Amazing Grace: Paul the Apostle 1 Timothy, 1:12-16
1 Timothy 1:12-16 · Vern Peterman · Jan 19, 2003
Philippians (2003), No. 02
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262252103077

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We will proceed here. You realize we've been going through ancient Philippi, and we will continue on with our study. There are, however, a few things yet to do. We've got to cover a few things first before we get back in our study of the book of Philippians. And so you might be wondering, well, is Vern going to go through some old slides? Yes, we'll go through some old slides. Okay. All right. There you are.

Meanwhile, we do have a few things to cover with you. One thing is afterwards, and today we're starting this God's Design for Marriage series. It's not too late to join us if you'd like to do that. Be glad to have you. And that'll be in a potluck that follows afterwards. If somehow you didn't come prepared, just come anyway. Be glad to have you join us. And that'll be downstairs. The schedule is available, handouts on the table in the lobby, so feel free to take that if you're interested.

The other thing to bring us around to, we started last week, as we approach this book of Philippians that we're studying, we start with an understanding of this is how we approach scripture. This is how we go about understanding scripture. And to do that, one of the things that we did is we had a handout. We ran out of those, so there's more of them out on the cabinet, just as you exit to the right, out in the lobby there.

And so feel free, if you didn't get one of those last week, to go ahead and take one. It's just a one-page handout that sort of systematically leads you through the steps. Here's how we go about correctly understanding Scripture. Okay? So feel free to have at that.

Also available is a binder cover and spline insert for this series. I was kind of looking at this. I haven't laid out the whole pattern yet, but it'll be at the end of next month before we get through verse 1, so you might need a binder. Just a clue there if you're wanting to keep these handouts and the notes that go along with them. Anyway, those are also available in the cabinet, including little spline inserts. Feel free to have those and help you keep it together and keep it collected. Okay, as we go through this sequence, okay, we first look at, we observe, we interpret, and then we apply.

And one of the questions that came up, we first looked at last week, and this was, when was it written and what was happening at the time? And then in the question, who was writing, starting with the blue, we started asking that question last week. And to whom were they writing? The Philippian church, of course, and that's what we're looking at. Well, what we want to do is turn the tables on that and answer the other part, okay? And so what that says is who was writing this letter and what do we know about them?

Well, the authors are Paul and Timothy and so we'll be looking particularly at Paul this time. One of the things you may have seen, this is kind of interesting, in Rome there is a prison. It's a room that's quite small. And the historical documents are not such that it's nailed down certain, but evidence points to this being the probable last home of Paul in the Mamertine prison in Rome. And one of the things that we like to point out, that is the entrance.

This is where they put you when you were hours away from being beheaded or crucified. And so if they were nice, they would lower you in a rope. If they weren't nice, you didn't get a rope. They just dropped you in. Nice of you to drop in, right? So anyway, this was the room, and then they would exit them out when it's time to take them out, but they just dropped them in.

And if that's the case, it may very well be that some of the New Testament letters written from prison were written here. And so I just kind of think about the introductory verse that we had there is Paul said, I have learned in all circumstances to be content. And he may very well have written that from a room like this. Amazing. So here's Paul, and kind of the theme here is amazing grace. Amazing grace. Paul is the very demonstration of amazing grace. And that's what comes forward here.

We'll be looking at 1 Timothy 1, 12-16, but first we want to take a look at some other things about Paul that come forth here. If you look at the first couple of verses in Philippians, Paul introduces himself and Timothy, and it starts off like this. Some aspects of it are a very typical introduction for Paul, and some are not, as we'll be looking at in the weeks to come here. This is, by the way, this is the oldest copy of Philippians, you know, verses 1, 1 and 2 from chapter 1 there, from the oldest complete Bible that we have.

And it just, why do I bring this up? You know, maybe you say, well, I don't know Greek. This, the point in fact being, one of the reasons why we show these pictures of old documents and old places, this is real stuff. This is not make-believe. This isn't a little fairy tale that's a nice religious story. This is real writings by real people, real life. It's very important that we recognize that. Historical truth is not divorced from spiritual truth.

They're intricately and intimately tied. Now, this was probably something like the letter that he wrote to them. They would write on papyrus, which is reed papers that they would kind of cement cross-grain. And then once they'd written their letter, they'd seal it up, put a seal on it. What you see here is the seal once it's been cut off. This is the underside where it has the grain. But this is what it would look like.

And you can imagine Paul, because it's many hundreds of miles from where he was to where this letter went. You can imagine Paul saying, okay, and he put this in somebody's hand and they would hold that letter and guard it with their life until they got it to its destination. Okay, here's a kind of a rough timeline, and I would point out you have both a similar timeline on your handout, and on the back side there's one with more detail. It may take you a magnifying glass to dig out all the detail, but there's more detail on that one in case you want to dig it out. But let's take a look at these key points that are on the timeline on the front of your handout.

Acts chapter 9 records Paul's conversion. We know that prior to that time, Paul was a rabid, a rabid Jew. And the Lord confronted him there. We'll take a look at more of what that conversion looked like. But it was not a mild conversion. It was a radical change that the Lord brought about in his life.

The next thing is we notice here, and I think it's important to see, this is some years taking place here. Here's this missionary journey recorded in Acts 13 and 14 where Paul is taking off and he goes off into what is now modern Turkey, into the southern and central parts there. He also had some second and third journeys and the part we're of course focused on here is now, here's Acts 16 that records the founding of the church at Philippi that we looked at last week.

That history is recorded throughout most of that chapter. It's giving us the detail. We looked at that in outline form last week. And it wasn't actually until better than a decade later that this book that we're studying was written. So here the church had been founded for better than a decade by the time he's writing this letter. To think about it, Look at the period of time that's taken place now. Here's a decade, here's another decade.

You're looking at two and a half plus decades from the time Paul is converted until the time this letter arrives. So Paul had some time to himself to grow spiritually, some time to interact with this church at Philippi. Okay, let's take a look at Paul's earthly resume. It's interesting to think about a resume for an apostle. I doubt many of them had to submit a resume, okay? But I think it's helpful for us to kind of step our way through it, okay?

One point there being, he was born a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin. It's noted here in Romans 11.1, but we're also going to see when we get to Chapter 3 of the Book of Philippians, he brings it up again. And we'll see why and in what context he brings it up. He was very much a Jew, and you get that impression from everything he writes, and even particularly from the account in Acts 9, 13, 14, and then on into 22 and 26, where he again records his conversion. He was born in Tarsus and raised in Jerusalem.

Now let's get a little detail to that. He doesn't provide all the little steps as to how his upbringing came about, but we can assume Paul being a Jew, there was a lot of tradition, right? Lots of tradition. And so the typical thing would be up until around age 5, his mother would have raised him. She would have been the focal point of his upbringing to that point. From about 5 until about 10, his father would have focused his attention upon Paul at that stage in his life. And then what would typically happen in a situation where there would be some upbringing by somebody else around age 10, Paul would have been sent away.

And Paul claims, as we'll see here shortly, to have been tutored under someone else. And so likely about that time he would have been sent off to be tutored and probably at that time would have gone to Jerusalem. So we say born in Tarsus, raised in Jerusalem. That was after the initial upbringing, which probably took place in Tarsus. We don't have the details, but just interpolating from tradition, that's where it would stand. He's educated in Judaism by Gamaliel, the son of Simeon, the son of Hillel.

Gamaliel is quoted, and you can read it for yourself in Acts chapter 5. Gamaliel warns the Sanhedrin, be careful what you do to these men. If you If you fight them, and this is God's doing, you'll be opposing God. Be careful what you do. Interesting.

Gamaliel was the grandson of Hillel, who was a very famous rabbi. And so Gamaliel was somebody who was mentioned more than once in the New Testament, because he was a very substantial, well-respected teacher. He had a school, which Paul apparently attended, in Jerusalem. The next thing we see there is he was a Roman citizen. He made claim to this numerous times.

Now what does being a Roman citizen mean? For one thing, it means you have rights. We're accustomed to all having rights, right? Not in the Roman Empire. If you're not a Roman citizen, you haven't got much. So being a Roman citizen gave him rights. And so he laid claim to that. One thing is you have to have a fair trial. The rest of the citizens didn't get that, but if you're a Roman citizen, you do.

Now, he was a tent maker by trade, and it's real interesting, as we look through extra-biblical records, one of the things we find out about Tarsus is Tarsus was famous for its fabrics and for its tents. And so it fits, doesn't it? Historically, it fits very well.

He was fluent in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic. possibly other languages, but we know at least those four. Greek was the language in which he wrote his letters in the New Testament. He also went into Greek-speaking cities and spoke apparently with no problem at all. Latin would have been the language that he spoke to a lot of the Roman officials and Roman soldiers with, and so he most certainly would have been fluent in Latin. He spoke Hebrew, we know that because that's the language that he would have been trained in, for one. It also says in Acts chapter 22 that he spoke, when he told of his conversion account, he spoke to the Jews in Jerusalem in Hebrew, in the Hebrew tongue, and that quieted them, that he spoke in Hebrew. Aramaic would have been the common language of Israel of that day. It is also the language that portions of Ezra and the book of Daniel are written in.

So he would have known that as well. So we know that it is quite reasonable to conclude Paul knew at least these four languages, very fluent and able to move about. He even moved as far away as what is now Kosovo and travel up in that area. So he may have known other languages as well.

He was an aggressive persecutor of the church. This is one reference there in the early verses of Acts chapter 8. But there are numerous places, even from his own mouth, he said, I persecuted the church to the point of death. He didn't mind if it took life. And we see the first instance of him showing up under the name of Saul at the stoning of Stephen.

Here's the birthplace of Paul in Tarsus. There's an ancient gate here that led into Tarsus. A good deal of the ancient Tarsus has now been destroyed because there's a modern city there. But nonetheless, this remains. There's also a Roman road that ran through it and some ruins, as we see. Isn't it amazing after 2,000 years to have those roads still in place as well as they are?

Now, let's step through Paul's conversion. We've talked about that. It was a radical event. Here was a guy who was rabidly Jewish and rabidly anti-Christian. So here he is. Luke writes the account, tells it in Acts chapter 9. Paul himself recites it to the Jews in Hebrew in Acts 22, and again tells it to Agrippa in Acts 26. So it's repeated each time, the account.

Furthermore, while these give sort of the historical evidence, Paul provides a spiritual perspective on that conversion. That was such a pivotal event for him. He tells it again and again, but not just the historical account. He gives insights into what happened spiritually, and what the Lord was doing, and even revealing the Lord's very character.

That shows up in Philippians, which we'll be seeing in a few chapters from now. Galatians, the first chapter. And then the passage we'll be looking at today in 1 Timothy chapter 1. There are others as well, but these are some key places we'll be looking at.

Now, he was then named Saul and he was headed on the road to Damascus. That's the way the account is spelled out. You can look in Acts chapter 9 if you want the initial account there. He was confronted by the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Here's Saul, he says, Lord, who are you? And the Lord says, I'm the one you're persecuting. Isn't that amazing? He thought, oh, I'm just persecuting these horrible Christians. And the Lord says, I am the one you're persecuting. The Lord took that persecution personally. Now, Paul was blinded for a time from that event. And he was taken to the house of Ananias to recover. That's the short story anyway.

Saul then proclaims Christ as the Son of God. Now that is radical for a guy who first is headed to Damascus to say, all right, let's kill all these Christians, let's put them all in prison, to turn around and say Christ is the Son of God. That is a radical transformation. It's all a secret out of Damascus to spoil a death plot. The Jews heard about this and they say, okay, now this guy has turned against us, we've got to do him in. So they get him out of Damascus. And then these accounts are spelled out here in Acts 9, 22, and 26.

Now this has been in the background. The reason we show this here You know, this is Damascus and this is an archway. Typically this would have been the outside of the city and they built along it. Why do we show this? Because this is the street where Ananias found Saul. Okay, that straight street right there. Let's take a look at Paul the Apostle. He says, I am an apostle. Why does he say he's an apostle? He's an apostle because he's qualified to be an apostle. It wasn't a, hey, I think I'll be an apostle when I grow up, right?

It wasn't like that at all. He personally witnessed the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. He was therefore, at least in part, qualified because of that. Next. He was discipled by the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. And it's revealed in several different passages. as to how that came about. You think of the other apostles who were discipled personally by Christ while he walked the earth.

This is not like that, is it? Paul is one who came after in its special revelation, and he doesn't soft-pedal that point. He instead, again, brings it up, time and time again. What Paul had revealed to him was unique, and it was uniquely revealed to him, different from the others.

This word apostle is from the Greek apostolos, and it means a special messenger. It doesn't mean just a sort of a general gopher. This isn't a, hey, give it to the messenger, he's the guy who always takes it. No. It means someone who has a special commission.

He has the authority to communicate for a particular purpose. That's Paul's position. When he says he's an apostle, that's what he's saying. He says, I am especially appointed for a God-specific purpose. That's what he has in mind. He performed signs and wonders, and he says in 2 Corinthians 12, 12, that is the sign of an apostle that he tells them. It isn't something that Christians were generally expected to do, and it isn't something that Christians even today are expected to do. This performing the signs and wonders was a particular mark of an apostle. It is one of the qualifications that he had that noted him as an apostle.

He wrote 13 books of the New Testament as letters to groups of churches, for example, the churches of Galatia. That group of churches in central Turkey would have been included in that letter. Also to individual churches, like the church at Philippi that we're studying now. And he wrote to individuals, Timothy, Titus, Philemon. He would write to Individuals as well, so you have letters that are kind of on different categories in terms of the audience One question of course is is who wrote Hebrews?

We don't know okay? Possibly some think it's Paul it could be others, but at least these 13, okay? Now Paul had some unique teachings that went along with the unique way in which he received certain revelations One of them is the position of the believer in Christ and the identification truths As you look at those, those are alluded to with some of the other apostles' writings, but specifically spelled out by Paul and explained and clarified. That's a unique position that Paul has. Next is the walk of the believer, the spirit in the flesh. He talks about that repeatedly in his letters to the churches. He spells that out. Some of the other apostles may allude to it. Paul nails it. The church is the body of Christ, and Christ is the head. Only Paul really addresses this concept, but it's a pivotal one, and one he spells out and addresses with different churches in order to make it clear.

Believers have been sealed by the Holy Spirit. There are three verses in Paul's writings, two in Ephesians and one in his letters to the Corinthians, where he says believers have been sealed by the Holy Spirit. And he spells that out in two places. He calls it a guarantee. That's Paul's unique teaching.

Jewish and Gentile believers, he says, are in Christ. That phrase, in Christ, with Christ, if you look in the various letters of Paul, some 140 times he'll use that phrase or phrases like it. in Christ, with Christ. He's underscoring the position that we have and the condition that is made possible because of that position. The Jewish and Gentile believers are in Christ.

Paul underscores that point and explains it clearly and thoroughly to numerous churches. It was important for him to do so because he was the apostle to the Gentiles, and many of the Gentile churches that he wrote to had Jews either in the church or in the area. Some of those Jews were very strong in their Judaism and would be adamant as to the separation. And yet Paul was saying, no, that separation is now gone in Christ.

Next, he explained the mysteries, things previously not revealed. A mystery is not something that remains foggy and mysterious and like lost in wispy clouds. A mystery is instead something that was previously unknown and is now made clear. He spells those things out. One of the things he calls a mystery is something we've pointed to before. The church is the body of Christ. That's something that was previously not revealed, but has now been revealed."

Something else is the listing and explanation of spiritual gifts. Romans chapter 12, Romans 12, 13 and 14, and Ephesians chapter 4. He explains and lists spiritual gifts, and no other apostolic writings address it in any degree in comparison to what Paul has laid out. Now let's take a look at our passage here, 1 Timothy 1, 12-16. Now let's just step through that a little bit at a time.

Jack read it for us here. First he starts off with, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has strengthened me because he considered me faithful, putting me into service. The first thing is that Christ was the initiator in Paul's life. Paul's thanks were in response to what Christ had already done. As you look at how he spells out that verse, you see that? It is the Lord who has done the work. It is the Lord who has done the action. Paul is responding with thanks to what the Lord initiated. It was the Lord's doing, not his. Everything that Paul had learned his whole life before under Judaism was do, do, do.

The Jews were so well ingrained with this list of things to do and not do. It was not like you were a human being, you were a human doing. They would have 613 laws about things you were to do. 365 of those were things not to do. Don't do this. Do this. Don't do that.

Now instead, what does he do? He says, the Lord has done it. My only response is to thank Him. Isn't that neat? It's the Lord's doing, not ours. The next thing, the thanks is in the present tense. And the present tense in the Greek always has the idea of continuing. I am continuing to give thanks. I give thanks, and I give thanks, and I give thanks, and I give thanks. It's continuous and ongoing. It's not like I'm thankful at one point in time, and then I get past it. No. Instead, it's I'm continuing to give thanks. It's ongoing.

In verse 13, Paul himself said he was a blasphemer. Wow! In the Jewish mindset, a blasphemer was somebody who reviled God. And according to the Jewish laws, that deserved death. That was the death penalty. That was on the list of things that were the worst. Blasphemy was horrid in the Jewish mind.

So what's Paul spelling out? He says, that's me. He said, I reviled God. Here it was, Jesus Christ was pursuing me and what did I do? I reviled Him. Then, that's not all. He was a persecutor. The word that is used there for persecutor is a word that means to pursue. In other contexts in Greek literature, it's actually used to hunt, like they would hunt an animal down and kill it. He says, I was a Christian hunter. He even claimed later on in Acts, I would hunt them down to the point of death.

And so he was not only the worst offender possible to the Jews, he was the worst offender possible to the church. But that's not all. He was a violent aggressor. Now, this word that's translated violent aggressor or injurious in some of your translations, this Greek word has a lot to it. As a matter of fact, one of the references I was looking at had eight pages to explain that word. Eight pages. And the reason is, it is the word that to the Greek mind is the worst possible offense that a human being could do. It was unthinkable that you would do this. Because it was a word that was a combination of shaking your fist at the gods and being violently sadistic to man.

That's what Paul calls himself. So put it together. He says, I was guilty of the worst possible offense against the Jewish mind, blasphemy, I was guilty of the worst possible offense against the church, I pursued them to death, and I was guilty of hubris, the worst possible offense in the Greek mind, shaking my fist at God, and pursuing the church sadistically, taking pleasure in their agonies. You get a sense of how Paul sees himself?

That's just amazing, isn't it? So as we look at the next set of verses there, he says, Yet I was shown mercy, because I acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant. I think we don't want to skip over that word. Suppose you said to somebody, I'm thirsty, and someone said, no problem, here's a fire hydrant. That's the idea. You want a drink of water? Here's 500 gallons a minute. And that's what he's saying. It's overflowing. It is exceedingly abundant. It is just incredible in its amount.

The other thing that shows up in this particular set of verses, do you see the character of the Lord? He says, I was this way, this is the way I was, and it was really, really awful. But what comes out here is the character of the Lord, mercy and grace, faith and love. My character, he said, didn't count, thank heaven. It was the character of the Lord that counted.

Isn't that good news? It's good news, really good news. The next couple of verses says, it is a trustworthy statement. And it's real interesting, Paul uses this preface, it's a trustworthy statement, several times when he's writing to Timothy and Titus, the two people who received letters from Paul in what are called the pastoral epistles. And in our mind, you know, how would we say an equivalent We would say that this is a pivotal truth. You might even use it as sort of a colloquialism. You can hang your hat on this. This is a truth you can depend on.

Deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life. What's really clear here is Christ did come into the world to save sinners.

What's really clear here too, twice says Paul, I am the foremost. I'm number one. Isn't that amazing? He didn't come into them and say, I'm a really good guy, be like me. He said, I'm the foremost of sinners. I'm the one most in need of this grace and mercy. Most in need.

Paul spells out there, he says, he is an example. Isn't that interesting? His example, how did he describe himself? Not nicely, but what did he say? I am an example not of how great a guy I am, I am an example the marvelous grace of the Lord. That's what he's an example of. Not just grace that overlooks his sin, but grace that transforms. Transforming grace.

That's the contrast that Paul's making. So we go back to this prison here, thinking about it. Here is Paul, who was so very anxious to get all the Christians into a place like this. And now, over the course of a couple of decades and a little more, now he's writing letters from a place like this. Isn't that amazing? Here's a guy that has a rap sheet as long as a Roman knows. And yet, what's it for? Why is he in trouble? He's in trouble for worshipping the very same Lord the Lord Jesus Christ that he sought to put others in prison for.

I think one of the things as we look at Paul's life, and we're going to be seeing the evidence of that just come screaming through the pages of the book of Philippians. As we look at Paul's life, there's something that's going to be very clear. You know, we started off earlier with the song Amazing Grace, It's so common that you find the unbelievers will sing it with no problem at all. But it's partly because they don't recognize the depths of what's being sung, do they?

My brother, who is a pastor of a church in Northern California, and yes, there are some Christians in California, but my brother is a pastor of a church there. And one of the things that he's fond of telling them, he says, grace isn't grace until it's amazing. Think about that. Grace isn't grace until it's amazing. Unless it's amazing, we don't understand it. The true character of grace is that it is indeed amazing.

I don't have to come up with a matching percentage. This isn't a matching percentage deal. You're familiar with insurance and co-pay? This isn't a co-pay arrangement either. It is grace, 100% grace. Amazing grace. And Paul says, I am the example of it. I am the evidence of it.

I'm the one who, according to the Jewish mind, deserves condemnation. I am the one to the understanding of the church. I persecuted the church to death. I offended the church the worst. To the Greek mind, he says, I'm the one with hubris. I'll shake my fist at God and be sadistically minded and charactered among men.

And yet, there he says, the Lord showed me mercy. God's amazing grace. You know, if you think about that for a minute, Helmut was bringing up earlier, yeah, there are some that look at, okay, I've got this story and I've got that one. You know, I told you a week or so ago, I became a believer when I was about four and a half. And yet I look at it and I still am amazed at God's grace, amazed at God's grace. Because in reality, I'm guilty of all sorts of things. It isn't because I'm the good guy, it's because of God's amazing grace.

And it's a marvelous thing to understand that and to claim it by faith. Sometimes we may have had things in our past we look at and say, nothing short of that will do. Some few years ago, I heard one fellow on a Christian radio station who had been an abortion doctor.

And he had done 60,000 abortions. And the person who was interviewing him said, how do you deal with the guilt of that, knowing now that it's wrong? He said, there's only one way. There's only one way. He said, it has to be because of God's grace. There is no other way. Nothing else can deal with that awful guilt. That's what I need. Every one of us needs it. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank You that Your grace is amazing. We need amazing grace and no less. And we thank You for the example of it in the life of Paul, the man who would pursue the church to the death, the man who would shake his fist in Your face, and yet you would confront him and cause his heart to turn to you. How marvelous your grace. We give you thanks and give you praise in Jesus name. Amen.