Thank God for Salvation 1 Timothy 1:12-17 | Adult Sunday School

Good to see each one this morning. We are going to continue in our study this morning in Paul's letter to Timothy. We call it First Timothy. As we come back to studying house rules for God's church. There's a set of notes.

If you haven't gotten one already, there's some back there on the countertop and there's some circulating around. So, grab a set of notes this morning as we continue in our study. Going to try not to touch this little podium because it wobbles.

They build them that way on purpose to keep the preachers from leaning on them, you know.

And that way...

Well, I invite you to open your Bibles, as I said, to First Timothy chapter one again and we continue in our study. As we saw last time and the time before, Paul is charging Timothy, this younger preacher, with his task of ministering in the city of Ephesus to the churches there.

House churches probably, smaller churches. And Paul is going to move on to northern Greece or Macedonia and leaving Timothy there for this very challenging ministry. One of the main problems that he was going to have to deal with was the invasion by false teachers and their perversion of the true apostolic doctrine.

And that, we saw, is the foundation of the church. So, it only is reasonable that he would start with this. You have to have a solid foundation for the church. And they came in and were promoting false teaching, which led to things like being occupied with myths and endless genealogies, and he said, and he said, that type of teaching promotes speculation.

People get involved in all kinds of speculative things and they never actually come to the truth or deal with it. And that was going to be a problem that he would have to deal with. Now that would be bad enough, but as we know, false teachers, they don't advertise themselves as false teachers.

They don't have t-shirts that say, I'm a false teacher. They don't ply their trade, which is damnable lies and heresies, out in the open. They masquerade as, Paul said, teachers of the truth, and in this case, teachers of the law.

Many of them, and maybe you've known some, they are really nice people, right? You've met some, I've known some false teachers, many of them really nice people. But remember the words of Jude. Jude said, certain persons, and he uses that same word that Paul uses twice here in 1 Timothy.

Certain persons have crept in unnoticed, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ. And Jude there uses that word master, despotess, because these false teachers don't want any kind of lordship at all.

They take the grace of God and they twist it and pervert it into licentiousness, some translations say, or sensuality. They use the grace of God as a covering for their own sins. And the actual fruit, Jude says, of their so-called ministries, they are hidden reefs, they are shepherds feeding themselves, and they're feeding themselves on the flock, consuming the flock, waterless clouds, fruitless trees, and so on.

So Jude is in full agreement with the apostle Paul and also with Peter and second Peter in describing false teachers in the church. Another characteristic of false teachers is that they pervert the word of God, and just like their real spiritual father Satan did in the garden, claiming to be teachers of the law, as we saw last time in the word of God, but they are without understanding.

They are without understanding because they are without the spirit of God. But that doesn't stop them from setting themselves up as teachers of the law, promoting themselves, and last time we saw the proper use of the law.

The law is to be used lawfully, as Paul said, even though it is good, inherently, intrinsically good. We saw, and this is just a quick review of what we saw last time, the purpose of the law. Why did God give the law?

To generate an awareness of our sin. And by the way, you can see that that is an act of God's grace, is it not? You ever think of the law that way? The giving of the law was an act of grace so we would know what our real need is.

To generate an awareness of our sin, to produce a sense of our guilt, to stir up more sin within us, to show us that the source of sin is within us. Can't blame anybody else, can't blame our upbringing, can't blame our environment, can't blame everything everybody wants to blame, right?

It's internal. And that sin kills us. And to show us the sinfulness of sin. And these things really are meant by God to perform a sort of a cyclical kind of a function. If you have an awareness of your sin, it's supposed to produce a sense of guilt and to then stir up more sin to produce a deeper sense of guilt and an awareness of our sin.

And ultimately, Paul says in Galatians, he said, to drive us to the cross. To drive us to the cross. God just doesn't leave us in that situation. The gospel is there for people who understand and have an awareness of their own sinfulness.

And they come to the end of themself and then they have no other alternative but to turn to the cross and the grace of God through Jesus Christ. All of this against the backdrop of the infinite holiness of God shows us that the law of God is good and holy and in the hands of the spirit of God, it's like an instrument to reveal sin in all of its ugliness.

And like a master artist, the spirit of God uses that to paint against the brilliant white backdrop of God's holiness. To understand sin, you need to understand the holiness of God. And they work together in scripture.

That's what the law is for. And so our study last time maybe seemed a little bit dark, kind of grim, a grim assessment of human nature. And it might lead someone to ask, okay, in all of this revelation from God through his law of the sin of man and of my personal sin, in all of this hideous description of the sin, the fact that it's universal, every person on the planet, that it brings us all under the just and righteous judgment of God, that the wages of sin is death, physical and spiritual, leaving us eternally damned.

And when we can see it all around us in our world and internally, someone might ask, is there hope for me? Is there any hope for me? But Paul, through the spirit of God, was doing what he always does.

He uses the law of God in its proper usage to indict men in their sin, all men everywhere in every generation from Adam and Eve to the present, to lock them up in the prison cell of guilt and death without any hope in and of themselves, but he doesn't leave them there.

Against this ugly, hopeless backdrop, personal sin and the just wrath of God, Paul proclaims the grace of God and that unmerited love of God expressed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because Paul knows that if a person does not see the grace of God against the backdrop of sin and their own personal guilt so that they're stripped of their natural tendency for self-righteousness, they will never understand the magnificent grace of God and all of its beauty and all of its love and all of its saving power.

So the discussion of the law in its proper use sets up what we'll see in our passage this morning. We're going to be looking at verses 12 through 17. Paul moves from God's law to God's grace and that grace is given, it's made real effective for personal, individual salvation in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And after this detailed and graphic description of the sins of the lawbreakers, the sinners and false teachers and so on, and as we said, Paul covers the sins of the two tables of the law, right? The first table relating to man's relationship with God and the second table relating to man's relationship with other people.

And he uses what's commonly called a vice list, okay, a vice list, that list of sins. And you see this elsewhere. He does it elsewhere, other writers do. It's a word you don't hear too much anymore, right?

Vice list or vice used to be a pretty common word. Law enforcement agencies used to have a squad called a vice squad. I don't know if they even have that anymore. I think it was because they didn't solve all the vice, I think they just legalized it.

And it did away with the need for a vice squad to handle the vices, right? And as I thought about that, I thought, yeah, you don't hear that word too much anymore. And I thought, no, no, no, no, wait a minute.

We still have a vice president, okay? Hey, topic for another time. But Paul wants to detail the sins of people as part of that convicting work of law. And after so much detail, the mention of the gospel, which he says in verse 11, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

It's as if he just has to all of a sudden stop and then praise God for salvation. And that brings us to rule number three in the church. House rule number three, thank God for salvation, which we'll see this morning.

Verses 12 through 17 in 1 Timothy. Let's commit our time to our Lord before we study and ask his blessing on us here today. Our Father, thank you for your word this morning and thank you for your spirit who is our resident teacher.

We know that it is only by your grace that we can gather here today and we pray that you would accomplish your purposes in every heart here through your word and that we would always then praise you for who you are and what you have accomplished through Christ.

We ask all these things in his name, amen. Well again, verse 11 wraps up Paul's discussion on the law, but it transitions right into the grace of God. He does that when he writes. Of course, he does that in Romans, right?

That great treatise on justification by faith. How does he start? He starts with condemning all men under sin and winds up, you are without excuse, oh man. And then he moves into the grace of God and salvation.

And so this topic launches him into the praise of God and thanksgiving. So the first thing we're going to see on your outline there is God's grace generates gratitude in the church. And that gratitude and that grace comes through Jesus Christ.

The object of Paul's gratitude is his savior, Jesus Christ, the one who paid for his sins on the cross. He mentions him in verse 12, 14, 16, and 17. He's the focal point of Paul's praise and Paul's thanksgiving.

He says in verse 12, I thank him who has given me strength, Jesus Christ our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service. Well it's through Christ that Paul has salvation and so it only makes sense that Paul would give thanks and praise to God.

There are so many passages we could use to illustrate the great truth that God became a man in order to die a man's death to pay in full the sins of his people. But for me, and I know you're familiar with this verse too, one of the richest verses in the New Testament is 2 Corinthians 5, 21, which really captures this great truth.

It says, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And here you see that exchange that God made, our sin for his righteousness. When Paul thanks Christ for the strength Jesus gave him, he's not necessarily referring to physical strength per se.

Of course God's sovereignty and his providential working would encompass that as well as we.

Need it.

But this word is usually used of religious or moral strength when he says, I thank him who has given me strength. The New Testament scholar William Mount says this, this strengthening is not a daily empowering but refers to his initial call to the ministry and the gifts he received that enabled him to perform his apostolic tasks.

Paul then identifies Christ as the one who empowered him. We could certainly think of many, many passages in scripture that would illustrate this. Probably one of the most pertinent ones is in the life of Paul himself right after he was saved.

This is Acts 9 .22. It says, but Saul, still called Saul, increased all the more in strength. How was that manifested? And confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

Remember he was going to Damascus with arrest warrants. He was going to arrest Christians, take them captive, haul them back down to Jerusalem, preside over their trial and public execution, and then go get some more, right?

But instead he got saved. His life was kind of interrupted on the road to Damascus by our Lord. And so what happened then? Well there was a real reversal because now the Jews of Damascus were trying to kill him.

But he increased more in strength and then was proving that Jesus was the Christ. Same apostle Paul, you're familiar with this verse, Ephesians 6 .10, be strong in the Lord and the power of his might, right?

So this strengthening that Paul is thanking God for is the strength and the power that God gives to perform his duties as he has called us to do them. And he says, Christ Jesus, our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service.

How would Christ know that he would be faithful? Well because Jesus knew he not only was going to have to give him strength and regeneration, but he was also going to have to provide the faith in order to believe in him as well, in the sovereign plan of God.

That is what he does. He provides the faith, he provides the repentance, he provides the strength to do whatever he calls us to do. If you have a ministry, it is strengthened and empowered by God himself.

And you should thank him for that as we all should. So God's grace generates gratitude because it is through Christ. Another feature of it, it's also personal, very personal. Verse 13, Paul says, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.

Eight times in this little passage, Paul uses I, and three times he uses me. It's very personal, I, I, me, I. Paul had a deep, deep gratitude to Christ because he knew that Christ had died for him personally, and he had a personal awareness of his own personal sin.

This is a work of the Holy Spirit. If you hear people talk about being filled with the Spirit, and it, it's, the description is some kind of a sense-oriented, whizzy kind of experience, that's not being filled with the Spirit.

You want to know what a Spirit-filled apostle looks like?

Right here.

He is filled with the Spirit, and he is grieving over his own sin. He says, I was a blasphemer. This is a violation of the first table of the law. It's, he blasphemed God. I mean, he was really good at it.

This is how men were to relate to God in the first table of the law. Paul shattered that all over the place. And he says, I was a persecutor. What's that relate to? Relates to people, how we relate to people.

So he blasphemed God, he persecuted the church. He shattered God's law all over the place. This, this would have, for him, naturally followed right after this discussion of the law, right? And Paul was an expert in the law.

He was a, he was Jewish, he was a Pharisee. He was trained by Gamaliel, one of the premier teachers of his day. He was well aware of the law, and when he was saved, it was, it must have been just cataclysmic for him to realize he had shattered that law all over the place.

Both tables of the law, as a blasphemer and as a persecutor. And then he just sort of encompasses it, and an insolent opponent. I can, it sort of reminds you of Acts 9, 4, the blasphemy against God and the persecution of the church, but it's like they all come together.

Remember the Lord's words to him? Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? So there you have them coming together. He not only was blaspheming God and persecuting the church, but that included and entailed, encompassed blasphemy of Christ, persecuting Christ.

And he was an insolent opponent. Paul's sin was personal, it was his, but so was the grace of God in his life. And he says, with a very strong contrastive term, but, but I received mercy because I had acted in unbelief.

The word mercy there is a, it's actually a verb in the Greek. We don't really have a, at least I've never heard it, maybe it depends on where you live, but it's sort of a verb that's equivalent to the way this is structured.

If we did have one, it would say, I was mercied. It's passive, it's past tense, but it's a verb. I was mercied. Usually the English renders it something like have mercy or be merciful, sort of, but it's a verb.

Paul says, I was mercied in strong contrast to what I did, what I was like. God was merciful in that I was mercied. So Paul understood that sin is very personal, but he also understood so is the grace of.

God.

It's through Christ, it's personal, and this is C under Roman numeral one in your outline, it is unlimited, unlimited. Verse 14 says, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

No matter how horrific Paul's sin was, God's grace was greater. It completely overflowed is a way to render that. It is exceedingly abounding, we could say. And of course, we saw last time, Paul's own statement in Romans 520, where sin abounds, grace barely gets there, right, kind of gets maybe, no.

Grace abounds even more. This is exactly what he's talking about here. You cannot out-sin God's grace, don't try, but you can't do it. Overflowed with what? With the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Again, Paul's talking about what? He was a blasphemer, he had no faith, but when he was saved, God gave him the faith to believe. That's basically, we're back to the first table of the law, how you relate to God, right?

And love, relating to people. They're both right there. He just circles back to both these tables of the law. Through faith in Christ, it's as if God is enabling him now to express in his life both faith in God and love for other people, and so it's almost as if he's reversing his violation of God's law.

This is exactly what he was talking about. We looked at this back up in verse 5. The aim of our charge, he says, is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. They're both right there.

He's looking for the love that flows out of a relationship with God, not defined by the world, not defined by the individual, but which comes from Christ himself. Paul's words about this overflowing grace of God through Christ, it's almost like an echo of Psalm 23, right?

My cup overflows, my cup overflows. This is descriptive of what a believer experiences all through scripture. Gratitude to God is a hallmark of a believer, Old Testament, New Testament. And ingratitude is a hallmark of unbelief and even apostasy.

Listen to what Paul says in Romans. You're familiar with this passage where Paul is starting out to indict people. Here's what he says, Romans chapter 1, starting in verse 18, he says,. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made, so they are without excuse.

Now here it is, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Apostasy always begins with some kind of knowledge of God.

And here, even though a person may not have heard the word of God or had the Bible or even heard the gospel, they have creation. They have creation. And creation expresses the existence of God. It's commonly called general revelation.

You cannot be saved, but you can be indicted by it. And that's how it functions. We looked at Psalm 19 last week, but we started in verse 7. The special revelation of God or God's word. But if you go back and read the first part of that psalm, it deals with general revelation.

What does it say? The heavens declare the glory of God. If someone says, well, I don't know anything about God, well, open your eyes. Look at the heavens. The heavens declare the glory of God. What's the glory of God?

Good working definition is the sum total of all of his attributes. You are without excuse. Creation's all around you and it is fairly screaming that there's a God. His eternal power, his divine nature are expressed through creation.

So gratitude, a hallmark of belief in gratitude, failure to give thanks to God, a hallmark of unbelief and apostasy, as we could see here. Well, God's grace generates gratitude. God's grace is very personal and it also is unlimited in its ability to cover sin.

In Roman numeral two in your outline, we can see God's grace can save the worst. It can save the worst. In verse 15, Paul says, 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.

This is one of the five, what they're called trustworthy statements in the pastoral letters. Here in first Timothy 115, there's another one in chapter three, verse one. In chapter four, verse nine. In second Timothy, there's one in chapter two, verse 11.

And in Titus, in chapter three, verse eight. These are probably statements that the church had that were sort of circulated among the Christian population that were sort of statements that they would all say and repeat, that they.

All knew.

These were truths from Scripture. And one of the earliest ones was Jesus is Lord, that the Christians would share amongst themselves in response probably to, you know, Caesar's not Lord, Jesus is Lord.

In other words, this is a statement that's fundamental. It's an axiomatic truth. It's kind of like saying we hold these truths to be self-evident. You can take this to the bank. And what is that? It's the gospel.

Trustworthy, deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost. So basic to God's plan of salvation, right? The gospel of Jesus Christ. It speaks of his incarnation in which God became a man so that a man could die for the sins of men.

A man had to die to pay that penalty. But he had to be God in order to pay it, to pay the eternal penalty. And this purpose of God to save people is so basic and so fundamental. Before he was even born in Matthew 121, the angel of the Lord told Joseph, speaking of Mary's pregnancy, 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. That word Jesus, of course, is from the Greek term Iesus, which is a transliteration of the Hebrew word Yahoshua, and it's kind of contracted to Yeshua, from which this word comes from.

And it means Yahweh saves, or Yahweh is salvation. When Zacchaeus the tax gatherer was saved in Luke 19 .10, Jesus said, and he's speaking of himself, again, of his purpose, the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

That's his purpose. That's why he came, to save the lost, to save sinners. And that saving grace saves the foremost. And Paul recognized he was in that category, of whom I am the foremost. This word can mean the first, or it can mean the chief, and it's often understood to mean the worst of sinners.

And I think it could probably have an additional nuance. I don't know if Paul was really intending to say he's the worst of sinners, because then you can get into a comparative kind of a thing. I think in the context, it's also important to understand he's calling himself the most prominent of sinners, the most highly visible of sinners.

And the reason is found in verse 16, that why did God come into the world to save someone.

Like him?

He says, 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.

He is the foremost. Paul repeats this, and he says again in verse 16, but I received mercy. I was mercy. The second time he repeats it, just in this little passage. Paul is a first-hand witness to the grace of God, the infinite, superabounding grace of God, and that Jesus Christ saves the worst, the most prominent, the most highly visible of sinners.

And what's his illustration, his example? Himself. And he says the reason that God did that was that in me, as the foremost, the most highly visible, prominent one of his day, Jesus Christ might display, that is show forth, showcase his perfect patience in me as an example or an illustration to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

To display, to demonstrate publicly, to showcase his perfect patience. I kind of like the King James, long-suffering, long-suffering, that's a good phrase. His forbearance, it means. And to do that as an example.

Very interesting, one commentator says that this has the idea of sketching out his forbearance like a word picture, like an audio-visual demonstration. The word can also have the concept of a template or a frame, illustrating the patience of God and that he saves the foremost.

Well, what would a template have to do? Well, a template is something you use over and over again, right? If Paul could be saved, then maybe I can too, is the intent of that. Paul is the missionary on the tip of the spear of God's missionary program.

The apostle who would write 13 books of the New Testament, who would plant churches, be used by God in an amazing way, and he was still humble, humble enough to recognize and be willing to be used by God with all of his past sins on public display as an example of God's overwhelming grace to those who would believe in him for eternal life.

Don't miss that last little phrase. Biblical Christianity is oftentimes criticized for being too narrow. You're so narrow. Liberalism historically has wanted to reach out and encompass everybody in God's love.

Well, that's maybe commendable in a certain way. The problem is we need to go by what Scripture says. There is such a thing as common grace, of course. How do you think the apostle Paul existed long enough in his sin to even come to the point where God could save him at that point in time, right?

Every heartbeat, every breath people draw is by the grace of God, even those who are sinners like the apostle Paul. But this example that Christ was working, Paul says, as an example to who? To those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

If you don't mind being squeezed into a very narrow opening, there's one right there. The Bible is very clear about these things. When we present the gospel to somebody, don't ever stop with just somebody saying, well,.

I believe. I believe.

A legitimate question would be, okay, believe in what? Faith is always objective, right? And it's very common in certain circles, and even in Christian circles, where people say,.

Well, I'm a believer.

I believe.

Well, believe in what? Paul says, believe in him. He has to be the object of our faith and our trust for salvation. And what do we believe him for?

A new car?

Better job? People get promised these things all the time. No, believe in him for eternal life. When you share the gospel with people, never promise them anything that God doesn't promise,.

Okay?

Easy to get a crowd, right? You promise all kinds of wonderful things, but never promise anything God doesn't promise. What does he promise? Eternal life. What you win them with is what you win them to.

If you win them with some sort of an emotional hook, God, Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your best life now. Guess what? You can win them to that, but then the very second something happens and it turns out not to be their best life, they're gone.

They're out of there. And you've just created an apostate, right? Never promise anything God doesn't promise. Share the gospel that faith in him, believe in him for eternal life. So God's grace generates gratitude.

God's grace can save the very, very worst, and his grace is an example to those who would believe in him for eternal life. I thought I would just stop here and see if there's any questions that you might have or thoughts or comments from what we've seen so far.

No? Okay.

Either I totally muddied the water or... Let's then move to number three. God's grace glorifies the king. This is where Paul always winds up and where he's going to wind up here and where we should always wind up.

All sound theology, if it is truly sound theology, will result in doxology, doxology. And what he does here, this is called a doxology, verse 17, doxa, glory, logos, word. It's a word of glory or statement of glory of God.

And Paul here, he just sort of circles back. He started out, I thank him, and here's where he ends. To the king, to the king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, Paul says.

Sometimes these doxologies happen to be my favorite portions of scripture.

I really love them.

I probably, you know, in times of great stress or trial, you know, I might go to the doxologies more than anything. They are such concentrated statements of the qualities of God and the attributes of God.

And I find them very edifying because they are just basically pure worship of God, are.

They not?

And sometimes when I teach through these, you know, I kind of feel like I'm scraping the paint off the nose of the Mona Lisa, you know, to take it back to the lab and try and analyze it a little bit. And so if we're looking at things and trying to exegete a text like this, that's a good thing as long as it leads to the glorification of God.

But sometimes, you know, we can sort of miss the forest for the trees here. But Paul, he just simply is glorifying God. And it's just right here in this early part of his letter that sometimes these are at the end of a letter or statement, but oftentimes Paul just, he just has to erupt in a statement.

Of praise.

And this is what he does here. And he comes full circle back to who? Jesus Christ. The object of praise is the King, Jesus Christ. To the King of the ages, he gave his grace and mercy. He paid the price of salvation to satisfy the just wrath of God by dying on the cross for sinners.

Paul knew he had no part in his own salvation. He owes everything to the King, King Jesus.

King of the ages.

Literally, it says, to the ages of ages. Some of your translations might render it eternal king. He's not an earthly king. He's not an earthly king that would die and you have to go find another king or elect somebody else or find somebody else.

He's the eternal one. He says he is immortal. He's not perishable. He's not subject to corruption of any kind. And neither is the salvation that is in him. Hebrews 7 .25, we saw that tremendous verse.

He ever lives to make intercession for the saints. What a tremendous verse. Ever lives to make intercession for the saints. That verse by itself takes any concept taught through all of history that says you can lose your salvation.

Anything like that or anything close to it, it just wads it all up and just drops it right in the doctrinal trash can. Just that verse. I'll lose my salvation when Christ stops interceding for me. You know when he's going to stop interceding for me?

When he dies. He already died. He's the resurrected king. And he ever lives to make intercession for the saints. He's immortal. He's also, Paul says, invisible. This is quite probably a reference to visible idols, you know?

Something you can hold in your hand. He is the invisible God, but he was made visible in Jesus Christ, his son. This passage is kind of interesting because here we are sort of between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

You know, sort of between those two holidays, and yet both of those concepts are here. This is all about gratitude for God's grace, but also the incarnation is here.

You know?

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. The invisible God became visible in the person of Jesus Christ. He can only be known by man, God can, if God takes the initiative and reveals himself.

He's the self-revealing God. You cannot reason your way to God. Nobody can. The most brilliant person on the planet. They've tried it. You've heard them. Well, yeah, I checked that out. I did all the research, and I found out that Christianity wasn't true.

No, you didn't. You didn't prove anything. All you did was demonstrate your own inability to reason your way to God. He's the self-revealing God. Apart from him taking the initiative to reveal himself to you or to me, we could never know.