1. "It's easier to crash a plane than to land one. And it's easier to make shipwreck of your faith than to keep it."

2. "Paul is highlighting these two men there at the end of the passage, like the vestige of a ship barely visible, sunken by rocks to warn him."

3. "By rejecting the one, the conscience, they lost the other, faith. By neglecting their conscience, they made shipwreck of their faith. Paul is comparing the conscience to a ship transporting the precious cargo of faith. He's saying, if that ship of the conscience crashes, if it sinks, the faith will go down with it."

4. "Pay attention to anything that normalizes worldliness and stigmatizes holiness. That's what causes leaks in your conscience. Satan wants to normalize worldliness and he wants to stigmatize godliness. He wants to make godliness look strange. He wants to make holiness look prudish and unattractive and contemptible."

5. "God's grace when it comes, it doesn't trickle. It's not like a leaky faucet. It overflows. It is an ocean. It is powerful. It is unending."

6. "God's grace is never a response to our faith and love. God's grace comes to us and it creates the faith and love in us. Paul did not conjure up faith to earn God's grace. God's grace came first."

7. "Who else can turn the most violent persecutor of Christians into an apostle of Jesus Christ? And friends, this teaches us not to write anyone off. That friend that you saw fall away, don't give up hope on them. If there's hope for Paul, there is hope for anyone."

8. "Paul holds two things in tension that are absolutely crucial if you are to be a Christian. He says, I am a great sinner, and I have a great Savior."

9. "Paul's life became a living greater to the lesser argument. Anyone who looks at themself and thinks, well, God couldn't do that for me, God couldn't forgive me for what I've done—the apostle Paul here would reason with you."

10. "How do we see what God is like? God saves us. He changes us. He makes us by his Spirit into displays of his mercy so that the invisible God can be seen in the lives of those that he has saved."

Observation Questions

1. In 1 Timothy 1:13, how does Paul describe his former life before Christ, and what reason does he give for receiving mercy?

2. According to 1 Timothy 1:14, how does Paul characterize the grace of the Lord that came to him, and what accompanied that grace?

3. What does Paul call the statement in 1 Timothy 1:15 about Christ Jesus coming into the world, and how does Paul describe himself in relation to sinners?

4. In 1 Timothy 1:16, what reason does Paul give for why he received mercy, and what was Jesus Christ displaying through Paul's conversion?

5. What specific charge does Paul give Timothy in verses 18-19, and what two things does he tell Timothy to hold onto?

6. According to 1 Timothy 1:19-20, what happened to Hymenaeus and Alexander, and what was Paul's purpose in handing them over to Satan?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that Paul uses present tense ("I am the foremost") rather than past tense when describing himself as the chief of sinners in verse 15? What does this reveal about how believers should view themselves?

2. How does the progression described in verses 19-20—from rejecting conscience to making shipwreck of faith to becoming blasphemers—help us understand the relationship between guarding our conscience and preserving our faith?

3. What is the connection between Paul's description of God's grace "overflowing" in verse 14 and his statement that grace came "with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus"? What does this teach about the order of grace and faith?

4. How does Paul's example as a former blasphemer (v. 13) provide hope for Hymenaeus and Alexander, who are described as current blasphemers (v. 20)? What does this contrast reveal about the purpose of church discipline?

5. Why does Paul conclude this section with a doxology praising God as "immortal, invisible, the only God" (v. 17)? How does this connect to his teaching about God displaying mercy through saved sinners?

Application Questions

1. Paul instructs Timothy to guard his conscience as a way of protecting his faith. What specific influences in your life—media, relationships, habits—might be normalizing worldliness or making holiness seem strange, and what concrete step could you take this week to address one of them?

2. The sermon emphasized that Paul never denied, excused, or forgot his past sins, but rather owned them while receiving God's grace. Is there a past sin you tend to either minimize or be paralyzed by? How might holding both truths—"I am a great sinner" and "I have a great Savior"—change how you process that sin?

3. Paul's conversion became an example of God's patience for future believers. In what relationship or setting this week could you share how God has shown patience and mercy in your own life, so that someone else might see hope for themselves?

4. The sermon challenged us not to write off anyone, even those who have fallen away or are persecuting the church. Is there someone you have given up on spiritually? What would it look like to begin praying for their conversion as Paul prayed for persecutors?

5. Church discipline is described as having restoration as its goal—"that they may learn not to blaspheme." How does this purpose shape the way you think about confronting sin in your own community? Is there a situation where you need to lovingly confront someone or receive confrontation yourself?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Acts 9:1-22 — This passage provides the full narrative of Paul's conversion on the Damascus road, showing the dramatic transformation from persecutor to preacher that Paul references in 1 Timothy 1.

2. 2 Timothy 2:14-19 — Here Paul provides further information about Hymenaeus and his false teaching about the resurrection, expanding on the warning given in 1 Timothy 1:20.

3. 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 — This passage gives Paul's instructions on church discipline, including the phrase "hand this man over to Satan," helping us understand the practice Paul references in 1 Timothy 1:20.

4. Ephesians 2:1-10 — Paul describes salvation as entirely by grace through faith, reinforcing the sermon's emphasis on the power and priority of God's grace over human effort.

5. Romans 5:6-11 — This passage emphasizes that Christ died for sinners while they were still enemies of God, supporting the sermon's theme that God's grace reaches even the worst of sinners.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Problem of Good People Going Bad

II. Recognize the Stakes: There Is a War Going On (1 Timothy 1:18-20)

III. Remember God's Grace: The Power of God's Grace (1 Timothy 1:12-14)

IV. Remember God's Grace: The Purpose of God's Grace (1 Timothy 1:15-17)

V. Responding to God's Sovereign Mercy

---

Detailed Sermon Outline

Why does it seem like good people are always going bad?

Why does it seem like good people are always going bad? See, we love stories of redemption. We love stories of how villains become heroes. You think about the story of Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities, who, by the end of the story, selflessly gives his life for Charles Darnay. Or you think of Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol, who goes from a curmudgeonly old miser to a generous man and philanthropist.

But when we turn from Dickens' novels to the real world, such stories sadly seem rare. I mean, when was the last time you read a newspaper article about how a murdering bank robber became a community supporter?

And stable figure. I guess it's always possible that such things happen and just go unreported.

But so often the stories we hear are of famous leaders falling from grace, once inspiring figures who turn out to be villains. What is it that Ecclesiastes says? Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good. See, it's easier to crash a plane than to land one. And it's easier to make shipwreck of your faith than to keep it.

And in our passage this morning, Paul gives us two examples to help Timothy fight the fight of faith and finish the race. Two examples in contrast. One is the story of how a wolf became a sheep, and how two who appeared to be sheep turned out to be wolves. It's the story of how one goes from shipwreck to paradise, and two, go from paradise to shipwreck. Turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Timothy 1.

You can find this on page 991 of the pew Bibles in front of you. As you turn there, let me remind us of the context. This is a letter written by the apostle Paul to his son in the faith, Timothy, the newly appointed pastor of the church in Ephesus. And as Paul is symbolically handing off the mantle of his ministry to Timothy, he is charging him, as we saw last week, to instruct certain persons not to teach any other doctrine than the doctrine that they had received. You see, there were false teachers who were misunderstanding the law, they were undermining the gospel, and they needed to be so Paul instructs Timothy that if he is to persevere, he has to do two things.

How is Timothy to walk by faith and finish the race? First, Timothy is to recognize the stakes and he is to remember God's grace. That's what we see in this passage. First, at the end of the passage in verses 18 to 20, we see that Timothy needs to remember the stakes. He needs to recognize the stakes, rather, and he needs to remember God's grace.

Listen now as I read to us from 1 Timothy 1:12-20. This is the word of the Lord.

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful. Appointing me to his service. Though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, Amen. This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience.

By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymeneus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.

Friends, with so many examples of Good people seeming to go bad. How do we walk by faith and finish the race? The first thing we see is we need to recognize the stakes. That's what Paul is telling Timothy at the end of the passage there in verses 18 to 20. Paul is calling Timothy to recognize the stakes so that he doesn't go complacent, so that he doesn't forget that there's a war going on.

You see, Paul is highlighting these two men there at the end of the passage, like the vestige of a ship barely visible, sunken by rocks to warn him. Paul is highlighting their examples that Timothy doesn't follow in their footsteps. You know how sometimes when you're driving along the highway and you see white crosses on the side of the road? Sometimes there are tires.

You realize they're not just placed there in honor of the victims. They're placed there by those who suffered collateral damage. To warn you. To say, Take heed, be careful. Don't let this happen to you.

That's why Paul is highlighting Hymeneus and Alexander here at the end of the passage. He's telling him, the stakes are high because there is a war going on. That's why there's the strong language you see in verse 18. This charge I entrust to you. As I reminded us last week from verse 3 and verse 5, this language of charge is military language.

These are orders from a general to a subordinate. He is telling him, I am charging you, Timothy, to fight the good fight, to wage the good warfare. See, the stakes are high because there is no neutrality. There is a war going on. As Christians, we understand that it's a cosmic war.

It's not against flesh and blood. There's a war going on between God and Satan. Between the forces of good and the forces of evil, between light and darkness, and we are caught up in the middle of that battle. Ever since Satan first contradicted God's word in the Garden of Eden, he has been twisting God's word to teach people false things about God. That's what Satan wants for us.

He doesn't want us to know the truth about God. He doesn't want us to know the truth about ourselves. He wants to deceive us. And Timothy's basic mission as pastor of the church in Ephesus is to protect the doctrine of the church. It's to protect what that church knows about God and about themselves, what it knows about God's word so that they wouldn't fall into these lies.

And in verse 20, we're introduced into two people who sadly fell under Satan's sway. Their names are Alexander and Hymeneus. This is the first time we're introduced to them specifically in 1 Timothy. Both names appear again in 2 Timothy, giving us a fuller picture of who these men were. According to 2 Timothy 217, Hymeneus was someone who had swerved from the faith by teaching that the resurrection had already happened.

He was undermining the proper order of the gospel, the chain of events that we're to expect before Christ's return. And according to 2 Timothy 414, Alexander was a coppersmith. He was a metal worker, someone who worked with his hands, but Paul says there in 2 Timothy 4 that Alexander caused him great harm.

This was a personal relationship. This was someone that Paul grieved over. It's possible that this Alexander is the same one mentioned in Acts 19:33, but because of how common the name Alexander was, it's impossible to say for sure. In either case, these were men intimately acquainted with Paul and Timothy. But as verse 20 says, they had become blasphemers.

They were teaching false things about God. The gospel they had once professed they no longer believed. The Christ they claimed to know they had now rejected. When Paul says that they've made shipwreck of their faith, he's not teaching that a Christian can lose their salvation. When he talks about faith there, he's talking about the content, the doctrines of the gospel.

He's saying someone who professes the truth can change their mind and swerve away and no longer profess to know the same truth. And now that these men were actively leading others astray, there was only one tool left at Paul's disposal and that was church discipline. That's what Paul's referring to in verse 20 when he talks about handing them over to Satan. That's a reference to church discipline. Paul is using his apostolic authority to instruct the Ephesian church to remove Hymenaeus and Alexander from membership as an act of excommunication.

He's charging Timothy with forbidding them from participating in the Lord's Supper and removing the church's affirmation of their profession of faith. This is the most severe punishment that Christ has entrusted with his church to act out. And that highlights for us the seriousness of what's at stake, both for the sake of the church in Ephesus, and for the sake of Hymenaeus and Alexander, Timothy is to see to it that the church removes these false teachers from membership. The question is, how did it get this far? I mean, how did Hymenaeus and Alexander go from paradise to shipwreck?

How did they go from appearing like sheep to being uncloaked as wolves?

Well, notice the progression there in verses 19 to 20. It's similar to the progression that we saw last week in verses 5 to 6. It started with their consciences. As Paul explains in verse 19, Holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith.

The this is singular and it must refer back to the conscience. See, by rejecting the one, the conscience, they lost the other, faith. By neglecting their conscience, they made shipwreck of their faith. See, Paul is comparing the conscience to a ship transporting the precious cargo of faith. He's saying, if that ship of the conscience crashes, if it sinks, the faith will go down with it.

And that's what happened to Hymeneus and Alexander. They rejected a good conscience. They stopped listening to God's Word. They stopped obeying God's Spirit. They started ignoring their God-given alert system.

And eventually those compromises got bigger and bigger and the alerts got quieter and quieter until, as verse 20 says, they became blasphemers.

One of the most famous naval disasters of all time took place in September of 1641. The English galleon, the Merchant Royal, was on its way back from the Caribbean, where it had been trading with Spain, and it was transporting a valuable cargo of over 2,000 pounds of pure gold. The ship had been troubled by leaks for some time. But they had stopped and sought to mend the leaks at the port city of Cartagena in Spain. But they were on a hurry, they were in a hurry, so on September 23rd, as they were sailing just 34 miles off the coast of England, the ship's hull once again sprang a leak.

The crew launched into action, operating pumps as quickly as they could, but the damage was already done. The hull took on more and more water until eventually the ship sank, as I said, just 34 miles off the west coast of England. All of its treasure gone.

Friends, if you were charged with transporting 2,000 pounds of pure gold, what care would you take to make sure that the ship was seaworthy? What precautions would you take to make sure those cracks are mended? To make sure those leaks are taken care of. Brothers and sisters, the doctrine of the gospel is an unspeakably more precious treasure than gold. Jesus tells us that gold will perish.

Moth and rust will cause gold to disappear. Thieves break in and steal. But friends, in the gospel we have a treasure laid up for us in heaven that gold and rust cannot touch. What care ought we to take to guard our consciences, to mend those leaks, to see to it that our vessel is seaworthy so that it does not sink? So Paul is telling Timothy and he's telling us, Guard your conscience.

Protect it. How do you do that? How do you guard your conscience? How do you identify leaks that threaten to sink your ship? Here's how.

Pay attention to anything that normalizes worldliness and stigmatizes holiness. Pay attention in your life to anything that normalizes worldliness and stigmatizes holiness. That's what causes leaks in your conscience. See, Satan wants to normalize worldliness and he wants to stigmatize godliness. He wants to make godliness look strange.

He wants to make holiness look prudish and unattractive and contemptible. And he wants to make worldliness look attractive. Impressive, desirable. And in our day, it's not difficult to find shows to watch, music to listen to, books to read, people to spend time with that normalize worldliness and stigmatize holiness.

You might need to ask yourself, Who do I need to stop spending time with?

What show do I need to stop watching? What music might I need to stop listening to? Because if you want to patch the holes in the leaky deck of your conscience, you need to give yourself to holiness. You want to give yourself to things that normalize holiness and stigmatize worldliness. Above all, this means spending time with God's people and spending time with God's Word.

That's what reveals holiness to us. That's what stigmatizes worldliness. That's what makes godliness look attractive. It's God's Word. It's spending time with God's people.

That's part of the purpose of this gathering right now. As we sing God's Word, as we hear His Word read, as we pray together, we're steeling our spines against making compromises with the world. And if you think I'm being too severe and sounding too uptight, then my concern is that you might not be recognizing the stakes. Paul is laying out Hymeneus and Alexander here, not as hypotheticals, but as very real warnings so that we do not follow in their footsteps. And Paul's instructions to Timothy basically boil down to two things.

He has to give himself to God's word and to guard his own conscience. That's what Paul means when he mentions to pay attention to the prophecies previously made about you in verse 18. See this is before the New Testament canon was completed so God was still regularly speaking to his people through prophets both in the Old Testament and still in the New Testament. As Paul later explains in 1 Timothy 4:14, God had spoken directly to Timothy through a prophet when Timothy was ordained for ministry. We see that in 1 Timothy 4:14, Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you.

Now, we don't expect God to speak that way to us today through prophets because God's given us his word. And what Paul is telling Timothy is to give himself to God's word. That's how he is to guard his conscience. That's how he is to protect himself from falling away. You've probably heard the expression, God's Word will keep you from sin and sin will keep you from God's Word.

Timothy is to give himself to God's Word in order to guard his conscience and he's to guard his conscience to give himself to God's Word.

That's how he will avoid the fate of Hymeneus and Alexander. Friends, if you've been a Christian any length of time, you've no doubt seen friends fall away from the faith. Someone you love, someone you respected, follow this same pattern, this same trajectory that you see Paul describing here about Hymenaeus and Alexander.

It's a deeply painful thing to see someone walk away from the faith.

And what I want you to see here, particularly in verse 20, is that Paul isn't writing Hymeneus and Alexander off.

He hasn't lost hope for them. Did you notice that word in verse 20? Learn.

That they may learn not to blaspheme. See, the goal of church discipline is restoration. Paul's express purpose in excommunicating Hymenaeus and Alexander is that they might wake up from their sin and repent before it is too late. And the reason Paul has hope that Hymenaeus and Alexander can learn not to blaspheme is because he learned not to blaspheme. Did you notice that when I read the passage earlier in verse 13, how does Paul describe himself?

I was a blasphemer. But what happened? God had mercy on me. And Paul's hope for Hymenaeus and Alexander is that God would have mercy on them. See, if Hymenaeus and Alexander are a warning of how you can go from paradise to shipwreck, Paul's life is a living illustration of how someone can go from shipwreck to paradise.

And that's what we see in verses 12 to 17. In verses 12 to 17, Paul highlights himself as the least likely candidate for salvation, as the least likely candidate for apostleship. And he says, if God can have mercy on me, there is no one that he can't save. So read with me again from verses 12 to 17.

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, an insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Friends, Paul's life was a shipwreck, and God brought him into paradise. And so he charges Timothy to remember God's grace. That's the second thing he shows us here. We need to remember God's grace. If we are to finish the race, if we are to walk by faith, we need to remember God's grace.

And I want to unpack this point under two subpoints. Paul is especially highlighting the power of God's grace and the purpose of God's grace. We'll see first the power of God's grace in verses 12 to 14 and then turn to the purpose of God's grace in verses 15 to 17. First we see the power of God's grace in verses 12 to 14. I thank him who has given me strength, Paul writes, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged, he considered, he regarded me faithful.

Why? Well, he did it by appointing me to his service. See, the selection of Paul to be an apostle demonstrates beyond question the power of God's grace because there was no one less attractive as a candidate for apostleship than Paul. Paul explains why in verse 13. He says, I was a blasphemer, persecutor, an insolent opponent.

Paul's former life in Judaism was well known. Everyone there in Ephesus would have known it. Formerly known as Saul, Paul was present in Acts 8 when Stephen was martyred. He gave his approval to it. Paul was the one who raised up the great persecution against the church that you can read about in Acts 8:3.

Paul says he was ravaging the church, entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. Paul was the one who asked the high priest for letters so that he could pursue the Christians, not just around Jerusalem, but as far as Damascus. He later explained in Acts 22, I persecuted this way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women. I punished them often in the synagogues. Paul explained to Felix in Acts 26, I tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities.

This was Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church.

Friends, do you see in this the power of God? Who else can turn the most violent persecutor of Christians into an apostle of Jesus Christ? And friends, this teaches us not to write anyone off. That friend that you saw fall away, don't give up hope on them. If there's hope for Paul, there is hope for anyone.

There's hope for you. There's hope for me.

See, as much as we are concerned about the persecution of other Christians, you realize we're even more concerned about the unbelief of persecutors. That's why we've been, when we've been praying for our brother from Zanzibar. We haven't just been praying for him. We've been praying for the persecutors. We've been praying that they, like Paul, would come to know Jesus.

That's because all this time that Paul was blaspheming Christ and persecuting the church, he says in verse 13 that he was acting ignorantly in unbelief. Now, Paul is stating this as a fact, not as an excuse or justification for his sin. It's the same way Peter describes the Jews in Acts 13:17, I know you acted in ignorance, as did your rulers. This doesn't excuse their sin, it does explain it. Paul is implicitly contrasting his blasphemy here in verse 13 with the false teachers in verse 20.

All were guilty of blasphemy, all were guilty of speaking against Christ, but there was a difference. Paul's sin was done in ignorance. It was before he knew Christ. Once he was confronted by the risen Christ, he immediately repented. Hymeneus and Alexander already knew the truth about Jesus and they had turned away from it.

The question was how would they respond when they were confronted in their error. Friends, How you respond when confronted about sin says a lot about whether or not you are repentant. Ignorance doesn't make innocent. Ignorance can explain, though never excuse, sin. Paul was sincere in his belief.

He sincerely believed that Jesus was not the Messiah. He sincerely believed that Christians were wrong and needed to be opposed. But Paul's sincerity wasn't enough to excuse him because truth is more than sincerity. Paul was sincere but he was sincerely wrong. And here he owns his wrongdoing.

He accepts it. He doesn't make excuses. What he needed was faith. What he needed was mercy. And mercy is what he received.

You remember on the Damascus Road, on his way to persecute Christians, Paul the persecutor was himself arrested by the Lord Jesus Christ in that heavenly vision when he hears those heart wrenching words that changed his life forever. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

Who are you, Lord? He calls out.

I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

Paul's life immediately changed. He repented. Never was there repentance like this. He turned from being the persecutor to being the persecuted. No suffering would Paul avoid in the way of making this Jesus known.

So that the word spread among the Christians that he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith that he once tried to destroy. Friends, what else can account for this kind of change but God's abundant grace? That's how Paul describes God's grace in verse 14, and Paul knew it. He knew that God's grace was abundant. The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

See, God's grace when it comes, it doesn't trickle.

It's not like a leaky faucet. It overflows. It is an ocean. It is powerful. It is unending.

And that's why Paul says that God's grace overflowed for him. He's choosing a word that's a compound of two words, overflow and hyper. It hyperabounded. It superabounded toward him. And the order here matters.

It was the overflowing grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that came with faith and love. It wasn't Paul's faith and love in Jesus that caused God's grace to overflow on him. No way. That's not how it works. God's grace is never a response to our faith and love.

God's grace comes to us and it creates the faith and love in us. Paul did not conjure up faith to earn God's grace. God's grace came first. If you've ever visited Great Falls National Park over in Northern Virginia, you can walk along the pathway there with the river flowing beside you, the Potomac River. And as you walk, you pass a pole standing in the ground.

It goes up above your head. And it's a marker of the high watermarks that that area has seen. And it's staggering to look down on the water flowing below, and then to look up on the high water marks, and to imagine what it would be like for the water to flow that high. At the top of that marker is 1936. That's marking the Great Flood of 1936, when all of Virginia and Washington were deluged in water after days of heavy flooding.

All of Navy Yard was underwater. Only the tips of the tallest trees were visible at Haines Point Park. If you've ever been out to Haines Point Park, just imagine that. The only way to get from Virginia to DC was over the Key Bridge. You could barely make it over.

Friends, when Paul writes that God's grace overflowed for him, he's talking about that kind of a flood. He's talking about rivers of water that never go dry. So Paul calls on Timothy. He calls on us today to remember God's grace, specifically to remember the power of God's grace. God's grace can save anyone.

But God's grace isn't just powerful, it's not like an aimless flood that causes destruction. God's grace is purposeful. It has a purpose. When God pours out his grace, he means to do something. And that's what we see in verses 15 to 17.

Paul explains the purpose of God's grace, the intention or goal of God's grace is to save sinners and to show God's mercy. That's what Paul says in verse 15. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. When Paul says that this is a trustworthy saying, he's saying this can be taken as a summary of the content of the gospel message. The gospel message can be boiled down into these words: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

He came into the world. He wasn't born like one of us. Jesus Christ is God himself. God the Son took on flesh and became incarnate. He came into the world.

He entered the world. He entered our sinful human condition. And unlike Paul, unlike Hymenaeus and Alexander, unlike you and me, he never sinned. Jesus perfectly kept God's law. He didn't need God's mercy.

He was God's mercy on display. And Jesus died. Jesus died a death of persecution. He died as a blasphemer. That's the charge brought against Jesus that he blasphemed by saying who he was.

I am the son of God. He told the truth and he was killed by people like Paul, by people like you and me. God raised him from the dead three days later showing the power of his grace, showing that sin and death could not hold Jesus Christ because the payment for sin was paid in full. God's wrath was poured out on his son and Jesus rose with power and victory and ascended to heaven to pour out his mercy on people like you and me, on people like Paul. And he commands us like he commanded Paul on the road to Damascus to turn from our sins, to recognize the truth about ourselves and to receive his free gift of grace.

Friend, if you have not done that, would you turn to Him today? His mercy is more. His mercy is ready to receive you. Would you call on Christ in your heart by faith today?

Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. And what Paul is making clear is that Jesus is not just a savior of the sinners who aren't particularly bad. He's not just a savior of those sinners at the bottom percentile of all sinners in the world. He is a savior of the worst of sinners. That's what Paul is saying here.

He identifies himself in verse 15 as the foremost. And notice he doesn't say, I was the foremost. I was bad. I was a persecutor. I was a blasphemer.

I was a the foremost. He says, I am the foremost. You know how sports fans sometimes argue about who is the goat, you know, the greatest of all time? Paul here is saying, I am the WOAT. I'm the worst of all time.

He's saying there's not even a competition. I'm not out here arguing about how good I am, I'm arguing about how bad I am. And I don't think Paul is saying this in a kind of self-pitying prideful kind of way. You know how sometimes people can talk themselves down, really to evoke pity and it's not really being humble, it's actually kind of prideful? That's not what Paul's doing.

I think Paul is stating this as an objective fact and as his subjective judgment on himself. I think Paul really understood himself to be the foremost. As he says in 1 Corinthians 15:19, I am the least of the apostles. Unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God.

I think Paul lived his whole life with a very real and present sense of the horrific nature of what he had done. I don't think Paul ever got over that. Yes, he had acted in ignorant unbelief, but he didn't make that an excuse. He had separated families. He had dragged off men and women to courts.

He had taken personal pride in making some renounce Christ. He had testified loudly at their trials. And at Stephen's execution, he had looked on with approval.

And here's what Paul doesn't do with his past. And you need to pay attention to this if you struggle with sin in your past or in your present. You need to learn from Paul's example here because he doesn't deny it. He doesn't deny what he's done. He doesn't excuse it.

He doesn't even forget about it. He doesn't shove it away to a far corner of his mind. He doesn't plead ignorance or compare himself to others. He owns it. He accepts God's judgment as just, and he believes God's verdict, and he receives God's grace.

See, Paul holds two things in tension that are absolutely crucial if you are to be a Christian. He says, I am a great sinner, and I have a great Savior. I am a great sinner, and I have a great Savior. Can you say that with Paul this morning?

I've heard so many people in this church this week share with me that this is one of their favorite verses in all of the Bible because they can relate to the apostle Paul. If you feel like you're sitting here in the room and you think that, no, that's me. In this room, I'm the foremost. Just know that you are in welcome company. You can look around and see the people sitting around you.

If they are Christians, this is what they're saying about themselves. See, only you know the depths of your own heart.

Only you know the ways that you've sinned against God. Only you know the ways that you've sinned against Christ. So this is something that every Christian can say about themselves. I am the chief of sinners. This is why John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim's Progress, entitled his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.

Bunyan knew what Paul knew. That he was a great sinner and that Jesus was a great savior. Friends, Paul's testimony shows that the purpose of God's grace is to save sinners.

But there's also another purpose as well. We see this in verse 16. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience. As an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. In other words, the purpose of God's grace in Paul's life wasn't supposed to end with Paul.

It was to make Paul into a billboard of God's mercy. Paul had his own purpose for his life. He thought he knew what he was doing. And when God poured out his grace on Paul, God turned that all around. Paul's purpose changed.

His purpose became to display God's mercy. Paul's life became a living greater to the lesser argument. See, anyone who looks at themself and thinks, well, God couldn't do that for me. God couldn't forgive me for what I've done. The apostle Paul here would reason with you.

He would ask you, well, have you killed Christians? Did you lock up men and women? Did you force them to blaspheme the name of Christ? No? Well, what makes you think that God couldn't forgive you?

He forgave me. He can forgive you too. Paul's testimony shows the purpose of God's grace is to display God's mercy. And God's grace was shown to Paul not just to save him, but to reach even you through Paul's example.

Dear doubting brother or sister, you who think that you're beyond the grace of God for something that you've done, don't you see that when God had mercy on Paul and wrote these words, he had you in mind? He wanted you to know the assurance of his mercy.

He wanted you to know this grace. He showed that grace toward Paul, and he can show it to you as well.

When Mark told me several months ago that I could choose a sermon text to preach from in January, I immediately knew I wanted to preach these verses because these were the verses that God used to save me. Some 10 and a half years ago, I was coming here to the States from Sweden for college. My life was a mess. Outwardly, I looked like I had it all together, but over the course of that year, even as I shared last week, God was exposing my sin one after another, one after another. And I came here broken.

I wanted to change, but I didn't know how. I arrived on campus a week early for international student orientation. I found a group of people I thought would be my friends, and that evening we sat together in their dorm room and they brought out the alcohol. And it's like I could see my life passing before my eyes. See, I'd been in that place so many times before.

I'd always made the wrong choice. I had done that while bearing the name of Christ. I had done that despite being loud mouthed in what I believed as a Christian. I'd given Jesus a terrible name.

But the week before, the Sunday before, I visited CHPC for the first time. On August 19, 2012, I heard Brad Wheeler preach from Hebrews. I had lunch with Dave Russell. I came back for the evening service and heard Trip Lee preach. I thought he was okay.

I had dinner with Audrey Anderson and with Jess Prole. And I knew I'd found a home. And as I sat there in that dorm room that night, I knew I had a choice to make. I could keep being the person that I'd been, or I could be the person I'd been praying for months that God would make me. And somehow, by God's grace, I got up and walked away.

It wasn't a triumphant moment. I was depressed and discouraged. I sat alone in my dorm room all evening thinking, Is this what college is going to be like? But the next morning I had planned to get breakfast with Paul Billings, who had just gotten started as campus outreach staff person at Georgia Tech University. Paul and I sat together in my dorm room kitchen, and Paul told me to open my Bible to 1 Timothy 1:12-16.

I still have my notes from that first time we studied the Bible together. We walked through observation, interpretation, application, and as we studied this passage, it came alive to me. I saw myself in Paul. Paul asked me, Paul Billings rather asked me, what? And the Apostle Paul through God's Word.

Paul Billings asked me, why would God have mercy on you? What reason do you have that God would show you mercy? And I had none. I had a thousand reasons against it. And I sort of thought that I was a Christian because I had prayed a prayer a long time ago and sort of obligated Jesus to have mercy on me.

But I thought he must be so disappointed with me because I just lived so contrary to what I had professed. But what this passage showed me was that God's mercy was sovereign. He didn't have mercy on me because he had to have mercy on me. He had mercy on me because he chose to have mercy on me. And because God's mercy is sovereign, it's also purposeful.

It also meant that God wasn't gonna leave me where I was. He was gonna change me. He was gonna make me a display of his mercy. And that was the best news I'd ever heard. And God used this passage to help me understand the gospel and to give me new life in Christ.

And from that day, my life was never the same. Friends, that's just one example from hundreds in this room and thousands in this city and millions throughout history of how God has used passages like this to save sinners and to show us His mercy.

When we remember God's grace like this, when we remember the purpose of his grace, how else can we respond but in giving honor and glory and praise to our God? That's how Paul responds in verse 17. That's why he closes as he does in verse 17, To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. Friends, this is the verse we sing every Wednesday night after Bible study.

We praise God as the eternal king, the undying, the immortal, the imperishable God of the ages. Though he created all things, visible and invisible, he is himself unseen. But this invisible God makes himself seen. He discloses himself. How?

By saving sinners like you and me. That's why Paul's highlighting God's attribute of invisibility in verse 17 because in verse 16 he says that God is showing who he is in saving sinners and making them a display of his mercy. How do we see what God is like?

God saves us. He changes us. He makes us by his spirit into displays of his mercy so that the invisible God can be seen in the lives of those that he has saved. So praise be to God. Praise be to God that he would have mercy on us.

And because of this, he is worthy of honor and glory forever and ever. So what do we do? We offer ourselves freely to him. We say, make me a display of your mercy. Cause my life to be an example to others of your patience, of your mercy.

When people look at me, would they see that there's hope for them too?

So how do good people go bad and how do bad people go good?

Friends, it's easy to go bad. We see that in Hymenaeus and Alexander. We see that the stakes are high. All you have to do is to stop giving yourself to God's Word, stop guarding your conscience. That's what happened to Hymeneus and Alexander.

And they're here for our warning.

But how can a bad person become good? Only by God's grace. And by God's grace, any bad person can become good.

Anyone can receive God's mercy. God's grace is so powerful that He can reach the greatest sinner on earth and make them a display of His mercy. It could reach Paul.

It can reach that friend who's wandered away from the faith. And it can reach you today.

Will you receive it?

Will you display it?

Let's pray.

Lord God, we praise you as the God of mercy. We praise you for your sovereign grace that it would overflow and extend even to us who have lived our lives in opposition to you. We thank you for inspiring this passage of Scripture and for giving us the example of the Apostle Paul so that even the greatest sinner on earth can know that they can receive your mercy. We pray that they would even today. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.