Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Acts, chapter nine is where we are. Okay, so as I was thinking about this passage, Taylor and I were actually talking before the sermon today. And if you grew up in the church or maybe if you've been around church for any amount of time, you've probably heard this story of the conversion of the Apostle Paul and, and there are all sorts of commentaries about this story, different opinions and thoughts about what happened to Paul on the Damascus road and all of that. And I don't really want to get into any of that with you. You're free to go and read that for yourself and read the different opinions and really interesting thoughts out there. I think it's pretty self explanatory and simple. And so all I want to do today is ask the question of why, why did God save the Apostle Paul?
[00:00:52] And what does that have to do with you and I.
[00:00:56] Because there's a really awesome tie in to that question that I don't know that I really gave a whole lot of thought to prior to this week.
[00:01:04] And so my hope is that you and I on this Mother's Day would leave encouraged, that if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you would leave with more assurance than you came in, more of a knowledge of the love of God for you, the devotion of the Father for your good and for your joy and your flourishing, that you would just leave filled and refreshed and encouraged as we answer this question of why, why did God save the Apostle Paul? And why did Luke put it in here?
[00:01:34] Okay, so we'll get to that toward the end of the sermon. But just to kind of set it up a little bit earlier, I'm sorry. Later last week I found myself in a situation where we were doing yard work, which is a very therapeutic thing for me. So I'm doing yard work. And, and as I was doing yard work, we had a particular instance with one of our kids where one of our kids was having a difficult time.
[00:01:58] And rather than taking that opportunity to draw near to my child in a loving, gentle, kind way, I got angry.
[00:02:08] And so, you know, kind of live through that moment and sin and my anger in that moment and on the back end of that begin to kind of just ask. I mean, the Spirit of God does this. This is what the Spirit does when he brings conviction in our life. Like the Spirit of God doesn't bring conviction like a sledgehammer.
[00:02:27] Like, I used to hear preachers say that all the time. Like they'd take Psalm 23 where David says, your rod and your staff, they comfort me and they'd be like, yeah, what's comforting is when you get a whack across the head. And I'm like, I don't think that's what that means.
[00:02:39] The rod and the staff are intended to protect the sheep, not to bash the sheep in.
[00:02:44] That's not the heart of the Father for you. But we kind of have. I think what we do with God sometimes is we take our own personal experiences, whether it be the knowledge of how broken we still are, how sinful we still are, and how broken and sinful the people around us are, whether it be our parents or our neighbors or whatever.
[00:03:05] We take these horizontal experiences and we superimpose them upon God and we assume that he's that way, too.
[00:03:13] So if we're angry, we just assume, well, God must be angry, right? Or if our experience with mom or dad was really negative, we just assume even subconsciously that God must be that way too. And this is something that people have done for a long time.
[00:03:28] John Owen, who was a famous Christian theologian from long time ago, Owen, says this. He says, want of a due consideration of him. That being God with whom we have to do, measuring him by that line of our own imaginations, bringing him down unto our thoughts and our ways, is the case of all our disquietments.
[00:03:56] That's a very wordy phrase, but essentially what Owen's saying is. He's saying all of the unrest and anxiety and worry that you and I carry around on a moment by moment, day by day basis, all of it is due to this reality that we superimpose upon God's character. Something that isn't true about who he is.
[00:04:16] And so we learn a lot about who God is through Acts, chapter nine.
[00:04:23] And so that's the approach that I want us to take as we look through the passage. What? So again, on this Mother's Day might we take our eyes, our thoughts, our imaginations, and lift them off of what we see, hear, feel and touch here on this side of heaven, and just lift him up to the question of who is God?
[00:04:45] Who's he revealed Himself to be?
[00:04:48] And we see much of who God is in his character and his attributes and his goodness and his beauty through Acts, chapter nine. So with that being said, let's see what God says about himself in Acts, chapter nine. So look at verse one with me. I'm going to read the first three verses and then I'm gonna make four points. Let me make sure. Four points and a conclusion. All right, so Acts chapter nine, verses one through three says, but Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
[00:05:35] Now, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. So the first point that I want us to consider this morning in light of who God is, is this simple reality that God is real.
[00:05:53] The first thing that Acts chapter 9 tells us, or that we can draw from Acts chapter 9 is that God is real.
[00:06:02] And so I just want to put the question back on you, and I want you to really think about this for a moment.
[00:06:07] How much of your day is lived out of this kind of functional atheism?
[00:06:14] You're not going to say it with your word. We're not going to say that with our words. I mean, I would imagine whether you're here and you're a Christian or not, this morning, you're here because you would say, like, I do believe something about God, and I believe you. You do? We do.
[00:06:27] This is why, as Christians, we all honestly ought to be praying the prayer of the Father in the Gospels when his son has epilepsy and he comes to Jesus and he says, I believe, help my unbelief.
[00:06:39] Because in every single one of us, there is a belief for those who are Christians, we believe, but we still don't believe.
[00:06:46] And so we have to pray for it.
[00:06:48] I do believe, help my unbelief.
[00:06:53] Because, man, the reality is, if you and I walked out of this place believing just a little bit more that God is real, that he really is real, he's not a figment of our imagination. He's not an idea. He's not a religious thing, one of many religious options, like, the God of the Bible is alive. He's real.
[00:07:15] I was in a conversation yesterday with a friend of mine who's the father of one of the kids on my son's soccer team, and he and I have gotten really close. He's not a Christian.
[00:07:26] And we talk about all sorts of things whenever we get together. And yesterday we talked about aliens. He was like, hey, man, you're a pastor. What do you think about aliens? And I'm not going to tell you what all I said to him. That's a podcast episode for a different day.
[00:07:40] But here's kind of where the conversation led to is at some point I asked, he made this statement. He said, you know, I know the difference between right and wrong, and I said, well, how do you know that?
[00:07:53] He's like, what do you mean? I was like, well, how do you know the difference between how do you know what's right? How do you know what's wrong? And he's like, well, I grew up in a good family. It's like, but how do they know it?
[00:08:01] And it just kind of led down this rabbit hole of what's the source of how does anybody know the difference between right and wrong? How does anybody know what morality is and what it isn't? How does anybody know what evil is? We can acknowledge evil. And so because we can acknowledge evil in our flesh, we have a tendency to say, well, because evil exists, God must not. But because evil exists, God must exist. Otherwise you wouldn't know evil to be evil.
[00:08:27] And so what does all this have to do with the Apostle Paul? Well, the Apostle Paul, it says in verse one, was breathing threats and murder against the people of God. This small little sect of Jewish Christians called the Way, that were growing in influence. More and more people were joining the Way out of Judaism. They were following Jesus, claiming Jesus to be the risen Messiah. And as this was happening, they were experiencing more and more persecution and pushback. And the leader of that persecution was this guy, Saul of Tarsus. He wasn't just breathing out threats and murder against the disciples of Jesus. He. He was doing it. He was participating in it.
[00:09:07] He was leading out in it. He wanted to carry both men and women bound from their homes back into Jerusalem in order to imprison and or kill Christians.
[00:09:18] And so then the conclusion of how in the world does this point to the reality that God is real? Like, what else could have turned a man like that into the man that we know to be Paul the Apostle?
[00:09:31] Somebody who goes from breathing threats and murder against Christians to somebody who goes and becomes a man who plants churches of the Way, who disciples Christians in the Way, who calls non Christians, Jewish Christian, Jewish, non Christians and Gentiles to repent of their sins and believe upon the Lord Jesus. It must have been that this person, Saul of Tarsus, actually had a real encounter with this risen Messiah.
[00:09:55] Some of the earliest New Testament manuscripts we have are written by the Apostle Paul. No serious scholar of history is going to deny that the Apostle Paul existed and played a major contributing factor into the advance of Christianity in the first century.
[00:10:10] And so the first thing to take note of here is man. Acts chapter nine reminds us that God is real.
[00:10:18] He's real.
[00:10:21] Francis Schaeffer in his book, he is there and he is not silent.
[00:10:28] Says, but when the world can turn around and see a group of God's people exhibiting substantial healing in the area of human relationships in their present life, then the world will take notice.
[00:10:40] And this is what we see in the apostle Paul. Even Ananias, who we're about to encounter in a moment, says, yeah, but that guy was killing us.
[00:10:50] And yet God is going to use this transformation in Saul of Tarsus in calling him out of darkness and into light, giving him a new heart with new desires and new affections to testify to the reality that God is real, that he's there, as Schaeffer would say, and that he is not silent.
[00:11:13] So that's the first point. God is real.
[00:11:16] The second, let's look at verses four and five, says, and falling to the ground. So suddenly a light from heaven shone around Saul.
[00:11:28] And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
[00:11:39] And he said, who are you, Lord? So there's an immediate recognition that the voice he's hearing from heaven is the Lord, who are you, Lord?
[00:11:51] And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting me.
[00:11:59] Saul wasn't ignorant of Yahweh.
[00:12:02] He was a master in Torah.
[00:12:05] He knew the Messiah was coming.
[00:12:08] He didn't believe that the Messiah was Jesus initially.
[00:12:11] And on his way on the Damascus road to go and bind Christians, carry them to prison and kill them, a light from heaven shines around him, and a voice from heaven calls out, saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? He knows it's the Lord. But here's the thing that I want you to take note of. I would encourage you, if you have a pen or pencil, to circle the word me. Why is it that Jesus tells Saul he's persecuting him?
[00:12:38] How could he do that? Jesus is in heaven. He's ascended to the right hand of the Father.
[00:12:43] How is it that Saul of Tarsus is persecuting him? Well, here is the reason, and this is the second point, that God identifies with his people.
[00:12:56] He identifies not only is he real in the sense of God is otherworldly, transcendent.
[00:13:05] He's the creator and sustainer of all things, but he's deeply personal.
[00:13:11] He's not like a clock maker that creates the clock, clicks the button, and then walks away and lets it kind of work itself out. The transcendent God has made himself intimately personal.
[00:13:22] He identifies with his people.
[00:13:28] Exodus chapter 3.
[00:13:31] When God's people are suffering at the hands of Pharaoh, God reminds his people before he rescues them out that he sees them, says that the Lord saw them and he knew.
[00:13:51] That idea of God knowing connotates this idea of intimate knowledge in the same way that a husband knows his wife when they get married. This is the way that God knows the pain of his people.
[00:14:06] He saw them and he knew.
[00:14:12] God feels the pain that you and I feel.
[00:14:16] You ever think about that?
[00:14:20] And there's a part of that that almost sounds like heretical, like, what do you mean? God feels the pain that I feel. But I just want you to consider this for a moment.
[00:14:28] So Exodus chapter three says that God knew, like he intimately knew. He didn't just see with his he didn't just see, but he knows the pain of his people. But in the New Testament, that becomes even more profound in that God's knowing of his people is fully embodied and personified in the incarnation of the Son of God.
[00:14:49] The Son of God takes on human flesh, by which Jesus isn't part man and part God or mostly God or all God and part man. Jesus is fully God and he's fully man.
[00:15:09] Matthew 25:34, 40 to kind of tee up this idea of God identifying with his people, Jesus is talking about his return.
[00:15:19] So the final judgment, he says, then the king, that's himself, will say to those on his right, come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him, saying, lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will answer them, truly, I say to you, as you did to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.
[00:16:04] Then he will answer them, saying, truly, I say to you on the negative side, as you did not do to one of the least of these, you did not do it for me.
[00:16:13] Ephesians 5:29, 30 and speaking to husbands, and how we as husbands ought to love our wives by the power of the Spirit, is to love our wives like Jesus loves the church. But he goes further than that, and he says, which one of you hates his own body?
[00:16:30] Like who hates his own body? Well, the answer is, none of Us hate our own body.
[00:16:35] No, we don't hate our own body. We nourish and we cherish it. And then Jesus says this.
[00:16:41] For no one ever Paul says this. But the spirit of God through Paul, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church. Because we are members of his body.
[00:16:55] Jesus is our head.
[00:16:59] He is the head of his body.
[00:17:01] And his body consists. His bride consists of all peoples who by the grace of God, have put their faith in Him. We have been grafted into his body, and he is our head. And as our head, he loves and he cherishes and he nourishes us. He is our means of nourishment.
[00:17:22] That's how closely Jesus identifies himself with his people. That he can go to the Apostle Paul, Saul of Tarsus in this moment and say, saul, you're not primarily persecuting my people. You're persecuting me.
[00:17:37] I mean, this is similar, but different. But pretty similar in that, like, if somebody came to me and said, brad, I really like you. I can't stand your wife.
[00:17:48] I wouldn't be okay with that person.
[00:17:50] Like, no part of me would be. I'd be like, then you're not okay with me.
[00:17:54] If you're not okay with my wife, who I'm one flesh with, you're not okay with me.
[00:18:00] And this is what Jesus is saying to Paul.
[00:18:04] Like, we do live in a day and age, and you guys know this. We talk about this often. We do live in a day and age where the church is talked really poorly about.
[00:18:11] We talk really badly about the church, and we do it under all sorts of justifications.
[00:18:17] There are many in the room who have been legitimately hurt by people in the church. And that's terrible.
[00:18:23] I hate that I've been hurt by people in the church.
[00:18:26] It's terrible.
[00:18:27] It ought to be lamented.
[00:18:29] People who hurt other people ought to repent.
[00:18:34] All of those things are true.
[00:18:36] But we have to be very, very careful with how we talk about Christ's bride.
[00:18:43] Saul.
[00:18:44] Saul, why are you persecuting me?
[00:18:48] Is what Jesus says.
[00:18:51] Jesus so identifies with us, friends, that we are his body and that he is our head.
[00:18:56] He's nourishing us. He cherishes us. He loves us as his own body.
[00:19:03] And so it's because of this that Hebrews 4 says that we have a high priest who's not unable to sympathize, but one who in every way has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Jesus knows your Pain.
[00:19:21] He knows your pain. And so we have a God who is not merely transcendent, but one who is otherworldly, personal, beyond anything that we can fully comprehend.
[00:19:35] So, third point.
[00:19:37] God is real.
[00:19:39] God is God, identifies himself with his people. Third point. Look at verses 6 through 15.
[00:19:46] Says, but rise.
[00:19:49] This is what he's telling Saul, but rise and enter the city, and you'll be told what you are to do. The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were open, he saw nothing.
[00:20:04] So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight and neither ate nor drank, nor was there a disciple at Damascus. I'm sorry. Now, there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias.
[00:20:18] The Lord said to him in a vision, ananias. And he said, here I am, Lord. This resembles Samuel and Samuel's calling, or Moses and Moses calling. We see this now fulfilled in the New Testament. It's amazing, these parallels.
[00:20:30] Here I am, Lord. And the Lord said to him, rise and go to the street called Straight. And at the house of Judas, look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. For behold, he is praying.
[00:20:41] You see the transformation already taking place in Saul from persecuting to praying.
[00:20:50] And he has seen a vision and a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight. So again, Jesus is not one working in Saul's life from afar. He's intricately working all of the details out in Saul's life. For Saul's good, he gives him a vision. This is who's going to come to you. You're not going to be able to see, but this is who's going to come to you.
[00:21:13] But Ananias answered, lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on his name. So we would anticipate possibly Jesus rebuking Ananias for his quote, unquote, unfaithful response. Ananias is scared.
[00:21:33] He's like, I've heard things about this guy. Are you sure?
[00:21:36] You sure that's the guy that I'm going to go to? But Jesus, Jesus is wonderfully gracious, isn't he?
[00:21:42] Like we see this time and time and time again in the way that Jesus responds to his disciples who struggle with faith.
[00:21:49] Doesn't rebuke Ananias, he says, but the Lord said To him go.
[00:21:55] For he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.
[00:22:08] Now, we don't know how Jesus said that statement. If Jesus was like, he's going to suffer like, I don't think he said it that way.
[00:22:17] I think what Jesus is saying to Ananias is he saying, hey, this man is now your brother.
[00:22:25] Only the cross of Jesus Christ can do this, make enemies, family.
[00:22:30] This sinner is your brother, and I want you to go to him.
[00:22:35] He's a chosen instrument of mine, which is what point three is going to be. I'll get to that in a moment. He's a chosen instrument of mine, and I'm going to show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.
[00:22:46] I don't think Jesus is angry. I think he's coming down hard on Paul. To Ananias, it is the reality that Paul will suffer greatly because of the gospel. For the sake of the gospel. He's going to suffer persecution. He's going to suffer being ostracized. He's going to suffer being cast out of the temple. He's going to suffer being persecuted by the Pharisees that he once used to lead. He's going to die. Church history would say, by beheading at the hands of the Romans, he is going to suffer for.
[00:23:15] But that's not the point that I want to drive home to you. It's simply this, that God is gracious.
[00:23:22] God is real.
[00:23:24] God identifies with his people. And what these verses tell us is that God is gracious.
[00:23:31] God's grace. What we see through the Apostle Paul precedes our response to him.
[00:23:39] God's grace precedes your faith in Jesus.
[00:23:43] God's grace precedes your repentance of sin.
[00:23:48] God's grace precedes your ability to do better and get it right.
[00:23:54] Which that last one will never happen, by the way, not to do better. You will do better by the grace of God, but you're never gonna fully get it right. God's grace precedes it all.
[00:24:04] It wasn't after the Apostle Paul made any changes into his life that Jesus appeared from heaven. It was while he was still breathing out threats and murders against the church.
[00:24:15] That's when Jesus did it. Not after that happened, but while it happened in the midst of Paul's worst was when the grace of God intercepted and intervened and initiated a radical life change in Saul of Tarsus. God's God is.
[00:24:33] God is gracious. And I love the way that the apostle Paul talks about God's grace throughout the remainder of the New Testament, like in the Book of Galatians. Listen to what Paul says.
[00:24:42] Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. For I did not listen. He's talking about this moment. Acts, chapter nine. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul's, like no man, came to me and preached the gospel to me. Jesus himself did it.
[00:25:03] He ripped heaven open. He called me by name and he called me to himself. It's a revelation of Jesus Christ.
[00:25:10] For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently. So Paul carried with him, I think, a sense of regret throughout the entirety of his life.
[00:25:21] It's not accurate to say you'll have no regrets in life. You absolutely will have regrets in life. All of us will. We all do things we regret.
[00:25:30] And so Paul's talking about his former life. I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age, among my people. So extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. So the good news for us is not that we won't have regrets. It's in the midst of regrets we can be reminded that before the foundation of the earth, God lavished His grace on you.
[00:26:05] You're covered in the righteousness of Christ. That's your hope.
[00:26:09] Not that you won't have regrets in life.
[00:26:12] You do have regrets in life. You will have regrets in life. And in the midst of those regrets, you can remind yourself of this objective reality that the blood of Christ has covered you. You are covered in his blood.
[00:26:25] You're righteous in the sight of God because of like in Jesus.
[00:26:32] And so Paul, it's like Paul is constantly preaching this to the church and himself, that it was before he was born that God set his love and affection on the Apostle Paul.
[00:26:44] And the same is true for you.
[00:26:46] The doctrine of election is not intended to divide you and I into getting into all the intricacies of what does it mean and what choice do I have? And all these kinds of things that the doctrine of election is intended to comfort you like a warm blanket around you on a cold day.
[00:27:04] That's what it's meant to do. That you, in the midst of your doubts and your struggles and your sin and your suffering, can be reminded of this reality. Before I was born, he called me.
[00:27:17] Before I did anything good or bad by his grace, he called me in his Son.
[00:27:25] That's really great news for you.
[00:27:28] And if God decided that before you were born, don't you think he'll complete it throughout the duration of your life?
[00:27:36] Pastors say this all the time, and I think it's helpful. Like, if you didn't earn it, you can't lose it.
[00:27:41] And if you could lose it, and if I could lose it, I promise you we would.
[00:27:46] If we had the ability to lose our salvation, we would do it in a second.
[00:27:50] We'd be out of here.
[00:27:52] First sign of trouble, first sign of suffering, first sign of adversity. I'm done with you, God. Like, that's what my flesh still wants to do.
[00:28:01] What's keeping you?
[00:28:04] It's the sustaining, transforming, refreshing, renewing grace of God.
[00:28:13] Paul says, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined, determined beforehand to be conformed to the image of his Son. And he will accomplish that in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he called.
[00:28:31] And those whom he called, he also justified. That's made right before God. And those whom he justified, he also glorified.
[00:28:39] So from beginning to end, salvation belongs to the Lord. Your salvation could not be more secure.
[00:28:46] And it's Paul wrote that. Saul of Tarsus wrote Romans 8.
[00:28:51] Think about that.
[00:28:53] The Spirit inspired him to write it for the Church, but it was a true thing for him. He's a person too.
[00:29:01] Isn't that amazing?
[00:29:03] Saul of Tarsus can say something like that.
[00:29:06] He called me before I was born in love. He predestined me for adoption as His Son.
[00:29:13] He's justified me, and so he will glorify me.
[00:29:18] Our hope is totally in God in His work on our behalf, and in no way up to you and I.
[00:29:25] So we learn From Acts, chapter 9 that God is gracious, and we see it manifest through the Apostle Paul. And then the final point to be made.
[00:29:36] I'll just read the remainder of the text, and then I'll make this final point.
[00:29:41] Boris, we'll start in verse 15. But the Lord said to him, go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and Kings and the children of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. So Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him, he said, brother Saul, that's amazing, right? Enemies to family.
[00:30:03] Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
[00:30:14] And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. Here's Dr. Luke giving us an anatomical phrase.
[00:30:24] It's like something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight.
[00:30:32] And then he rose and was baptized and taking food, he was strengthened.
[00:30:38] So what's the final point to be made?
[00:30:41] If you flip in your Bibles to the book of 1 Timothy, chapter one, and I want to ask you to go ahead and do that. I'm going to read the passage to you, but I think it'll be helpful for you to see it. 1 Timothy chapter 1.
[00:30:55] Give you just a moment to get there.
[00:31:12] We conclude our time by circling back to the initial question of why.
[00:31:19] Why did God save the apostle Paul? What does it have to do with you and I? Well, one of the reasons God saved the apostle Paul was to be an apostle to the Gentiles, right to fulfill what Jesus promised would happen in Acts chapter one, verse, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth. And Paul is the chosen instrument of Jesus to be the forerunner of that mission, taking the gospel, the good news of Jesus, life, death, resurrection and forgiveness and salvation in his name to the ends of the earth, to the Gentiles. We are here today in this room on a Sunday morning in 2026, amazingly, miraculously, supernaturally, in part because of the way God used the apostle Paul.
[00:31:58] Amazing. So that's high level reason, but there's a more boots on the ground reason that applies directly to you and I in a really significant way.
[00:32:08] 1 Timothy 1:16, Paul says, but I received mercy for this reason that in me as the foremost, that's the worst of sinners.
[00:32:22] Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.
[00:32:32] God saved Paul in part so that you and I today in 2026 would learn something or be reminded of something new in regards to God's patience for us.
[00:32:47] You ever think about the reality that God is patient with you.
[00:32:55] Beyond any sort of like again, horizontal human to human relationship that we've ever experienced with one another?
[00:33:04] The word that Paul uses For patience is the word. Long suffering God is eternally longsuffering people.
[00:33:20] Psalm 103:10 says, he that being God does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
[00:33:32] This is in light of the cross of Jesus Christ. Because he bore our sins, he took our iniquities. He put our sins behind his back, cast them into the depths of the sea, never to be taken up again.
[00:33:48] So the psalmist can say, he does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.
[00:33:59] As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust.
[00:34:19] I love that he knows your frame because he made you, he loved you. And so he sent his Son to live the life that you could never live, to die on the cross, the penalty and the punishment that you and I deserve to die, to be buried, and then to be raised on the third day, victorious over sin and death.
[00:34:45] And he's ascended to the right hand of the Father and before the foundation of the earth for those who are in Christ. He called you by name at some point throughout the duration of your life. He, like he did the Apostle Paul, initiated grace in your life. He brought your heart from death to life. He gave you new desires and new affections and the ability to repent of your sin and believe upon him.
[00:35:14] And he will carry through that work to the end.
[00:35:17] Philippians, chapter one. He promises to do this. And in the meantime, as the Spirit of God is conforming you and I more and more into the image of Jesus, he's patient with you.
[00:35:30] He's otherworldly patient with you.
[00:35:34] He's not quick to anger.
[00:35:36] He's not quick to fly off the handle.
[00:35:39] He's not thinking in the back of his mind. If they don't get it together today, I'm done.
[00:35:47] Or if they don't get it together tomorrow, I'm done.
[00:35:54] The story of the Apostle Paul reminds us that God is patient with you.
[00:36:00] Paul's it's like Paul's hollering out to you and he's saying, hey, if I, who am the foremost, the worst, persecutor of the church, murderer of Christians, persecuting Christ himself because I'm persecuted, like if he can do this in me. Then he then he's patient toward you.
[00:36:22] And then the last thing I'll say is, the patience of God, as we see manifested in Acts, chapter 9, verses 1 through 19. The patience of God is purposeful. God's patience with us has a purpose. And that simple purpose is that you and I might once again return to Him.
[00:36:43] Isaiah 55, verses 3, and then 6 and 7. And then I'll read a quote, and then we'll pray.
[00:36:50] Isaiah 55 says, Incline your ear and come to me.
[00:36:54] Hear that your soul may live. And I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast sure love for David. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him, Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. And then, final quote, we'll pray. Scott Hubbard says, the patience of God is a beckoning hand, an open door, a pathway home.
[00:37:27] And what do we find when we return to him confessing and forsaking our sins?
[00:37:32] We find a father running to meet us.
[00:37:37] Luke 15.
[00:37:39] We find a Savior who has already been knocking. Revelation 3.
[00:37:43] We find a God who abundantly pardons and plentifully redeems. Isaiah 50:5, Psalm 130.
[00:37:50] We find a Lord whose patience is perfect. First Timothy 1:16. Return to him then, now and forever. And in returning find rest. Let's pray together.
[00:38:07] Father, we we do love you. We thank you that you are. That you are patient. We we praise you. We worship you because you're real.
[00:38:17] You're not a figment of our imagination. You're not wishful thinking.
[00:38:21] You are the God who is there and has spoken so. God, we praise you that you've spoken through creation, the beauty of creation, that you still speak through creation.
[00:38:32] God, we praise you that you've spoken specially to us.
[00:38:37] God, to those who are Christians in the room, who know you through your word, who know you through the person of Jesus.
[00:38:44] Pray for any in the room who are who are not yet Christians, that you would speak to their hearts the reality of your existence today, but not just that you exist, that you identify with your people, that you are gracious and that you're patient.
[00:38:58] We praise you for who you are, and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
