I will be in 1 Timothy 1. Everybody who gathers under the
banner of Christ today or whenever, they do so because of one reason
only. However often a church meets,
and there is no rule for that, The members of that church worship
God and enjoy sweet fellowship. And they are heartened every
time. And a believer's sole reason
for gathering together and worshiping is because of that great and
wonderful mercy of God. The Bible tells us that God's
mercy is both his delight and it is manifested in Christ Jesus. God's mercy, when it works, it
seeks the lost child. And then God's mercy bathes the
child's unrighteousness away and grants righteousness. It
brings life to that lost child. And God's mercy breaks that child's
dead stony heart and provides a living one. And God's mercy
grants that child faith. Faith to believe in his son who
died to save sinners just like that child. Now let's read starting
in 1 Timothy 1 verse 12. says, and I thank Christ Jesus,
our Lord, who has enabled me, because he counted me faithful,
putting me into the ministry, although I was formerly a blasphemer,
a persecutor, and an insolent man. But I obtained mercy, because
I did it ignorantly in unbelief. and the grace of our Lord was
exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ
Jesus. The words, but I obtained mercy,
are my focus. They're Paul's confession, showing
how he used to be and who he had become by the time he wrote
this. They show how God saves sinners,
even one like Saul of Tarsus, who was the scourge of early
Christianity. And they show us that God is
the giver of this mercy and that this mercy cannot be bought. It's entirely free. Now, some
people probably have not considered how incredible a change occurred
in Paul, and I speak this partly from a fleshly point of view.
We know that anybody who is saved undergoes a tremendous change,
whether they were Christians to begin with or not. You can
be someone who does not believe in God or someone who believes
in God, and the mercy required to save that person is the same.
But from a fleshly point of view, Paul was not, he was a zealot,
not a political one, but a religious one, and that's almost the worst
of the two. A person like that who believes
that his quest or his purpose is a righteous one and is a morally
good one, They don't show even a shadow
of guilt or shame when they have to do certain things that are
not good, whatever reaches their goals. Even when Paul had to
commit some pretty heinous atrocities, now he hunted down and he took
people and he put them in prison. And it was anybody who believed
that Jesus was the Christ I was thinking about this and
other zealots in history, and I remember that President Lincoln,
he was a man who was zealously sought on both sides, but I'm
going to focus on the ones that were against him. Between his
first election and his inauguration, he committed himself to basically
taking a tour of some states in a train. But that election
so struck the nation that it caused a great divide, and before
Lincoln could be sworn in, the South had elected its president,
and seven states had seceded from the Union. And life wasn't
safe. Not for Lincoln, especially,
because there were people who believed strongly so strongly
that their cause was righteous and that his was not, that they
went after him with assassins and bombs and what have you. And they were, of course, goaded
along by people who believed the same thing. And they gave
them provisions and intelligence, and they were spies to help him. And because of these threats,
he had to basically ride incognito. unmarked trains, changing them
sometimes to avoid assassination attempts. And he had some detectives
and some agents. They used whatever means necessary
to keep Lincoln safe from all the zealots. And those zealots
who wanted Lincoln dead were like Paul. It was over a belief. Look at the words from Paul's
own mouth. He says, I was formerly a blasphemer. And someone might say, can't
be. Paul? The great Paul? A blasphemer? That's just too unbelievable. He might have made a few comments
with a little too much candor. But none of it ever rose to the
level of blasphemy. I mean, how can a person taught
under Gamaliel be a blasphemer? I don't think that's right. But
he surely was. To blaspheme means to speak irreverently
or disrespectfully of God. And you can tell a lot about
a person by the way He speaks the reverence in his words when
referring to God. Paul told the Ephesians that
he and they, and of course by extension, all who are born of Adam and
are in sin, he says, we were by nature children of wrath,
children of wrath. and sons of disobedience. But see the words from the man
himself. He was a blasphemer. He disrespected
God and did not revere him. Where did Paul believe his righteousness
came from before he was converted? The law. Pretty simple answer,
just like the Pharisees did. He was a Pharisee. So why is
that blasphemy? Because pursuing righteousness
by the law is the same as saying God's mercy isn't required. I'm good, thanks. Don't need
it. great hymn by Thomas Kelly, and
we have it. He says, ye who think of sin
but lightly, nor suppose the evil great. Those people are
blasphemers. They think their sin is little
instead of all-consuming, and that they need only a little
of God's righteousness, perhaps, to patch themselves up, a righteousness
which they believe they can earn. And in so doing, they scorn his
grace. And they disrespect, they spit
on Christ's substitutionary death. But Paul learned something after
his conversion. He learned that what he had said
before was a sin against God. His heart was changed. He no
longer blasphemed, but revered the things of God. He counted
everything from before, that he was a Pharisee, that he was
taught under Gamaliel, that he was Hebrew of Hebrews, all that
stuff. He counted it as loss. He was taught the awfulness of
his sin. He learned the meaning of these
words from that same hymn, the next words in that very verse.
Here may view its nature rightly. Here its guilt may estimate. Mark the sacrifice appointed
and see who bears the awful load. It is the word, the Lord's anointed,
son of man and son of God. The great mercy of God, the Lord's
anointed, was shown to Paul. And Paul not only stopped his
blaspheming, he stopped persecuting Christ. And by extension, the
church, his church, Back in our text, that is the second thing
Paul calls himself, a persecutor. He harassed the church and he
sought to destroy it wherever he found it. He was like a bounty hunter for
Christians. He would get warrants from the Jewish leaders and he
would go after those people and he would throw them in prison. And on the road to Damascus,
he was on the hunt again. But instead of Paul arresting
a Christian, Jesus, Jesus arrested Paul. And he said,
Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And you can see the quality of
the man as spoken by Jesus himself, persecutor. But you might think, wait a minute,
we don't even have evidence that Saul ever met Jesus in person. But that's not what Jesus said. Saul didn't persecute Jesus directly. He persecuted his church. He
persecuted his followers. And in so doing, he persecuted
the Lord, the Lord's anointed himself. And these words are
the proof. It's from God's own son. It is
the truth, the fact. Saul, why are you persecuting
me? In fact, it was so well known
in the region what Paul was doing. And I'll just leave it there. What
Paul was doing to the early Christian churches that After news had
spread of his conversion, Paul wrote about it in the book of
Galatians. He said, I was unknown by face. People had no idea what I looked
like. I was unknown by face to the
churches of Judea, which were in Christ. They only knew his
name. but they were hearing only he
who formerly persecuted us now preaches the faith which he once
tried to destroy. His reputation preceded him.
And that reputation was that he had persecuted the church.
Now, have you ever said something and then immediately thought,
oh, I wish I wouldn't have said that? And have you ever wanted to take
it back? Now it could be because it was
too harsh, too petty. It's just, you were hungry, I
don't know. But it was hurtful. Now I pray God would tame my
tongue because I get that feeling almost daily. It just feels awful. And when you have that feeling
that you might have hurt someone, or in a more spiritual sense,
given the enemy cause to justify their unbelief or their irreverence
toward God, we wish we could take it all back. Now imagine how Paul must have
felt every day of his life after Jesus knocked him off his horse.
The things that man said. Regret is a thing Paul knew well.
He had persecuted not just a man named Jesus, but the God-man. God's only son, the one who was
foretold by the prophets that Paul claimed to have studied.
He was God Almighty incarnate. We know Paul wished he could
take it all back. Yet Paul, as bad of a prosecutor
or persecutor as ever lived, obtained the mercy of God. Says it right there, verse 13.
I obtained mercy. Who obtained mercy? Paul, the
persecutor. The persecutor of the very finisher
of his own salvation. Paul, the persecutor of God's
promise, Paul, the persecutor and the blasphemer, became he
who formerly persecuted us, now preaches the faith which he once
tried to destroy. To what did Paul owe this change? Mercy was obtained. Some think
God's mercy means an easy life and maybe riches or at least
convenience. Paul hadn't either. His life got hard after his conversion. He made tents to get by as needed. He spent many days in chains
under house arrest. He was run out of towns and pursued
by probably the same people he used to call comrades. Yet whether
he was rich or poor, bound or free, he wanted it known to all
that this one important thing, he had obtained mercy. Paul had
become a man of some renown both before and after his conversion
and for different reasons. After he had come to know the
Lord, he had a sort of a following. Some members of the church would
even say, I am of Paul. I'm of Paul. As if there was a sub-camp within
Christ's camp. Now they say that fame changes
a person. And it's like a change in their
pride. They become proud of what they've
done. You know, they think how great they are. They might boast more about what
they've done. And they will gladly receive
adoration. And Paul, he was a changed man,
but not because of fame. It was because he had obtained
mercy. He doesn't attribute it to anything
else. He knew what the one thing needful
was, and it was God's mercy. Paul declared these words in
our text to be the most important thing. He didn't say, I obtained
apostleship. He didn't say, I was a Hebrew
of Hebrews. It wasn't his previous standing
in society or his fame within the church. The importance of
mercy is never lost on the children
of God. They know the depths of their
depravity and the uselessness of trying to gain salvation through
any other means than the blood of Jesus Christ. Now, does sin merely inconvenience
others? If I sinned against you, Bruce,
would it be an inconvenience to just you? Or is it just a
bad thing? Just a bad thing. You shouldn't do, right? Shouldn't
do bad things. Rather, was your sin not against
God? I quote this scripture a lot,
but when David sinned and had a man killed, and had his wife,
he didn't say he sinned against that man or his wife, he said,
I sinned against God. We sinned against God who with
great longsuffering held back the store of his wrath, and there
is one, store of his wrath until a substitute was found for you. if you are his. Paul presents
up himself as a pattern, an example, an example to all believers of
God's long suffering towards his people, as it says a couple
of verses ahead of our main text. Now did Paul know the depths
of his sin and who he sinned against? He surely did. Once he understood that, where
did he rank himself? that is somewhat of a fleshly
view, but these are Paul's words. He said of himself that he was
less than the least of all the saints. Less than the least, but he wrote
half the New Testament. So how did Paul obtain God's
mercy? Well, we know the flesh likes
to earn, likes to receive payment. A fleshly view of Paul's life
would provide ample reason to suggest that he obtained mercy
by all his works. He had the preaching, he had
the writing, he had the missionary work, as you could call it. He
went from town to town, stayed true, did all of that. And let's not forget all the
souls he saved. I don't know the words that they
use in certain churches nowadays, but, you know, saving souls or
whatever they call it. Just trying to use their language. And of course, he had other works. And there are traditions in churches
sometimes that there are ways to obtain it through those traditions.
But all of those things have one thing in common. They are
not the Lord's Christ. Paul had no intention of boasting
in his works even though or even if he outranked
any one of his peers, what we would call a ranking. In Philippians 3, verses four
through six, Paul says, if anyone else thinks he may have confidence
in the flesh, I have more so. Circumcised the eighth day of
the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. And don't forget, concerning
the law, I was a Pharisee. And concerning zeal, there he
was, the zealot, Concerning zeal, persecuting
the church. Concerning the righteousness
which is in the law. Look, he's doing this to himself.
He's saying this about himself. Concerning righteousness which
is in the law, blameless. And then Paul says elsewhere,
I labored more abundantly than they all, meaning the other apostles. Lest you think Paul is blaspheming
again Look at the next words he wrote. I have suffered the
loss of all things. Basically, all those things that
Paul could boast about. All those things that would make
other men and women heap praise on him. All those things he could
use to further his power and his influence. And he said, I count them as
rubbish. You ever go back for your trash? Why did he count them as rubbish?
That I may gain Christ and be found in him. Mercy is free. Paul didn't pay for it. And if you try to buy it, you
can't have it. You must go begging for free
mercy. God won't have it any other way. So what does it mean to be found
in Christ? It means to obtain mercy. It is not of him that wills,
nor of him that runs, but of God who shows mercy. Don't run for mercy, don't exert
yourself. If you want mercy, it's a four-letter
word, rest, rest. Rest in Christ Jesus. Don't make
a decision for Jesus. Believe. We can tell that to
people. Believe and be baptized and you
will be saved. Believe that Jesus is the Christ.
And you will obtain mercy, even if you were once a persecutor,
a blasphemer, an insolent person. Because God delights in mercy. Now the question is, do you delight
to receive it? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and you will be saved. And like Paul, you will obtain
mercy. May the Lord bless his word.
Bruce, would you close us please?