in view. And so I make appropriate application to both groups. Christian leaders and every Christian should be marked by continual praise to God for the gospel. and by continual vigilance to never let it go. That's what's going on here in these two paragraphs. I'm going to now, with God's help, more deeply explain and directly apply how these words of God need to shape our lives. First point is this. Christians, we must live with continual thanks and praise to God for his overflowing grace in Christ Jesus. This is verses 12 to 17. It's where Paul reflects on his own testimony. And no doubt in the context, he is amazed that someone like him, who so badly used the Old Testament law, he completely misunderstood that the purpose of the law was to drive him to the Messiah, who was Jesus. He's amazed that someone like him who so badly misunderstood the law would be entrusted with the glorious message of the gospel. That's what's overwhelming him. So he tells Timothy in verse 12, I am thankful to Jesus because he's given me strength. He selected me for enlistment in his service. Now when he says he judged me faithful, Paul is not thinking that Jesus picked him because to that point in his life he had been such a faithful guy. That's completely opposed to what Paul is saying. Paul's central thought is, I can't believe that God so graciously chose me and is strengthening me in my work. What grace. Paul is particularly thankful about this when he remembers who he had been. Look at verse 13. Paul says, I was a blasphemer. I hated and trashed the name of Jesus. He says, I was a persecutor. I oversaw the imprisonment and the execution of Christ's followers. And he says, I was an insolent opponent, referring to a defiant and violent mistreatment of others with an air of superiority. Paul goes on to say at the end of that verse, verse 13, that He was ignorant in his unbelief. It almost sounds like, and this is not the case, it almost sounds like he's excusing his behavior. I didn't understand what I was doing. But he's actually explaining why God had mercy on him. He says, God took pity on someone like me. One commentator says he's emphasizing the pitiable, guilty blindness of his sin. God took pity on me, he says. So when he considers what he had been like, he knows the last person who ever deserved to be enlisted in the master's service was him. What do you call it when God gives you what you don't deserve? It's grace. When God gives you exactly opposite what you deserve, it's grace. God gave Paul grace. Paul was a recipient of God's overflowing grace. Verse 14, the grace of our Lord overflowed. And Paul goes on to say, God changed my heart. He gave me faith in Christ and love in Christ. He worked the promises of the new covenant in my life. I, who was such an abuser of the old covenant, God, by his grace, worked the new covenant heart change in my life. Grace is being shown kindness when you deserve the exact opposite. It's God rescuing you and gifting you with eternal life when you deserve hell. Paul was a violent, blasphemous, hater of Jesus who deserved eternal judgment. But instead of giving Paul judgment, God turned his heart to believe in the Messiah. He forgave his sin and he put love for Jesus and faith in Jesus in Paul's heart. Why? Grace. Overflowing grace the only explanation for why God would do something like that When Paul reflects on his life testimony in these verses He summarizes it all in a statement that he says Every person should be absolutely certain of the truth of this statement. Look at verse 15 Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I'm the foremost and Look closely at that statement. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. Do you see that the apostle, inspired by God, says this statement deserves full acceptance. Do you fully accept that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah? Do you fully accept that He came into the world? His existence didn't begin at His birth. He is eternal God, the Son become man. Do you fully accept that? Do you believe that the central mission of Jesus of Nazareth was to save sinners? to die on the cross bearing the punishment that your lawbreaking deserved so that if you would call on him as Savior and Lord, you would be saved, saved, rescued. Do you fully accept that? Do you fully accept that you're a sinner? That you need Jesus, that he's your only hope? If you don't fully accept this, you don't, as verse 16 says, have eternal life. You will die drowning, as it were, unsaved, unrescued, and eternally separated from God. I wonder, however, if you think, this doesn't apply to me, If you think I'm too bad, you don't really know my past. Do you realize that Paul quotes the statement where he goes in verse 16, you are in his crosshairs if you think you've done things too bad that you could ever be rescued by Jesus from these. Do you view yourself as someone who's beyond hope You need to read verse 16 and understand that Paul says, God saved a wretched murderer like me to be an encouraging example to you. It's powerful. He essentially says, look at me, look at my life. If God can save a hell-deserving rebel like me, he can give grace to a hell-deserving rebel like you. If God can save me, he can save anybody. That's his logic. So if you have never accepted, fully accepted the truth that's in this statement, I urge you to do so today. Call on Christ Jesus to save you. Call out to him. He will. Now Christian, it's interesting that Paul is writing this to Timothy. The primary application of this paragraph is to Christians. It's to pastors like Timothy and churches like the church at Ephesus. And this is where I want to apply it to all of us. Do you see that Paul lived with a continual sense of thankfulness? A continual sense of thankfulness to God for his overflowing grace. You are healthy, Christian. If you are as amazed as ever that God would save a sinner like you, is that where you're at today? Sing like never before, oh my soul. Are you more aware today than ever of God's overflowing grace to a wretched sinner like you? If you have been a Christian for any length of time, then you know that it's not really hard to grow apathetic. It's not really hard to lose a sense that God's grace is amazing. It's not hard to stop being thankful and to let the cares of this life drown out your thankfulness. And I just ask, Christian, have you lost a sense of thankfulness? Is that where you're at this morning? If you've lost a sense of thankfulness, what do you do? I'll give two counsels based on the passage. Based on verse 13, I'd recommend take time to remember your life testimony. Write it out. Write it out again. A friend of mine makes a habit of rewriting his testimony at least once a year because he senses that as he grows in the Lord, he better understands what God did in saving him. It's good. You need to remember who you were before Jesus saved you. Don't forget. Based on verse 17, I give a second word of counsel. If you sense that you've lost your thankfulness, based on verse 17, I'd say you need to study what God is like. When Paul thinks about his testimony, what drives his praise is the greatness of God. What is God like? He's sovereign, he's the king. This means, The one who showed you grace is the one who reigns over history. He's the one who reigns over every government, over every molecule. He's the one who reigns over every person, every day, all the time. He's the king. And he showed you grace. He is the eternal king, the king of the ages. We can't fathom a being that is beginningless. The Lord doesn't get old. He never had a beginning. He will never have an end. He is immortal. This means he's not liable to corruption or decay. His health, his sharpness will never decline. He's life, he's the source of life, and he will live forever without change. He's sovereign, eternal, immortal, he's invisible. God the Father is invisible. Paul's going to describe this more in chapter 6, verse 16. He's the one whom no one has seen or can see because he is spirit, John 4, 24. He's unseen. God is everywhere, present in all his fullness. That's the kind of person he is. And fifth, God is holy. Paul says he is the only God. Another way of saying this, we say there's no one like you, is to say you're holy. You're holy. Paul's praise in verse 17 reveals that he had a rich view of God's grace because he had a right view of God's greatness. And now, I'm going to pick up on Pastor Chris' cue. Two weeks ago, he led us to sing twice in the middle of his sermon. It was delightful. If you want to right now praise the name of your great, gracious God, just sing with me. Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible, hid from our eyes, most blessed, most glorious, the ancient of days, almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise. Amen. You want to have a rich view of God's grace, you need to have a right view of God's greatness. The first point, Christians, we must live with continual thanks and praise to God for his overflowing grace in Christ Jesus. And the second point is, Christians, we must live with continual vigilance to keep our faith strong and our consciences clean in order to avoid shipwreck. It's in verse 18, after Paul takes this inspired detour to reflect on how a lawbreaker, a law abuser like him, was entrusted with the responsibility of communicating the glories of the Gospel, he comes back to this central charge he's giving to Timothy. He's reminding Timothy of his pastoral duties. You remember in verse 3, he had said, I left you there to ensure that the church would be fed healthy Gospel truth. Do not let false teachers Teach. Here in v. 18, Paul goes back to that theme, and I think he's reminding Timothy of his ordination. When many godly leaders publicly testified That they could see God's hand on this young man. And they said, Timothy, you are qualified to pastor and you are set apart by God to pastor this congregation. Timothy was recognized. Godly leaders to be set apart by God for the work and Paul reminds Timothy of what those men Spoke about him on that day in order to encourage him look at the end of verse 18 to wage a good warfare Another translation has to fight the battle. Well, I Just wonder is that how you think of your pastors and elders at Tri County I Do you see us as warriors? Or do you think of Christian living like this? Is your concept of Christian living that it's war? Paul clearly did. Timothy would face conflict when he didn't allow certain teachers to teach. Timothy would face conflict when he preached the gospel as the end of the law for those who believe. Timothy would be heartbroken as he watched fellow soldiers defect, professing Christians leave the faith. Look at verse 19. Paul says, Timothy, you need to tightly grip, hold onto faith and a good conscience. One teacher says these are the main weapons in the battle, faith and a good conscience. Of course, faith refers to the core of what Timothy believed. There is one eternal God who is three in one. That God has revealed himself fully and sufficiently in the pages of scripture, in the very words of scripture. That humans are made by God and for God. That humans are fundamentally disobedient against God. And we are rightly deserving of his judgment and we can't save ourselves. The faith includes the conviction that God sent Jesus to bear our punishment when he was crucified so that all who trust him could be saved and that Jesus rose again and that Jesus is right now building his church. He's in charge of the advance of his army. that Jesus is coming again to rescue his longing people and Reign in justice and peace on earth. This is the faith and Paul says Timothy hold on to it Christians must hold on to our faith Paul's gonna say in his next letter to Timothy continue in what you have learned and become convinced of and Of course, the primary way we hold on to our faith is by studying the Scriptures privately and together. Christian, hold on to what you believe. Hannah and I talk way too regularly about friends that we had in college. We thought were strong Christians. 20 years later, they deny the faith outright. Christian, keep strengthening your grip on your faith. Keep close to what the scriptures teach and keep submitting yourself. Whether you feel like it's true or not, keep submitting yourself to the truth of what you find there. According to verse 19, the first weapon in the battle is faith. The second is a good conscience. A good conscience. I want to park on this just before concluding. Every person has been given by God the gift of a conscience. It is a sense of right and wrong. A sense or some people will say an awareness or a consciousness of right and wrong. Our consciences are not infallible. We have overly sensitive consciences about certain things, and we have dull and insensitive consciences about some things. As one of my friends puts it in his book on the conscience, consciences must be calibrated according to the Bible. And no Christian alive has arrived yet in having a perfect conscience. Every one of us has a conscience that needs to be more biblically calibrated so that we can be rightly sensitive to the things that God loves and hates. But no matter how mature your conscience is, no matter whether your conscience is right or wrong, one thing you must never, ever do with your conscience is sin against it. If you think something is wrong and you go ahead and do it, you are committing sin against your conscience, your God-given conscience. You dull your conscience. And every time you go ahead and do something that you believe is wrong and sin against your conscience, You make your conscience less sensitive. Paul actually in other places uses the concept of a seared conscience. It's like you burn it so that it doesn't have any sensitivity. Now every person who has ever come to Christ has come to him with a guilty conscience, with a dirtied conscience. There is not a human alive who has ever lived up to God's standard, there is no human alive who has ever even lived up to his or her own conscience. And according to the scriptures, the blood of Jesus cleanses the conscience. It can cleanse us at the conscience level. Here in chapter 119, Paul is writing to Timothy, of course, more broadly, indirectly, the church. And he's basically saying, Timothy, you have, because you're a believer in Christ, you have a conscience that's been cleansed. Brother, hold on to a good conscience. Do you know, I think you do, I do, do you know that it is possible for Christians to sin again and again against our consciences? Don't we so often say to ourselves, I know what to do, but right now it's just too hard. I know I shouldn't think that way about God, but I can't seem to help it right now. I know I need to stop this, but I'm not going to today. Maybe I will tomorrow. Can you relate to that laziness when it comes to our consciences? Our consciences prick us. We just brush it away. It's too hard today, maybe tomorrow. Christian, verse 19 says, beware, be alert, keep vigilant, hold on to a good conscience. Because the end of sinning against your conscience is shipwreck. Shipwreck. Paul says, by rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith. And in verse 20, Paul actually names two men who had to be put out of the church, the domain which Jesus rules, And they had to be put out of the church and back into the world, into the domain over which Satan presently rules. Because they stopped holding on to the faith, and they stopped holding on to a good conscience. Paul says, that's the end of that journey. You start saying, I know the Bible says this, but I feel this and I'm gonna believe it. Or you start saying, I know I should do this, but you know what, not today. The end of that journey is shipwreck. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but there is a strong case to be made that we who live here in this tri-county region, Northeast Ohio, we live right next to the shipwreck capital of the world. This is a debated point, and it will probably always be debated, because there's not clear, comprehensive records, historical records of shipwrecks throughout the world. And because there are varying definitions of exactly what entails a shipwreck, But there are two researchers, one who is from Mercyhurst in Erie, Pennsylvania, and one who's on the shores of Lake Erie in southern Canada. Two researchers, both of them, their first name is Dave, David Frew and David Stone, who for about 30 years, since about 1980, they teamed together until about 2015, studying the shipwrecks in Lake Erie. And they wrote a book that I read about a year ago called Shipwrecks in Lake Erie, Tragedy in the Quadrangle, What they're describing there is if you draw a line that goes from Conneaut to Erie and that becomes the bottom of a square that reaches up to the top of Lake Erie, they argue that that is the epicenter of the world's shipwrecks and that the, I'm quoting them, the Lake Erie quadrangle made the Bermuda Triangle seem wimpy. In their research, they have documented at least 1,400 shipwrecks in that quadrangle. The last chapter of the book, Fru retells the worst storm on Lake Erie that has been recorded in history. It was on a Friday in the middle of October 1916. On that day, the barometric pressure dropped quickly. The waves kicked up to between 20 and 40 feet. and the wind turned quickly forceful. They said some of it was documented at over 90 miles per hour, so it was hurricane force. And on the east end of Lake Erie, the Colgate, name of the ship, left Buffalo, headed for Detroit, and it was never seen again. It was a 308-foot ship. It was called, quote, the unsinkable whaleback. There was one survivor. His name was Walter Grayshaw. And he was rescued after holding on to one object from the ship for 36 hours. And it took him several days to recover from hypothermia. Shipwreck. It's close. It's what it looks like. It's devastating. This is where I end, is with two pastoral comments on this thought on shipwreck. Christians. Please, please, please don't mess around with your consciences. I pray that you don't hear what I'm saying today and think, shipwreck will never happen to me. I've got a strong faith. Don't think, I've weathered things in the past. You know what? I can just mess around with my conscience a little longer. Paul says, hold onto a good conscience. Are you going to obey to those words of the Lord today? If you are sinning right now, I urge you to confess and forsake your sin. You will find mercy. There is cleansing and forgiveness of all of your sin if you will confess it. Ask Jesus again to cleanse your guilty conscience. Ask Jesus to sharpen again your conscience that's grown dull. I urge you to turn before it's too late. Finally, you might be here and you might have walked away from Jesus. You might be someone who say, you know what, when Joe and Hannah talk about their friends who walked away from the faith, that's me. I used to say I believed, then I just walked away and it's been 10 or 20 years You've made choices regarding what you believe and how you're choosing to live that required you to be put out of the church. You wanted nothing to do with the church anymore. You've been living in the world. I just want to point out, if you look at verse 20, Paul uses the language of handed over to Satan, removed from the church and put out into the world where Satan rules. He used that language in another place. You might put right next to that phrase, if your Bible doesn't already have it, 1 Corinthians 5.5, 1 Corinthians 5.5. You might think that that language is very, very harsh, handed over to Satan. I get it, it is. But the other passage that mentions this says that Paul does that. He puts people out of the church with a restorative goal, to restore them to the faith. So I just wonder, are you a little bit like Walter Grayshaw right now? You're here, and you've for hours been holding on to a little part of a shipwrecked boat. Do you know that it's possible to suffer shipwreck? That it's possible to regret years of loss and to survive? If you sense that your life this morning is shipwrecked, I point you back to the saying that deserves full acceptance in verse 15. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I'm the foremost. There is hope for you in Christ. Let's pray. Oh God, I pray that every Christian in this gathering would hold onto faith and a good conscience. I pray that we would be marked by constant vigilance and by constant thankfulness. God, may we be doers of your word and not hearers only. I pray this in the name of our Savior, Jesus. Amen. Amen.