Thank God for Salvation

Let's imagine for a moment that you are on a cruise and you fall over the edge into the ocean. And let's imagine that you cannot swim. And so there you are, flailing in the water, trying to keep your head above water, just trying to stay alive. And somebody on deck notices your plight throws over a life preserver. It lands right in front of you. But you are so weak that you can't even slip your arm through it and hold on. And so someone else who sees the plight that you're in and you're going to drown if somebody doesn't do something jumps in to help you. They put your you around them and they get both of you in the life preserver and others are able to slowly but surely bring you up to the top of the ocean liner. And there you are, you're okay. You're spottering for air, you're spitting out water. And all of a sudden you come to your senses. Can you imagine saying to those gathered around you, did you see the way I grabbed them to that life preserver? Did you notice how tightly I held on? Did you see the definition of my biceps and the flexibility of my wrists as I held onto that life preserver? I really had that thing. That would be insane, wouldn't it? If that happened to you when you were able to say anything, you would be thinking profusely those who saved your life. And you would put your arms around them and hug them and you would do anything. You would feel like you owed them a lifelong debt of gratitude for saving your life. That's the only proper response. And that's exactly what Paul does in our passage today in 1 Timothy, 1 Timothy 1 verses 12 through 17. You see Paul has been engaging his protege, the young man who had trained for ministry and whom he had sent to a significant church in Ephesus to be the pastor there. Paul is dealing with him about instructions as to how he ought to conduct himself in the church, how he ought to minister. The very first thing he says is there are some false teachers there and you need to make sure that that gets stopped. That true biblical doctrine is taught by you and false teachers are stopped. He describes those false teachers as teachers of law who are twisting the gospel according to verse 11. He says the gospel, the glorious gospel of the blessed God which he entrusted to me. And that generates in Paul's mind how all of that happened because you see Paul used to be one of those teachers of the law. Paul used to be one of those self-righteous guys who felt like if I only keep the law then I can earn my way into heaven. He was one of those people and now he's totally different. He's been saved by the grace of God. He recognizes that he was a sinner in need of salvation so he wants to explain how all of that happened. So what he does next, this is not disconnected from what we've already heard, it's very much connected. In contrast to those false teachers who are twisting the gospel, Paul begins to describe how the gospel, the grace of God, the mercy of our Lord has completely transformed his life. He reflects with praise on the different elements that make up salvation. As he thinks about how God has saved him, this becomes a pattern testimony of salvation because he highlights the various elements of salvation that are true of all of us. And so if you know Jesus as you're saved, you're here this morning and you know for sure that because of the forgiveness you've received from God through the death of Christ, you know for sure that you're on your way to heaven, then let's rejoice together in the great salvation that we have. If you are not absolutely sure that you're on your way to heaven, you don't really understand what it means to be forgiven by God and saved by his grace. I hope you'll see what that means this morning and that even today you will come to know Jesus as your Savior. The first element of salvation that Paul thanks God for, he thanks him for his pardon in salvation, for his pardon, his forgiveness. Look at verse 12, he says, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has given me strength that he considered me faithful appointing me to his service. Now we're going to come back to that verse because that's actually the tail end of his testimony. That's the end of his testimony and he's going to get there but he's going to show us how he got there. So really verse 13 is the first thing he's thanking God for. Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. And Paul first of all describes his past. His past was pretty bad. Paul was a corrupt sinner and he describes himself in three ways. He says, I was a blasphemer. A blasphemer is one who speaks evil of God, who speaks against God, who doesn't believe in God and will do everything he can to tear down the reputation of God. But wait a second, Paul was a righteous Jew who in his own mind at least acknowledged the God of the Old Testament, the God of the Jews, so he never spoke against God but he did speak against Jesus Christ. I think it's amazing to me and very insightful that Paul actually here is defending the deity of Christ. For him to blaspheme is really to say bad things about Jesus Christ, which means Jesus Christ in Paul's theology, Jesus Christ is God. But he was a blasphemer, he hated Christ, he denied Christ, he said terrible things about Christ and those who followed Christ. And so he says, I was a blasphemer. And then he says, secondly, I was a persecutor which means he put to flight the church. He describes it or it is described for us in the book of Acts chapter 8 and verse 3. But Saul, and this was his name before he began to follow the Lord, Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. So Paul was persecuting the church, he was looking for people who claimed to be followers of Christ, who claimed to be Christians and throwing them in jail. But even more than that, he wanted them dead. Chapter 9, verse 3 of Acts, verse 1 tells us this, meanwhile Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest and got permission, the text goes on to tell us to arrest people in Damascus, a major Middle Eastern city and have them thrown in prison and hopefully killed. So Paul's very breath was murder. He wanted Christians dead. And so he says, I was a blasphemer, I was a persecutor and then he says, I was a violent man. It's an interesting word for violent man. It means to insult with a superior attitude. We would probably think in terms today of a bully who insults someone with a superior better than you stronger than you attitude. What are you going to do about it? But the word goes actually deeper than that. It means a contempt of other people that breaks out in outrageous, outlandish speech and actual physical harm. Violence. And so good summary of that concept is I was a violent man. This is more than just a bully. I think we could go so far as to say that Paul was a spiritual predator. He was on the lookout for anybody that claimed to be a Christian and he wafted them for the purpose of doing them harm. I will arrest them and I'll do everything in my power to make sure they die. Now that's Paul. That's his past. But notice he says even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy. Stop right there. Let that soak in. I was shown mercy. Mercy means the compassionate outreach of God that withholds judgment. Certainly Paul deserved the righteous anger and judgment of God. But God showed mercy. God withheld his judgment. And Paul tells us the reason why he says because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. Be careful with that. Don't misunderstand that. Don't think that Paul is saying well because I was in unbelief and I was ignorant. That kind of excuses what I did. Certainly God won't look that bad because after all I didn't know what I was doing. No, that's not really what he's saying. Remember the flow of thought here. Paul is contrasting his own testimony with the profession of these false teachers. These false teachers claim to be Christians. They should know better. They claim to know Jesus. They claim to honor Jesus. But they're perverting the gospel. The very message of Jesus Christ. Paul said when I was persecuting Christians, I didn't really know what I was doing. I was doing it in ignorance. I really thought I was doing God a favor. I was trying to be a faithful Jew. Thought the Christian religion was a threat to Judaism. So I thought I was doing God a favor. At least I did it in unbelief. He's not excusing himself. He's just giving the context in which he committed these awful acts. The real emphasis of the passage is on Paul is a sinner who received the mercy of God. You know what that means? That means his sins will never be held against him. When he trusted Jesus Christ on that road to Damascus as his savior, his sins were completely blotted out. God looked at his page on the book of heaven where we're listed all those sins. Plastey were persecuted or violent man and wiped them completely off that record and declared him righteous, declared him to be right with him. That's what God did. That's God's mercy. And he shows the same mercy to all of us because all of us are sinners. We have a past. We're sinners. And God shows us mercy. He withholds his judgment so that we can receive his forgiveness. And when you trust Jesus as your savior, all of your past, all of your sins, all of the sins, even of the present and future sins you haven't even committed yet, all of those are wiped off your record book in heaven. And God says, I will not judge you. I will give you mercy. I will withhold my judgment. The mercy of God means that your sins will never be judged and held against you in the sense that you can stand to be condemned and cast into hell for those sins. But forgiven, that is mercy. We don't deserve that. That is God mercifully reaching out to us in compassion and withholding his judgment. I love the way that Psalm 103 says it. One of my familiar favorite passages in Psalm 103 verses 11 and 12 for as high as the heavens are above the earth. So great is his love for those who fear him as far as the east is from the west. So far has he removed our transgressions from us. The east never meets the west. You can never go east so far that you'll ever meet start going west. So he's talking about an infinite distance here, an infinite distance. He has forgiven us and removed our sins from us so that they will never be held against us. It was December 1943 and a German pilot by the name of Franz Stigler was coming in back and pursuit of an American bomber pilot by the name of Charles Brown. He was going to shoot that American plane down. He knew that if he did, he would receive the night's cross, the highest honor for a German soldier. But as he approached the plane, he noticed there was no tail guns blaring, no tail gun lights like guns were firing at him. In fact, close to the guy he realized there was no tail gun assembly at all. He noticed that the left stabilizer was gone. He also noticed that the nose of the aircraft was missing. So he decided to get a little closer look and he pulled alongside the American plane and saw that even its skin had been blown off, he could actually see inside the plane. And what he saw were frightened, terrified young men tending to their wounded. The thing about Stigler is that he was a Christian and in spite of the military system which he was serving, he wanted to be a man who fought with honor. He himself recognized that the only way he could lay down his pillow, his head on a pillow at night if he survived the war would be if he fought with at least some degree of honor and as much humanity as possible. So he could not shoot down that plane. In fact, he started motioning for Brown to land his plane. But Brown didn't want to do that in German territory and risk all of them being captured, being prisoners of war. So he shook his head no. And so then Stigler started to try to mouth the word Sweden, Sweden to Brown. Like you can land in Sweden. That's the closest place. But Brown didn't understand what he was saying. And so finally Stigler saluted him and veered off. And the last thing he said was God bless you, you're in God's hands now. Well somehow amazingly enough, Brown was able to get his plane to the English shore and able to land. He served for 20 more years in the Air Force. Finally retired. But he was never able to escape that day. He was obsessed with wondering who that was and why that happened. Why he was not shot down. So in 1990, he took out an ad in a newsletter for fighter pilots, just hoping that maybe somewhere somehow he would be able to reach out to the man who let him go. Amazingly enough, Franz Stigler was now living in Vancouver and subscribe to the same newsletter for fighter pilots and solve the ad. And he ran into the kitchen to his wife and this is the man. This is the man I didn't shoot down. And so he made contact with the address that was on that ad and they began to write and eventually met and formed a very close friendship. They both died in 2008, six months apart in the article that explained this story in New York Post. Also noted that both men were Christians and that both obituaries listed the other as a special brother. Amazing. You know, something even more amazing. God could shoot us down, but he doesn't. God has every right because of what we have done, our sin against him. Whatever that may look like, whatever kind of sin it may have been, whatever your past may have been. God has every right to shoot us down. That would be the just thing to do, but he doesn't. He offers us pardon forgiveness, mercy. Thank God for the pardon in salvation for his mercy in salvation, but Paul doesn't stop there. He also has something else he wants to thank God for. He says, I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, not only for the pardon of salvation, but also for the provision in salvation. Look at verse 14. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. And we've already seen the mercy of God active in salvation withholding judgment and offering us forgiveness. And now Paul speaks of the amazing grace of God. Grace is God freely offering and bestowing salvation without anything expected on our part to earn it. An insurance company recently offered a first forgiveness part of their policy, a rider for their policy. And it read something like this. I mean, first forgiveness is, you know, will forgive your first accident. You won't insurance rates won't go up for that and so forth. But when you read the fine print, it was if you are accident free for three years, then we offer you first accident forgiveness. Now, is that really first accident for forgiveness? You have to qualify for it. You have to go accident free for three years. Of course not. I'm so thankful that God never says, okay, you want to you want to go to heaven? You want to be saved? All right. We're going to put you on probation for three years. If you don't do anything bad for three years, then I will offer you my forgiveness. What you thought God doesn't do that? Aren't you glad for his grace, which doesn't expect you to meet a standard in order to get to heaven? But simply says, I offer you freely my forgiveness, my salvation. I give it to you freely. And my friend, God doesn't see some sins as worse than others. There are some sins that may have different social consequences and harm others or harm us more than other sins. But in God's eyes, all sins are the same. They are a violation of his standard. And so no matter what your sin has been, no matter what your past has been like, no matter where you've come from, God freely, without any strings attached, without any probationary period, offers you his forgiveness and salvation. Thank God for his provision of abundant grace. And this grace is so abundant that it is greater than any possible sin. Paul says it in Romans chapter 5 and verse 20. He says, but we're sin increased. Grace increased all the more. Think of it this way. You start describing certain sins. Here's a bad one. Okay. Here's a bad sin. Grace goes more than that. Well, here's a worse sin. Grace is more abundant. Well, here's a really terrible, awful, despicable sin. Grace is much more abundant than any sin. God's grace is able to grant you and offer you salvation, no matter what your sin has been. Thank God for his provision of grace. The Paul's not done. He also wants to thank God for his purpose in salvation. The very reason why Jesus came. Look at it in verse 15. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst. Paul begins this sobering statement with kind of a call to attention. He starts out the verse by saying, here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. It's an interesting statement. It doesn't occur anywhere else in the New Testament except for the pastoral epistles, first Timothy, second Timothy, and Titus. It occurs five times in those verses. I remember way back when I was starting in ministry, I was looking at those five occurrences and I preached a message on the five faithful sayings of the pastoral epistles. It's a great study, but only five times, and it's in these epistles, this Paul used this introduction. And it's a kind of grab you by the neck and saying, listen, listen to this. This is important. This is a foundation of truth. This is a key statement. Come on now. Are you listening? Here's what I want to tell you. This is critical. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, not good people, not self-righteous people, not religious people. He came to save sinners. That's something the Pharisees in Jesus' day could never get. They could never understand why Jesus spent time with such despicable people in their eyes. Because see the Pharisees were so good, so religious, so in their eyes righteous, self-righteous. So it's described in Luke's Gospel this way. Luke chapter 5, verse 30, but the Pharisees and teachers of the law who belong to their sect, complained to his Jesus disciples, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? I mean, the scum of society, the lowest sinners of all, why do you spend time with those people at all? And here was Jesus' response. Jesus answered them, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Listen, my friend, do you think you're too sinful to be saved? Do you think you've done something that is so awful, that is so despicable in God's sight that he could never save you? You're the very person who came to save. And by the way, all of us are sinners. And let me just quickly take that excuse out of your arsenal of reasons for not being saved. Paul says, Jesus Christ came to save sinners of whom I am the worst. You say, well, that's just false modesty on the part of Paul. It's really a pretty good guy. I think Paul genuinely saw himself because of what he had done. He's just described being a blasphemer and a persecutor, one who murdered Christians and a violent man. I think he saw himself genuinely as the worst of sinners. And I think the longer he was saved and understood about the holiness of God, the more he realized how despicable his past was. So here's my point. God has already saved the worst. So I think he can save you. So don't ever use the excuse that my past is too bad to checkered. I just can't. I can't measure up. God's not looking for people who measure up. He came to save sinners and all of us are sinners. Matt Chandler in his 2012 book, The Explicit Gospel writes about a time that he and a couple of friends invited a young woman named Kim to a Christian concert. He was really hopeful that Kim would come to know Christ that evening. However, he describes what occurred at that concert in the book as using his words, a train wreck. Here's what he says, the preacher took the stage after the musicians were done preacher took the stage and disaster ensued. He gave a lot of statistics about STDs. There was a lot of you don't want syphilis do you? His big illustration was to take out a single red rose. He smelled the rose dramatically, caressed its petals and talked about how beautiful the rose was and how it had been made. Then he threw the rose out into the crowd and he encouraged everyone to pass it around. As he neared the end of his message, he asked for the rose back. But by now it was broken and drooping and the petals were falling off. He held up this now ugly rose for all to see. And his big finish was this. Now who in the world would want this? His word and his tone were merciless. His essential message which was supposed to represent Jesus message to a world of sinners was this. Hey, don't be a dirty rose. Chandler says he didn't hear from Kim for a few weeks until one day Kim's mother notified him that she'd been in an accident. She was in the hospital. So Chandler went by the seer in the hospital and he said this. He writes this in the book. In the middle of our conversation seemingly out of nowhere, she asked me, do you think I'm a dirty rose? My heart sank inside of me. And I began to explain to her the whole weight of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that Jesus wants the rose. It's Jesus desire to save, redeem and restore the dirty rose. That's why he came, friends. And all of us are dirty roses. We haven't all committed the same sins, but we've all sinned. And in God's eyes, all sin, regardless of what it is, is a violation of his standard. And we are all worthy of his wrath and his judgment and hell because of our sin. But we can't be merciless. The reason the whole purpose Jesus came was to save sinners to redeem dirty roses. The message of the gospel is not stay away from sin, clean up your act, and then maybe I'll accept you and take you to heaven. The message is you have sinned, you're a dirty rose, and you need Christ's blood to cleanse you. And God in His grace and mercy has offered that to you. So no matter where you've been, what you've done, where you come from, the whole purpose in salvation is for Christ to save the worst, the worst. And all of us are dirty roses. Thank God for His purpose in salvation. And in order to be true to the Bible, we have to call sin sin. We have to understand and make clear and declare boldly what sin is. But we should never do that in the tone I just described. We should never do it with a whole year than thou, you measure up or you're too dirty for God. Or you've done such despicable things or you're living in such a lifestyle that God could never forgive you. My friend, God came to redeem all of us dirty roses. All of us who have been abused and used up by this world and by our own sin. That's the whole purpose for his coming. Thank God for his purpose in salvation. The pulse to not done. He says there's something else I want to thank God for. And that is his patience in salvation. Look at verse 16. But for that very reason, Paul's just saying I'm the worst of sinners. For that very reason, I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life. Thank God for his patience in salvation. And Paul's an example of his unlimited patience. The patience of God in salvation means that he restrains himself from exercising his just anger and wrath against our sin. He restrains himself from that in order to mercifully and graciously offer us forgiveness. God has every right to unleash his anger on us. God has every right to unleash his wrath. His holy demands, his holy character demands a payment for sin. And yet he is patient with us. He is slow to avenge Psalm 103 says these patients, you know, it's hard for us to understand anything about patients. I think it's hard for us to understand God's patience with fallen people with those of us who are sinners, either before or after salvation. I think sometimes we're an impatient people with each other because we are impatient people. The NPR National Public Radio had a program recently entitled the impatient nation describing what we have as Americans have become. We want quick answers to complex questions. And this article goes on to say we, we speed date. We eat fast food. We use the self checkout lines in the grocery store. We try the one weekend diet. We pay extra for overnight shipping. We honk when the light turns green. We thrive or dive on quarterly earning reports. We speak in half sentences. We start things but don't thin. We tweet stories in 140 characters or less. And that's too long sometimes. We cut corners. We take shortcuts. We tax to what we leave the E out. Don't we? We're so impatient. We cannot grasp how patient God is with lost and dying humanity with people who've gone down the road of destruction. And in our eyes, it might seem too far. But it's never too far for God because he is so patient. He withholds his righteous display of judgment and wrath in order to give us opportunity to respond to his grace and mercy and be saved. Robert Ingers Hall was an interesting man. He lived back in the 1800s born in 1833, died in 1899. He was a lawyer, actually grew up in a pastor's home, a congregational pastor. But he trained to be a lawyer and in the process of his adult, early adult years, he became an agnostic where he decided you can't really know whether or not God exists. Nobody can prove that. Nobody can really say for sure that God exists. And so he became a lecturer. He was a very eloquent brilliant man and he became an orator. And you have to understand in the 1800s, that was the entertainment. We were there were no movies to go to, you know, that kind of thing. The entertainment was to go here someone just blow your socks off with some oration. And most of his speeches would last for three hours. I'm not sure if you're glad he's not preaching this morning. And people would sit in rapture by this eloquent man and his orations. But most of his speeches, practically all of them were in large cities and they were displays of arrogance against God, challenging God, denying God, blasting Jesus Christ, blasting the Bible and the idea of hell. He would just go on and on. Often at the end of those speeches, he would say, now if there is a God in heaven, then I offer him a challenge. I challenge him if he is really there to strike me dead on this stage in five minutes. I'll give him five minutes and he would stay in there. And the crowd would get real nervous. People were known to have faint while they were waiting to see what was going to happen. People would leave. I mean, they hadn't seen all the movies that we've seen. I mean, this was dramatic. At the end of five minutes, he would say, see, there is no God. A couple of people were walking out of one of those speeches and one turned to the other, both of them were believers and they had gone because they wanted to hear. They'd heard a lot about him. One of them said to the other, what did Robert Ingersol prove today? Because it was a little bit shaken about what he had seen and heard. And the lady responded to him. Robert Ingersol proved that you cannot exhaust the unlimited patience of God in five minutes. And you can't or in five years or five trillion years. You cannot exhaust. It is unlimited patience. That's how Paul describes it. So my friend, don't hold back from coming to Jesus as your savior because you think God's patience on you has run out. Your opportunity has gone. No, no. God has unlimited patience and he's offering you again today. His mercy, his grace, his forgiveness, his salvation. Thank God for his patience and salvation. But there's one other thing that Paul thanks God for. And that is for the product of salvation. And that takes us back up to verse 12. Here's the end result of salvation. This is the natural product of a person who truly comes to know Jesus. And Paul starts here, but this is the end result. And so he spends the verses we've just talked about telling how he got to verse 12. Verse 12 is the product of all of this of salvation. Notice what it is. I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has given me strength that he considered me faithful appointing me to his service. There it is. The last word in the verse. Service. That's the product of salvation. That's the reason why God saved you. Oh, yes, he saved you so that your sins would be forgiven and you could spend an eternity in heaven with him, but it doesn't stop there. If it stops there with you, you've missed all that God intended for you and your salvation. God saved you so that you could then turn your life around and give it to him for service to serve him in some way. And Paul was convinced that God had, as he says, appointed him appointed him to his service. Paul knew that there was a distinct call in his life where God had set him apart to serve him. He talks about it. For instance, in Colossians chapter 1 and verse 25, he says, I've become its servant, the gospel's servant by the commission. God gave me to present the word of God in its fullness. Paul was convinced that God had commissioned him appointed him, authorized him to preach the word of God to give the word of God in all of its fullness. He spoke about it to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 9, in verses that first became my life verses when I went to P. Bible College some 46 years ago. When I preach the gospel, I cannot boast since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel, if I preach voluntarily, have a reward. If not voluntarily, there's a sense which Paul is saying, I'm still simply discharging the trust committed to me. I'll never forget how those words burned into my heart as an 18-19-year-old young man. And God pressed him on my heart. John, that's what I've called you to do to preach the word of God in all of its fullness. And I was compelled to that and those verses still aroused within me that original commission and burden God placed on my heart. Paul knew that, God had set him apart for that. But you say, wait a second, God didn't call me like that to preach. I've never since that or felt that. But God has given you a commission and a call to serve him in some way. We all are under what's called the Great Commission to go and disciple, make disciples of all nations, bring them into the fellowship of the church and communion of believers through baptism and then teach them so that they can repeat the same thing. They can go, all of us are commissioned to serve. And so it's incumbent on us to figure out, how does God want me to serve? What can I do in gratitude to him for my salvation as the product ever redeemed, forgiven, grace, mercy-filled soul? What can I do to give my life to serve him? Can I join a prayer team? Can I go reach people on Mercer Street and now outreach we have there? Can I join the choir? Can I teach a Bible fellowship? Can I, whatever, whatever it is, there are a hundred ways or more for you to be involved in serving God. Figure it out, figure out what your passion is, where your heart is, how God's gifted you and developed you and shaped you to serve him. What does it you want to do if there's nothing you want to do, then start praying and ask God to get your heart right with him so that you will serve him. You say, well, what's required? What do I need? Two things, only two things. And Paul tells us both of them. In verse 12, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength. That's the first thing you need, the power of God, the strength of God. And it's available to everybody to serve in whatever capacity God wants you to serve him. He offers you his strength, his power. He will give you the necessary strength to do whatever he lays on your heart to do. The second thing is personal faithfulness. Notice Paul says that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service. So personal faithfulness. What has God required you, some great exploit before you serve him? No, he just requires that wherever you are right now, whatever you're doing right now, that you as a child of God, be faithful to him. I think Paul demonstrated that between Acts 9 when he was saved, and Acts 13, where he was given that commission to go out and preach the gospel to the Gentiles. He was faithful in whatever was right in front of him. Remember he was saved on the road to Damascus. The Bible says he started talking to people in Damascus about Christ. He went into synagogue and basically said, hey, I was where you guys were until I got saved the other day. He was telling people about Jesus so much so they had to get him out of town because he was in danger of losing his life. So what did he do? He wasn't exercising his ministry of being the apostle to the Gentiles yet. He was simply telling people about Jesus. He was simply being faithful with what was right in front of him. And God saw his personal faithfulness and it's okay. Here's how I want you to do. Here's how I want to use you. All God requires is that you depend on his strength and you serve him and live for him faithfully and he'll give you what you need to serve him. So he requires but that is the product of salvation is people who serve God not people who just sit and soak in but people who serve people who do something for the Lord in response. In this amazing that Paul is now in ministry means the persecutor is now the preacher. The murderer is now the missionary. Amazing testimony. But there's a sense in which all of us who are redeemed have the same testimony. We were all sinners and God and his mercy pardoned us. God and his abundant grace offered us freely salvation. God came for the purpose in his son of dying for sinners so that we might be saved in his patience. He waited for us to recognize our need so that we would come to Christ and now he wants to use us as the product of our salvation. You see Paul is filled with gratitude for God and we should be too. Today my friend as you reflect on your salvation should cause you to burst forth in praise just like Paul did in verse 17. Now to the king eternal immortal invisible the only God it's like I just I just am full of all these these biblical images of who God is how great you are to to him be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen or so be it. And my friend if you have come to know Jesus is your savior your heart ought to overflow with the kind of praise that says I want to now give myself to serve him in some way. That's how I'm going to show my gratitude the rest of my life. But if you're here today and you've never received God's mercy and grace in salvation and you've been trying to be a good person you've been trying to be a religious person maybe that's the reason you come to church and you've tried to do good things and turn your life around on your own you're really trying hard. You can't be saved that way my friend God's not expecting you to have a three year spotless record before he offers you forgiveness he offers it freely the offers it to you today. Would you be willing to trust Jesus is your savior please join me in prayer. Father thank you for the grace and mercy abundantly showered upon us in our salvation for the forgiveness and pardon of our sin freely offered through your mercy and grace. Thank you for your long suffering and patience with us to gently woo us speak to our hearts draw us to yourself help us to realize our need. Thank you father that you do not flash out in your anger against this but you patiently work with us until we will be willing to bend the need to you and trust Jesus is our savior. Oh how we thank you for our salvation. Thank you that you came to this earth for all of us dirty roses. To save us. Not pray if there's anyone here this morning who's never trusted you as savior even though they may be a good person or a religious person. If they've never placed their whole confidence in hope of heaven in what you you did for them on the cross I pray that today they would receive that gracious gift of salvation in Jesus name we pray amen.