I delivered my first sermon this morning. In large part I think it went well, although it is hard to tell by the handshakes at the door. There was one remark in particular that I will treasure for a long time.

The experience has given me a far greater appreciation for the “job” of pastor. A few things that struck me are: 1) sermon preparation requires a huge amount of time and effort; 2) I do not know how they find time for other “pastorly” duties; and 3) the work schedule for a pastor is 24/7.

Many thanks must go to my pastor for helping me scope, narrow and refine the message. I am posting the text for those who asked me to do so (click on the following link). Maybe once I get a copy of the tape I can put up my first podcast?

Introduction

About a week ago I was talking with a friend about my upcoming sermon. And the first question he asked me was whether or not I was nervous? After a moment of hesitation, I responded by saying that it was not so much the delivery that concerned me, but rather the preparation that had my stomach all in knots. You see I was thinking about my reputation as a procrastinator, especially with matters such as this. The fear I expressed to my friend, and the eventual reality, is that this message would follow much of that same pattern of procrastination and last minute preparation.

That means one of two things for today. Either we will be done quickly and out in ten minutes, or we will be here for a very long time. I do have the green light from Dan to go five minutes longer than he usually goes. That way next week his sermon will seem short. [Laughs]

Scripture Intro/Reading

So, having prepared you, please pull out your bibles and turn with me to I Timothy. As you turn there, let me orient you to the letter itself. This letter to Timothy is the first of the three so-called “Pastoral Letters,” II Timothy and Titus being the other two, in which Paul is speaking primarily to church leaders (i.e., shepherds) rather than the entire church. Paul had left Timothy behind in Ephesus, where he was facing opposition from false teachers. The over-arching theme of I Timothy is “How to Run a Church”—covering topics such as prayer and worship, qualifications for leaders, guarding against false doctrines, and finally guidelines for young pastors (such as Timothy).

However, it can easily be argued that Paul wrote I Timothy for a much wider audience. The letter is rich in doctrinal teaching and abounds with information that would not have been necessary had Paul intended to deal with Timothy alone. I say this to remind us that God’s Word is as alive today as it was when He inspired these words nearly two thousand years ago. It continues to rebuke, correct and instruct us in righteousness.

Reading from I Timothy, found on page 1846 of your pew bible; our passage for this morning comes from the first chapter, immediately following Paul’s rather strong warnings regarding false teachers. We begin reading in verse twelve (12):

12I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service. 13Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. 14The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

15Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. 16But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life. 17Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

May God add His blessing to the reading of his Word. Let us pray…

Prayer for Illumination

Sermon Introduction

I recently picked up an album by an emerging Christian artist, Sufjan Stevens, which includes a song titled John Wayne Gacy, Jr. Perhaps that name rings a bell with you? John Wayne Gacy, Jr., according to a CBS Who’s Who summary, “was considered a pillar of his community before his arrest in 1978. But his passive behavior was only a guise hiding a ruthless killer. When Chicago police finally caught on to him, he had killed and raped dozens of boys and young men in the Chicago area. Investigators found 28 bodies buried in the crawl space of his house and the surrounding yard. Another five bodies were recovered from a nearby river. He was given the death sentence and died by lethal injection on May 10, 1994.”

Sufjan Stevens’ song is a lyrical biography of John Wayne Gacy, tracing “the pathology of Illinois’ most infamous serial killer.

The lyrics read like this:

His father was a drinker
And his mother cried in bed
Folding John Wayne’s T-shirts
When the swing set hit his head
The neighbors they adored him
For his humor and his conversation
Look underneath the house there
Find the few living things
Rotting fast in their sleep of the dead
Twenty-seven people, even more
They were boys with their cars, summer jobs
Oh my God

Are you one of them?

He dressed up like a clown for them
With his face paint white and red
And on his best behavior
In a dark room on the bed he kissed them all
He’d kill ten thousand people
With a sleight of his hand
Running far, running fast to the dead
He took off all their clothes for them
He put a cloth on their lips
Quiet hands quiet kiss
On the mouth

It is a song that can best be described as spooky, spooky and yet strangely beautiful. And yet having heard a portion of the lyrics, you may be sitting there thinking to yourself, why on earth would a musician, let alone one who professes Christ, choose to sing about a bad, bad man like John Wayne Gacy? In fact, many of us are uncomfortable—even offended—to have it brought up in a gospel sermon; after all, the gospel is about the good news of God’s comfort for the lost, not about people like John Wayne Gacy. and those who would sing of him.

But then again, as we look back at our text in I Timothy we find something terribly troubling. Hidden beneath the floorboards of SAINT Paul’s apostleship is something shocking—the blood of many early Christians is buried there. Paul was a bad, bad man in his own right. In fact, he calls himself the “chief of sinners.” You might wonder: could God redeem a man like Gacy? Could God use a man like Gacy? But like Gacy, Paul would have killed ten thousand with the slight of his hand. Before his amazing conversion on the road to Damascus, Paul was, as Brian Chapel put it so well, a “callous, pious, self-righteous, bigoted murderer hell-bent on a full-scale inquisition.”

The answer to that question, Brothers and Sisters, is what I hope to explore and unpack for you this morning as we look into these verses in I Timothy. It is an examination that will reveal to us both the cleansing power—and security from despair—that the gospel of Jesus Christ gave; not only to a sinner like Paul, but a cleansing and security that he gives to you and me and all who believe in the name of Jesus Christ. For that is Paul’s purpose in writing this letter to Timothy, that all might be saved and come to knowledge of the truth.

Sermon Body

Verse12

Paul had a lot to be thankful for as he wrote these verses to Timothy. After all, he went from being one of the most infamous persecutors of the early church to its greatest missionary and theologian. And yet right away he cuts off any argument that his assumption to apostleship had anything to do with himself. Verse twelve (12) says, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has considered me faithful, appointing me to his service.” The focus is not on himself, but rather on Christ and His choosing of Paul to be his faithful servant.

This is much unlike the false teachers that Paul warns Timothy about in the preceding verses, beginning in verse five (5):

5The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. 7They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.

Paul is emphasizing here in verse twelve (12) that Christ calls only those with pure motives into his service. He may allow some to rise for a time, but the ambitious are soon rejected.

Verse 13

Of course, many may have had reason to doubt the purity of Paul’s own motives, and so in verse thirteen (13) he acknowledges his unworthiness by saying, “Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.” Now I do not want to get too far off topic here, but I think it is worth clarifying what Paul means by the last half of verse thirteen (13), “…because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.”

What he is not saying is that Paul received mercy because he was innocent. It is not suggesting that he deserved any of the mercy bestowed on him by God. In fact, that assumption would be the opposite message of the letter, as well as the rest of Paul’s teachings. Romans 6:23 says that “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We are saved by grace and grace alone. There is nothing in ourselves that enables that grace.

So what, then, does Paul mean here? Simply put, Paul says his records of wrongdoings were based on the mistaken belief—the misplaced faith—that he was doing the right thing. As a Pharisee, Paul was passionate and sincere for the glory of God in his persecution of Christians. He thought that he was defending God’s very righteousness, the faith, against heresy. His blasphemy and attacks on God’s people—as bad as they were—did not disqualify him from receiving God’s grace as would a sin of high-handed unbelief; the kind of unforgivable sin that Jesus talks about in Mark chapter three (3), verse twenty-eight (28) in particular.

Verse 14

And so, in verse fourteen (14) we see that “the grace of our Lord was poured out on” Paul “abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” It is a picture of contrast between Paul’s former life and his current one—“unbelief” of the Pharisee versus “belief” of the Apostle; the “faithLESSness” of the Pharisee versus the “faithFULness” of the apostle.

The attitude of Paul in these three verses is consistent with what he says elsewhere, like in Galatians 6:14, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…”

Verses 15 & 16

And yet when I get to verse fifteen (15), in spite of the preceding testimony, it still strikes me as odd that Paul, at the end of his missionary career, calls himself the foremost of sinners. After all, this is Paul we are talking about, right? I mean, we are right up there with Paul and Timothy in the rebuke of the false teachers among the Ephesians. Look at verse eight (8):

8We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine…

These false teachers in Ephesus were bad, bad men, just like John Wayne Gacy. They were not only men who strayed from the truth; they were lawless, ungodly, murderous and perverse. The last thing that you expect Paul to do is to identify with them by calling himself the chief of sinners. After all, Paul is the champion of sound doctrine mentioned in verse ten (10).

15Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.

In this one verse the crux of the Gospel is summed up. We are lost, but Christ saves. This, Brothers and Sisters, is the gospel. We hear it and we confess it, but all too often we only focus on half of it. The two sides of the Gospel are 1) Jesus loves me; and 2) I do not deserve the least of it. We say that we are sinners, but we often do not believe that we really are, or that we are as sinful as Paul claims here in Timothy.

Paul makes claims like the one in this passage of I Timothy three times in the Epistles.

In 1 Corinthians 15:9 he says:

“For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle…”

In Ephesians 3:8 Paul says:

“…I am less than the least of all God’s people…”

Do you see the pattern, how each time that Paul is self-deprecating like this he gets more intense about it? Notice how he goes from being least of the apostles (not a bad place, really); to being least of all God’s people (bad, but still part of the elect); and then here in verse fifteen (15) and sixteen (16) that calls himself the worst sinner (it’s like he’s marching backwards!).

The Greek word that Paul uses for “worst” is protos, which implies that he believes himself to be Public Enemy Number One. There may be a sense in which he is reflecting on his past persecution of the Church, but notice here that he is speaking in the present tense. I am the worst of sinners, not was, or now cease to be. I was and still am capable of great sin—and the longer I live the “worser” I discover I am.

Look with me at Romans chapter seven (7), verses 15, 19 and 21:

15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do … 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing … 21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

And so the encouragement that we see in Paul’s life is that the further along he is in his ministry—the older he gets—the better his perspective becomes with regard to his sin. But it does not stop there. Rather than develop a fatalistic attitude, he becomes more thankful than ever for God’s grace. It is a synergistic relationship in which as Paul is sanctified, he experiences both a greater awareness of his own sin and a greater awareness of God’s grace. You may have heard of the Sonship program before, which says it this way: You are far more sinful than you think, but God’s grace is far greater than you can imagine.

The problem, however, for us as 21st Century Christians, is that we have come to understand the “good news” to mean that we can be comfortable with our sinfulness—that we do not have to worry about, much less acknowledge, our sins. This stands in contrast to the Biblical perspective, which says that we should be terrified by our sinfulness (and its consequences), but the “good news” is that we can be assured of the security of our forgiveness. As we see in the life of Paul, God’s grace in Jesus Christ far exceeds the terror of our sin.

The flip side of this cavalier attitude toward our sin, is that sometimes we find ourselves acknowledging that Christ came to save—only to question that surely such a salvation does not belong to sinners like us? Paul may have called himself the chief of sinners, but he obviously never met me. He would not have made such a claim if he knew what I have done. We look at our worthiness, and when our unworthiness is revealed, our confidence sinks. We become fatalistic about our sin. But here is a trustworthy saying that should dispel those thoughts—something that we can take to the bank:

15Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. 16But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.

Christ did not come to bring salvation to the righteous, but to sinners like Paul, sinners like you and me—bad, bad men though we are. When we behold the model of God’s grace in the life of Paul, then the ambivalence toward our sin and the distrust of our hearts is counteracted.

Verse 17

The resulting joy that flows from God’s graciousness toward Paul is so overwhelming, that in the middle of the letter to Timothy he breaks out into this wonderful doxology in verse seventeen (17).

17Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only god, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Paul’s words of praise focus the attention back upon the Lord, and that is exactly where God wants us to end up as well. Paul does not wish to glamorize his past, but rather point us to Christ.

Sermon Conclusion

Going back to the rather shocking song I read earlier about John Wayne Gacy, the musician Sufjan Stevens does not want Gacy and his sin to be glamorized, either. Reflecting on earlier verses, the narrator of the song concludes with the following lines:

And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid

Steven sings about the reality of the human state and gives humanity to John Wayne Gacy. Then he simply puts it into perspective by equating his own human brokenness to Gacy in comparison to God’s holiness. It is an emotion of humility. It is also a statement that echoes Paul when he called himself “chief of sinners.” I wish that I could be as honest with myself as Stevens is with his listeners.

Too often we have confidence in our own righteousness. We say that because we are righteous—or at least more righteous than most—we can confidently judge and condemn such evil-doers as John Wayne Gacy; but the Gospel fact, the Pauline fact, the Sufjan Steven’s fact is that we have no hope in our righteousness, much less any foundation for judgment. But Paul’s confidence—and the basis of his encouragement to Timothy and judgment upon false teachers—is rooted in the objectively revealed Word-made-flesh righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

Our confidence and our hope are found in this, that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.” The gospel does not turn a blind eye to our sinfulness, but shines its light upon it. It exposes our guilt and makes it public all the while cleansing us from it. That is why we call it the “good news.” And not only does it cleanse us from past guilt, but it secures us in the forgiveness of our sinfulness as those made alive in Christ. With this security, we rejoice ever more as, like Paul, we grow in an awareness of our sinfulness. We are really just like John Wayne Gacy, but we need not despair or fear. We can stand ever more in stunned silence that through the discovery of the depths and breadths of our sinfulness, we are, in fact, discovering the ever deeper and broader horizons of God’s amazing work of grace in Jesus Christ.

Thus, when you discover that Scott is really 1) an arrogant, 2) self-righteous, 3) lazy procrastinator; or when you are exposed as 1) __________, 2) __________, 3) __________ ; we do not have to be afraid, we do not have to fearful that we have lost our salvation; but we can acknowledge that 1) the observation is right, 2) you do not know the half of it, and 3) you can rejoice in the historical fact that even the “chief of sinners,” like you and me, is being made new in Jesus Christ.

Closing Prayer