June 11, 2017 PM Service: Sound Doctrine Illustrated by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Your Bible is pleased to 1 Timothy, as we continue in what is called one of the three pastoral epistles, and as I will probably remind you many times as we go through this portion by portion during the afternoon service, they're called the pastoral epistles because they give direction to pastors

Timothy and then Titus, Timothy of course in two letters addressed him and named that, first and second

Timothy, and then Titus, the pastoral epistles, giving pastoral instruction, and as I've said, please remember as we go through this, it's an instruction to the church, it's an instruction to the pastors then and pastors now in how to instruct you, which includes then me, not just in my pastoral duties but in my

Christian duties as a brother amongst you and you brothers and sisters amongst each other, it's a letter to us all, the responsibility is to us all.

Look now at verses 12 through 17 in 1 Timothy 1, this will be our text for this morning,

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointed me to his service, though formerly

I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our

Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom

I am the foremost, but I received mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost,

Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life, to the king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only

God, be honor and glory forever and ever, amen.

Let us now hear from the Lord in his word. To understand these verses that I just read, we need to keep in mind the context.

So as we begin here, there's two points of the context that I think we need to really have at the forefront of our thoughts, and the first thing we need to remember is

Paul's purpose in writing to Timothy. Remember that he's given him a task, he's given him a solemn charge.

You remember the military underpinnings of this word, I charge you to make sure that no other doctrine is taught in the church, my paraphrase, but I charge you a solemn task given to him to protect the church in Ephesus from the purveyors of a false doctrine, of falsehood, those who would turn the saints there in Ephesus away from the grace of God in the gospel of his son and bring them back to the manacles and shackles and chains of the law.

You see, when they were preaching to the church in Ephesus, they're preaching to a group for whom and over whom the law had done its work, and what is that work that the law had done?

It had exposed their sin, it had driven them to repentance, it had made them see the uselessness, the futility of their own effort, driven them to the cross of Jesus Christ, driven them to despair of self, and then its work is done.

The law can go no further, and so Paul is charging

Timothy to charge them, these false doctrine purveyors, charge them to stop teaching this different doctrine, this reliance on the law after the law fulfilled for us and we fulfilling it in Christ because we're in Christ as a way for the church to proceed in its life.

So that's first, remember the context, remember that Timothy is being charged to stop this.

I solemnly charge you, put an end to this. The second point we need to have in mind is how the verses just before what we have this morning ended.

So if you look up just one verse, it's verse 11, and the way that verse ends is, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed

God with which I have been entrusted. The gospel, you see, is not just any old message.

It is the glory of the blessed God. It's a treasure beyond counting, its worth is beyond measurement.

It is something that has been entrusted, a sacred bekeithment from the

Apostle to Timothy, from Timothy to the church in Ephesus, from the scripture to us 20 centuries later.

Gospel is not just a message. It's not just some billboard banner that you get to see it and encourages you as you read it on your way to work.

The gospel is the very power of God to salvation. The gospel is the revelation of his righteousness.

The gospel is what his son Jesus Christ came and died for. The gospel tells you that when you repent of your sins,

God forgives because the gospel says, as I said just a few moments ago, that your sins were punished and paid for in Jesus Christ.

So verses 1 through 11 give Timothy his basic marching orders, and then the specific doctrines and practices start in chapter 2.

Then these verses before us which are between those two parts of this letter, verses 1 through 11, the charge to Timothy, then in chapter 2, the specifics, the doctrines, the actual things.

What do I do? How do I behave? What do you want from me, Paul? That comes in chapter 2.

If all that be true, if that's a good analysis of the book, then the verses before us this afternoon are

Paul's testimony of his salvation and his complete dependence on the mercy and the grace and the goodness of God in his apostolic ministry.

The bridge between Timothy's task and the things that he must implement in the church, that bridge is here in verses 12 through 17, where Paul describes his summons to service, that's verses 12 to 14.

The gospel that he serves is verse 15, and finally he has this spontaneous, this ejaculatory outburst of praise to the

God that he would have Timothy continue to present in all his grace because of Jesus Christ to the church.

We're going to see here that God's grace and mercy overrules our sins Now this seems to be too simple to even state.

I mean, we should know that if we're Christians. We've returned here from the afternoon because we do not forsake the gathering together of ourselves, because the

Lord's table is of such high import. We know, we who would do all this, we who would behave in this way, that God's grace,

God's mercy, God's gospel overcomes our sin. It's greater than our sin.

The gospel is the answer to that sin. Whatever that sin or those sins are, their solution is where?

It's in the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. We're going to see here that God has a purpose in this salvation that is exposed in the gospel.

Now ultimately that purpose, like all things, is to rebound to the glory of God, and here in 1st

Timothy it's set forth in slightly more limited terms because Timothy needed to know that his service to the church was for a greater cause than is readily seen in the physical world and circumstances that that physical world generates around us.

It is his service to the king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only

God. Timothy needed to be reminded who he's serving. Timothy needed to be reminded what this gospel is and who this gospel came from and who put this plan together that should save sinners like ourselves.

Who is it? Who do we serve at Providence Bible Church in 2017?

The king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God. No different than 20 centuries ago.

Paul's summons to service is in verses 12 to 14. I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our

Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointed me to his service. Though formerly

I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our

Lord overflowed from me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. You see

God's grace not only saves, God's grace when it saves puts us in service.

It makes what the psalmist said, for a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my

God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. It makes that statement true and a matter of faith.

I mean do you believe this? Is it better to keep the door, to just be one who stands and does nothing but watch the door, than to live in all the luxury that you can in this world?

It's a matter of faith. Just to be in proximity to God is a treasure that outstrips any and everything the world can offer.

And when Jesus asked, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? We must next ask, is my soul's fate more important to me than is my body's comforts?

To be judged faithful, Paul does not mean that he earned anything, or that God revered him higher than he does any other man.

It does mean that Paul had always been a faithful man. He'd always been a faithful man.

Let me explain that. You see, for a time he was faithful to the strictest tenants of the strictest sect of Judaism.

He was a Pharisee. Philippians 3 chapter 3 verse 2 through 6 recounts all this.

How he was advancing in the sect, the strict legalistic sect of Phariseeism.

He was advancing faster than his contemporaries. He was, we would say today, just rising up the ladder pretty quickly.

He was smarter, he was quicker, he was more committed, he was more zealous, he was more organized. He got things done.

He was faithful. He was faithful because he lived and he acted in accordance with what he believed.

That's what it means there. He lived and acted in accordance with what he believed. Now Paul was an apostle, or Paul was as an apostle,

I should say, what he had been as a persecutor. He was faithful.

He was zealous. He was organized. He was energetic. He was uncompromising.

He was faithful to the gospel, which he then believed, just as he was faithful before. To the wrong things that he believed, but faithful to them.

You see, God did not remake this aspect of Paul. Paul was still those things.

He didn't remove his energies, his zeal, or his passion. What did he do? He sanctified them.

When he converted Paul, he called them to his service. And then all these passions, all these innate talents that Paul had, were sanctified and put to the use of the immortal, invisible, ever -living

God. So the hard -charging, fearless apostle, the one who stood before magicians and kings, the one who argued before Jews and the greatest philosophers, the same who faced stonings and beatings, all of this, yet he was a faithful man.

And as he had as a Pharisee, stayed true to his calling, was faithful to his calling.

Now with all that, you might ask, well, who could ever fill his shoes? How would you like to be Timothy, pastoring a church that's not only founded by that man, but now is being directed from afar by these letters?

How would you like to be Timothy, standing at the pulpit where the apostle Paul stood? He, under direct inspiration of the

Lord, had founded the church, written, what do we say, like 40 to 50 percent, depending on your word count, of the whole

New Testament. How would you like to stand there? It'd be a lot easier,

I'll tell you, to come here after I'm done and the Lord takes me away or I retire or whatever happens. It'd be a lot easier to stand here than it would be to stand there.

Will he give thanks to him? Paul does. He gives thanks to him, to Jesus who gave him strength. How was

Timothy to face down the false teachers? By the same strength, by the same

Jesus, our Lord, that strengthened Paul. Whether you and I face the beasts at Ephesus or the philosophers at Athens, whether the lictors' rods or the

Pharisees' stones, our strength is from the same Jesus from whom Paul derived and found his strength.

If we face our family's derision or a neighbor's condescending sneer or that little joke at the water cooler at the office, how do we get through it?

Where do we find the wherewithal? Much as we're talking about in Romans 8 and this endurance, this patience as we've grown in this world, how?

By the Spirit of God. Amen. It's Jesus who gave

Paul his strength. It's Jesus who we can say gave Timothy his strength who today gives us ours here in this same place.

You see, the call to service is no human endeavor. In Galatians 1 .1, Paul says he is an apostle not from men or through man but through Jesus Christ and God our

Father. You see, Jesus appointed him. Paul learned of this on the

Damascus Road when he was on his way to do the things that he remembers in verse 13, to blaspheme

God's name, to persecute followers of Jesus and to generally be insolent against the truth.

You know, he says he was a blasphemer. The root for the word blasphemy is stupid or injurious speech.

Did you know that? When I prepared for this message, that one caught me by surprise. I did not realize that.

Blasphemy has a root which means stupid or injurious speech. Persecution.

He says he was a persecutor. What is that? It's the organized bringing of harm to a particular people.

Of course, in Paul's case, against the church. Insolent comes from the

Greek word hubristes, where we get hubris or just overbrimming pride and self -confidence.

Perhaps Paul was more energetic than the rest of us. He was likely more zealous and certainly he was well -funded as a

Pharisee. But none of this matters. The important word in all this is the second word in verse 13.

Did you see it? The second word in verse 13. Formerly. Formerly I was these things.

And then the other important word. But. Formerly I was these things, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly.

Then I was that, now I am this. On my own I was what I was, but by God's mercy in Christ I am now this other.

The apostle. The lover of Christ. The lover of God's people. Making sure as best he is able to hand the church off into good hands.

To Timothy with good instruction. And reminding him that the power, the strength, the wherewithal to do this work is in Jesus.

And so what does it mean to stand at the pulpit where the apostle Paul, the writer of so much of the New Testament stood?

It means to stand in the name of Jesus Christ in reliance upon him and his strength and his power.

Whether you're Timothy or the apostle Paul. Whether you are

C .H. Spurgeon or Pastor Josh Sheldon here in Sunnyvale. The strength, the spirit, the

Christ, God the Father, the gospel we preach is all the same. And the wherewithal to do it is from the same exact spirit of God.

In verse 15 as we go through this, we find

Paul generalizing the whole issue really. The gospel in a sentence. We love these single sentence, entire gospel kind of verses right?

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. Why did Christ come? This Christ who strengthens

Paul and Timothy and all of us in his service. Why did he come? Why was he incarnated?

Why did grace and truth come in the flesh of Jesus Christ? John 1 14.

To save sinners. Matthew 9 13. Go and learn what this means.

I desire mercy and not sacrifice for I came not to call the righteous but sinners. Luke 19 10.

For the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. John 12 47. For I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.

Gospel in a single sentence. You don't need to be the foremost sinner for this verse to apply to you.

What if you were the best, the most holy, the most righteous of all sinners? Let's say we ranked all the sinners from the one who had done the very very least because he's the most righteous, still a sinner, but the most righteous of them all.

You're the best, closest to righteous, and still against sin, but least of them all.

You're first in line and the one last in line are the worst sinners in history.

Let's say that Paul really was the chief of them all. So he'd be last in line. As the numbers go up, worse and worse and worse sinners, he's the worst of them all.

So he's at the back of the line. The foremost of all time and you are the gentlest and most reluctant sinner ever.

What then? Then he would fall into the chasm first.

Then would be the second of them all. Let's say that's Judas. Then would be the third worst sinner of them all. Let's say that's

Pilate. Maybe after that there'd be Herod, then Annas, then Ahab, then Manasseh, and Jezebel, and then start to pick your sinners.

Dictators who've wiped people out, genocide perpetrators, mass murderers, whatever.

Then after all the millions upon millions who had been worse sinners than you, after all of them had gone to their eternal destiny, what would happen to you?

Because you are the most righteous sinner ever. You are the least reluctant sinner ever, or the most reluctant sinner ever,

I should say. You're the best. You're the closest there ever was to not actually being a little bit of a sinner.

After all the other worst sinners went ahead of you, what would happen? You'd follow them.

You'd follow right after them. You whose righteousness was off only by a hair's breadth.

You whose sins were not as numerous as Hitler's or as depraved as Nero's. Off you go to the same fate.

And you say, but wait, there are different rewards. There are different punishments. I'm not as bad as all these. This is not what

I deserve. Maybe true. Maybe not. Depends on how you take certain verses.

There's different opinions about that. Ultimately, it just doesn't matter.

Only Christ's righteousness extended to you by God's mercy will part you from the endless throng.

If your hope is in your lesser sin, it is a hope that will doom you. You eat, drink, and make now.

For tomorrow you will die forever. It's only by faith in Jesus Christ for any sin.

As James says, if you fail at one, you failed in the entire law. You're completely condemned in accordance with everything that the law says.

What do we learn here in this one verse? Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. We read, and as we think of Paul, say

I was a blasphemer. I was insolent. I was a persecutor of the church.

He persecuted some people to death for no other cause than following the way of Jesus Christ. What do we learn?

No one, no one is too great a sinner for God. If it were possible for any one person's sin to make him impervious to God's grace, then

God is not God and the gospel is impotent to save. Sometimes our unfamiliarity with the ultimate depravity is more dangerous than the man who delves into the lowest fathoms of it.

He might look upon his more wicked neighbor and say, well now that one can use a big dose of religion.

Thank goodness that's not me. I tithe from all my income. I fast. I pray. I thank God every day for making me as wonderful as he did.

Sometimes it's the one who lives this upright life in a civic sense who's in the most dangerous condition because they don't do the things that the other really bad people do.

And so the bad people have something to look up from when God finally touches their heart and shows them here's where you are, completely depraved.

Look what you've been doing. And another person says, well I've never done that. I must be okay. What a dangerous position to be in.

The saying that Christ came to save sinners is trustworthy, deserves full acceptance.

Paul didn't say that only the chief of sinners is to be saved. No, he said that only, he said only that God saved the chief of them.

Before he takes his place at the head of the line as the chief of all sinners though, he says that Christ came to save sinners.

Sinners like himself. Those whose sins are less than Paul's and those whose sins turned out to be greater than Paul's.

He came for them all. He came for them all. And what does Paul say when he says it's trustworthy?

He's saying Christian, trust that. Timothy, trust that. This is the message

I've entrusted you with. This is the gospel. Trust it, Timothy. You don't have to doll it up.

You don't have to make it exciting. We don't need skits. We don't need drama. We don't need lots of illustrations.

I don't have to make it seem palatable to you. Just trust the gospel that Christ Jesus came to save sinners of whom

I am, if not the chief, I'm one of them. Trust that,

Christian. That Christ Jesus came to save you. And then the doxology, but I receive mercy for this reason that in me as the foremost,

Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who are to believe in him for eternal life.

Very simple there. You don't have to take it apart at any deeper technical level.

God's patience with Paul is a pattern to all of us. Salvation by definition is something you cannot earn.

There are many theological reasons for God's mercy in our salvation. And the author of 1

Timothy expounds them for us, but not here. Not here. Remember that this letter instructs

Timothy on how the church should conduct itself, which is chapter 3, verses 14 and 15. And so the reason for God's gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ is given here in very practical terms, not deep theological terms.

We have that all over, especially in Paul's writing. Not here. Here it's just simple.

Christ Jesus came to save you, sinner. Trust in that powerful message.

Trust in the power of the Spirit through that message. See, Paul's conversion doesn't say anything special about Paul.

He was a sinner. He's in need of grace just like the rest of us. He's in need of grace like everyone he met and ministered to.

His pharisaical resume is actually no more impressive than yours or mine.

I think about that when you read Philippians 3. Paul's conversion, your conversion, my conversion, anyone's ever succumbed to the grace and mercy of God says zero about us and all about Jesus.

There's only one Paul who was arrested by light from heaven and the actual voice of the risen

Lord. That way of humbling Paul was as unique as when God used a donkey to rebuke a madman or when he used balsam trees to imitate the sound of an army and bring victory to David or when he told

Israel to shout down Jericho's great walls. These are unique. These are rare occurrences in scripture and only

Paul was arrested on his way to Damascus the way he was. I should have said Saul, but the grace that saved him is the same grace that saved you.

God's grace that we remember at the table is the same grace for the chief of all sinners and for the least if there is such a thing as the least of all sinners.

Well now Timothy knows who are the subjects of his task.

This charge that's been given to him by the apostle. Who is the subject of this great charge, this great commission that Paul is handling handing down to Timothy?

Sinners. Sinners saved by grace. Sinners at Ephesus in the first century.

Sinners at Providence in the 21st century. So how do we put all this together?

What do we do with a God who calls and strengthens? A God whose perfect patience can endure blasphemies and insolence and persecution?

A God who sent his son to save sinners. Sinners of all sorts.

Very simple. Praise God.

Burst forth into doxology. To the king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only

God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. What leads to this wonderful prayer, this hymn, this song of the faith.

I can't say anything else. I can just say praise God. Praise almighty

God that he would give a gospel like this. Through Jesus to the apostles, to the church.

Give praises to his name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness as the psalmist tells us.

Psalm 20 verse 5. May we shout for joy over your salvation and in the name of our

God set up our banners. Psalm 118 verse 14 and 15. The Lord is my strength and my song.

He has become my salvation. Glad songs of salvation are in the tents of the righteous. Psalm 118 verse 21.

I thank you Lord that you have answered me and have become my salvation. Or we just read again and again and again.

This ejaculatory praise, this spontaneous hymn of faith, this trustworthy saying, worthy of all acceptance.

The king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen. So strengthening truth, a short hymn to an immeasurable

God. I mean what an assurance to be reminded that our God is the one true supreme Lord of all ages.

Potentate of time as the hymn puts it. One age folds into the next. Centuries past are forgotten while the infinite infinitude of the future lies ahead.

The only God. He is the king of all these ages. One man puts it this way and with this we close.

The insects whose world is crushed by a footstep may as well expect to comprehend the works and and pains of man as we profess to understand the infinite purposes of the king of ages, the incorruptible, the invisible, the only

God. To him be honor and glory forever and ever.