Good News you can rely on

Our meditation this morning is taken from 1 Timothy and verses 12 to 17. And you may be seated as I read the word of God. 1 Timothy 1 verse 12. 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. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering as a pattern to those who are going to believe on him for everlasting life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen. So reads the Word of God, the Lord blessed to our understanding by the help and illumination of His Holy Spirit. One of the major problems in Western society today is unbelief. Generally speaking, nobody seems to know who or what to believe anymore. Public scepticism was highlighted some time ago in a comic strip from Peanuts with Charlie Brown walking along the street, waving his arms in the air and saying, believe in me, believe in me, and nobody takes any notice. And in the last frame, he shakes his head and says, you just can't get anyone to believe in you anymore. Our world is a world of sceptics. We used to trust our generals, but Vietnam changed that. We used to trust our presidents, but Watergate proved us wrong. We used to trust our bankers, but the subprime mortgage crisis and a trillion dollar bailout in 2008 put paid to that. We are skeptical of everything and everyone, but deep down in our hearts, Isn't it true that we all long for something concrete to rely on? Something that can give us hope in life. Well, Paul has something very relevant to say in our text in 1 Timothy 1 verse 15 to a skeptical society like ours. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief." Here is something you can stake your life upon, says the Apostle. You can rest upon it. Historically it is true and it should be universally accepted on that account. Now there are five of these so-called faithful sayings in Paul's three pastoral epistles to Timothy and to Titus, and they are probably quotations from a basic early creed. They are concise summaries of key doctrines that were already common in the church at that time. And in quoting them in these letters, Paul gives them his own inspired apostolic endorsement. Our text, which is the first of the five statements, has only eight Greek words, but in them we have a marvellous summation of the gospel of salvation. As we ponder them, it is my prayer that we will all feel we have got something really to rely on. There are four simple statements in these eight Greek words, the first of which is this, the gospel, or God's good news, is trustworthy. It is faithful to the truth about Jesus Christ. In chapter 2 verse 7 Paul calls himself a teacher of the truth. In chapter 3 verse 15 he defines the church as the pillar and ground of the truth. Because the church and its teachers have a responsibility to uphold the truth and to proclaim it. The truth as recorded by reliable eyewitnesses who were inspired by the Holy Spirit. to record and to recount the history of Christ's earthly life. So Matthew begins by telling us that Jesus was born when Augustus was the emperor of Rome and issued a decree that all the world should be registered. That was between 6 and 5 BC according to Roman history. Again, we know from history that Herod the Great, who tried to kill baby Jesus, died in April 4 B.C. That would make late December 5 B.C. the probable date for the birth of Jesus. But the Gospel writers also accurately fix the time of our Lord's death near the end of Pontius Pilate's governorship of Judea, which Roman history tells us lasted from AD 26 to 36. So, both the beginning and the end of our Lord's life on earth are pinpointed as verifiable historical events. The gospel is not the stuff of fairy tales and legends. Now, although Paul, who was a contemporary of Christ and knew of Christ, at first dismissed the claims of Christians, he subsequently became convinced of their trustworthiness. And here in our text, he endorses what he and the churches commonly believed, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I want us to think for a few moments about that phrase, Christ Jesus came into the world. It's rather a strange way of talking about somebody, isn't it? Normally, we talk about their being brought into the world. We would use a passive verb, because after all, a birth is a passive act. None of us chooses to come into the world we just arrived. But Paul speaks here as if the coming of Jesus was different, as if his coming to the earth was a journey that he decided to make. He says, Christ Jesus came into the world. And of course, that is exactly what the whole Bible teaches. The coming of Jesus Christ into the world was different from the coming of all other men and women into the world. It was planned by God the Father and executed by God the Holy Spirit. Mary and Joseph, therefore, were not left in the dark. They were each informed separately by the angel that she will miraculously conceive a child of the Holy Ghost, that she will have a child without any assistance from a human father, and that the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. Many of the people in their hometown of Nazareth disbelieved this claim, and so when Jesus grew up, he had to face accusations of illegitimacy. But the evidence of his supernatural coming didn't stop there, with the angels' pronouncement. As our Lord began His public ministry, more and more people came to the truth that Jesus was the Messiah, the Saviour God had long promised. Sometimes it was His teaching that convinced them, because He spoke as no other man spoke. He teaches with authority, they said. He doesn't quote from any rabbi or any other human source. He didn't even speak as the prophets in the Old Testament spoke, who always prefaced their messages with the words, thus says the Lord. Jesus would begin by saying, truly, truly, I say to you, Then again, sometimes it was the miracles that convinced people that Jesus came from heaven. Take the time that he fell asleep in the boat during a raging storm. His disciples cried for help and when he stalled the tempest they said, what man is this? What sort of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey him? Halfway through his public ministry, Jesus asked his disciples the question, who do you say I am? And Peter, who was the spokesman for the group, said, you are the Christ, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Now, if some would dismiss Peter's confession as being mistaken, we can add that all the disciples thought they were mistaken about Jesus when they saw him crucified on the cross and buried in the ground. But their uncertainty was soon relieved when on the third day he rose again from the dead, appeared to them, and broke bread with them. Our Lord, however, was never unsure about his coming into the world. He claimed to have come from the Father and that he would return to the Father. Listen to this prayer the night before he died. I have glorified you on earth, I have finished the work you have given me to do, and now, O Father, glorify me together with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world was." Can you imagine any sane human being praying a prayer like that? Only someone who was the Son of God incarnate, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit could have had such an existence of sharing the glory of God before He came from heaven to the earth, before He took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Well friends, I don't know about you, but I thank God for the solid rock of historical truth on which every Christian can cast anchor and not be tossed to and fro by every wind of doubt or doctrine. The gospel, I say, is trustworthy. Secondly, says Paul, the gospel is intended for everybody. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance. I like the way J.B. Phillips paraphrases it. He says, this statement is completely reliable and should be universally accepted. Absolutely. The logic is very simple. If the gospel is true, then it's true for everybody. It is not for some exclusive minority who happen to be religiously inclined. It is for every human being. Now this claim for universal acceptance is being increasingly denied by progressive modern thinkers who reject entirely, out of hand, all notion of objective truth. Also called truth, they say, is subjective. What you think is truth is only your own opinion, and everybody's opinion is culturally conditioned. It all depends on whether you grew up in a Christian home or an agnostic home, whether you live in the Bible Belt or in New England. So you have your truth, I have mine. He has his, she has hers. And although they are all different, they are all true for each particular person. Christians, however, reject this skepticism as just a convenient ruse to escape the demands and the moral restraints of God's truth. History provides positive proof of how again and again society has degenerated into moral chaos when every man does what is right in his own eyes and does not obey the Bible. Society has always been at its best when it has accepted the Bible as objective truth. Now, just think about it. It took 1,500 years to write, and it was finished 2,000 years ago. That means that the earliest parts of our Bible were written more than 3,000 years ago. There is no other book, no other religious book in the world that has writing so old. But not only that. The 66 books that go to make up the Bible were written by many different authors in different stages of Jewish culture and separated by hundreds of years. And yet there is an incredible harmony between the authors in progressively foretelling the details of Christ's coming as the Saviour of the world. Details such as His miraculous birth of a Jewish virgin in the town of Bethlehem, His triumphal entry into Jerusalem as King riding on the back of a foal, a donkey's colt, his death by crucifixion when that method of public execution was completely unknown, and his resurrection and exaltation to the right hand of God till his enemies are made a stool for his feet, as proclaimed by David in Psalm 8. Only an all-knowing, And all controlling God could reveal such truths hundreds of years in advance of their fulfillment and then bring them to pass. And the birth of Jesus, you know, beautifully illustrates the universality of this gospel. That if it is true, then it is true for everybody. For there were two distinct groups of people who came to the manger to pay their tribute to the Christ Child. The shepherds and the magi were separated from one another by barriers of race, class, and culture. Racially, the shepherds were Jews, the magi were Gentiles. Socially, the shepherds were poor. And the Magi were well off, judging by the expensive gifts they brought to Jesus Christ. And then culturally, the shepherds were illiterate, the Magi were scholar-priests belonging to the Zoroastrian religion in distant Persia. Yet despite their racial, their social, their cultural differences, see how they are united in their worship of Jesus Christ at the manger. Now, that has been the characteristic of the church ever since. It is the most multinational, multiracial, multisocial, multicultural community in the world. For Christ commanded his disciples to take the gospel to all the nations. So far then we have seen from 1 Timothy 1.15 that the gospel is trustworthy and it is intended for everybody. Now thirdly, consider with me the truth that the gospel is about Christ's power to save sinners. This is a true saying, says Paul, and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That was the reason our Lord himself gave for his coming into the world. In Luke 19.10 he says, For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. Now, the word sinner And the words save are regarded by many today, especially in academia, as old-fashioned and irrelevant. But they are not to be so easily dismissed. For these are the words that God himself has chosen to describe our moral and spiritual condition, and they occur throughout the Bible, the Old and the New Testament. If we want to see how relevant and pertinent they are, then we need to take a few moments to understand their basic meaning. What is sin? Well, in essence, sin is self-centeredness. It is self-deification. It is making myself God and taking control of my own life. It is not just lying or stealing or blaspheming, to name a few sins. They are just outward symptoms of an inward moral perversity. And so we may partially reform our outward behavior, we may stop cussing, but we can't change our inward bias to self. You see, sin is inbred rebellion against the authority of God over our lives, and consequently it brings the just judgment of God upon us. Now I know this is not popular teaching. The God most people believe in is the God who smiles at our folly. But that isn't what Jesus taught. In Matthew 13 and verse 41 he says that when he returns he will send out his angels and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and those who practice lawlessness and they will cast them into a fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Or listen to these words later on in Matthew 25 verse 41 where Jesus says that on the last day he will say to those who do not love him and have not served him Depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Friends, no one spoke more about God's wrath and about hell than Jesus. If the God we believe in does not send impenitent sinners to hell, then he is not the God of the Bible, but only a figment of our own sinful imagination. No, the truth is that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And he did so precisely because all sinners or in grave danger of perishing in the unquenchable fire of hell. And if you and I believe that justice is important, and I know we all do, we want to see justice done when injustice occurs, then I'm sure we wouldn't want it otherwise. What respect can you have for a God who doesn't punish wrongdoing? None, really. And therein lies the need for sinners to be saved or rescued from the danger of going to hell. So the word save is not meaningless. It is not irrelevant. It is extremely relevant given the eternal destruction that awaits all sinners. And it raises a question that all of us should be asking, but none of us do. The question that always comes to mind is, how can a good God send anyone to hell? But the question that we should be asking is this, if we believe in justice, how can a good God allow us to go on living, only to go on sinning? Now isn't that a more pertinent question? If God is as good as we want Him to be, how can He go on ignoring all the sins that you and I keep on committing? For while He is being patient with us and loading His blessings upon us, we continue to disregard His command to repent of our sinning. Listen to what Paul says in Romans 2 to those who show contempt for the riches of God's kindness and patience that are meant to lead us to repentance. He says, because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when His righteous judgment will be revealed. How can anyone say that these words to save sinners are meaningless and irrelevant in our sophisticated society? It is because God's judgment of sinners is real that we need to be rescued from it. And what did Jesus do when he came? in order to save sinners from hell. He did the only thing that He could do, that anyone could do to save us, but it was something that only He as God could do. He died for our sins. He bore in His own sinless person the judgment of God upon your sins and upon mine, so that God might forgive us. He also rose again from the dead that we might live for God by the power of His risen life. And one day He will return to resurrect our bodies and create a new heaven and a new earth in which we may enjoy eternal fellowship with Him and with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. The gospel, I say, is all about Christ's power to save sinners from destruction and from perishing in hell. Fourthly and finally Paul says the gospel must be received personally or individually. This is a true saying or a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief, literally the foremost. And then twice, as if he could not get over it, Paul says in verses 13 and 16, I obtained mercy. Now, the prominence of the pronoun there, I am the chief of sinners, and I obtained mercy, emphasises our need to personally receive Christ as our Saviour. But sinners will never come to Christ and receive Him as their Saviour unless they are convicted of the gravity of rebelling against God. Now take the case of Saul of Tarsus who is speaking here. For the first 30 years of his life as Saul of Tarsus, he was rather proud of his efforts to keep the Ten Commandments. He speaks in Philippians 3 of being a member of the chosen race, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, with a Jewish pedigree as long as his arm. Concerning the law, he says, I was a Pharisee, and the name means a separatist because they were separated from Laxer Jews by their strict views of ritual purity, like washing of hands and feet and so on, and also their strict views of tithing. Indeed, Saul was so committed to living an outwardly holy life that he says, concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. That is, blameless in the sight of other human beings, but not in the sight of God. And then he adds, concerning zeal, persecuting the church. Because Paul saw Christianity as a heresy and Christians as heretics who needed to be stamped out. Saul hated Christians and he made it his business to hunt them down and destroy them. And that's why he says in verse 13, I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man. His hatred was so intense that he had blasphemed Jesus by openly, publicly proclaiming that Jesus was a liar, he was a fraud, he was a heretic. In Acts 26, Paul tells us that he even caused Christians to blaspheme. But his persecution didn't stop there. Sorry, his opposition didn't stop there. He also persecuted the church by putting many of the recalcitrants in jail and voting for some of them to be put to death. Again, he calls himself an insolent man. And the Greek word there describes an arrogant person who finds great joy in insulting and humiliating other people. Now, what brought about this 180 degree turn in Saul's life that changed him from an enemy of Christ into a servant of Christ? The answer is, he had a radical encounter with the risen Jesus while traveling to Damascus with letters from the high priest to carry out the persecution in other foreign cities. blinded by a light from heaven brighter than the sun, he heard a voice speaking to him in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Who are you, Lord, he asked. I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, came the reply. And friends, believe me, that was a shock of a lifetime. For the Greek name Jesus, or the Hebrew name Joshua, where Joshua is the same name as Jesus in the Greek. Both names mean Jehovah your Savior. I am Jehovah your Savior whom you are persecuting. Now, he had thought all the time that he had been serving Jehovah by persecuting Christians, and now he hears first-hand that he has been persecuting Jehovah. To persecute Christians is to persecute Jehovah Jesus. And no man in the whole world ever felt more unworthy than Saul did when he realized that his hostility was directed at God. He really felt that he was indeed the worst of sinners, the chief of sinners. But friends, did he mean us really to take him seriously? I don't think so. Because Paul had no way of knowing how bad everybody in the world had been before he was born, or how bad anybody would be after he was dead. So he could not have meant it literally. What then did he mean? Surely he meant this, that when God's Spirit convicts us of sin, We become so aware of our own sinfulness that we cannot imagine anyone being as sinful as we are. And you know the publican in the temple, the tax collector in the temple, is a wonderful illustration of this. There's the Pharisee, who's thanking God, who's telling God he is so lucky he has him as a servant, and the tax collector goes to the front and he can't even lift up his head to heaven. Now he knows there are lots of prostitutes and gamblers and murderers in the city, but he can't lift up his eyes to heaven. But he smites upon his breast and he says, God be merciful to me, not a sinner, but the sinner. That's how everyone feels when they are convicted by their conscience and the Holy Spirit of their sin. They cannot imagine anyone is more sinful than they are. Well friends, That's the good news of the gospel. Its content is absolutely trustworthy. Its scope is universal. Its concern is with the power of Jesus Christ to save sinners, and its application is personal and individual. Although we may feel that God will not receive us because we are so sinful, He will. If Paul, who hated the church, so violently obtained mercy, why shouldn't you or I? Indeed, in verse 14 we read that the grace of our Lord was so exceedingly abundant upon Paul that it brought faith when his heart was previously filled with unbelief, and it brought love when his heart was previously filled with hatred. And my friends, God has done everything to provide us with a full and a free and an undeserved salvation. It's worthy of all acceptance and it's up to us to receive it. No one goes to hell because they are ordained to go there. They go to hell of their own choice saying, leave me alone God. Stop bugging me. I don't need you and I don't want you in my life. And the sad thing is that if you go on saying that long enough, God will do just that. He will leave you alone forever. Do you really want that? I earnestly entreat you not to go on spurning Christ's gracious offer to rescue you. It is good news you can rely on and never ever regret. You have God's word on it. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for sending your eternal Son to save us from perishing in hell. And we pray that By your good grace, you will deliver us from everything that would hinder us from coming to him in faith and in repentance this morning. Whether it is our pride, Lord, or our unbelief, or our complacency, please help us to put it aside so that we too, like Paul, however great our sin may be, may know that Jesus saves. for time and for eternity. We ask it for the glory of His great and glorious name. Amen.