Book of 1 Timothy - Ch. 1, vv. 16-17

Y 'all can turn to 1 Timothy and then we'll start in verse 12 and the new material for today will be in verses 16 through 17, that's where we left off last time, but let's remind ourselves of the context because this is all, from verses 12 through 17, we have

Paul talking specifically about the power of the gospel, the power of God's grace, using himself as the prime example of what that looks like, what the transformation of a

Christian looks like, the transformation of the Christian life. And so we begin in verse 12, it says,

And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious.

But I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our

Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom

I am chief. Howbeit for this cause, I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering for a pattern to them, which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.

Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise

God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. So after establishing himself as the chief of sinners there in verse 15,

Paul, and of course this again flows from verses 12 downward, he's talking about the gospel, he's talking about his past as a pagan blasphemer, insolence, persecuting the church, chief of sinners, all this kind of stuff and it's to what?

It's to magnify God's mercy, God's grace. So after all of this, he then expresses the primary reason for sharing this little bit of information about himself in the first place.

Why he kind of backtracks and is talking about his past as well as even his battle in the present, because remember when he talks about himself as the chief of sinners, he puts it in the present tense, which

I find fascinating. So what's the reason that he's talking about all of this?

Well in verse 13, if you guys picked it up, there's something that Paul is kind of, there's an echo in verse 16, between verses 13 and 16.

And in verse 13, Paul makes the statement that he obtained mercy, he says, but I obtained mercy and that's right after talking about his past as a blasphemer and persecutor.

And so we saw that in verse 13, that was immediately following kind of the rehashing of his pagan life.

And so after using himself as the prime demonstration of God's grace from verses 13 through 15, puts himself in the crosshairs, says, look how bad

I was, look how bad I am, look at how much I am in need of a savior. He does all of that.

Then he kind of concludes this little section with the proclamation, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom

I am chief. So he rounded it out there. And then he gives us the real reason why this mercy, why this grace was even shown to him in the first place.

And this is fascinating because this is the kind of stuff we can read over somewhat quickly, and yet it is paramount with regard to understanding

God's work in creation, why human beings were created in the first place.

We know that from eternity past, if you could use that kind of oxymoronic term for a second, in eternity past, he had perfect union, perfect communion, perfect love.

All of his attributes were there. They were present in perfect communion between the three persons of the

Godhead. So why is it that creation came about? Why did he create the spiritual realm with angels and seraphim and cherubim and all of them and then human beings in his image, all of this?

Look what he says in verse 16. He says, for this cause, in other words, the reason why

Paul obtained mercy in the first place for this cause, I obtained mercy that in me first,

Jesus Christ might show forth all long suffering. So in other words,

Paul's salvation wasn't primarily for Paul. Now the emphasis there is on the word primarily because we know it absolutely was for Paul.

There are benefits there. Christ loves each and every one of his sheep on an individual level, even though we do make up the corporate body, even though we are together, the bride of Christ, we are together, the church, all of these things, we are many members of one body,

Christ's body with him as the head. He loves each of his sheep on the individual level as well.

So obviously salvation is for us by all means, but that's not the primary reason.

That's not the primary purpose that Christ saves any sinner that is otherwise deserving of condemnation.

It wasn't just to pull Paul away from the path of hell that Paul was saved in the first place, but rather it was to use him as an example and a prime example of just how patient God is.

So in other words, the glory of Paul's salvation and Paul being used as an instrument, an apostle of God, the glory for all of that was to go to Christ, not

Paul. It was to demonstrate Christ's long -suffering spirit, his patience with his rebel creation over against the way any other

God would have done it if they even existed. If you look at the innumerable gods of various pagan religions, patience is not one of their attributes.

Usually retribution comes rather quickly, sometimes toward each other. And of course, none of it makes any sense.

And so what does Paul do here? What he does is he amplifies, he magnifies

Christ's long -suffering spirit using himself as the example of just how patient he can be.

Look how bad I was. Look at how much patience was on display. Look at how much patience

God has. And so what is that doing? It is a very particular way of God, excuse me, of Paul putting all of the glory for his salvation on Christ, not himself.

So again, Christ's long -suffering spirit is the exact attribute that we see exhibited over and over again throughout the entire

Bible. In the Old Testament, it was the stiff -necked Israelites time and time again that we had to see this patience be brought to bear.

And in the New Testament, you have murderers, you have persecutors, you have thieves, you have pagans of all stripes, including

Paul himself, that were his sheep, but they just didn't know it yet. They were sheep that were rebelling against their

Savior. They were sheep that were trying to leave the flock, trying to leave the pasture. And if you want to think about it in the, you know, if you want to use that analogy and think about it from the human viewpoint, they were sheep that were making the shepherd have to work harder.

They were inconveniencing the shepherd. Again, just to use that analogy. And so you have all of these people, again, the

Israelites in the Old Testament, and then Israelites and Gentiles, Jews and Gentiles, both in the

New Testament, that were constantly trying to basically ignore their position.

They were trying to ignore who they were and whose image they were created after, who the shepherd really was.

They were trying to do all this, and yet in the middle of all of it, Christ showed his long -suffering. He showed his patience.

And so what Paul says at the end of verse 13, kind of again there's echoes between verse 13 and verse 16 here, it rings true for all of us.

He says, I obtained mercy, and then he ends that verse by saying, I did it ignorantly in unbelief.

So that's the case of all lost sheep. They're ignorant little creatures that are out there thinking that perhaps they are the masters of their own destiny or something like that, when in reality they are meager little sheep with lions and wolves and bears abounding.

It's the silliest thing to think about it in these terms. That is the life of a believer prior to his conversion experience, is the belief that you can make it out of the world as a little ewe lamb with wolves and lions and bears snapping at your throat, as if you can pull that off without the shepherd.

We did it ignorantly in unbelief. That is God's patience on display.

He didn't just say, fine, go for it then, and then you're devoured within seconds. He didn't snuff you out of existence.

He didn't, you know, open up the earth, which he has done before and could do at any point, and let it swallow you up.

He didn't do any of that. He was patient for his people to find their shepherd. He was there all along.

We just needed our eyes open and our ears open. Now, because there are parallels between Paul's salvation experience and our own, at least in the more broad sense, so, you know, we're thinking things like grace, mercy, reconciliation, justification, that all of these things are realities for every believer, for everyone's conversion experience.

So in a broad sense, obviously there are parallels between Paul and ourselves. With that in view, basically what he does is he cashes in on this even more in the final phrase of verse 16.

He's already been doing it over and over again through this little section, 1 Timothy verses 12 through 17, but he does it even more at the end of verse 16 when he says, for a pattern, all of this is a reality, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to everlasting life.

So just to read the verse one more time in its fullness, for this cause I obtain mercy that in me first, that's the

Apostle Paul, in the Apostle Paul first, Jesus Christ might show forth all long suffering.

In other words, how much patience could he possibly have to put up with this guy? That's what

Paul is saying. And all of that happened for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to everlasting life.

So what's the moral of the story here? God's immaculate patience is on display not just for Paul, but for every believer, for every person that has called upon his name, for everyone that desires to know their creator.

What's the point of this entire section of 1 Timothy? It's to demonstrate God's saving grace over and over again as we've noted a number of times already.

And so Paul just, again, brings all of it back into yet another distinct way of looking at it one more time.

If God can take the worst pagan, that being the Apostle Paul, of whom

I am chief, the chief of sinners in fact, if he can take the worst pagan and turn him into the greatest

Christian, and entrusting him with the apostleship, entrusting him with the,

I'll use for lack of a better term, authorship of scripture, the human author of a huge portion of the

New Testament, entrusting him with all of these things, if he could be patient and allow all of that to happen, then no person who desires to know their creator will ever be too far gone for God to save.

That's one of the points that Paul is trying to make here. If Paul couldn't be too far gone, if Paul was the result of God's patience, then every person that desires to know their creator is in the same boat, that they're not going to be too far gone either.

They will be recognized as sheep. Can I interject? Absolutely.

The miracle of the prodigal son. Sure. The 99, leaving the 99 for the one.

Even the Wednesday, the day's been going through with John, that a shepherd who literally loves any, again, 99 and one, it's like, well, the odds are in the favor of those who obey.

It's like, yes, but each individual one is worthy of chasing down. Right. No, that's exactly right.

Again, it goes back to while there is this very important, and in fact, in some ways, the

New Testament emphasizes the corporate aspect a ton, but it does not ever at any point negate the individual either, which is your point.

So, if the shepherd has a full flock of 99, it was originally 100, it's still 99, which is a considerable sized flock.

He's not going to say, well, that's good enough at any point. He's going to go after the one in every single case.

And it's not just for some that he has some kind of special feeling toward an apostle like Paul or like King David or something like that.

It's for every one of them. Every one of his sheep, he would be willing to leave the 99 to go get it.

For the majesty and glory of Jesus the Messiah. That's exactly right.

Because it's for his glory. All glory given to him, and that's a full family.

It's like 99%. It's like, no, full family. Right. And what is it doing?

With each time that he has to do that, it's one more display of his long -suffering.

Because once more, just to use an analogy that we can understand, not that it's perfect, but it's an analogy we can understand, for the sheep to have to leave the pasture, to have to leave the flock to go get the one, is by definition, from our viewpoint, an inconvenience.

It's saying that we're having to make him work more. And again, this is all from the human viewpoint, of course.

But I mean, it's like that for a reason. He wants us to understand we're the problem. We aren't the ones that are deserving of any amount of glory for any of this.

It is the shepherd that has to put up with all of it. He does so willingly. He does so because he loves us that much.

It's not some kind of duty -bound frustration.

It's not in that, but it is work. It's work all the same. In fact, it is the ultimate work.

It's his finished work. And so there you go. And so because he displays this patience, because he's displaying this long -suffering toward us, just as much as he did toward Paul.

In fact, again, the reality that he could save a man as vile as Saul of Tarsus was, that alone should be enough to give every seeker of God peace that they too can drink from the water of life.

And where does that come from? It comes from Christ alone. So actually seeing what he did in Paul's life can give us peace, knowing that he can't lose us either, that he won't lose us.

Yes, sir. Well, again, to use the analogy of a human shepherd, a human shepherd leaving the pasture, leaving the flock, that's work that he wouldn't necessarily have to do if the sheep hadn't rebelled, so to speak.

Sure. Yeah. And that's the difference between the true shepherd and the analogy.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. So the difference, again, to go back to what I said a second ago, so you can look at real -life shepherds that may feel a sense of duty toward their sheep but are grumbling the entire time they go rescue them.

That's what I meant a second ago when I said it's not this duty -bound frustration. It might be work.

It might be an inconvenience to find, but it's not a frustrated...

It's not an irritation. It's not an irritation. And so that, in fact, was the very reason why he was able to get through the dark forest fighting the lions, fighting the wolves in order to rescue the sheep was because, to your point,

Pop Pop, the joy of rescuing the sheep. And so otherwise, no one would want to go through that, the darkness.

No one would want to go through the darkness that he experienced. He didn't want to, but the reason he was able to get through it was because of knowing that there would be rescued sheep on the other side.

And not just a few, but all of them. And so, yeah, there you go. Again, it's really, really amazing stuff that you can get out of these certain phrases that Paul is using, that he's pulling from here.

And he's still talking about the same topic from verses 12 on, but he's taking it from these different angles that just make this mercy pop in different ways in our minds.

When Paul says of himself that I was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious, or in other words, he was an insolent man toward Christians, he says of himself all of these things.

If God is patient enough to wait for a person like that, a complete and utter rebel that was under the influence and bondage of Satan himself, which was true for all of us as well prior to our conversion, then he can be patient and he can show grace to anybody.

And again, that is what Paul is trying to get across here in verse 16. That's the main message he wants us to come away with.

And I have to, you know, there's always going to be some repetition, and I have to say it again. Why is

Paul making this argument at this particular place? Well, remember, from verses 6 through 11, roughly, he's talking about the false teachers.

He's talking about those that want to put the yoke of bondage back on God's people to make them think that in order to be a good follower of Christ, you have to have these debates about genealogies and the law and myths and fables and all these types of things.

So this is still Paul setting the stark contrast between all of that. And so when you remember that, it flows into everything we've just talked about from verses 12 through now 16.

It just continues to make it better and better. And we see why Paul is trying to get this message across so clearly because of what

Timothy and, of course, all of the church at Ephesus at this time was having to put up with. You could almost say, though, that in Ephesus, for instance, you've got the

Artemis or the Diana thing. What's bondage as well about serving a false god or following, you know, like who has deceived you in, like, taking you to Babylonian, Canaanite, Ephesus, Grecian type of, like, those are as much of a bondage as is legalism.

Like, the spectrum is very diverse on bondage.

Let's be very, like, you're following your stomach, you're following a false god, you're following, you know, all the rules of to, as a better person, like, there's a ton of ways that bondage can exist, and particularly in the

Greek world or back then, you know, where it's more, you could go to any temple you wanted to and you could pay money or you could have, you know, tons of sex or if that's bondage in its own style of, like, oh, well, this is liberty.

It's like, it's definitely not. It's totally bondage. That's not healthy stuff.

That's a terrific thing for us to always remember, Robert.

The opposite of pharisaism or legalism or whatever you want to call it, moralism, the opposite of it isn't

Christianity. The opposite of it is libertarianism, the kind of this, or antinomianism to use a historic term used since from the time of Luther.

The opposite of legalism is bondage to a form of anarchy to the individual, and the reason

I can say that is because the opposite of one ditch will always be the other ditch. We want to stay on the path of righteousness, which is in between the two, and so that's right.

That's exactly right. Now, in this context, he's talking about freedom from a particular form of bondage, but you're right.

From verses 12 through 17 here, we're about to get to 17, it can be equally applied to bondage to an antinomian lifestyle, bondage to a pagan worship lifestyle.

Great point. I'm glad you brought that out. Okay, now we look at verse 17, the conclusion to this section.

It's not the conclusion of the chapter, but this section, the book is kind of divided up in these natural little sections, and right now, what is he talking about?

The transformation of the Christian. What does true spiritual transformation look like? And he concludes this whole section with this.

Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise

God to be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. So these truths that Paul has just brought to bear for Timothy, and knowing that this will be read to the congregation in Ephesus shortly and all congregations shortly after that, he gives the glory to God once more, but this time kind of to the superlative degree, if you will.

And he does it by inserting this little, what you might call a doxology in verse 17 here.

Now a doxology that comes from a Greek term, doxologia, and it was a very generic term at the time

Paul would have been alive. And what a doxology is, is it's a proclamation of praise to God, and usually the proclamation follows these preceding realities that were just talked about, or that were just realized or recognized.

So in other words, in this case, we'll just use this as the example, Paul is talking about the mercy of God in his life.

The fact that God is so powerful and his grace is so much more powerful than sin, than the bondage of sin, the bondage of the devil, all of these things.

It's so much more powerful than that, that even he is a blasphemer, persecutor, insolent man was saved.

Even he could obtain that mercy. So he's talking about all of that. All of that is what preceded verse 17.

So a doxology is a proclamation of praise, usually due to preceding actions, which would have been all of the stuff that Paul just talked about.

Sometimes it appears in kind of a short exclamation. In verse 17 here might be a good example of that.

Short, brief, but it is exclaimed, it is emphasized, and then other times we can have really long passages.

So the Song of Moses would be a good example of that. It in and of itself is a lengthy doxology, but it's a very lengthy passage, and it's usually pretty poetic in nature as well.

And so we see a lot of New Testament doxologies at the end of a lot of Paul's letters. We see them all throughout the book of Revelation.

We see them in Jude. We see them in Peter's epistles. And what are they doing? They're praising

God's attributes, such as his immortality, his wisdom, his power, and his glory.

Now there are times, even in our hymnal, we sometimes sing a hymn that is simply called the doxology.

And it was written back in the 1700s by a guy named

Thomas Ken. And it's short. It goes like this. It says, Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Praise him, all creatures here below. Praise him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Amen. And we sing that. It's in the form of a hymn with music. We sing it together.

That is a doxology. It is a praise to God in the form of singing or whatever it may be.

In the case of Paul here, it is simply his exclamation of praise because of what he just finished talking about.

Look at how powerful the mercy of God is. Under the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise

God, the honor and glory forever and ever. So this is what Paul is doing in verse 17 here.

He's lifting up a very specific praise or doxology to God, exclaiming and exalting his attributes.

And why is he doing it? It's as a result of the magnificent reality of God's saving grace and mercy, like I said before.

So it's lifting Paul up. It's putting Paul in this lofty feeling of recognition of just how powerful

God is. And it is coming out in this form. It is being expressed in this form.

And this is important for us to recognize because there will be times even in our lives where the recognition of God's goodness toward each and every one of us, it will get really deep.

Some of the newer translations may say something along the lines of it would go all the way to our heart.

The KJV would put it eloquently by saying it goes all the way into our bowels and it goes into our bones.

When the goodness of God is just sitting center on the seat of our emotions, of everything that we could feel as a human being, the result oftentimes is an inability to express what that is actually feeling like in that moment.

How do you express that? We all know what it feels like at different times in our lives. We may have felt something like that where we just recognize how good

God has been to us. And how do you put it into words? How do you express that to people? It may manifest itself in tears of joy.

It may even put a lump in the throat. Obviously, it brings great joy. But in scripture, we're given a pattern or a model of what we can do in those moments where we are feeling an otherwise speechless gratitude that we have toward God.

We can praise him for his majesty. We can praise him for his goodness, for his honor and glory, and his

Godhead in contrast with our meager creatureliness down here in this fallen world.

And of course, Paul was experiencing one of those moments as he has been recounting the mercy that befell him at his conversion.

He's been talking about his past, his very dark past. And he sees what God did with him anyway.

And what does it do? It makes him want to proclaim the majesty of God in the way that he does in verse 17.

When we consider our own conversions, we can follow Paul's pattern here. And as Calvin once put it, we can be carried to lofty admiration to God for all of the things that he has done in his life, for God's work and our lives.

And just to briefly, we have just a couple of minutes left, but just to briefly go through some of the things he says, look what he says,

King Eternal. Now that more literally could be translated the King of the

Ages, because we have the word Aeon there and it's in the plural form. And so he's the

King of the Aeon, but it's in the plural. So the King of the Ages would be the way that we would say that in English.

I love King Eternal, but again, more literally, he is the King of the Ages. And there's many parallels in the

Psalms where David is talking about this reality of the Lord and Jehovah being the

King of the Ages. And if you read those Psalms in the Greek, the

Septuagint, you'll see that word Aeon being used over and over again. And that's what Paul is playing off of here.

He is the King of the Ages. He is the King of all time. What is he after that?

He is immortal. In other words, he is imperishable. He is incorruptible. There is absolutely no possibility of decay or loss of strength.

Now, when you look at our own bodies, you look at our own corruptible bodies that we live in now, you get to the end of life and you see what even the most godly saints have to go through.

We think about what Brother Raymond is battling at this moment. We live in these perishable bodies that decay, and it won't be long before everyone in this room is in that exact same spot.

And yet we serve a God that can't decay. He's imperishable. He is immortal. That cannot happen to him.

And it is because of that reality that we can then be glorified to be able to live in like manner.

But he was the first fruits of all of this. It is because of his attributes that we can later display those attributes ourselves.

He is immortal. He cannot decay. He cannot lose his strength. After that, Paul says, he is the invisible one.

He is the invisible God. He is the one that can only be known by his self -revelation.

This is an important thing for us to remember, and it comes out here. He's the invisible one. He is known only by his self -revelation.

And how is that given? It's given in two ways. It's given in the Bible. It is given in Scripture itself.

That is one way how you can know an otherwise ineffable, invisible, transcendent being through his self -revelation, which is the word, but there's a second way as well, and that is in the

Son, Jesus Christ, the incarnation, what we just finished talking about last Sunday in light of the season that we are in.

We can only know the invisible one through his revelation, which is Scripture and the revelation of his

Son. Now, we know that there is this reality of natural revelation. We know that people can understand there is a

God, that there is a creator just by nature alone, but they can't know him. They can't know who he is just by nature alone.

You can't know him on an intimate level. You can't know his name. You can't know his attributes just by nature.

You have to have his word, his self -revelation, and his Son, Jesus Christ.

So he is the invisible one known only by his revelation, and he is the only wise

God, and what that does is that is emphasizing the fact that he has the exclusive right to Godhead or deity.

He holds the exclusive right to what it is to be God. There can't be any other.

He is the only one, and by virtue of that reality, he is the only wise

God that there is or that there could be, and so it is to this merciful

God, to this wise God, to this immortal God that Paul says to him at the very end of verse 17, to honor and glory, or excuse me, be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen, and the ending of that doxology there when he says forever and ever, one way that you could literally translate that is age unto age, because once again, we see the terms aeon being used.

He has this glory. He has this honor from age unto age.

It's never -ending for every age that there will be into eternity future, and we know that there will be.

Paul fleshes this out for us clearly in 1 Corinthians 15. We see this reality in the book of Revelation as well.

For every amount of ages that there will be into eternity future, he will still have honor and glory in the middle of all of that.

Just to kind of bring out some of this, you can get literal translations of the

Bible. Green, there's one called Green's Literal Translation. There's one I got data a couple years ago,

Young's Literal Translation. A lot of y 'all may have heard of Young's Concordance. He was a brilliant scholar back in his day, but he also did his own translation of the

Bible, and it's called Young's Literal Translation. In this verse, this is how he renders it. And to the king of the ages, the incorruptible, invisible, only wise

God is honor and glory to the ages of the ages. Amen. And so that is

Paul's doxology. That is how he ends this amazing portion of this little book, verses 12 through 17, showing what the true gospel looks like in contrast with the false teaching of the false teachers that Timothy has had to deal with.

Any other thoughts before we close it out here? And if not, we will pick it up in verse 18.

A few Sundays from now where the section changes a little bit because Paul is about to get really practical again, right back to the very practical nature of these pastoral epistles as he closes out this first chapter, basically giving a charge to Timothy, the young elder, on how to finish well in his work and basically the basis for the strength that he can have.

It's really amazing stuff. So we'll get back to that. I think

Dave has two more Sundays after today, and then we'll get back to these verses here.

Alrighty. Robert, you have one more thought? The time on earth for the ministry of our

Messiah is the Isaiah 53 suffering servant, but he's been elevated to our intercessor right now, and he's still anointed that he'll be king of kings, future tense.

But it's very parallel to the David section of like, hey, he was anointed and had to continue suffering until eventually his time as king, like he was praised, he was given honor and recognition, and most of the country knew that you're going to be the king, but it's this intermediary phase.

Right now, he's the intercessor, and that the shepherding section of things is like, yeah, he's willing to lay down his life literally as he saw from David, you know, to fight for a land.

It's like, okay, well, you know, there's a lot of work that goes into rescuing us. The salvation or the savior section is like, we should never spit in his face.

We should never look at it, you know, simply, you know, it's incredibly loving, and there's a lot that goes into it for the task of our

Messiah, you know, and all of that for that he's going to reign forever and ever, eon and eon, you know, future tense, it's like, this is wonderful, but he laid down his life for us, you know, like, right, let's not, let's not ignore that.

Oh, well, I like him when he's coming as a king. We all like that, but he had to lay down his life.

The suffering servant is not to be rejected. Certainly not.

Well, and this is one of the great paradoxes of the Old Testament for the prophets is writing about this coming king in glory, the same one that Paul just talked about in verse 17.

And then, you know, within a few chapters in the case of Isaiah, you have just it all over the place.

Within a few chapters, he's talking about that suffering servant, and that has always emphasized the parallel between the earthly Davidic kingdom and the way that played out with his anointing by Samuel a good number of years prior to Saul's usurpation ending.

And so, in 2 Corinthians 4, 4, this is well after the death, burial, resurrection, well after the ascension to the right hand of power,

Christ on the cross took back the keys to the, took back the title deed of earth, essentially, which was supposed to be

Adams and the devil took it. And then Jesus took it back as the last Adam. We talked about all this in our sermon just last week.

And even though all of that is already reality, after all that Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4, 4 in whom, well, let me start in verse three, but if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost in whom the

God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe them not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of God, who is the image of God, should shine into them.

The apostle Paul calls Satan the God of this world even post ascension. So what is, what's the parallel there?

Well, when Samuel anointed David with oil, he was king on the spot.

He was king in God's eyes. He was king, he was king positionally and experientially because he experienced the anointing of king.

And yet Saul continued to usurp the throne and he remained on it for a time. And so right now,

God, it's interesting that Jesus gives us a parable where he says a great man, the

Lord went to get a kingdom and to bring it back. And that is a great reminder for us to think about the kingdom in ancient terms, rather than our modern view of a monarchy, because we think of kingdom as geography.

We think of kingdom is real estate. And what happens in that parable is the Lord leaves the real estate to go get a kingdom.

And then he brings it back to that geographical location. What that tells us is that a kingdom is an authority thing.

It's not a real estate thing. The real estate is a part of it, but it flows from the authority.

And so where is Jesus right now? He went to get that kingdom and he will bring it back with him in the clouds.

And so that's why believers can experience the kingdom on earth even now, because his authority is living within us via the spirit.

And so that whole typology of David, his anointing, Saul's usurpation, his death, and then

David's ascension, all of that is a very earthy picture of basically how it plays out over the last two millennia with Jesus coming as the last

Adam and as the son of David, as the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant. And so there you go.

Lots of amazing parallels there, to be sure. And I like what you said there,

Robert, because it did all begin with the suffering servant, but it continues with this king eternal, this king of the ages.

And it's an amazing thing. All righty, guys. Well, let's go ahead and dismiss and we will move on into our next portion of the service.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful day, for giving us another opportunity to open up the pages of scripture and to talk about these glorious truths together so that we can be lifted up.

We can be taken to that lofty place like the apostle Paul was himself as he concluded this portion of scripture with singing his praises to you for your glorious attributes, for your honor, and all of these things that you hold for eternity that are never -ending.

We ask, Lord, that you give us the strength to take these things with us into our own lives and to apply them there so that we don't have to be brought low by our feebleness, but rather we can be lifted up by the fact that we are held and sustained by a king eternal, by an invisible and immortal king like yourself.

And so for these reasons, Lord, we, like Paul, praise you for these realities and we thank you for your honor and for your glory that you have for all ages.

We ask that you be with us in the services to come, in our fellowship to come, and we ask you right now to be with our beloved deacon,

Brother Raymond Bland, as he is still with us at this moment fighting for his life, and we ask that you be with him and that you be with his family that are there with him as well, and just for us to be a comfort and a peace to all of them in this time.