Okay. Does everyone have access to a yellow book?
Number 16, “Be Magnified.” Does anybody know it? Does anyone at all know this song? Oh, yellow book? I got you, I got you.
Would you recommend me having them on or off if I were to sing something?
Okay, if you know it, sing with me, please. If you do not know it, you will catch on very quickly.
You are highly exalted,
And there is nothing You cannot do.
O Lord, my eyes are on You.
Be magnified, O Lord, be magnified.
You are highly exalted,
And there is nothing You cannot do.
O Lord, my eyes are on You.
Be magnified, O Lord, be magnified.
Lord, we come before You today, asking that You would be magnified; Lord, that we would see more of You, that we would see You more fully, that we would see Your glory and Your beauty. Lord, draw us into Your presence today. Open up Your word by the Holy Spirit, Lord.
I pray that there would be such a blessing—that we would be blessed and that You would be blessed, Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen.
So, I am learning how many “uhs” I can say in a sentence. You know, back in the day, it was nice because CTM was all done on tape. So if you heard a speaker and they did not do real good, you would not be able to tell who they were at a glance. That way, you know, they would be safe. Not so anymore.
My first verse is from 1 Timothy 1:15.
It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.
One more time:
It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.
Now, I am a patterns person. I like patterns. I think we can use them to figure things out. And there are three trustworthy statements in the book of 1 Timothy. Generally, if something happens more than once in the Bible, it means pay attention. If it happens three times, it means really pay attention. So there are three things that the Apostle Paul is really, really trying to get across.
Now, who knows who the book of Timothy was to? I guess you do.
You know, it has really been kind of on my heart lately because I am part of the younger generation, and there is a generation that came before us. I have heard them sharing a whole lot about, “How do we survive in this time? How do we keep our faith? How do we keep from being overwhelmed by the world around us?”
And, you know, that is quite similar to Paul’s experience. He was part of not the very initial wave, but not that long after the initial wave. There was this huge apostolic movement. The Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost, and people were being touched and saved, and Jesus was the Messiah, and it was exciting.
Then, as time went on, there were problems, there were controversies, things fell apart, and the world fell into disorder. Paul had to learn to endure.
But in the middle of all that, there was a second generation—a younger generation for whom Jesus being the Messiah was not new, groundbreaking information. It was a given: “Of course, Paul. Of course I believe that. Here I am, you know?” So this is a letter written to the second generation of something very important that he is trying to get across.
My burden is for those of us whose struggle is not so much with the world around us as with what is going on inside. You know, there is conflict, and that conflict was inside Timothy. Paul saw this and wanted to be able to reach out to his—his, I do not know what their relationship was: student, pupil, friend, apprentice, son. Anyway, this is stuff that he wanted him to hear.
I have gotten a little bit of comfort from this, so I wanted to pass it on to you guys. If I do not, that will be sad for me, I guess. I do not know.
Can we put the verse up one more time? 1 Timothy 1:15:
It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.
I really admire this man’s humility because, you know, if you have someone whom you are training, the instinct is, “I mean, I am fine. Other people are not so good.” But Paul points to himself. He is just like, “Timothy, my pupil, my son, I am the chief of sinners.”
There is one very important thing that I want to point out—well, there are two important things that I want to point out. Number one: do you see how it says, “I am foremost of all,” not, “I was foremost of all”? It is a very important distinction.
“I am” means something that I currently am. I am a man. I am six foot and some change. I am wearing shoes. You know, those are statements that are true concurrently.
“I was” is something that no longer applies to me. I was a child. I owned a Toyota. You know, those are things that once were true but no longer are and do not really have bearing on me.
So if you loop that back to the beginning: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I wanted to kind of dissect what Paul is trying to say here.
Many of us know that we are saved—most of us, gloriously saved—at some point in our life. I was saved on March 30, 2000, according to my mother. My mom underlines it on the calendar, and she reminds me every year. I had a four-year stint as an unredeemed sinner. There were pictures, but I thought it would be distracting.
But at the same time, while I am saved, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am—not “I was.”
So I wanted to delve into the weeds with this to try to see what it is. Now, please understand: I want to make a very special clarification of terms. When I say “saved,” I do not mean, like, in the right-now sense. I do not mean saved from hell. I do not mean saved from eternal punishment or whatever. If you are saved from the beginning, that is in the package, just for clarification.
But there is a follow-up thing that is also glorious that we are going to delve into. So I wanted to dissect what a sinner actually is. I was giving this some thought, and I did not really know how to explain what a sinner was, because it is kind of a general term. A lot of us do not really understand that we are sinners because it is kind of a high concept.
So I accidentally found a cool thing describing what it was. Can you look up Daniel 2, starting in verse 31? I found this by accident. If it is not correct, just edit this part out of the video.
This is, in my opinion, a description of a sinner:
You, O king, were looking, and behold, there was a single great statue; that statue, which was large and of extraordinary splendor, was standing in front of you, and its appearance was awesome.
The head of that statue was made of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, and its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
I think that is a wonderful description of the sinner, personally. Who here is familiar with The Chronicles of Narnia? You all are familiar, right?
The villain, the White Witch, has a way where she turns people to stone. She walks up to them, turns them to stone. It is very scary. It is very sad. Somehow, that is what we are when we arrive on this planet. We show up, and we are a statue.
Now, let me explain why I think that is the case. There is a head of fine gold. That represents God’s holiness. But here is the thing: in our statue stage, we have a holiness that is independent holiness. It is not God’s holiness.
It has arms of silver—its breast and arms of silver. That represents wisdom in Proverbs. So it is a wisdom that does not come from God.
The belly and thighs of bronze—I had to kind of dive into this one a little bit. That represented redemption, like the bronze serpent on the staff or whatever, representing Jesus. So it is how we redeem ourselves. It is how we excuse ourselves. It is our sense of right and wrong; it is our conscience, but that comes from ourselves.
Further on, there are legs of iron. It says that the Lord will rule the nations with a rod of iron. It represents will. Then, further on, its feet are partly of iron and partly of clay. That is your will mixed in with your body, because we are made out of the dust of the earth. You know, it represents our flesh. That is what you are on arrival.
Now, bear in mind, a lot of people have a hard time comprehending that they are sinners because they are just like, “I am a good person. I am smart. I have scruples. I have principles. I can do things. I can commit myself to things. What is the problem?”
What was Lucifer’s sin? Who knows? Pride? Yes, but dissecting it a little bit: when the devil fell, the reason he fell was because he did not want to be a worshiper anymore. He wanted to be worshiped. To an extent, he wanted to worship himself. He became his own idol.
Brothers and sisters, one of the reasons why sinners are unacceptable to God is that we have done that same thing on arrival. We have all these things that are all our own, and the reason why there is a punishment for us is because God will not tolerate idols. God is a jealous God. When we arrive, we are idols accidentally on arrival.
Can you imagine? We serve ourselves, we serve our own needs, we prioritize ourselves, we operate by our own pride. What a mess. What a mess.
The Lord is very clear about what He wants done with idols, right? You have got to melt them down. You have got to burn them. You have got to shatter them. You have got to melt them.
And, brothers and sisters, that is what hell is. That is our state without Jesus. It is not an issue of, “Oh, am I good? Am I bad?” or whatever. It is what you are out of the box.
We have done a wonderful job talking about the grace of our Lord this morning, and I am not going to try to touch on that because other people have done it far better. But praise the Lord.
Our Lord Jesus saw that state of affairs, and because He loved us—you know, a lot of us think we are kind of an easy self to love. It is just like, “Look, I have these principles. I have these scruples. I am charming.” The Lord saw us in that state and said, “I love him. You know, I love him.”
The Father, who is a jealous God, had the understanding that in order for them to go from the state where they are this to a state where they can be anywhere close to Me, someone has got to be in the middle. And Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.
Jesus Christ came in. He has a wonderful phrase: “I am from above; you are from below.” He is not from here. He is not like us. He came into this world, and it did not touch Him. And He saved us. He died on the cross.
I was reading through Leviticus, and it was talking about how the lamb has to be spotless if he is an offering for sin. He gets brought in, and he has got to be examined, and he has got to be spotless.
I was reading in Luke, because Luke is a doctor, about the crucifixion. Most people think, “Okay, so Jesus got arrested, sent to some priests, sent to Pilate, crucified—easy-peasy, right?” What actually happened was Jesus got arrested, got sent to the priest, got sent to Pilate, got sent to Herod, got sent back to Pilate.
None of them found a good reason to crucify Him, by the way. He wound up being crucified just because the people outside were going to be a riot or whatever.
But, brothers and sisters, that was the Lord being the perfect sacrificial Lamb for us: examined, examined, examined—spotless.
Believe it or not, our Lord hung on the cross for six hours. Have you ever had to do anything unpleasant for six hours? Have you ever had to drive for six hours, sit next to someone for six hours?
Our Lord Jesus—the way that He saved us was that He was our substitute. He stood there, arms raised, being examined: “Examine Me, examine Me, examine Me, examine Me,” for six hours, being examined.
“Are You good enough to be the exchange for this? Are You enough? Is this good enough?” And at the very end of it, the Lord said yes.
That is what we have come into, brothers and sisters. If you believe that, that is what salvation is.
You can make good on it every single day. It mentions that we are saved from separation from God. That is the first “saved” that I want to touch. We are saved from that separation, and every day we can come into it.
It mentions in 1 John: if any man sins, the blood of Jesus covers. We have been saved from separation. We can plead the blood. We have the Lord up there interceding.
Every time, I have this picture in my head. It is probably not accurate, but I always kind of imagine—this is so cheesy—God the Father is there, Jesus at His right hand, and God looks over and He sees you make a mistake. He kind of starts to look over, and Jesus puts His hand on His shoulder. The Lord looks at Him; He sees the hole.
Can you imagine? I am sorry.
So I wanted to go into the second half of being saved here. There is a second part of being saved that is a little more complicated than that. Because after you got saved, do you still make mistakes? Right? Right?
The Lord rescued you, but you are still a statue. Granted, you are not a statue that is going to be burned anymore. It is kind of like a garden gnome—you are just kind of a little garden gnome lying on the ground.
But we have an advantage. Again, The Chronicles of Narnia—the statues. Do you all remember how the statues go from being statues to being people again? Do you all know? Aslan breathes. He breathes on them. Right.
Believe it or not, that is in the Bible. John 20:22:
And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
So you have been saved, but the Lord has breathed on you. Then, all of a sudden, there is somewhere deep in your heart where the Holy Spirit comes in, and it says, “I will take the heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh.”
The Lord comes in, and He starts to do a work. There starts to be flesh where there was metal and—organic, I do not know. We said silver here, but it is also where your heart is, so I do not know how that works.
So He starts to breathe, or whatever. Brothers and sisters, I am not an authority to really talk about how it goes from there, so I am going to give some rough illustrations and stuff.
What I mentioned before was us being saved, but the second part is us being saved from being a sinner. It is a process. It is something that the Lord goes through.
I was reading in Jeremiah 20. I am going to read a big chunk of it.
This is what happens to people after they have been saved and they have been walking for a while. This is Jeremiah. Jeremiah was kind of like Timothy, where the Lord called him and he had a special calling, and he was just like, “Great. I am a little bit young, but great.” And then, you know, problems and stuff.
This is kind of the Christian thing which we go through. I am going to kind of jump around, but this is what happens:
O Lord, Thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived;
Thou hast overcome me and prevailed.
I have become a laughingstock all day long;
Everyone mocks me.Each time I speak, I cry aloud;
I proclaim violence and destruction,
Because for me the word of the Lord has resulted
In reproach and derision all day long.But if I say, “I will not remember Him
Or speak anymore in His name,”
Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire
Shut up in my bones;
And I am weary of holding it in,
And I cannot endure it.For I have heard the whispering of many,
“Terror on every side!
Denounce him; yes, let us denounce him!”
All my trusted friends,
Watching for my fall, say:
“Perhaps he will be deceived, so that we may prevail against him
And take our revenge on him.”But the Lord is with me like a dread champion;
Therefore my persecutors will stumble and not prevail.
They will be utterly ashamed because they have failed,
With an everlasting disgrace that will not be forgotten.Yet, O Lord of hosts, Thou who dost test the righteous,
Who seest the mind and the heart,
Let me see Thy vengeance on them;
For to Thee I have set forth my cause.Sing to the Lord, praise the Lord,
For He has delivered the soul of the needy one
From the hand of evildoers.
That is our road. Because the thing we have to be saved from—our nature—is a hard road. I cannot even begin to explain what that is going to look like for you. I am not fit to. I do not understand it. I am still a statue in so many ways.
But the Lord is bringing us through something, brothers and sisters. The Lord is doing something day by day.
Well, this is not going to get easier. Okay, so I am a big fan of Jesus Movement music. Are you all familiar with Jesus Revolution music? Any Second Chapter of Acts fans here? Hey, nice. You all should talk afterwards. It is a good band.
I am not any authority to dig into this, so take this with a grain of salt. I am not a biographer.
There was this family—mom, dad, a bunch of kids—who grew up in the Midwest, I think. I am not precisely sure. The mother developed some health problems. Some of the kids grew up. The mother found out she had a brain tumor and passed away.
Then the father, about two years later, also got cancer and passed away. So the kids were kind of left orphans. Some of them were older and already had families of their own, but then the two youngest did not really have anywhere to go. One of the older sisters, who was married, became their legal guardian. So there were two sisters and a brother.
The sister played the piano, so sort of for therapy, they would sit around the piano and play music together.
Anyway, very cheerful music. They really loved the Lord. Jesus Movement—just singing about Jesus, praising Jesus, loving Jesus. This was when they were kids. On their first album, they were teens, I think. I think the boy was like sixteen or seventeen in the beginning, or whatever.
Fast forward thirty-odd years. I think the first album came out in 1974. Someone who knows? 1974.
So the boy, his name was Matthew, right? He knew the Lord, wrote songs praising the Lord, knew the Lord. Then fast forward twenty-odd years, and he developed cancer of his own.
It was a rough time. I am sorry, I am crying because of the buildup. I am not that much of a sob story; my friends know me, that I am not.
I am sorry, I am looking up lyrics. I am not texting. I do not have anything better to do right now. I am trying to pull up lyrics here. Hang on. Always have your phone muted because you never know.
This is one of those things where stuff like this happens, and we are all like, “We do not know what to make of it.” I am not going to touch it. Just listen to the transition, because it went from a boy who was in his teens singing about Jesus to a boy who survived cancer singing about Jesus. There is just a transition, you know?
Forgive me if these are kind of corny. They are from the nineties, but I just wanted to share this with you guys.
He wrote this afterwards. He said that this was sort of a song that was what was going through his head when he had cancer.
Overwhelmed with sorrow, broken by the pain,
I could hear the doubt falling like the rain.
“This time it is over. This time you will not win.”
While the voice of doubt was calling,
I barely heard the truth within:
“I am watching over you.
I am for you, and I will lead you on.”Loneliness would cry out, keeping my heart bound.
I would ache inside to hear heaven’s sound.
Just the smallest whisper, just a word or two,
Could let me know there is nothing my God cannot do.God Almighty, God Almighty,
God Almighty raised me from the dead.Wounded but not shattered,
I was battered but not lost.
Your holy hands were there to guide,
Breaking the chains deep inside.
Through it all, I have learned to see
Just what You have done for me.
You have given me faith to live again.God Almighty, God Almighty,
God Almighty raised me from the dead.
I am not an authority to share on things that happen to people. I do not know what that process looks like for you. I am not an authority. I cannot comprehend it. I barely understand what is happening inside of me.
But Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am chief. It is a trustworthy statement. Yeah. Anyway.
Dear Lord, we praise You that You finish what You start. We praise You that there is nothing You cannot do. We praise You that You chose us. We praise You that You keep working on us. We praise You that it is not over. And we praise You that You will lead us on, Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen.