Well, this is a very special
occasion, and I wish we could do this every night. To hear
you sing and to gather in this place is an inexpressible joy
and blessing for me. Every time I come to this sanctuary,
I have such pleasant memories. I always hear the Saturday night
before the first service on a Sunday morning, and in here with Dr. Sproul and just walking around
and the sense of anticipation. And the memories I have of Dr. Sproul standing in this pulpit
and preaching the Word of God and hearing and sensing that
he was growing stronger and stronger in his preaching of the Word
of God till that very last sermon from Hebrews 2, 1 through 4. How shall we escape if we neglect
so great a salvation? And so, I think it is appropriate
to acknowledge where we stand right now in history in the unfolding
of God's purposes and plans for Ligonier Ministries that is now
reaching around the world in an extraordinary strategic way,
that as we gather tonight, this is our first Christmas gathering
without our beloved Founder in this world with us, and His influence
is lasting. His influence is very spiritual
and very deep in all of our lives. And so, I carry that influence
as a very cherished stewardship that has been entrusted to my
life, and I'm sure that you would give the very same testimony
as well of how the Lord has worked in your life Not only has God
appointed the end, but He's appointed the means to accomplish that
end, and God has chosen to work through men whom He has raised
up to minister His Word. And we have been privileged to
be under the influence of one of those choicest men in all
of church history. Well, as I have the opportunity
to speak to us tonight, I have a text, and I understand there's
a pew Bible in front of you, and I want you to take your pew
Bible, not your hymnal, but your pew Bible, and turn with me to
1 Timothy chapter 1. and verse 15, and I have just
one verse for the time that we will spend together that I want
us to give careful attention to. First Timothy 1 and verse
15, the title of this message is, Why Jesus Came. First Timothy 1 and verse 15,
I want to read this passage. It is a trustworthy statement
deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. This one verse captures and addresses
the primary reason for which Jesus came into this world. That He came and lived here on
this planet is indisputable. Even other religions and secular
historians acknowledge that Jesus Christ came into this world. We know who it is who came. He
was the Son of God, the Son of Man, the seed of the woman, the
seed of Abraham, the seed of Isaac. He was the son of David. He was the prophet like Moses,
the priest according to the order of Melchizedek. He was both the
root and the branch of Jesse. He was wonderful counselor, mighty
God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His name was Immanuel,
God with us. We know exactly who it is who
came into this world, and we know where He came. He went to
the city of David. He was born in Bethlehem, just
as it had been prophesied by Micah. And we know when He came. He came in the fullness of time.
in the year that Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census
be taken of the known world. We know that it was either 5
or 6 BC. We know exactly when he came. We know exactly where he came. We know exactly who it was who
came, and we know how he came. He was born of a virgin. He was
conceived within His humanity by the Holy Spirit. He was the
holy offspring of Mary. But here is the million-dollar
question. Here is the billion-trillion-dollar
question. Here is the question of the ages.
Why? Why did He come? Why did He leave
heaven? Why did He come to this earth? What was the purpose of His coming? And how does this relate to your
life? I want us to consider this one
verse tonight, and I want us to consider it very carefully
because this text addresses crystal clear why He came. It is so obvious
a blind man could see it. This one verse uniquely, succinctly
captures the very essence of what the gospel of Jesus Christ
is. So, let's just walk through this
passage together, and I trust you still have your pew Bible
open. As we begin looking at verse
15, notice how it starts. Now, Paul starts this verse in
a very interesting way. He begins, it is a trustworthy
statement. Why would he say that? Is not
everything in the Bible trustworthy? Is not everything that Paul wrote
in his thirteen epistles trustworthy? Why would he say this is a trustworthy
statement? Is he implying that other things
that he said are not trustworthy? No, this is a way in which Paul
is underscoring the supreme importance of what he is about to say. This
raises to the highest level of importance what he is about to
say. To say, this is a trustworthy
statement is exactly like Jesus saying, truly, truly, I say to
you. It is a way of capturing our
attention, of drawing us close that we would see the importance
of this. Everything that Paul wrote was
inspired, inerrant, and infallible. All Scripture is inspired by
God. But some things that Paul wrote were more important than
other things. They were not more inspired,
but they were more important. And this is one of those verses
that rises to a higher level of importance than other verses. They're all inspired, but some
are mountain peaks. Some rise to a higher level and
grab us by the lapel and draw us close. There's only five times
in the New Testament that Paul says it is a trustworthy statement,
and this is one of those five. And the key word is the word
trustworthy. In fact, in the original Greek,
when Paul wrote this, the order of the words is different than
how it's translated in our English Bible. In the Greek language,
if you wanted to emphasize a word, you move a word to the very beginning
of the sentence. It's called the emphatic position,
to draw our attention to the importance of the word. And this
verse literally is translated Trustworthy is the statement. Faithful is the word. And in essence, what Paul is
saying is that this statement is reliable. It is absolutely
true. It is of such an importance that
none of us can afford to not be certain about what it says. And when he says this is a trustworthy
statement, we need to understand that Paul is not inventing this
statement as he writes this. This statement that will follow
in this verse concerning why Jesus came into this world was
a very popular statement. All of the believers, when they
would come together, would actually say this statement. It was like
a confession of faith. It was like an abbreviated creed,
if you will. It was at the very heart and
center of their Christianity, and it was the bare truth reduced
down to its most minimal number of words It is a trustworthy
statement. And if there is any statement
that you've ever believed in your life that would flow from
the pen of the Apostle Paul, this is at the head of the list. You cannot be right with God
and be wrong about what this text says. And then to really
cinch the knot even tighter, He then adds, deserving full
acceptance, not partial acceptance, not a good deal of acceptance,
but every one of us must fully accept what will follow in this
verse. It is deserving full acceptance. And by that, he means you must
accept this into your life. You must commit your soul to
what will be stated in this text, because this is the John 316
of the pen of the apostle Paul. This is the very heart of the
Christian faith that Paul writes. And so, I want us to look at
specifically what is this trustworthy statement? What is this faithful,
reliable maxim that Paul writes, that he literally lifts out of
the fellowship of the church and places it right here in this
verse? And you'll see it in the middle
of verse 15. It is a trustworthy statement. deserving full acceptance. That, and now what will follow
are nine words in my English Bible. There are eight words
in the original Greek with which Paul wrote this, and this is
the condensed version of the gospel of our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. And this reveals to us why God
sent His Son into this world, and why Jesus, in obedience to
the Father, came into this world. So, where did this saying actually
begin? Where did this start? as it was
being spoken by the believers in the first century, that Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That's the statement.
What is the origin of this statement? And the answer is, most probably
and plausibly, It was combining two verses that came from the
lips of Jesus Christ Himself. The first is in Matthew 9 and
verse 13, which reads, and these are the words of Jesus, "'I did
not come to call the righteous, but sinners.' I did not come
to call the righteous, but sinners. And Jesus would explain in the
next verse by way of this analogy that the physician has not come
for those who are well, but for those who are sick. And Jesus
has come into this world for those who are plagued by the
deathly disease of sin. And then the other verse is Luke
19, verse 10. You're very familiar with it.
It comes at the end of the conversion of Zacchaeus. And Jesus said,
for the Son of Man, and by the way, that was His favorite way
to identify Himself. He identified Himself by this
term, the Son of Man, more than any other of His names or titles,
because He loved to identify Himself with us who live in this
world. He referred to Himself most not
as the Son of God, though He is the Son of God. But Jesus
chose to make Himself most known to us as the Son of Man, that
He came to this world, that He got into our skin, that He entered
the human race, that He became in essence one of us yet without
sin. And in Luke 19.10, for the Son
of Man has come to seek and to save. that which was lost. And so, this statement that we
find in verse 15, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,
is a compilation of those two statements, and there are probably
a couple of other verses that say essentially the same, but
Jesus from His own lips spoke of His coming into this world
on a rescue mission of salvation. So, let's look at this statement.
It's right in the middle of verse 15, Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners. It begins by identifying who
it was who came. It was Christ Jesus. Normally in our conversation,
certainly in my preaching, I normally say, Jesus Christ. Paul did not
normally say, Jesus Christ. Paul normally said, Christ Jesus. Christ simply means the Anointed
One. It is the Greek from the Old Testament Hebrew, Meshua,
or Messiah, which means the very same thing, the Anointed One. And Jesus Christ, in His coming,
was anointed by the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill the
saving mission for which He came into this world. He was endued
with power from on high. As He was in the river Jordan
in Matthew 3, verses 16 and 17, and the heavens opened, and the
voice from above said, this is My beloved Son in whom I am well
pleased. And the Spirit of God descended
upon Him like a dove. And after his wilderness temptation,
he would go to Nazareth. He went into the synagogue. He
asked for the scrolls to be handed to him. He took the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scrolls, and
he read what is for us, Isaiah 61 verse 1, "'The Spirit of the
Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me. to preach. That's what it means for Him
to be the Christ, for Him to be the Messiah, the One who is
the anointed priest, the anointed prophet, and the anointed King. He came as the Messiah, the long-awaited,
promised One, the One who was proclaimed by the prophets, the
One who came in the fulfillment of the Old Testament. And Paul
begins this statement with the name Christ. He was empowered
to successfully carry out his mission of salvation by the omnipotence
of the Spirit of God upon his humanity. The second word is
Jesus. And you know what Jesus means.
It means Jehovah saves. It means that Jesus was God in
human flesh come to save those who are in great danger of destruction. In Matthew 1 verse 21, the angel
said, you shall call His name Jesus. For He will save His people
from their sins." It's in the very name, His mission. He has come to save. He has come to rescue those who
are in danger of eternal destruction. You'll note the next word, came.
Christ Jesus came. That He came means that He descended
from the heights of heaven and came down from heaven to this
earth. It also implies His preexistence,
that He existed before He came, that He was sent by the Father. And He simply has descended from
heaven down to the earth. And we would ask the question,
why must He come all the way down to this earth? And the answer
is, because we cannot pull ourselves up to God. God must come down
to us. We cannot by our own good works
and by our own morality or religiosity. pull ourselves up to the heights
of heaven? George Whitefield, the great
evangelist, said, what? Can a man be saved by works?
He said it would be easier to pull yourself up to heaven with
a rope of sand than for you to pull yourself up by your own
works. No, Jesus had to come all the
way down to us. He couldn't even meet us halfway.
He does His part, we do our part. No, He had to descend down all
the way down into this world, and that leads us to where He
came. Notice in the middle of this
statement, Christ Jesus came into the world. He came all the way down into
this world. He came into this world of sin
and sorrow. Only in a church does that happen.
He came down into a world of misery and death. He came down
into this cesspool of iniquity. He did not come into a pleasant
place. He came where the curse reigns. He came where the devil holds
sway. He came to mankind who is lost. and condemned to hell, man who
is alienated from God and hostile towards God. He came down into
this world, and notice what He came to do. He came to save. The word save does not mean to
deposit something into a savings account. The word save means It means to deliver someone out
of a perilous state in which they are in threatening danger. It involves an intervention by
one who is greater than the danger and the threat in order to rescue
from harm those for whom He has come to save. R.C. Sproul wrote a book, Saved From
What? If you listen to the average
television preacher today, you would think he has come to save
us from financial hardship, that he's come to save us from physical
ailment, that he's come to save us from loneliness. that He's
come to save us from insecurity or a bad job. He's come to save
us from being single and not yet married. That's not what
the Bible teaches. At the very apex and pinnacle
of the reasons for which He came into this world, Dr. Sproul argues in this book, He
has come to save us from the wrath of God. He has come to save us from God.
Not only is God your only hope, God is your biggest threat. Romans
1 verse 18 says, "'For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men.'" He talks
about in this book, saved from what? When he had just become
a Christian, was in college, and was walking across the campus
and a very overly zealous believer came up to him and just said,
"'Brother, are you saved?' Dr. Sproul said it startled him.
He said, "'Yes, I know I'm saved,' and went back to his dorm room
and sat down on his bed and with that mind began to think and
to process through verses with which he was familiar, "'I know
I'm saved, but what am I saved from?' And the answer to that
is to be saved from the wrath of God. And there is only one who can
save from the wrath of God, and that is God Himself. And it is
the mercy of God that saves us from the wrath of God. for His mercy has triumphed over
His judgment." Notice for whom He came. He came to save. Save who? The text says Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners. He did not come for good people.
He came for bad people. He came for sinners. Jesus came
for lawbreakers. Jesus came for God rejecters. Jesus came for those who had
no merit and no righteousness of their own. who had no basis
whatsoever to be accepted by God by their own doing. Jesus
came for the worst of people. He came for sinners. And so, how did Jesus save us
from the wrath of God? Well, the answer is very simple. He saved us by His life and by
His death. He saved us by His sinless life.
Galatians 4.4 says, he was born of a woman under the law. He
came into this world under the law of God, the law that Adam
broke, the law that you and I have broken again and again and again,
times without comprehension. Jesus was born under this very
law, and Jesus obeyed the law perfectly. And it was by His
obedience to the law of God that He secured perfect righteousness
that is imputed to our account when we believe upon the Lord
Jesus Christ. This righteousness and justification
by faith. God does not just create an ex
nihilo out of thin air. This righteousness was actually
achieved and secured by the active obedience of Jesus Christ as
He lived under the law. He lived in your place. He obeyed
on your behalf. so that His obedience and the
resulting righteousness can be given to you as a free gift. And as Dr. Sproul used to love
to say, that is why the mission of salvation was not a three-day
enterprise. It wasn't Jesus left heaven,
went straight to the cross, died, was buried, raised, and went
straight back to heaven. No, he had to live his life under
the law and obey that law so that there would be this perfect
righteousness that would be deposited into your account when you believe
upon Jesus. That's why he left heaven. That's
why He came to this earth. That is why He entered into the
human race. That is why He was born of a
woman. That is why He was born under the law. That transaction
and that accomplishment could not take place in heaven. It had to take place here upon
the earth, as He was made like His brethren. and not only His sinless life,
but His substitutionary death. As Jesus went to the cross, the
Bible says, Him who knew no sin, God made to be sin for us that
we might receive the righteousness of God in Him. 1 Peter 2 verse
24 says, He bore our sins in His body. upon the cross. And there, as
He not only lived in our place, but He died in our place, all
the sins of all the people who would ever believe in Him and
find this full acceptance of this trustworthy statement All
our sins would be transferred to Christ, and Jesus would bear
the heavy load of our sin and the curse of God upon our sin,
which is death. And by His death, Jesus satisfied
the righteous anger of God toward us. There is now, therefore,
no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And in that
death upon the cross, Jesus reconciled holy God and sinful man, both
of whom were at enmity with one another, and has brought the
two together through the blood of His cross. This is how Jesus
saved. as He entered into the human
race and became one of us, that He might obey on our behalf and
might carry our sins far away. Jesus had to come to this earth. Jesus had to enter the human
race. Jesus had to become one of us
in order to be our mediator who would stand between God and man
because a mediator must be equal to both sides. And Jesus, as
the God-man, He was truly God and could represent God to man,
and He was truly man and could represent man to God. Only Jesus
could have stood in the middle and brought the two offended
parties together. And this necessitated that Jesus
come to this world in order to carry out this mission of salvation. It could not have been accomplished
by proxy from heaven. It could not have been. He could
not have been an absentee Savior. He had to come, and He had to
live, and He had to die. And so, Paul concludes this verse
in the most dramatic way. He says, I am foremost of all." Your translation
may say, the chief of sinners, the foremost sinner. It's the
superlative degree, because Paul was not comparing himself with
anyone else and thinking, I'm a little better than someone
else. All Paul could see was the perfect holiness of God,
and as he measured himself against the perfect holiness of God,
the only conclusion to which Paul could come is that, I am
the chief of sinners. When he wrote 1 Corinthians 15
verse 9, he said he was the least of the apostles. That was in
55 A.D. Six years later, in Ephesians
3, 8, he said he was the least of the saints. But now as he
comes in 1 Timothy, some two to five years later, he says,
I am the chief of sinners. He's gone from I'm the least
of the apostles to I'm the least of the saints to I am the chief
of sinners. And with great humility of heart,
Paul is like the publican in Luke 18, smiting his breast off
in the corner, unable to even look up to God and saying, God,
be merciful to me, the sinner. That is our confession here tonight. God, be merciful to me, the sinner. Jesus came into this world to
seek and to save that which was lost. He came not for the righteous,
but for sinners. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners. So the point that Paul is stressing is that by addressing himself
as the foremost of sinners, this is what he is saying, and I'm
finished. Paul is saying, if God can save
me, He can save anybody. If God can save the chief of
sinners, He can save any lesser sinners. As Spurgeon said, if
God can get the elephant into the ark, He can get the ant into the ark. And if God can get Paul into
the kingdom of God and into heaven, then God can get you into the
kingdom, and God can get you into heaven. And it begins by
confessing that you're a sinner. that you are one who has sinned
and fallen short of the glory of God. But God has sent His
Son into this world to save sinners, to rescue sinners, to deliver
sinners, to salvage sinners from eternal destruction. And if you
have never called upon the name of the Lord, I would urge you
to do so even tonight here at a Ligonier Christmas gathering
within your own heart. If you've never committed your
life to Christ, on behalf of God, I call for the verdict in
your heart and in your life and in your soul. Commit your life
to Christ, and He will save you, and He will wash you, and He
will make you clean, and He will clothe you with His righteousness,
and He will reconcile you to God. And He will come and live
inside of you, and one day when you die, He will save you from
death. He will take you to His Father's
house where you will live forever and ever in the presence of God. This is why Jesus came into the
world. It is to save sinners. like you
and me. And if you will believe in Christ,
He will save you. That would be the greatest Christmas
you would ever have. Let us pray. Father, thank You for this trustworthy
statement deserving full acceptance. Thank You for sending Your Son
into this world not for us to have warm feelings
about animals in a barn and a baby in a manger, but so that we would
be rescued from You in the judgment on the last day. Thank You for
the abundance of Your mercy and Your grace that is lavished upon
undeserving sinners who call upon the name of the Lord. Father,
we rejoice that there's been room for us to come into Your
kingdom. In Jesus' name, amen.