Turn with me to the book of 1
Timothy chapter 1. At verse 15, let's talk about that
a little bit here this morning. It says, This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into this
world to save sinners. Faithful saying. Worthy. Loyal. Acceptation. This is the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ in one verse. One verse. The essence of the whole Bible
is one verse. Christ Jesus came into this world
to save sinners. Now, one of the most important
questions that can be asked by any man is this, For whom is this salvation meant? This is a faithful say worthy
of all acceptation. that Christ Jesus came into this
world to save sinners. For whom is this salvation meant? That's the question. And the
answer is given by the Holy Spirit of God. Christ Jesus came into
this world to save sinners. That's the answer to the question,
which is one of the most important questions, or the most important
question that any man will ever ask. Christ Jesus came into this
world to save sinners. Now, all men have sinned and
come short of the glory of God. All men. Every man, every woman,
every boy, every girl who is a member of Adam's fallen race
have sinned. And that's a fact. That's the
fact. That's the testimony of God against
all of us. All men have sinned and come
short of the glory of God, yet all men have not sinned in the
same way. All men have sinned in the same
way in the sense that they are born of Adam. Born in sin, conceived
in iniquity. But yet all men have not sinned
in the same way. They have all wandered down that
downward road. There is no doubt about that.
Yet each one, each one of those that make up Adam's fallen race,
has gone a different way from all the rest. It says that he
came into this world to save sinners. Now, he came into this
world to save respectable sinners. Someone said there's no such
thing as a respectable sinner, but there is, in a sense, a respectable
sinner. He came into this world to save
respectable sinners. He came into this world to save
disreputable sinners. He came into this world to save
thieves. He came into this world to save
harlots. He came into this world to save
murderers. He came into this world to save
proud sinners. He came into this world to save
despairing sinners. He came into this world to save
liars and thieves and drunkards and whoremongers. That's a black
lot, isn't it? That's a black lot. That's a
horrible crew, Bob, horrible crew. Murders, thieves, rapists,
proud sinners, sparing sinners. respectable sinners, rebellious
sinners, wayward sinners. A black lot and a horrible crew
is these that I've described. And hell is their due reward,
by the way. That's their due reward. That's
what they've got coming to them. If there's any people in the
world who are not sinners, Jesus Christ did not come to save them. If there's anybody in this world upon this earth that is not a
sinner, then Jesus Christ did not come to save them. Because such people do not want
a Savior. They don't want a Savior. They
don't need a Savior. And if there be any here this
morning gathered here in this place at this church, if there
be any here who venture to say that you have never sinned, then
you need not listen to me this morning. You can just turn me
off because I have nothing to say to you, nor has the Bible, the book of God. The
only thing that the book of God has to say to the man who says
he has never sinned or he is no sinner, the only thing that
the Bible has to say to him is, that you're living under a great
delusion. Because he says, the man that
says that he has not sinned, says he has deceived himself. And not only has he deceived
himself, he said he makes God a liar. Now, listen to me. There can be no mercy. No mercy. There can be no mercy to the
man who has committed no fault. No mercy. A man's not a sinner. He says, I've not sinned. No mercy for you. No mercy for
you. Pardon and mercy are not for
innocent people. Not for them. They're for the
guilty people, pardon and mercies for guilty people, not for innocent
people, not for righteous people. I've already said, and you've
read it yourself, that this is a faithful saying, worthy of
our acceptance. Christ Jesus came into this world
to save sinners. Save sinners, not the innocent, not the righteous,
not the so-called good, but he came to save sinners. He came to save sinners without
any other qualification, no qualification except that they are sinners. That's the only qualification,
except they are sinners. He came into this world to save
sinners. That's all he's going to save.
I don't want to save anybody else except sinners. Guilty,
guilty, condemned, self-condemned, Holy Spirit condemned, society
condemned, God condemned, sinners. will save them. He came to save
rebellious, stubborn sinners. He came to break their will and
to subdue them and to bring them at His feet and confess unto
them that He's right in everything He said about them. He's come
to save sinners. Listen to me now. He's come to
save sinners who have no good in them. He's come to save him
who has not a trace of goodness in him. That's who He comes to
save. You've got any goodness in you, He didn't come to save you. He
comes to save the individual, man or woman, boy or girl. Hasn't
got a trace of goodness in him. But surely there's something
in me that is excellent in the sight of God. No, there's not.
Not anything. No good in you. No good. Everything
in you is bad. Everything in you God frowns
upon. As a matter of fact, that which
is in you, God hates. Sin. Sin. He came to save sinners. I hope you understand that. I'm
going to stay on it until I understand it and until you understand it.
Now, that's all that Paul said. He said that Christ Jesus came
into this world to save sinners. knowing that what he said was
inspired of the second person of the Trinity, who is none other
than the Holy Spirit. In some places it talks about
the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit
are one and the same. Now, I dare not limit what is
left unlimited, and I dare not qualify what is left unqualified. Sinners is all that Paul said. That's all he said. He came into this world to save
sinners. I said before, what if they have
no trace of goodness? What if they have no mark of
excellence? in man. He came into this world
to save sinners. This means also that he came
to save sinners in their corruption and in their pollution. They're
polluted. You know what it means when they
talk about something being corrupted or polluted? It means every part of that which
they say is corrupted has been affected. Don't drink the water. The water is polluted and the
water is corrupted. That's the way we are. Sin has
corrupted us, has polluted us. Now, he came to save sinners,
And that means that he came to save sinners in their corruption
and in their pollution. Now, when the conscience, there's
something about a man called the conscience. The Bible
refers unto a man who has a dead conscience. And all of us, by nature, have
a dead conscience. That is, we're not God conscious. We're self-conscious, but we're
not God conscious. Now, when the conscience that
is dead by nature is awakened to discover the polluting element
and effect of this thing called sin, when the conscience awakened
to it, then we discover the awful, horrible element of sin in us. And it is seen by us that have
been awakened to it to be exceedingly sinful. and a thing that's truly
terrible and horrible. These things that I mentioned
that describe those for whom our Lord came to save, these
murderers, rapists, adulterers and whoremongers, All of that
is the fruit of this corruption, of this polluted nature. It is sins and iniquity, but
the root of the matter is in us. The root, the root from which
all these things spring. Oh, someone says, well, I wouldn't
commit adultery, I wouldn't do this. As long as the root of
the matter which is sin is in you, you can do anything. You're
capable, you're potential. Sin, when sin is seen to be sin,
becomes exceedingly sinful and horrible and terrible. Sin. in its pollution. He came into this world to save
sinners in their pollution, to save them whom society gives
her vote to expel, society which is rotten to the
core. I mean rotten to the core. Yet society sets in on judgment
of some who they think is more rotten than they are. When they
find that if society only mentioned this by way of an example or
an illustration, when some poor man or some poor woman has gone
astray, Then self-righteous society said, we cannot bear that person. We cannot bear that person. I'll
give you an everyday illustration I just read in the paper. Just
recently, last week or so, where a school teacher, assistant principal
of some school, connived some way through the computers, I
don't know how it was, all to exercise his sinful makeup, his
sinful self to some form of pornography and some lifestyle which is contrary
to the word of God, contrary to human nature. and tried to put himself off
on some young boy. And they set the trap for him
and caught him. And I've read the various articles
on the front page and the letters to the editor that parents have
sent letters and telephone calls to the Board of Education that
said, that says, we can't have a boy, we can't have a man like
that teaching in our school. And I joined with them, I wouldn't
want that either. What I want to say in that society,
which is rotten to the core, will immediately stand up and
ain't even convicted this fella yet. We can't have him. Get him away from us. We don't
want him associating with us. Drive him out, Bob. We can't bear with him. We don't
want to touch him. We don't want him walking down
the streets and his garments touching our garments. Drive
him out. Drive him out. He's polluted
and corrupted. So he is. So he is. That's the way we are, too. We're
polluted and corrupted. But listen to you, I'm not talking
about that. That's not the burden of my discourse
here this morning. It's not so with the Lord Jesus
Christ. It's so with society, and it's
so with the majority of us. Not so with Him, notwithstanding
His sensitive sense. towards sin. Not so with him. And his sense of the awfulness
and the depravity and the corruptness and the pollution of sin is much
greater than ours. His mind is sensitive because
of its supreme purity. Yet notwithstanding, yet notwithstanding, he came
to save sinners. He mixed with sinners. The Lord Jesus Christ mixed with
sinners, polluted sinners. He mixed with sinners, with publicans,
and with harlots. harlots. He sat at meat with sinners. He lived with sinners. He died
with sinners. He made his grave with the wicked,
the Bible says. He entered paradise with an out-and-out
thief. over there in the book of Revelation.
It says that redeemed sinners sang a new song. This is what they sang. They
sang, they say, Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us, God, by
Thy blood. That's what they sang. polluted
sinners, rebellious sinners, sinners whom He ate with, sinners
whom He died with, they sang, Thou hast slain and hast redeemed
us unto God by Thy blood. He came also to save sinners
under the curse Sin is a cursed thing. God has never blessed sin and
never will bless sin. Sin is a cursed thing. God cannot
bear it. And ultimately, God will burn
it. Sin hates you. He can't look
upon you. He came to save the cursed sinner
by taking the curse upon himself. How did he do that? By hanging
on the tree of the curse. He took our curse. He bore our curse. what all is
involved in the curse of God upon sinners. He bore it completely,
all of it. Every drop He drank from that
cup, that cup of woe. Oh, He came to save sinners that
are under the curse by being made a curse for them. Cursed
is everyone who does not do what is contained in his holy law,
the curse of God's own. He that offendeth in one point
is guilty of it all, the curse of God's own. Hell's his due
reward. He saves sinners from the curse
of love. Another thing he does, he came
to save sinners without strength. Listen now, he came to save sinners
without strength. Sin brings death. Wages of sin
is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Sin brings death,
and wherever sin reigns, the power of good dies out. Can the Ethiopian change his
skin? Can the African black man change
his skin? Can he make himself white? Can't do it, can he? Who's that
singer in California that spent a fortune trying to bleach his
back skin white? Michael Jackson, trying to do
it. Spent all of his life trying
to become white. Can the Ethiopian change his
skin? He can't do it. Can the leopard
change his spots? He can't do it. It says if he can't, if this
can ever come to pass, then ye who are accustomed to do evil,
or you that are accustomed to do evil, then you may do good,
or ye that do good, if that's the case. But it's
not the case that can't change, and neither can you and I. We're bound in a stream, in a
force that's going downward, and nothing can change it unless
God intervenes. Oh, listen, without strength,
without strength, God saves them without strength, without strength
enough to even believe upon it. No man by nature has within him
power or strength to believe the message of the gospel of
grace. He doesn't have that. He's without
strength. But he comes to save sinners
who are without strength even to believe on His name. Without strength. Without strength
to even feel His sin. Without strength even to know
what sin is. Without strength to even feel
a good desire to do good. The Bible says when we were without
strength, in due time, in God's time, that's what that means,
in due time Christ died. For who? For the ungodly. Christ came to save sinners without
strength. in due time. He died for whom? The ungodly. I know that you'd hesitate. You'd
hesitate before you spoke of a person whom maybe you didn't
know at all or just partially knew something about him, either
by observation or hearsay, you would be reluctant to say he
or she is ungodly, wouldn't you? To be ungodly means to be without
a trace of goodness. That's what it means. It is the opposite of godliness. If a man is not godly, he's ungodly,
not a trace of godliness in him. In due time, Christ died for
the ungodly. Christ died for sinners. Without a trace of goodness,
without hope, and without God, in this present world. Now you see, what I'm trying
to say is, the city of refuge is where the man who commits the crime, he
goes into that city and he finds safety. And the gate is wide
open. And the gate is wide open here. As a matter of fact, you can
even take the post down that holds the gate. And it's wide
open for any sinner, any man, any woman, any boy, any girl
that is ungodly. to be saved from their sins,
from their corruption, from their pollution, from the curse of
God? Whoreth have strength that cannot
even put the gates open? All you've got to do is come here. Without hope. Without hope. To who? To who's he talking about? Christ
Jesus came into this world to save sinners. That's who? Sinners. He came to save. He didn't come
to condemn us. Already condemned. He didn't
have to condemn us. He's already condemned. He didn't
come to condemn us. When he came down to look at
the Tower of Babel, And he's seen them, all the wickedness,
evilness, trying to build this tower to heaven, all the sin
and evil practices, ungodliness of this world. He might have been shocked and
said, how horrible is all this. I'll destroy. them from the face
of the earth. But he didn't come to destroy
men's lives, but he came to save men's lives. He didn't destroy
them people, Bob. He scattered them all over the
face of the earth. He didn't destroy them. Oh, my soul, my soul, my soul,
my soul. Son of man, he said, has not
come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. Now, he did
not come into this world to help us save ourselves. I wish everybody
here would believe that. He didn't come to help you save
yourself. All of us, one time or the other,
We've been under the influence of that. We understood something
about Christ dying for sinners, but yet we thought, and some
maybe still do, there's something that we've got to do in order
to help God save us through His Christ. He didn't come to help
us. save ourselves. Christ Jesus,
worthy, acceptation, faithful, he came into this world to save
sinners. Not help save sinners, but to
save sinners. He didn't say, well, now, You
do what you can do, and I'll pick up where you leave off.
You try to get this thing straightened out, and you do so much, and
if you can't go any farther, let me know, and I'll wind this
thing up. I'll make up where you fell short. Oh, no. I'll do part, and you
do the rest, or so forth. Oh, no. He came to save us, and He will save us from top
to bottom, alone and by Himself. It is salvation by grace. He did not come into this world
to make us savable. He came in this world to save
us. He came Himself. to be the Savior
of the helpless and the hopeless and the doomed and the damned. Can't you see here this morning how so many people, human beings, human beings, offsprings
of Adam, lovely faces, respectable people who spend
all day trying to weave a fabric, a coat of righteousness to set
themselves in good order before God by their good works. You see people doing that every
day. And those people, they don't understand that all they do,
all the effort that is put forth, weaving this platform to stand
upon, which will do them good before God, all that they do
and all the time and effort that is spent comes unraveled before darkness falls upon their
day. Worthless, worthless, worthless,
worthless. There's a whole lot of people
in this world. The majority of them, they have one foot on the
rock and one foot yet in the sand. Oh, they would not tell you that they're saved by the grace
of God. They'll tell you, we hope to
be saved. We hope to be saved. We're not sure. We'll not know
until it's all over with whether we're saved or not. They got
one foot on the rock and one foot in the sand. They're saved
if they do this or they're saved if they do that. No, my dear
friends, hear this one. Salvation is given to the sinner
and it's given to him outright. There's
no buttons on it. There's no strings on God's salvation. It's given to the sinner, hopeless,
helpless sinner who can't save himself, and he knows it. The
salvation of God is fitting to suit the sinner who cannot help
himself, suited for him and him alone. If you can help God save
you, you won't have this salvation, because the salvation that God
gives to you and gives it to you forever, causes you to honor
and to glorify Him instead of yourself. Does He not say, He
that believeth is not condemned? Does it not say, He that hath
begun a good work in you shall finish it, shall complete it
through the day of redemption. We have a name, don't we? And
it's recorded here. Our name, our name is sinners. That's the name we have. By what
other name you go by, you can disregard really. It
don't mean a thing. sir this or sir that. You may
trace your name way back. You may be able to say, my genealogy
qualifies me to be a son and daughter of the revolution, or
the son and daughter of the confederacy, or whatever. I'm qualified. My ancestry. You can do away
with all that. The truth of the matter is our
name is sinners. We're sinners. Christ came into this world to
save sinners. He didn't come into this world
to invent electricity. Benjamin Franklin, instrumental
in that. He didn't come into this world
to reveal What's that about the weights? Gravity? That wasn't his purpose. He didn't
come into this world to reveal to some surgeon how to operate
on the brain. That was not his objective. He
didn't come to give us the ABCs in the English language. He came to save immortal souls. He came to save sinners who couldn't
save themselves. That's all he came to do. He
didn't come to build hospitals, create the United Nations, and
do all that. He came to save sinners. That's his business. Why don't
we let him do his business? Why is it? that we set about
trying to help Him do His business. We who are nothing but sinners,
nothing. What could we do? The only thing
we could do is lie and cheat and go to hell. That's all we
could do. We have our own name, and He
has His own name. And here we have it. We have
our name and we have His name. And His name is what? Christ
Jesus. Now, what does that word Christ
mean? That means anointed. That's what it means. It means
that He was anointed by God the Father. It means that He was
prepared by God the Father. That means that He was fitted
by God the Father. That means that he was qualified
by God the Father. That means that he was endowed
by God the Father for the work of saving sinners. That's what
it means. Christ Jesus is the anointed,
the commission. He did not come on his own account. That is, without any authority.
or without any commission, but God commissioned him and authorized
him to save sinners on the basis of who he is and what he does. He's the anointed Savior, commissioned
by God to be the Savior. And if he is not a Savior, listen
to me, if he is not, a Savior. And I say this in reverence. If He is not a Savior, He's nothing. He's nothing. He came into this
world to save sinners, and if He does not save sinners, He
missed the mark. He missed the mark. If he's not
able to save, then we're in bad shape. But he's able to save. He's all that the poor, self-destroying,
self-destructing sinner needs. Why? Because he is God, and yet
man in one person. He's man to sympathize with me,
and He's God who's able to save me. Oh, listen, He's able to
save to the uttermost all that come to God by Him. His name shall be called Jesus. for he shall save his people
from their sins." This is a faithful saying worthy
of all acceptation, that he, the anointed, commissioned by
God, anointed, appointed, qualified, and fitted, came into this world
to save sinners. Paul said, "...in whom I am chief."
And you and I, we could say with Paul, Paul, you're not entitled
to all of that because I feel like I'm the chief of sinners
too. And I know if God saved you and if He saved me, that's
our testimony. We're the chief of sinners. God
saves sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ. That's all he's
going to say. Someone said, one of the Puritans
said, a sinner is a sacred thing for God has made him so. Just by me Saying that I'm a
sinner and you're a sinner, don't make it so. But when God makes us to agree with Him in
regard to what He said about us and who we are, we become
a sacred sinner, a sinner for whom Christ died.