Hope For The Worst

So there’s some truth to what
Ron has said. Some of the truth is that, yes,
I am preaching today. It’s not true that I stepped
up and decided I would be the first. That was the day that
was left over. So with that, a lot of this preparation
has been 11th hour kind of changes and things. including this morning,
but I hope that what the Lord has provided me will be beneficial
to everybody here. One of the 11th hour changes
was, as I was working on it last night, I get a text from Ron
and he said, do you have a sermon title? I thought, and I thought
for about 10 seconds, I said, how about Hope for the Worst?
And I thought, wow, that’s really funny. So that’s what stuck. This sermon title is Hope for
the Worst and I think by the end you’ll see it’s an apt title.
We all have our favorite Bible verses, don’t we? Those of us
who have walked with Christ. Last April in our New Testament
reading, a verse was read that I claimed for myself quite a
few years ago. And these verses that we have
or that are ours are those that make us feel closest to God,
those that reveal who we are maybe more, they give us comfort,
they show us God’s grace, his mercy more than any other My
verse is 1 Timothy 1.15. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. As a new believer,
I started reading the Bible, and my version was the New King
James Version. It’s a copy of God’s Word that
my sister bought for my wife and I six years prior, before
we were converted. And in that version, it doesn’t
say of whom I am the foremost, but rather, of whom I am chief. And so, For 20 years I’ve considered
myself the chief of sinners and so if I transpose chief and what
other version there is, that’s why. I placed my faith in Christ
when I was 29 and up until that time I pretty much hated God
and anything to do with Him. And that transferred into my
hatred towards Christians. I would go out of my way to be
rude, mean, I would cuss more around them, and they pretty
much got my wrath if they were on my bad side. Later, when I became a Christian,
then I saw that I was very much like Paul in that regard. Before
we get into our text, though, I want to review a bit of the
author, the author behind our text, the Apostle Paul. And so
I want to read three verses out of the book of Acts. And just
to set us up for who we’re dealing with, who said he was the original
chief of sinners, the first reading is out of Acts 7. And it’s towards
the end, verse 52, and we’ll begin where Stephen is wrapping
up his sermon. And he says, which of the prophets
did your fathers not persecute, and they killed those who announced
beforehand the coming of the righteous one, whom you have
now betrayed and murdered, who you received the law as delivered
by angels and did not keep it. And now when they heard these
things, they were enraged and they ground their teeth at him.
But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the
glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And
he said, behold, I see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing
at the right hand of God. But they cried out with a loud
voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then
they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses
laid their garments down at the feet of a young man named Saul.
And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, have
received my spirit. And falling to his knees, he
cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against
them. And when they had said this,
he fell asleep, and Saul approved. of his execution. In Acts 8,
2-3, devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over
him. But Saul was ravaging the church and entering house after
house. He dragged off men and women
and committed them to prison. Acts 9, 1-5, But Saul, still breathing threats
and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high
priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus,
so that if he found any belonging to the way, men or women, he
might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he went on his way, he
approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around
him. And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him,
Saul, Saul, why Are you persecuting me? And he said, Who are you,
Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom
you are persecuting. It’s important to note that here
Jesus identifies the persecution of his people as persecution
of himself. So with that background laid,
would you please turn in your Bibles to 1 Timothy 1, and we’ll
read verses 12 through 16. We’ll be focusing on verses Mostly
15, but we will get into verse 16 as well. But I just want to
get a start on the whole flow here. This is Paul writing, verse
12. 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 and 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. The context in which we find
our passage is that Timothy was a young pastor in the church
of Ephesus. Years before Timothy was even
a pastor, Paul had told the Ephesian elders that fierce wolves would
come and try and ruin the church. Paul wrote to Timothy to help
him to meet the problems of doctrine, discipline, church training,
which were becoming increasingly urgent. We note that while this
letter and all the other pastoral epistles were written to individuals,
they apply to the church as a whole, and they apply to us today. It
is within this context that we find the trustworthy saying.
So I want to spend a few minutes discussing, well, what is a trustworthy
saying? There are five trustworthy sayings
in the New Testament, and each one they appear to express a
truth that has become so universally known that they just become axioms. People just use them. I enjoyed
how one commentator said that it sounds like a slogan from
the early church, possibly from a hymn or creed or catechism.
We could almost imagine seeing it on posters or bumper stickers
for sale in the Christian bookstores in Asia Minor. The amazing thing
about reading God’s Word that after 20 years of reading it,
you always come away with something new. Here I was last April and
I heard the words spoken that Christ Jesus came to save sinners
of whom I am chief. And it got me wondering, what
part of that is actually part of the faithful saying? Was it,
is it the whole thing, Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners of whom I am chief, is of whom I am chief part of
the faithful saying or was that something that was just Paul’s
commentary? And I came to a dogmatic conclusion. Sort of. This morning. But I’m not going
to tell you what that is until the end. But first I want to
talk about what the word trustworthy means. Trustworthy in our Bibles
is a Greek word, pistos, which can mean trusty, worthy of confidence,
believe, faithful, sure, firm, reliable. Several of these words
are used in our various translations. Ultimately, what Paul is saying,
he wants his listeners to perk up and pay attention because
what he says is important. It’s not a hunch, it’s not a
guess, and it’s not his opinion. This isn’t like, if you look
in your Bibles up to verses three and four, this isn’t like certain
persons that taught different doctrine and devoted themselves
to myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations. What
Paul is gonna say isn’t a speculation. And it’s not like the certain
persons of verse six who wandered away into vain discussion. What
we’re discussing this morning isn’t vain discussion. What we’re
discussing is a sure thing, it’s solid, it is trustworthy, and
it demands our attention. I compare this to a little bit
like climbing mountains. I’ve climbed several mountains,
quite a few actually, and there’s a particularly nasty mountain
range in Colorado, it’s the Elk Range, it’s down by Aspen. But
it’s also one of the most photographed places in the country. It’s the
Maroon Bells. They are beautiful. But to climb
them is a nightmare because all of the rock, they call it dinner
plates, the rock is loose and you grab it and it just comes
out. It doesn’t give you any firm grip. You can’t trust it.
And when you’re climbing them, you’re always reminding your
partners, don’t trust anything. My climbing partner was going
up and he grabbed a rock and a rock the size of a microwave
came out, and he had to let it go. So this is junk rock, and
it’s scary. That’s not our verse. Hendrickson says that trustworthy
is like granite. I’ve climbed on granite. Granite
is wonderful. If you know Long’s Peak, it’s
granite. It has a face, I forget how many
thousand, it’s a thousand feet high, it’s a diamond, it’s beautiful. The rock doesn’t move. It is
solid. You can grab it. You can do whatever you want
on it. A horse tooth is made out of granite. You grab stuff.
It’s going to stay. You don’t even worry about it.
It is solid. It’s sure. It’s firm. And you
can rely on it. Those are the type of mountains
I like to climb. Paul says that this verse in 15 as well is not
only trustworthy, it is also deserving of full acceptance.
By full acceptance, it means that everybody should believe
it, the young, the old, the smart, the not so smart, the rich, the
poor. And not only should everybody
believe it, but also they should believe it in its entirety, not
just part of it, but all of it. Ultimately, the saying, though,
is trustworthy because the God who promises salvation in Jesus
is trustworthy. He’s a God who cannot lie, and
he said it, so we can trust it. So I want to open this up this
morning under three heads, and then close with some application.
The first part of this passage, I just want to bring out the
arrival of the divine Savior. Look at verse 15. The saying
is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ
Jesus came into the world. Who is it that came into the
world to save sinners? It was Christ Jesus. He came
into the world. But there’s something about his
name, Christ Jesus. Bound up in these two words are
all that he is. Christ is the anointed king who
came to redeem and become the earthly Jesus at the incarnation. We just celebrated Christmas,
and we spend so much time, I think, and this Christmas more than
others. We spend so much time focusing
on the baby Jesus in the manger, and that’s great, And we think
about how he doesn’t cry, so the song goes. And we think about
that, but we, I think, sometimes miss the fact that he didn’t
become, he existed forever in eternity past as the word, and
that he came in in the incarnation as Jesus. So I think we need
to take that more into account, more often in our thoughts, especially
during Christmas. But as the existed part, as part
of the Trinity as the second person, as the son, and then
he entered into the world at the incarnation. In John, we
see that Jesus was the Word, who then became Jesus at the
incarnation. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the
beginning with God. All things were made through
him, and without him, not anything made that was made. In the words
Christ Jesus came into the world, we see the incarnation. We have
other verses. And the word became flesh and
dwelt among us. Jesus, who is the image of the
invisible God, Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact
imprint of his nature. And he upholds the universe by
the word of his power. Yet at his incarnation, God made
Jesus for a little while lower than the angels. It is this Christ Jesus that
came into the world, the second person of the Trinity, Emmanuel,
God with us. Verse 16 says that Christ Jesus
came into the world, so he actually had a location that he came into. We spent some time a few weeks
ago in our adult discipleship class talking about what does
the word world mean? And of course in this passage
it means the sphere of where Jesus came and what where he
arrived and what he was then going to do. But so often in
the case of the word world in our Bibles, it has more to do
with just a sphere or this place. The definition that we used back
then was, world means, and can be defined to, and is most awfully
used as, the ungodly multitude. the whole mass of men alienated
from God and therefore hostile to the cause of Christ. Bringing
us a Greek lesson, Hendrickson notes, the coming into the world
includes incarnation, suffering, and death. In the Greek, the
word sinners immediately follows the word world. Not, as most versions have it,
like we have it, because this is how we think, came into the
world to save sinners, It’s came into the world sinners to save.
The juxtaposition of the word world and sinners shows that
the world is an ethical concept. It is the sphere of sinful and
rebellious humanity that Jesus came. Carson notes the world,
or frequently this world, is not the universe, but the created
order, especially of human beings and human affairs, in rebellion
against its maker. I know that there’s some Star
Wars fans here. We watched Star Wars the other night, and I thought,
oh, that’s a wonderful reference. So just to help you guys out. So there’s a scene in Star Wars
where Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi come up to, and they’re
overlooking Mos Eisley Space Station. And Obi-Wan tells him,
you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. I thought that was pretty cool,
and I thought if I had my own Star Wars version of my Bible,
I could say, Christ Jesus came into this wretched hive of scum
and villainy to save sinners. I might work with that. That’s
our first point. First point is the arrival of
the divine Savior, but now let’s consider the mission of the divine
Savior. Verse 15 says, Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners. As just mentioned, the Greek
text says Jesus Christ came into the world, sinners to save. So
I want to deal with what sinner is before I talk about saved
is. So I had about three pages of
what it means to sin. And I got rid of all of those.
So sin is missing the mark. God has given us his will, we
know what his will is, we’ve missed the mark. We are born
in sin, all of us absolutely, inherently sinful. We go through
life and we sin. We sin because we’re sinners,
and we’re sinners because we sin, and we’re born in sin. That’s
the bottom line. All of us know that we are sinners.
We know that we’ve fallen short of God’s perfection, and if we
are comparing ourselves with other people, To get our idea
of what sin is, we’re not going to come to a full understanding
of what that is, because we’re always going to find people worse
than us, and we’re going to think we’re better than them. Well,
our standard is God, and we find it in the Ten Commandments, we
find it in the Sermon on the Mount, and if we just read our
Bibles, we can figure out that we fall short of what God would
have us to be. That is sin. One definition I
really thought was neat as I was going through and I didn’t cut
this out was sinning is any feeling or thought or speech or action
that comes from a heart that does not treasure God over all
things. So if that’s you, you’re a sinner. Sin is a barrier between us and
God and the excuse, well nobody’s perfect, doesn’t work. If not
dealt with, sin will mean eternal separation from God. God says
the wages of sin is death. But the good news is that Christ
Jesus came to save sinners. Before Jesus came into the world,
the angel told Joseph, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to
take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is
from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you
shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from
their sins. Jesus of himself said, for the
Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. And he also said, I
did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. It’s obvious
that Jesus’ mission was to save sinners. That’s why he came. He saved sinners based on his
life of perfect righteousness, to the law of God and through
his suffering and death on the cross. His obedience to the law
fulfilled the requirements of the law for sinners and his death
on the cross paid the sinners penalty for their sins. In his
resurrection we see the power of God to save sinners. He saves
sinners when they believe in him and his work on their behalf.
Earlier Paul said that grace overflowed for him with the faith
and love that are in Christ Jesus. That’s how he said he was saved.
That’s no different than how any sinner is saved. It is by
God’s unmerited favor, his grace, it is by faith, even if our faith
is small like a mustard seed, we reach out in faith and hold
on to Christ. So we’ve seen the arrival of
our divine savior, we’ve seen the mission of the divine savior,
But now I want you to see the patience of our divine Savior. Look at verses 15 and 16. 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. In verse 16, Paul explains that
he was shown mercy as the worst of sinners. It was so that Jesus
Christ might display his perfect patience and to be an example
for those who were to believe in him. So now the question is,
how is divine patience shown in this case to Paul? I think
we need to look at what he means by what it means to be the chief
of sinners or the foremost sinner to see God’s patience. In our opening, we saw the witness
of Paul’s life before he came to Christ. In 1 Timothy 1, 12
through 13, we can hear Paul’s own summation of his life before
Christ. 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. To sum it up, Paul was a bad
dude. When Paul says, Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners of whom I am chief or foremost, was it him only
reflecting on his former life? Or did it have any application
to his present condition? Many of us regret our former
way of life before we became Christians. And that’s how I
really identified with Paul, I think, early on when I saw
this verse. But notice our verse, it says, Paul says, of whom I
am the foremost. He doesn’t say he was the foremost,
he says he is the foremost, if I may. Paul doesn’t say he was. One commentator says, Paul never
got away from the fact that Christian salvation was intended for sinners. And the more he increased his
grasp of the magnitude of God’s grace, the more he deepened the
consciousness of his own naturally sinful state until he could write
of whom I am chief. Another writes, this phrase may
seem extravagant, but the truth is that in proportion as a man
fixes his ideal high, in proportion as he appreciates the possibilities
of what Saint Paul calls life in Christ, in that proportion
will his actual progress in the spiritual life appear poor and
unworthy of the grace with which he has been endowed. It is noteworthy
that the apostle does not say of whom I was chief, but I am,
by the present tense making it the abiding sense of personal
sinfulness. Is that the case with some of
us? The more we know Christ, the more we see our own sinfulness?
Do we see ourselves as the chief of sinners? But in that, we also
see more of the manifold grace of God in our lives. So here’s
the 11th hour change I made this morning. I had a dogmatic statement. The dogmatic statement was that
the faithful saying was limited to the eight Greek words that
form the first part of the sentence, that Christ Jesus came in the
world to save sinners. and that the rest was commentary.
But then I got to thinking, what are some of our own faithful
sayings that we have today? And the one I came up in, now
any analogy, they’re all gonna be flawed, right? Because they’re
not totally true in human sense. So the one I came up with was,
only certain things in life are death and taxes. Well, yeah,
that might be an apt thing. You know, to compare this thing
with? Death and taxes. So, as we’re saved, this is the
11th hour change. When we’re saved, we know we’re
bad people. We know that we are sinners.
We come to faith in Christ knowing that we’re bad. Some of us may
have seen that we were the chief of sinners at the time, but I’m
guessing a lot of us just saw that we were sinful. And we still
consider other people worse than us. Obviously, Hitler is probably
worse than us, okay? We don’t really personalize the
chief until later. It’s sort of like death and taxes.
It sort of applies to everybody, even the little baby in the back
room. Eventually, that’s going to happen.
But the baby isn’t paying taxes. Taxes come later. The more the
person grows, the matures, they get a job, they start making
money, they start buying things, selling things. Now they’re paying
taxes. I think it’s a little like this
verse. We all come to faith in Christ
the same because we see our need of a sinner, a closer, or a savior,
sorry, and the closer we get to Christ, the more we understand
our own sinfulness before him, then we are able to possibly
say, I am the chief of sinners. Maybe you’re like me. Each year,
each, well, maybe month, maybe week, maybe each day, You think,
I’m gonna, I’ve just, I’m, God just take me, why don’t you just
take me? We want to read our Bibles more,
we want to speak more gracious words, we want to be a better
representative of Christ, and we fail and we fail and we fail.
Last week, we sang the hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.
Let me know if these words mean anything to you. Oh to grace
how great a debtor, Daily, I’m constrained to be. Let that goodness
like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander,
Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.
Here’s my heart, oh, take and seal it. Seal it for that courts
above. Each day we come to God and we
need fresh supplies of grace. Paul says that as the foremost,
Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example
to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. Paul
was the example of Jesus’ perfect patience. But how? I think partly
it’s shown in the fact that Paul wasn’t killed on the Damascus
Road. He had every right, Jesus had
every right to take him right then. But I think it’s also shown
that Paul wasn’t allowed to live a full, long life of essentially
happiness and bliss on this earth apart from Christ? No, he came
in, he invaded his life, and he saved him. So there’s a sense
in which Paul was a perfect example of Christ’s patience because
he saved him, despite how bad Paul was before he was converted.
But also because Paul, he says, he is the chief of sinners. He said, of whom I am chief,
or who I am foremost. So I think this manifests God’s
patience with Paul because each day Paul is in need of new grace
to keep him, to keep him in the faith. We’re only saved by God’s
grace, not by what we do. Just like so many of us, people
witness our sin, but yet we are still saved by grace. We too
are examples of God’s patience. As I said before many times,
I wonder why God just doesn’t take me. Well, I guess I’m here
to grow in grace, and attempt to be an example to those who
might follow after me. Poor example, but an example.
Just by way of conclusion, a couple of quick points. To the believers,
focus on your sins more than the sins of others. You’ll grow
in humility. But also, thank God for outpatientness
to the one who hasn’t placed their faith in Christ, don’t
test God’s patience. Today is the day of salvation.
You’re not guaranteed tomorrow. Also, when Paul says that he
received mercy because he acted ignorantly in unbelief, don’t
think that you’re sitting here unbelieving because you’re ignorant.
Many of us have heard many sermons, many messages, we’ve heard the
gospel many times. We cannot claim ignorance. We
must believe. Also, realize that as Christ
came to pay for sinners’ sins, He also died to save the chief
of sinners. If He can die and save the chief
of sinners, He can save you. Our great God, we do just praise
you, Lord, for this day. We thank you for this message,
and we thank you for the Apostle Paul and his example to all of
us about your grace and your mercy that you showed to him
in superabundance. We thank you, Lord, that you can save the chief of sinners
We thank you, Lord, that you can save each and every one of
us. If anybody here thinks that their sin is too great for God
to save them, let Paul be the example. He was greater than
anyone here. And Lord, for those of us who
do know you, we pray, Lord, that you would just work and usher
grace to keep us mindful of the fact that we are saved by grace
and not by what we do. In Jesus’ name, we pray.