1 Timothy 1:8-20 The Law, The Gospel & Mercy

Well, good morning. Good morning. Good to see you. Thank you for being here and letting us be here too. Well, we've had a lot of trouble in our class. A lot of people fighting a lot of different things. Unemployment, cancer, heart attacks. And I woke up this morning singing to myself a song. I will not sing it for you. But I could. But years ago, we were in San Antonio. I used to sing in churches where I pastored until I got to Kansas City. And my music guy in Kansas City that we hired was a cabinet salesman. But he had a world-class voice. I mean, he absolutely could bring the stars down. When I was at First Baptist of Dallas, he came through there. And I had him sing one Sunday night. And the church went crazy for him. I mean, he was just great. So I quit singing then. Because I had Bob Brown, I didn't need to sing anymore. But in San Antonio, I went off for revival somewhere and came back with one of Ira Stanfield's songs. Now, Brother Jack is so old that he knew Ira Stanfield. Now, I mean, just think about that. Ira Stanfield wrote over 500 hymns. I mean, songs like Room at the Cross, Mansion Over the Hilltop, I Know Who Holds Tomorrow, We'll Talk It Over, Suppertime, The Glory of God, over 500 hymns, gospel songs that he wrote. Now, just for your information, we lived just a block from Eddie Arnold when we were in Nashville. Eddie Arnold is the one that sang Mansion Over the Hilltop. And so that's always been one of our favorites. But he wrote a song called Follow Me. And I think it kind of says what a lot of us feel. I'm going to read the words of the song. I'd like to sing it to you, but I haven't sung it so long. I probably shouldn't try that. But here's the song. I traveled down a lonely road. No one seemed to care. The burden on my weary back had bowed me to despair. I often complained to Jesus how folks were treating me. Then I heard him say so tenderly, My feet were also weary upon the Calvary Road. The cross became so heavy I fell beneath the load. Be faithful, weary pilgrim, the morning I can see. Just lift your cross and follow close to me. I worked so hard for Jesus I often boasted, Say, I sacrificed a lot of things to walk the narrow way. I gave up fame and fortune. I'm worth a lot to thee. Then I heard him gently say to me, I left the throne of glory and counted it but loss. My hands were nailed in anger upon a cruel cross. But now we'll make the journey with your hands safe in mine. So lift your cross, follow close to me. O Jesus, if I die upon a foreign field someday, Could be no more than love demands, no less could I repay. He gently spoke to me, If just a cup of water I place within your hand, Then just a cup of water is all that I demand. But if by death to living they can thy glory see, I'll take up my cross and follow close to thee. It's a great song. My dad told me, he said, Be nice to everybody because everybody's having a hard time. That's really true. But we've got so many things to be thankful for. We've often walked through the valley, but we did walk through it. We don't live in the valley. And we praise God for that. Now, we're going to start with verse 8. I planned to get through verse 11 last week and didn't make it. And so in 1 Timothy chapter 1, beginning at verse 8, we're going to try to finish that chapter today. Well, we'll finish it. We just may not deal with all of it. But we'll get through it today. He's talking here to Timothy. Bear in mind, the pastoral epistles were given in the midst of tremendous heresy. The whole Christian movement was in its infancy. And yet, quickly after the formation of the churches, heresy began to sneak in. And remember, I told you Manny Beasley always said, the greatest heresy is the one that sounds the most like the truth. And so heresy is very subtle. It's easily accepted. It just doesn't go very far. It doesn't last very long. It creates chaos and confusion. And there's a lot of that today. I've told you, I don't know how many churches I've preached in over the last 70 years. But it's rare to find a happy church. That's why I love our church. We're a happy church. And we'll just let it go with that. But this is a great place to be. But he's writing now to Timothy, and he's going to give him some strict instructions. He sent Titus to Crete, and he kept Timothy there in Ephesus. Paul spent three years as pastor in Ephesus. And so he left Timothy in Ephesus, and now he has gone on to Macedonia and left Timothy behind. And they were struggling with heresy in the Ephesian church. In fact, it had made such great inroads that he names the two ringleaders, Hymenaeus and Alexander. And later in the book of 1 Timothy, he tells Timothy, now don't you cut them a break. They're the ones that are ringleaders, and I've already kicked them out. You stand by and stand by what I've done. So he named the people who headed up the heresy there in Ephesus. It's kind of interesting. I think I probably told you last week, 1 Timothy is only two of his epistles that he didn't have some good word to say about the people he was writing to. And he's writing about Ephesus to Timothy, and he didn't have a good word to say about Ephesus. The Lord had a few words to say to him in Revelation 2 and 3 when he talked about Ephesus. He left your first love. So he's trying to give Timothy now instructions. Now the word instructions is here. He talks about instructions, and that means these are not suggestions. These are demands. Now Timothy, you do this. And so he's writing to talk to him about that. Now he's talking about the law, and the law had begun distorted, and apparently some of the heretics were speaking ill of the law and maybe even blaming Paul for some of the things about the law. But Paul never suggested that the law was not good, nor did he ever question the law. He just wanted it to be understood correctly. His references now were not just to the Ten Commandments, but included the practical outcome of obeying the law. And the basic purpose of the law was to give clarity to believers straying from the truth and also like a mirror to reveal sin and lead us to Christ and to emphasize the works that please God. So he's given some specific instructions on these areas. In fact, Jesus in Matthew 5, 17 said, Don't think I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. That was important to Timothy and to Paul. Paul especially wanted Timothy to understand and teach the real purpose of the law. The law was not made for the man who is saved, justified by Christ's death on the cross. It was made for those who have rejected the law, who have rejected Christ, who refuse to give obedience to the Lord, false teachers leading believers and tempting them, enticing them to substitute something for the real gospel, adding something to it. But he never suggested that the law was not good, nor did he question it. And we need to see that. The law is perfectly fulfilled in Jesus Christ. That's one thing that Paul certainly emphasizes. We do not obey the law as though we needed to do something to commend ourselves to God. Jesus paid the price and fulfilled the law in every extent. So Paul immediately dives into a list of unacceptable actions on the part of believers. All the way through the epistles of Paul, he is always reminding them that this is the way you used to be, but you don't do that anymore because you're believers. Or put it in maybe a simpler language, what you believe ought to make a difference in how you act. And so Paul keeps hammering at that, that Christian faith is not just something that we believe, it is something we are, something we do, some action on our part. And so he is emphasizing that. And so he lists these things. Let me just read a few of these verses for us, starting in verse 8. We know that the law is good provided one uses it legitimately. We know that the law is not meant for a righteous person, but for the lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinful, for the unholy, irreverent, for those who killed their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave traders, liars, perjurers, for whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God which was entrusted to me. That's a mouthful, isn't it? He begins with three adjectives describing unacceptable actions. Lawless, rebellion, which describes those that just simply refuse to obey the law. The ungodly and the sinful, that's the inwardly disobedient and the deliberately disregarding God's will. And the unholy and irreverent, the ones that misuse God's name. This probably is unnecessary to say to this group, but one of the characteristics of our society is the cursing and using God's name in curse words. I mean, the very name of Jesus Christ, which is a sacred name to us, is often used as a slang curse word. And that's the very thing he's talking about. Don't treat God casually. Don't treat God as if He's a human being. Don't treat God as if He's less than He is. We need to live in such a way that honors Him in such a way that is in obedience to Him. And he lists these things. After the first three, he goes down through the Ten Commandments starting with the Fourth Commandment on down through the Tenth Commandment. And when he mentions those who killed their fathers and mothers, it really is a reference to people who have lost respect and disregard for their parents. Just remember, it's not unusual in Apostle Paul for him to list some terrible things that he's condemning, and then right in the middle of that will be disobedience to parents. Isn't that interesting? Disobedience to parents. You can sum up the woes in America today because of the lack of respect for parents. And maybe because parents are not what they ought to be. But he's not talking about those who actually murdered their fathers and mothers, but those who disregard them, disrespect them. My mother lived with us 32 years. Any of you knew mother? She never told me to do something. I did it. Even after I was an adult when she was 80 years old. That's the way God intended for us to do it. When my dad died, she had been crippled all of her life, had no Social Security, hadn't worked a job. So the only thing for her to do was come live with us. So she did. Wonderful. We had wonderful years. And we are grateful for that. Grateful our kids got to grow up with their grandmother. Neither one of us were around our grandparents. Carol Ann's grandparents were deceased. Mine were not deceased, but lived far away. And we may have seen them once a year. And so when it came time to be grandparents, we didn't have any examples set before us because we'd never been close to our grandparents. But it's a good thing to respect your parents. That's where you learn to respect the law and respect authority. And so that's a whole other whole other message. But he's emphasizing here the importance of the law as making a difference in how we live. And after he mentions all of these things, it's kind of interesting. He says that whatever else doesn't conform to the real gospel. He hadn't mentioned covetousness, so that would fit in right there as well as the Ten Commandments. But whatever else is contrary. So he left a wide open door for many things to be placed in that place. And Paul declared in Romans 10-4 that Jesus Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to all who receive by faith his finished work on Calvary. Then he begins in verse 12 with a vivid description of the incredible power of the gospel that he has mentioned in verse 11. He talks about all of these terrible things you shouldn't do. Anything that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God which was entrusted to me. He says, I give thanks to Christ Jesus, verse 12, our Lord who has strengthened me because he considered me faithful appointing me to the ministry even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man. It's not a good biography. But I receive mercy. I do love the butts of God. But I receive mercy because I acted out of ignorance and unbelief and the grace of God overflowed. Superabundant grace overflowed along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. And he said, this is a trustworthy saying deserving full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners and I'm the worst of all of them. Paul can never get over the fact that the incredible gospel of Jesus Christ had been entrusted to him. Some of y'all were at Bill Anderson's funeral last week and I used Bill's favorite verse, two verses out of Ephesians 3, I think it was, where the Apostle Paul talks about that he's the worst of sinners and chief of sinners. Paul was not looking at other people. He was looking at the riches of Christ Jesus. And he said, when I look at me and see who I am and look at the riches of Christ Jesus and see who he is, I'm amazed that he, a sinner, worst sinner of all, and he gave and entrusted the gospel to me. Now, that's just a good reminder that God doesn't use any of us because of us. I'm a little distressed that all of my preacher friends who are falling like dominoes all over the country and things they should not have been involved in. But it's not surprising because every one of us is capable of every known sin if we don't keep our heart tuned in to God. There's no sin I would not commit. I've told you that many times. Best thing that ever happened to me was to realize that I can't trust myself. I always tell young preachers, leave the door to your office open. Put a glass in the door. Someone said, well, you don't trust the women that come in. I said, no, I don't trust myself. I know me. I don't know you sweet ladies, but I know me. I know that by the grace of God, there's not any sin I wouldn't commit. So, nothing for us to get puffed up about. No preacher belongs on a pedestal. Unfortunately, they get there. And it's good that we respect our pastors, but God's in the business of calling them and it's not an easy job. You just think of how many times a pastor has a chance to mess up. Wallace Bassett was the pastor of First Baptists in Oak Cliff. And one day, he had a wedding at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday and then he baptized Sunday night. And when he started baptism, he said, marriage is a sacred institution. He just had a wedding. And he caught himself and said, and so is baptism. And then he went right on and baptized. I mean, there are a lot of chances. We expect the pastors to know everything and do everything and be responsible for everything. And truthfully, none of us deserve that. And now we preachers bring it on ourselves sometimes. One pastor said, you know, we get so proud sometimes, we can strut sitting down. And you know, we shouldn't do that. And that's why I always just want to be called Brother Jimmy. I haven't had six doctor's degrees. Now, I didn't earn them like Jack did, so I have great respect for the Ph.D. Mine are all honorary degrees. But I never liked being called Dr. Draper. And at Lifeway, I told them, if you put my name in doctorate and throw my name into this material, millions of pieces of material go out of here, you're going to hear from me. Don't do that. I'm just Jimmy Draper. I figured if Billy Graham could be Billy Graham, I could be Jimmy Draper. And that's just the way it is. But Paul is saying it's amazing to me. I'm a blasphemer. I'm a persecutor. I'm arrogant. And God still gave me the gospel and entrusted it to me to preach the gospel. That's an amazing thing. Ought to be encouraging to us, though. Ought to be encouraging to us. Because not any of us deserve to proclaim the gospel. It's bigger than all of us. And yet God entrusted it to us. And we're just one generation from annihilation as Christians. If we older people don't pass on the things God has given to us, and we don't mentor them in the things of God, Christianity's dead within a generation. And so I know not very many of you in here are as old as I am. I'm so old I can't even think about how to spell the word. But, you know, we need to pass it on. I got a... This is not infrequent, but I got a text Friday from a young man named... Well, he's in his seventies now. But he was a teenager when I was his pastor in San Antonio. His dad was a deacon named Bill Strong. His wife was one of our secretaries. Her name was Louise. And he was still in elementary school. And out of the blue, I have not heard from him in decades. Friday, I get this long email. I need to tell you how much I appreciate you being my pastor. I said, what you've ministered me to do and become and how you've shaped my life and my ministry. So I was 20 years as a minister of education. Now I'm teaching at a seminary. So I just wanted to thank you for pouring your life into me. I've reached the age where that happens a lot because I've always felt that my job was to treat people with respect and try to encourage. I don't want anybody to ever feel worse after I leave. I want them to feel better. But just be reminded that things that I don't remember, people thank me for. Because God wants us to pass on what He's entrusted to us. It's all the same. I've been entrusted with the gospel, so I've got a stake in this thing. Don't you all mess it up. Don't let heresy come in and dilute the gospel. Don't let heresy come in and rob the joy that's in Christ. So he was telling Timothy, now don't you mess up what I gave you. You be true to what I told you. Do what I told you to do. And so it's just a good reminder to us that all of us need encouragement. All of us need someone to believe in us. We had a young man that was a member here while he was in seminary at Southwestern. His dad's a rancher in Montana. He had never preached. And we now for the last six or seven years, eight years, we've been entering him on texts and phone calls and emails. And he's become a pretty good preacher. But it's just a joy for me when I get a text from him. I got a text from him yesterday. He's getting married. And he's just set a date in January. He wants us to come to Montana. In January. Anyway, Paul is just reminiscing about all he's done in Ephesus. He's probably more than a little hacked that Ephesus is messed up so bad. It was a dysfunctional church for this time. So he's telling Timothy, this is what you need to do. If you don't do this, the heretics are going to take over the church. And I'm instructing you to do this. So he had a long relationship with Timothy. But he also told Silas what to do down at the tree. He wants you to appoint elders. Some people kind of wonder about that. He was going to appoint elders or pastors. Well, remember, these are first generation churches. Who are you going to get to pastor a church that was lost six months ago? Now, which one of them is going to be pastor? Well, you've got to move carefully through that. So it's not something that ought to be done today. But that was the culture. And the moment of Paul's writing was this is a new time. New churches are being established. And he realizes that God has entrusted the gospel to him. By the way, we all need to realize that God has entrusted the gospel to us. Do you know that 95%, as long as I can remember the research, believers never share the gospel? Do you know that young believers who just got saved share the gospel more quickly than older believers do? We just need to realize this is not fun and games. This is serious business. Paul says I was a persecutor and I was an arrogant person. Yet he had trusted the gospel to me. And who would have thought that from Saul of Tarsus would have come 13 books of the New Testament. Amazing. But Paul said, Christ came to save sinners. I'm the worst one of them all. I'm the chief of all. He said that several times. Well, these things... In fact, verse 11 tells us several things about God. About the gospel. The gospel is about the glory of God. And he's called the blessed God. God is blessed and he is the blessing and he is the source of all blessing. Blessedness comes from God and this gospel of blessedness now has been given to Paul to declare. And the malicious nature of heresies mentioned in verses 9 and 10 did not bring glory to God or come from God. And they must cease. They must cease. That's what Paul's talking about. Paul said, I'm gone now, Timothy. This is your responsibility. We all have responsibilities and many times we don't exercise them very well. The heart of the gospel is the incredible news that the law of God has been perfectly satisfied through the sacrifice of the death of Christ on the cross. We don't add anything to it. That was what the heresies did. Heresies wanted to add things to the gospel. Paul said, do not change what I have taught you. Declare it. And it's very important. There's no contradiction between the law of God and the gospel. They agree on the basics of the gospel. Both the law and the gospel condemn the same things. And they forbid the same things. And they agree on holiness and morality and true piety. Paul declares in Romans 10-4 that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to all who receive by faith his finished work on Calvary. And then we move on past that to verse 13. Paul gives three things in his past that God forgave him for extending the call to the gospel. I mentioned blasphemy, persecutor, arrogant man. Now, the sins that he mentions that Paul mentions about himself were not sins of presumption. He didn't sin against knowledge that he had. It was not a willful, deliberate affront to God. He was not willfully choosing that. Hebrews, I want you to look in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 6. No, chapter 10. I'm going to give you a quick lesson on two of the most controversial scriptures that we have. The first one is in Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10. I'm going to read this one first. Hebrews 10, verses 26 and 27. For if we deliberately go on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire about to consume the adversaries. Now, what on earth does that mean? Well, we go back to chapter 6 and in verses 26 and 27, I think. Let me get it here. Chapter 6. No, it's not there. It's toward the first of that chapter, I think. Okay. Chapter, verse 4. I'm a little bit ahead of myself. For it is impossible to renew to repentance those who were once enlightened, once enlightened, in other words, they once knew the truth, who tasted the heavenly gift. You eat something, it becomes part of you. They tasted the heavenly gift and they shared in the Holy Spirit, who tasted God's good word and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away. This is because to their own harm they are re-crucifying the Son of God and holding him up to contempt. Now, you have to put those two verses together. What are those verses talking about? Well, I will say it and then try to explain it. I believe they're talking about the sin unto death. Those who believe that you can apostatize, you can sin and God will take your salvation away. And there are, we've had people even in Southern Baptist life who held that view. Dr. Dale Moody, who taught at Southern Seminary for many years, is that chapter 10 verses that got him into believing that a Christian could be lost, that he didn't believe in eternal security. Well, what do they mean? There is a sin that is only mentioned one time in the Bible. It's mentioned over in 1 John and it's called the sin unto death. Now, that sin is something Christians commit. It's not the unpardonable sin. That's what lost individuals, un-Christians, commit the unpardonable sin. Now, what is that? Well, that's to attribute the works of God to Satan and to disregard God. And I have met one person in my life in our ministry that I believe had committed the unpardonable sin. In Kansas City, we visited with a couple that came every Sunday. They were a couple that would be in their 50s probably, maybe 60s. And he was very happy. And so I'd come to church. Carol Ann and I visited. And he told me, he said, oh, there was a time when I knew that I needed to be saved, but he said, I just wasn't ready. And he said, now then, I don't have any inclination that God wants me to be saved. He said, I'd like to be saved, but I don't believe I can. I told Carol Ann going home, he's committed the unpardonable sin. She said no to God, and after God finally said, okay. You want it that way? You got it. And unbelievers can commit the unpardonable sin. But the sin unto death, it's mentioned in 1 John, but it's evidenced throughout Scripture. I believe David committed the sin unto death. Now you say, why? Because after his sin with Bathsheba and killing her husband and all the episodes surrounding that, the sword never left his house for his entire life. His house was dysfunction. His adversary was his son who tried to steal the kingdom away from him. Everything about his life turned sour personally. Though he was forgiven of God and used of God, but still he was suffering the consequences of his actions. He had a chance to redeem his relationship with his son. I won't go into that. But when Absalom was near the point where he left in rebellion, David had a chance to get with him. But when Absalom came, he refused to be with him. So he did it to himself. But the sin unto death is a sin where God will either kill you or you will live with extraordinary consequences of what you've done the rest of your life. Now I know we're all going to live with consequences of what we've done, but there is a time where you will live with severe consequences that are irreversible. You're living with the actions of a sin that is never going to be the same again. And so I believe that when he talks in Hebrews 10 about fiery indignation and all these things, judgment, come back to chapter 6, he's referring to the sin unto death. Now I preached this at First Church Dallas. I've told you this before, but I'm old and remember that. When I was in Dallas, I was what I would call a topical biblical preacher. I preached from the text and tried to be true to the text. But I was not an expository preacher. Now Dr. Criswell spent his life being an expository preacher. He could preach. One of the greatest sermons I ever heard him preach was on one phrase, James, the half-brother of our Lord. I was absolutely stunned and amazed at how it was marvelous. But he preached the Word. So I told Carolinus, Adam has to start preaching expositorily. So I began to pray about it, show you God has a sense of humor. He told me to preach the Hebrews. Now there is not another book anywhere in the Bible that's as difficult to get through than Hebrews is. But God said I want you to do that. So I'm preaching away verse by verse. And when I got to these problem verses, they just made sense. You see, we have a tendency to take a verse and take it out of context and make a big issue of some doctrine out of one verse in the context. But when I got to chapter 6 and chapter 10 in Hebrews, because I started with chapter 1, they made sense to me. So I preached just what I said to you. Chapter 10 is referring to chapter 6 and it refers to the sin and the death. Ms. Criswell met me at the altar after the service. She said, where did you get that? I said, I don't know. I said, no telling. I probably got it somewhere because I do research. I said, I started in verse 1 and when I got there, that just made sense to me. She called Dr. Criswell Dubb and she said, Dubb always walked around that verse. He would never deal with it. He walked around it. I just wanted to know where you got it. Well, I don't know that that's right, but I really believe that there is a sin unto death. We take sin much too lightly. I can sin we think sometimes because God will forgive me. Or He's already forgiven me so I can live like I want to. That's not the way it goes. There is a sin unto death. And it's a sin against knowledge. It's a sin that you know better but you do it anyway. It's deliberate. It's not accidental. It's deliberate. It's a choice you make and you know you're disobeying God and you do it anyway. And where that line is, God only knows. But I can tell you as a believer, I want to be very careful that I don't commit the sin unto death. I know I sin. And I always thank God for the forgiveness. It's mine because of my relationship with Him. But I don't want to be guilty of committing a sin unto death. I think that's what he's talking about. And so the sin that Paul is talking about in verse 13 here, he's talking about it in the context that he didn't know better when he persecuted Christians. He didn't know who God was and who Jesus was. But now he understood. But he said, I did these things in ignorance, but that's no excuse. He said, I received mercy. Isn't that a great praise? I received mercy. Look in your heart. Remember the worst thing you ever did or thought. In spite of all that, God gave you mercy. We don't want justice. We want mercy. And Paul is caught up in this. This is the way I was, but in spite of all of that, God gave me mercy and He entrusted the riches of Christ, which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, He entrusted it to me. Wow! He could never get over that. And I asked my granddad one day. He preached 54 years and died when he was 76 years old. I can't tell you that story. I don't have time to do that. But I asked him one day, I said, Granddad, when do you stop getting nervous when you preach? Because every time I get up to preach, there's always a degree of nervousness about it. He looked back at me and said, Jimmy, he said, when you stop getting nervous, you need to stop preaching. And here's the reason. We are proclaiming the riches of Christ to people who desperately need to hear it. And that's nothing to take lightly. Do I get nervous because I don't like preaching? No, I preach in front of tens of thousands of people. I don't get nervous speaking in front of people, but I do get nervous when I realize my job is to preach the Gospel and not mess it up. And that's what Paul, he's still amazed. That's what I mentioned about Bill Anderson. Bill could never get away from fact. He had no background in ministry. He had no one in his family that ever was a preacher or ever involved in ministry. And he was not saved until he was a senior in high school. And he could never get over the fact that he had no experience in the Gospel and nothing to commend himself to God, and in spite of it, God called him to preach. But that's the way I feel. I remember my call to preach as much as I remember when I got saved. It was a dramatic moment. And you'll laugh at this. I don't know why I said this. When I surrendered to preach on a Saturday night in a youth revival back in Jacksonville, Texas, when my dad introduced me and said that I was surrendering to the Gospel ministry, he asked me if I wanted to say something. And I don't know why I said it, but I said, I don't want any of you to feel sorry for me. Why did I say that? I don't know. I guess because at that time, I'd get knots in my stomach just giving a part in the training unit. You know, we used to have parts. Everybody would read a part out of the quarterly. And I look back and think, who on earth am I that God would call me to preach? I mean, I was shy. When I made my profession of faith, my dad was the pastor. I wouldn't even go down and shake his hand. I just went and sat down on the front row. I mean, I was a shy kid. Nobody would believe that now. I mean, I'm not shy anymore, but I was in those early years. It amazed me that God would call me to preach. I used to lay awake nights thinking about what my life would be like if my dad wasn't a preacher. I never rebelled against him being a preacher, but I used to think, what would it be like if my dad had a grocery store or sold insurance or something? So for him to call me to preach, it was a stretch. It's kind of what Paul's talking about. Who am I to be entrusted with the Gospel? He said, I received mercy. He was a recipient of the incredible grace from God. And the very thought of his past life humbled him. He felt he was the chief of sinners. He was not an ordinary man. In every way he was extraordinary. He saw himself in the light of the Gospel and he confessed that in the light of the Gospel, in the light of the riches of Christ, I'm the chief of sinners. That's how he understood it. He was a general in Satan's army. He wasn't a private. He was not just an ordinary sinner. He was a chief of sinners. God delivered him from his ignorance and enlisted him and used him as a trophy of grace. His grace was merciful and powerful and deceiving and glorious. God's grace changed the hatred and unbelief of Saul of Tarsus into the faith and love of the Apostle Paul. Amazing that God did that. Verse 14, he says, The grace of thy Lord overflowed along with faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. That word overflowed is another word that we could use to understand it. Superabounded. Overflowed and superabounded toward him. And the result of God's grace was the experience of love and forgiveness that only devoted believers can possess. Verse 15, this saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And I am the worst of them. And he was literally declaring that he was the most prominent sinner. It was a remarkable statement. He wasn't saying this in bragging. He wasn't saying this to shock anybody. That's how he saw himself. The word trustworthy there, this is a trustworthy word, appears five times in the pastoral epistles and it always refers to something that's very, very important. Something very important. Verse 16, Paul's emphasis here is to illustrate the amazing grace of God that would transform a sinner like him. He was an example for everyone who would be saved through the gospel. Verse 17 is a doxology. He gets so excited about it. Verse 17, he just burst into a doxology. And let me get to it again. I'll read it. Verse 17, Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. He just couldn't contain himself. He burst into a doxology. And he described God as the King eternal, meaning He's the ruler of all history and the creation of time itself. Literally, that phrase means King of the ages. Number two, He's immortal. He can't suffer any decay or corruption. Three, He's invisible, but He's fully revealed in Jesus Christ even though God is invisible. He is the only God, which means He is unique with no competitors. He's incomparable. He's glorious. In one short sentence, he's saying a great doxology. You can kind of see it building. He gets to thinking about the riches of Christ and the gospel that's been entrusted to Him and what His past was like. And he gets so excited, he just bursts into a doxology there in verse 17. And as such, God is worthy of all honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. Now you know the word Amen. You might remember when A.F.S.M. Lockridge came and preached on one of our anniversaries here. I think he preached his sermon that he called Amen. I wanted him to preach Lordship of Christ. That's the one that everybody can remember. And he did that too. He preached both day, morning and night that day. But Paul is just saying God is deserving of all honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. Put an exclamation point after that. To God belongs majesty and power. Amen is an emphatic. It incurs that the things that he just said are justified and correct. And remember that at that time, Ephesus was one of the four great cities of the ancient world. There was Rome and Alexandria and Antioch. And then there was Ephesus. Four of the main cities, major cities of ancient times. And at that time, the population was about a quarter of a million people. About 250,000 people in Ephesus. So it was a major city. Its location on the Aegean Sea made it a great city for commerce. Traffic to come in on ships and then go on an amazing system of roads that Rome had created. And the most impressive building in Ephesus was the Temple of Artemis. By the Greeks, it was called Artemis. By the Romans, it was called the Temple of Diana. Oh, and by the way, Ephesus was the Sanctuary City. Now you've never heard of Sanctuary City until recently, the last 20 or 30 years. But Ephesus was a Sanctuary City. And if a criminal could get to Ephesus, he'd be safe. Couldn't arrest him in Ephesus. And so it was the center of the worship of Diana which was a sexual perversion. There were many sacred prostitutes who plied their trade as an act of worship to Diana. It was a center of emperor worship as well which means that it drew a lot of influential and wealthy Roman citizens who had been caught up in emperor worship. It provided an open door for materialism and immorality and pagan religions and unbridled pleasures like a cafeteria of bad choices. I mean, it was an open and pagan city. And Paul spent nearly three years in Ephesus according to Acts 20, verse 31, and he strongly warned them against false teachers that would attack the church and insisted that the elders have an ongoing posture to protect the church from heresy and a firm commitment to each other and to the ministry of the gospel. He saw all this coming. And so that's Ephesus. Now in verse 18, the word instruction comes in there. And the word instruction is the same word used in verse 5 that indicates, again, that Paul was not suggesting something. He was saying this is what you have to do. He was demanding that he does something. The prophecies mentioned here were probably the good things said about him when he was ordained. He was ordained and Paul really put a lot of significance in the ordination of Timothy as he mentions it several times in his epistles about his ordinations. And so he wanted him to remember the prophecies made about him, the good words spoken about him. And in Acts 13, 1-3, Luke talks about fight the good fight. And Paul's talking to Timothy about fighting the good fight which tells us that he's going to need everything within him to emerge victorious because a battle is not going to be easy. It's not going to be easy. It's never easy to combat heresy. It's a tough, tough time. Southern Baptists went through that years ago. There began to be those in our Baptist schools that would deny the authority of the Scripture. They would deny the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus. It was a move in the direction toward the denial of faithfulness to the Word of God. And it was a tough battle because, number one, none of us have ever been trained in controversy. We didn't have a single course for seminary about controversy. How do you deal with controversy? But here we were in the middle of controversy. People said, why don't you get into it? I didn't get into it. I sucked into it. I never set out to be a crusader. I never intended at all to create a ripple in Southern Baptists' life. But my dad always said when I was growing up, if something's good, you need to be for it. If it's bad, you need to be against it. And at that time, the trustee at Baylor and chairman of the academic affairs committee, and they had just approved putting a man that I disapproved of. They had approved putting a man in as chairman of the religion department that I didn't know and did not approve. And he had written a book which he brought and gave to me proudly. And I read it and nearly had nausea. I never read anything like that. Complete, total heresy. And so I took a stand. I thought Baylor would like to know. Surprise! Even the preachers, seven of them, good friends who were trustees, when the vote was taken whether to sustain my concern, they did not vote for me. They all voted against me. And during the controversy, they would say, well, name the names. Well, if we name the name of a professor, you're attacking the character of somebody. You can't attack the character. So if we name names, they accused us of character assassination. They didn't accuse us of being obscure. We couldn't win. It's hard when you're dealing with heresy. And that's what Paul is warning Timothy. Every fiber of your being is going to have to be challenged in this fight. It's not going to be an easy fight. But you need to link what you're doing with faith and good conscience, verse 19. Faith refers to a personal commitment to Christ. And he'd already mentioned good conscience and linking faith with personality, morality, was an important thing to do. And this means, this simply means that correct belief alone does not always result in a Christian lifestyle. Our faith must produce a life that honors the Lord, not just a lot of pleasant sounding words about such a life. Verse 19, he says, some have rejected these and have shipwrecked their faith. The word reject there speaks of a violent and willful rejection. They didn't just slip into this. They didn't just get snookered. This was a deliberate rejection of the things of God. And he mentions Hymenaeus and Alexander. And they've been guilty of willful rejection of Christ and the obedient lifestyle that should come from being part of the family of God. So their lives became shipwrecked. Verse 20, he mentioned these two men who apparently had led the intrusion of heresy in the Ephesian church. And he says, I have delivered them to Satan. And I think what that means is he had already dismissed them from the church fellowship and Timothy ought to stand by him and see that they were dismissed. He had already made the decision, but he wanted Timothy to back him up. And so as we go through these epistles to Timothy, I think I will quit there. I'll just make this statement that this chapter is a detailed description of the assignment Timothy received in how to deal with the heresy in Ephesus. Every chapter now for the remaining part of Timothy and 1 Timothy, every chapter is going to deal with one of those commands, one of those instructions. And so when Brother Jack comes back to talk about the second chapter, he'll be dealing with one of the instructions that Paul gave to Timothy about how to answer heresy. Well, we're going to have to quit next Sunday. Brother Jack will be teaching. And we'll go on through. But the pastoral epistles were written to individuals who had responsibility in churches. The focus of the church that Paul's dealing with is Ephesus. It's Ephesus which had such a great beginning and had become victimized by the heresy. And what heresy does, heresy will do several things. Number one, it will create chaos. God's not the author of chaos. When you find any kind of turmoil and dysfunction anywhere in a church, it's not of God. So just be aware of that. It's not of God. And number two, God didn't place any one of us in authority over the church. So get over yourself. Preacher, get over yourself. It's not about you. It's not about me. It's about the riches of the gospel in Jesus Christ. We can't let anything obscure that. Even defending the faith can't be done in a way that obscures the gospel. So the gospel's been entrusted to us. And Paul could never get over the fact that as chief of the centers that he was, that God still entrusted him with the most incredible privilege of all to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. To me, it's an incomparable privilege. When I was in Kansas City, we had a great pastor's conference. And at one of the pastor's conferences, I made the statement, don't remember whether I was speaking or just discussing, that if you don't like your church, and you've been there two years, look in the mirror. The church will be just like you. After that, one of the men came up to me and he said, well, if I can get the church to do what I want to do, I used to be a lawyer. I'll go back and be a lawyer. Well, I told him, I said, I've got nothing to fall back on. I don't have any place else to go. The church never fired me. I just have to go find someplace else to preach. Because it's burned into my heart and into my soul. God called me to encourage people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it's been a privilege and a joy to do that. And I'm not one of the pastors that's going to tell you a lot of troubles that deacons gave me and all the mean treatment they've done. I always was treated nicer than I was served. Always had great... To this day, my greatest, dearest friends are deacons. I don't know. I'd like to believe it's because I'm nice. And not vicious and mean. I know good and well it's just the grace of God. God probably knew I couldn't handle a lot of opposition. Now when we're fighting for the Bible, I didn't have a problem with that. But I never had a problem in the churches. Fred Swank, who pastored the same church, Sagamore Hill Baptist Church, was a Methodist church when he started preaching years ago. And he preached 50 some odd years at Sagamore Hill. But he would always... We've been passing... Well, whose church will do this? And Swank said, We'll do it. I said, Fred. I said, Fred, how can you answer for the church? He said, well, I just try to find where they're going and get out ahead of them. I know what they'll do. I know what they'll do. And so, what a great privilege for us to have the opportunity to just have any part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There's no unimportant people in Christ. Everybody's somebody. And we ought to treat everybody as though they're part of the family and we love them. Treat them with respect and encourage them. And preach the gospel. Amen? Paul, thank you for your love and grace. Thank you for Paul's letter that will continue to bless us as we go through it. And may we apply these things to our lives as we stand for the truth and walk in your grace and receive your mercy. We're grateful in Jesus' name.