Open up your Bible with me to Paul's
first epistle to Timothy.
And we're going to pick up once again
this evening in the first chapter of First
Timothy, we began our study last week and.
We didn't get quite as far as I
was thinking we were going to get, but
we did get basically through the introductory aspect
of the epistle.
So we pick up tonight in verse five.
But remember, Timothy, Paul is writing to Timothy.
Timothy is a young man that he discipled,
that he led to Christ, that he discipled.
He's Paul's associate in ministry.
And Paul, they were in Ephesus together.
Paul had to leave and go into Macedonia,
and he left Timothy there.
And Timothy was to urge those that were
there not to be giving heed to fables
and endless genealogies and getting caught up in
things that cause disputes rather than godly edification,
which is in the faith.
So Paul was concerned that the church that
they had founded there in Ephesus, that through
the infiltration of others with different motives and
things that that the believers would just get
caught up in a bunch of useless kinds
of things, just disputes and wranglings and things
like that.
And of course, he knew that all of
that was a big waste of time and
and just a dead end street.
And he so, you know, anticipating all of
the things that could possibly kind of go
wrong in a fellowship, Paul writes to Timothy
and he instructs Timothy in order that he
might pass that instruction on to the church
so that the church can be what God
intended it to be.
You know, that's been the big battle all
throughout church history.
God has a model.
He has a picture.
He laid it out for us in the
New Testament.
He he, you know, the book of Acts
gives us several pictures of the church in
action.
The epistles give us all kinds of different
instruction about what's to be happening in the
church.
And yet the big battle historically has been
to keep the church what it's supposed to
be, because there's this tendency for it to
to just constantly be drifting away from God's
ideal.
And of course, there's the devil who's going
to be trying to make that happen.
There are evil men that are going to
come and they're going to try to divert
the course of the church.
So it's a constant battle.
And Paul, in writing to Timothy, he uses
frequently military terms to remind Timothy that he
is in a battle and that he needs
to wage a good warfare.
And so picking up in verse five, he
says, Now, the purpose of the commandment is
love from a pure heart, from a good
conscience and from sincere faith.
So the purpose of the commandment, now the
commandment here is not, as we might assume,
necessarily the commandment of God.
It's not the word that's generally used to
describe the commandment of God.
It's actually the command that Paul is giving
Timothy.
And what Paul is saying is that.
The the intention of my instruction to you
and then you imparting this to them is
so that they would fulfill what God ultimately
desires in all of his people.
You see what the Lord is looking for
in our lives is love.
That's what.
The desired result of his saving work in
our lives is it's love that flows from
a pure heart, a good conscience and sincere
faith.
And so that's that's the primary thing, that's
the supreme thing.
And Jesus himself, you remember.
They're just before he was about to go
to the cross, he said to his disciples,
he said, A new commandment I give you.
And that commandment is that you love one
another as I have loved you.
And so the emphasis over and over again
in the scriptures on the love of God
toward us, the love of God working in
us, the love of God flowing through us
to others, that's.
That's what God is looking for in his
church.
That's what church leaders ought to be looking
to see develop within those fellowships that they
have the oversight of.
That's the purpose of the commandment.
It's love from a pure heart.
Now, the word love here, of course, is
the the Greek word agape.
And it's not a passing emotion.
Nor is it a gushy sentimentalism that the
apostle is talking about here, but he's talking
about the real thing as demonstrated in Christ's
love for us.
You know, it's easy to say.
I love you.
It's easy to, you know, just sometimes even
sort of feign that you love people.
I've seen it.
I've experienced it.
People say, hey, I love you, bro, I
love you.
But, you know, they're backstabbing you, they're backbiting
you, they're full of bitterness toward you, they're
angry at you.
And yeah, oh, but, you know, hey, bro,
I love you.
No, that's not it.
No, love is it's not just words, it's
it's action.
And and this is what God is wanting
to see in our lives, the kind of
love that Jesus demonstrated.
Toward his disciples, toward all of those that
he ministered to, even toward his enemies.
It's a kind of love that Paul defined
for us in First Corinthians, Chapter 13.
Now, I've pointed this out before, but I
want to point it out again.
The Greek word is agape and you can
go into your Greek lexicon.
You can go into some of the different
Greek word study tools that are available and
you can look up a definition for agape.
And it will give you a definition.
It will give you sometimes a few different
definitions.
But, you know, the best definition, you don't
even have to go to one of those
sources.
The best definition is found in First Corinthians
13, verses four through seven.
Paul defined the word for us.
The amazing thing about this word agape is
that it wasn't really a common word in
the Greek language.
It was a word in the Greek language,
but it wasn't common.
It wasn't it wasn't frequently used to express
love.
The Greeks, it was just one of those
words were just sort of lying there waiting
for somebody to come along and pick it
up and utilize it.
And guess what happened?
The Lord picked it up and utilized it.
And Paul defined it for us there in
First Corinthians chapter 13.
Let me read to you from a couple
of different translations.
Love is patient and kind.
Love is not jealous or boastful or proud
or rude.
Love does not demand its own way.
Love is not irritable and it keeps no
record of when it has been wronged.
It is never glad about injustice, but rejoices
whenever the truth wins out.
Love never gives up.
Love never loses faith.
Love is always hopeful and endures through every
circumstance.
That's from the New Living Translation.
Now, let me read to you from the
New English Bible.
Love is patient.
Love is kind and envies no one.
Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude,
nor selfish, nor quick to take offense.
Love keeps no score of wrongs, does not
gloat over other men's sins, but delights in
the truth.
There is nothing love cannot face.
There is no limit to its faith, its
hope and its endurance.
That's the kind of love that God is
looking to see being worked out in our
lives, being manifest through our lives.
It's the love that comes from God to
us and flows through us then to other
people.
And that's what everything is sort of all
about.
That's what it's all boiled down to.
God is wanting to develop a community of
people that love one another.
And as this community develops, that's rooted in
love.
This is the most attractive thing in all
of the world to those that are outside.
You know, so often we think so many
other things are, you know, the thing, the
most important thing.
But the scriptures over and over again take
us back to love.
Sometimes we think knowledge is the most important
thing.
We talked a little bit about that last
time, but it's easy to get caught up
in that trap of, oh, I, you know,
I just need to know more.
And if I knew these things, then I
could really have a great impact for the
Lord.
Now, I'm not putting down knowledge.
Of course, knowledge is important, but it's not
the most important thing.
And sometimes what happens is when you get
a whole lot of knowledge, then you depend
on the knowledge.
And so as you're seeking to, you know,
lead people to Christ, a lot of times
it turns into really just an argumentative kind
of an approach.
Because after all, you know, and it's love
that is the real key.
I was talking to someone just yesterday and
we were talking about Islam and we were
talking about an event actually that occurred here
in Orange County today.
And, you know, in reference to the anniversary
of 9-11, they were doing an event
that was that was informing people on the
subject of Islam.
And the people last last week, some people
came and they told me about the event.
They were very nice people.
They were Middle Eastern themselves.
They'd grown up in an Islamic culture and
they were very aware of the the dangers
of Islam.
And so anyway, they were having this event
and it sounded like a good event.
But as I looked over the schedule, there
was there was a certain individual that was
speaking there.
And right when I saw his name, I
thought, oh, darn, why did they have him?
Now, they would say, well, he is so
knowledgeable.
He knows so much about Islam.
He does know much.
He is very knowledgeable.
But in my experience with this person, what
I've seen, what I've observed, what I've listened
to, there's not a whole lot of love
in this presentation.
It's very combative.
It's very angry.
It's very aggressive.
And so anyway, I was talking to this
friend and we were talking about that subject.
And he said to me, he said, you
know, what's being discovered is that as Muslims
are coming out of Islam to faith in
Christ, of course, they're beginning to share their
testimonies.
And they're talking about the things that really
minister to them.
And this is what he told me.
Here's the primary thing that they're saying that
led them out of Islam to Christ was
the love they found in genuine Christians.
And the way Christians in love told them
the truth is revealed in the Bible.
You know, it's so easy to get in
attack mode.
It's so easy to want to go out
and just lop off heads for the Lord.
You know, you've got your sword, it's sharpened
and you're going to go out and just,
you know, take off some heads.
But that's not the way to do it.
Paul wrote to the Ephesians and he reminded
them of the importance of speaking the truth
in love.
And so that's it, Paul says, the purpose
of the commandment is love.
From a pure heart, a good conscience and
from sincere faith, from which some having strayed
have turned aside to idle talk.
So this is the danger, straying away from
the main thing and getting off into.
Non-essentials.
Idle talk.
And this particular group that Paul was concerned
about.
They were desiring to be teachers of the
law, understanding neither what they say nor the
things which they affirm.
So in Paul's day, there were those that
they wanted to be teachers of the law,
and that was a.
That was a prestigious position to some degree,
and so they were motivated by pride, but
they they wanted to be teachers of the
law.
But Paul says regarding them, they do not
understand what they say nor the things which
they affirm.
But we know that the law is good
if one uses it lawfully.
You see, the problem was they didn't understand
the law, they wanted to be teachers of
the law, but they didn't understand the true
nature of it, the true purpose of it.
They didn't understand why God actually had given
the law.
And so they were taking and trying to
impose the law upon these young Christians.
Now, trying to apply the law to Christians
is wrong for the simple reason that the
law is not made for a righteous person.
And that's what the apostle goes on.
And he says here, we know that the
law is good if if one uses it
lawfully.
What does he mean by that?
If one understands it correctly and applies it
properly.
But whenever you try to apply the law
to Christians, you don't understand it and you're
you're actually seeking to misapply it because the
law, as Paul goes on to say, is
not made for a righteous person.
The law is not made for a righteous
person.
If men were righteous, there would never have
been any laws ever given.
And when a man is declared righteous and
when a man begins to live righteously.
Then he's no longer subject to the law,
he doesn't need to be subject to the
law.
Boy, I can relate to this so much
just from my own life personally, before I
was a Christian, I went out of my
way to break the law.
I just I just had that rebellious thing
in me.
If a sign said, don't do something, you
could be absolutely certain that would be the
thing that I was going to do.
But, you know, since I became a Christian,
everything changed.
I just no longer desired.
To do those things, I no longer desired
to break the law.
So the law doesn't really have any bearing
on me.
I don't need it.
And that's what Paul is saying, when a
person becomes a Christian, there's no need for
the law because the law was given to
restrain evil.
And when a person is converted, when a
person is regenerated, when a person is born
again and the spirit of God is dwelling
in them, then it is that person's delight
to do what is right.
So there isn't this need to have this
outside force imposing these rules and regulations.
There's always been, though, this temptation in the
church, not just back in the apostolic period,
but on down through to this very day.
This this tendency to bring in all the
rules, to bring in the regulations and to
lay this kind of stuff.
On the people's backs, but that's not what
the Christian faith is all about, the Christian
faith isn't about a bunch of rules.
It's not about a list of do's and
don'ts.
It's about a loving relationship with God, and
because I love God, because he loved me
first, you know, I don't need that list
of rules and regulations because I don't have
any desire to do those things anyway.
You know, it would be like.
Having married my wife.
Then somebody handed me a list of things
that I must do because I'm married now,
you must kiss your wife at least once
a week, you must buy her a card
for her birthday, you must take her out
to dinner on your anniversary.
I don't need somebody to tell me that.
Because I'm going to kiss her a lot
more than one time a week, and I
want to do good things for her.
Not just on her birthday, but as often
as I can, and I want to go
out and have a nice time, not just
once a year and on our anniversary, I
want to go out and have a good
time with her always.
Why?
Because I love her.
And that's the kind of thing that we
have with the Lord, we have a loving
relationship with God, it's between us and God,
and so I don't need all of these
things telling me don't do this and you've
got to do that.
And whenever.
Well, intended, but misguided people come in and
start slapping the rules down.
Man, the spirit is just quenched and and
all the the beauty and the freedom and
the glory of just that loving relationship is
quenched, and Paul understood that, and that's why
he fought with everything in him against that
kind of thing happening back in his time.
Because the law is not made for a
righteous person, now he goes on and he
tells us the kind of people that the
law is made for knowing that the law
is not made for a righteous person, but
for the lawless and insubordinate for the ungodly
and for sinners, for the unholy and profane,
for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers,
for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers,
for liars, for perjurers.
And if there is any other thing that
is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the
glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was
committed to my trust.
So Paul says now this is where the
law has application.
It has application to the lawless, and I
think it's important that we we give a
bit of a definition of each of these
words, the word lawless refers to those who
knowingly break the law, not someone who's ignorantly
breaking the law, but someone who's intentionally knowingly
breaking the law.
The insubordinate referred to those who refuse to
submit to any authority.
So a person who is just in rebellion
to authority and then.
He uses the term ungodly.
And this term speaks of positive and active
irreligion, it speaks of human nature in battle
array against God.
So this is active hostility toward God, this
is what we see in atheism today, there's
an active hostility toward God, that's what Paul
is talking about there.
And then he says sinners and the word
simply refers to those who are without a
moral compass, but then he mentions those who
are unholy.
And this is an interesting term here.
Because it refers to those who would violate
the eternal ordinances, it refers to those who
spurn those things that are part of the
very constitution of the universe.
The everlasting sanctities, the person described here is
worse than a mere lawbreaker, he is the
man who violates the ultimate decencies of life,
where we have a current example of what
is being described here with those who are
trying to impose gay marriage on.
And.
The whole world, the eternal sanctities.
They're they're going against all of history, they're
going against every culture for all time and
just very, very obstinately.
Insisting that this must be accepted.
That's what Paul is describing here, that same
sort of attitude, and then he says profane,
a person who is morally filthy.
And then he goes on and.
He becomes more specific in addressing sins for
murderers of fathers and mothers.
Now, it says murderers of fathers and mothers,
it could actually be those who strike their
father or their mother, but in some cases
actually killing them.
It's really speaking of a youth culture that's
completely out of control, a youth culture that's
in total rebellion to authority, hostile to and
out of control in regard to even their
own parents.
And then he says for manslayers.
And that would be a reference to murder
generally for fornicators, the Greek word is an
all inclusive word for sexual immorality, for sodomites.
This word.
Can and should probably these days be translated
homosexual because that's what's being referred to here.
And then he speaks of kidnappers, of liars
and perjurers, but notice this and if there's
any other thing that is contrary to sound
doctrine.
Now, the word sound here is an interesting
Greek word.
We get our English word hygienic from this
Greek word.
So he says if there's any other thing
that is contrary to sound or wholesome or
healthy teaching, in other words, what he's saying
is all of these things are inconsistent with
a healthy life.
All of these things are inconsistent with a
wholesome society.
In other words, any society.
That tolerates or even worse, promotes this kind
of activity is a society that is terminally
ill, our society is terminally ill.
You see, here's the thing.
We're not the first people in history.
To do the things that we're doing as
a culture.
We're not the first people in history to
try to throw off all restraints.
We're not the first generation to shake our
fist at God.
We're not the first generation to try to
change.
The everlasting constitution of the universe, others have
done it before, they did it back at
Paul's time, and it was into that world
that the apostles went with the gospel.
You see, sometimes.
I find that we in this current generation
of Christians, especially in this country.
We tend to think that the way things
are presently and the way they're continuing to
go is is a situation that we alone
in history are experiencing.
No one else has ever encountered this kind
of a thing before.
And a lot of times you hear, you
know, just sort of a defeatist kind of
a perspective on all of it.
And the idea is sometimes seeming to come
across that because of the way things are
culturally now that the church really doesn't have
much of a chance in this environment.
This is the world that the church was
born into.
These are the kinds of things Paul is
not describing 2004, he is.
But he's also describing.
The first century.
The century that he ministered in, and do
you see a parallel between what was happening
in his generation and what's happening in our
generation?
You certainly do.
Because we have kind of come, in a
sense, culturally full circle.
Where there was a period of time where
the Christian message had an impact upon our
culture, so certain things because of the Christian
influence, not because everybody was Christians, not because
our institutions were all Christian institutions or anything
like that, but because there was a cultural
influence of Christianity and sort of an idea
of morality and decency.
A lot of things were just simply not
done in our society because it was inconsistent
with the cultural views of the time.
But as time has passed, the influence of
Christianity upon the culture has decreased.
And so now what's happening is we're just
seeing what every other generation, what every other
culture has seen without the influence of Christianity.
Now, of course, the apostles went into a
world that had never heard of Christianity, they'd
never heard of Jesus Christ, they didn't know
anything about the gospel, they didn't really know
much at all about one God who created
the world and loved the world.
They were heathens, they were pagans, and because
they were heathen and pagan, they lived a
certain way.
That's where we're at today.
And what I feel that we need to
realize is that the gospel that had the
power to change the world in Paul's day
is the same gospel that we preach today,
and it still has power to change people
today.
But, you know, the apostles didn't really think
in terms of creating Christian nations.
That's something that came along quite a bit
later in the church's history, and you can
actually attribute much of what went wrong in
the church to.
Trying to marry the church in the state
to one another.
The apostles didn't think in those terms, they
thought in terms of individual salvations, they thought
in terms of getting people saved.
One person at a time and then letting
God take those individuals, whoever they were, and
from whatever walk of life they were and
work in them and through them in their
sphere of influence.
That's pretty much the way they thought.
And I think that that is the way
that we need to be thinking in these
days, because I think it's utterly foolish and
I think it's wrong and I think it's
hopeless to think that we're ever going to
turn the Western world back into a Christianized
cultural type of an experience.
I don't think that's ever going to happen,
but that doesn't mean anything.
Because that's not what God intended in the
first place.
God intended that we go out and preach
the gospel to people and people get saved.
And then those people impact, as I said,
their sphere of influence.
Now, the law, as I mentioned, the law
was there to restrain evil.
To restrain evil men, the gospel is intended
to change evil men, and just as the
apostles went out into that world and their
solution to the situation.
Was not to somehow alter the form of
government, their solution was to preach the gospel
to individual people and let them get converted
and let God's will begin to be accomplished
in their lives.
So as we look around the world today,
we need to understand the solution is still
the same.
It's the gospel.
It's people getting converted.
You see, the gospel.
Is unique, there's nothing like it.
It's the power of God to salvation, to
everyone who believes and what the gospel is
able to do that no government on the
face of the earth can do.
No legislation from any government on the face
of the earth can do.
The gospel is able to change a man
from the inside out, give him a new
heart and a new mind, a new way
of looking at things and a new way
of living.
That's what the gospel does.
Now, in case.
There was any temptation.
To doubt that Paul uses himself as an
illustration of that reality, and I think Christ
Jesus, our Lord, who has enabled me because
he counted me faithful, putting me into the
ministry, although I was formerly a blasphemer, a
persecutor and an insolent man, Paul saying to.
Timothy, he's saying, Timothy, don't don't let these
people get sidetracked into arguments and disputes about
the law.
These guys don't know what they're talking about.
The law is to restrain evil.
That's the valid use of the law.
The gospel is to.
Bring power to people who are evil.
So that they can become righteous, Paul's whole
message over and over again would be get
the gospel out, get the gospel to people.
And he says, because that's what happened to
me.
I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor and
an insolent man, the word insolent is interesting,
it means a person who is so arrogant,
arrogant beyond.
On.
Anything you could tolerate and not only arrogant,
but violent.
Hostile, antagonistic toward anyone who would even remotely
disagree with them.
So Paul describes himself as the kind of
person you would never want to have a
conflict with, he would just destroy you, but.
He says this, I obtained mercy because I
did it ignorantly in unbelief, there are those
who are great sinners and yet their
sin is in many ways rooted in ignorance.
Those are the ones to whom God shows
mercy.
There are others who are also great sinners,
but they're not sending an ignorance.
They're knowingly in rebellion, they're knowingly sinning, I
think of.
As an example, I think of those today
and.
Positions within the church, the church in the
in the bigger sense, you know, Christendom, as
it's called sometimes just the whole collective body
of what's known worldwide as Christianity.
I think of those who have gone to
seminary, I think of those who have their
theological degrees, but yet they deny.
The truth of the scripture.
They deny the deity of Christ, they deny
that he died for the sins of the
world, they deny that he rose from the
dead and so forth, those are the ones.
That need to be most concerned.
Because the judgment upon them is going to
be more severe.
I think of those who are in the
scientific community who have studied.
Biology, biochemistry.
Anatomy, whatever the case might be, and they've
seen the fingerprints of God all over creation,
but they stand in arrogance against the idea
of a creator.
You see, they're not doing it ignorantly.
They're doing it knowingly.
And for those who are knowingly rebelling.
Boy, the judgment is going to be that
much more severe, but Paul says concerning himself,
he did it ignorantly in unbelief and the
grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with
faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus.
This is a faithful saying and worthy of
all acceptance.
Now, evidently, there was this saying.
That was going around among the believers in
that day, and Paul grabs on to it
and he says, this is a faithful saying
and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners of
whom I am chief.
This is a faithful saying and worthy of
all acceptance.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners.
Do we know that?
Well, of course we know that the Bible
says that over and over again, doesn't it?
But do we really know it?
When we see certain people who are sinners,
do we say, man, Jesus came to save
that person, or do we say, oh, God,
destroy that guy.
Newcombe, wipe them off the planet, sometimes we
do that, don't we?
But see, those are the people that Christ
Jesus came into the world to save.
You know, testimonies are are wonderful things, and
I would imagine that if we had the
time and we could bring some of you
up here tonight, we would be stunned at
your testimony.
We just wouldn't be able to imagine that
you could have been the person that you
previously were.
And it's always an amazing thing to to
listen to a testimony where somebody has really
been a sinner, a rank, vile sinner, and
to see the power of Christ come upon
their lives and to see them change to
such a degree that you would never, ever
dream that they could have actually done those
things.
They couldn't have possibly been that kind of
person.
That's the power of the gospel.
It's so radically changes our lives.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners.
Paul said, that's what happened with me.
And we need to remember that that's a
faithful saying.
And as we see sin.
And we do see it, don't we?
It's proliferating in our society.
It's overflowing.
It's becoming more and more and more obvious.
We as believers should not despair.
We should not go into seclusion.
And say, oh, no, look what's happening.
We need to realize, no, this is the
time when we begin to shine.
You know, people have said to me so
often, you know, how did you live in
Europe?
I mean, that place is so wicked and
it's post-Christian, you know, it is it's
all of that.
But there's something that when you're in the
midst of it and you're you're shining.
There's something about it, you just think, man,
this is the way it's supposed to be.
You see, the darker it gets.
The brighter our light is able to shine.
And so rather than, you know, wringing our
hands in despair.
Rather than throwing up our arms in frustration
and just saying, oh, it's hopeless.
We need to realize that this is our
time.
This is our hour, because Christ Jesus came
into the world to say sinners, you know,
back 50 years ago when the culture was
Christianized still to a large degree.
You know what the difficulty for the church
was back then?
The great difficulty back then was to convince
anybody they were a sinner.
Because they didn't.
What do you mean we're sinners?
We don't do bad things.
We even go to church on Sunday and,
you know, we try to be as nice
and polite as we can and so forth.
And that was the big struggle that the
church had.
Nobody believed they were sinners.
You know what?
We don't have that state today for the
most part.
People know they're sinners, they're quite aware of
it.
And so in a sense, we've got, you
know, somewhat of a better situation in regard
to evangelism.
Because we don't have to so much convince
a person, it's obvious their lifestyle is blatantly
broadcasting the fact that they're sinners.
Remember when Paul went to the city of
Corinth and, you know, we studied through Acts
together, Corinth was a notoriously wicked city.
And Paul went there after he had been
through numerous trials and difficulties, he had come
on the tail end of of being persecuted
in three or four of the different towns
that he had been in.
And when he came into the city of
Corinth, he was afraid.
He was afraid for his life, he was
afraid that he was going to be attacked
and brutalized.
And we read there in the 18th chapter
of Acts how the Lord appeared to Paul
and he said, Paul, do not be afraid.
For no one shall attack you and harm
you.
For I have many people in this city,
Corinth, that wicked, vile, corrupt city.
Jesus said, Paul, I have many people in
this city.
You know, my friends, there are many people
out there that are waiting to hear the
gospel, many people that are waiting to hear
it.
We've got to remember.
Christ, Jesus came into the world to save
sinners, and we need to boldly take that
gospel to those centers and we will see
men and women.
Like Paul, people that you would have never
dreamed could be saved, getting saved.
You know, Cheryl was telling me and she's
told me this number of times as we've
talked over the years about these things.
But remember last Monday, of course, we had
the Labor Day picnic out here and we
had the groups from the past.
And there was one guy that actually wasn't
playing last week, but he was here, I
saw him.
And Cheryl was telling me, you know, she
was a little girl at the time, but
when the Lord was pouring out his spirit
back in those days and all of these
people from the hippie counterculture were getting saved
out of the drugs and the sexual perversion
and all of that, you know, they were
having outreaches and things all over Orange County,
the fairgrounds and the Long Beach Arena and
the different places.
And she was saying how they were at
at one particular thing.
And there was there was this guy who
became not going to mention him by name,
but he became well known in the Jesus
people era.
He went on to be a pastor and
so forth.
But she said the first time she saw
him, he was at one of these events,
stoned out of his mind on drugs, wearing
a wetsuit and doing some effeminate dance in
the middle of the crowd.
Now, I guarantee you, if somebody were to
do that at this stage, we'd grab him
by the scruff of the neck and toss
him out on their head.
What are you doing?
You can't do this church, don't you know
what you're what do you think you're doing
here?
And I'm not advocating anarchy in the midst
of our assemblies, but, you know, when God
starts moving and sinners start getting saved.
It's a glorious, awesome, powerful thing, but there's
some weird stuff that goes on, too, because
weird people start getting saved.
Now, we had some trippy stuff in England.
One night I was standing there, I looked
over and there was a transvestite sitting right
there.
Just, you know, he was all decked out
in his hot pants and his high heeled
shoes, and.
So I just went over and talked to
him, how are you doing now and just
realize, you know, God, God brought this guy
here tonight.
And we just sought to reach out and
love to him and he came occasionally and
he would come drunk and loaded.
Sometimes we tell him, you know, if you're
coming like that, you're really you're not going
to benefit from what's going on here.
But, you know, if you can refrain from
that, you're welcome to come.
But you see, those are the people Jesus
came to save.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners.
And I really think.
That we have to be careful today because,
you know, Christians are generally stereotyped as the
right wing group of people in the country
who hate everybody else and they want to
impose this law and this rule and that
standard on the rest of the nation and
so forth.
We have to be careful.
Not to get sucked up into that, we
really have to be on our guard.
You know, Jesus refused to get caught up
in a in political debate.
Jesus refused to get caught up taking sides
politically.
Now, obviously, we all have our own political
persuasion and we have rights and so forth
and we can vote and all that.
But, you know, we have to be careful.
We have to remember the bigger picture.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners.
And we don't want to be guilty of
giving an impression to sinners that there is
no salvation available for them.
We want them to see in our lives,
we want them to understand.
That they can be saved as well, and
you know what I found for myself, and
maybe you can identify with this, sometimes I
have to stop and just go back and
reflect on my own past.
And I have to remember where God has
brought me from, because you can get caught
up in your religious thing and you can
get all wrapped up in your your righteous
view of everything to the extent that you
sort of forget where the Lord brought you
from.
And I think it's good for us to
kind of just reflect sometimes back on what
we were before and how Christ Jesus saved
us.
And how his mercy was abundantly poured out
upon us.
And Paul goes on to say, however, for
this reason, I obtain mercy that in me
first, Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering as
a pattern to those who are going to
believe.
On him for everlasting life.
Listen to that, for this reason, I obtain
mercy that in me first, Jesus Christ might
show forth all longsuffering as a pattern.
Paul said he was the chief of sinners.
Basically, what Paul said is if Christ could
save me, he can save anybody.
And he said he saved me to set
a pattern and to show the world that
there is not a single person who is
not a candidate for salvation.
Paul said, I'm the chief of sinners.
If Christ can save me, everybody's less of
a sinner than I am.
If he can save me, he can save
anybody.
And then he says.
Sort of bursting forth in praise now to
the king, eternal, immortal, invisible to God, who
alone is wise, be honor and glory forever
and ever to the king, eternal, immortal, invisible,
God, who alone is wise, all the wisdom
and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are
his judgments and his ways past finding out
for who has known the mind of the
Lord.
We know.
God's heart is to save sinners.
And that's why we're here, because he saved
us, but let's not forget that he wants
to save others.
And let's make ourselves available and let's live
in a way loving one another.
And loving those that we come into contact
with, let's live in a way.
That would lead to opportunities,
conversation, situations where others can hear more clearly
about Christ Jesus, who came to save sinners.