I Was Shown Mercy

If I were to ask you what is the central tenet or attribute or characteristic of being a Christian, it would be a hard question to answer. Because we'd all have different things in our minds and we'd say, well a Christian is this, well a Christian is that, a Christian is this other thing. And sometimes we'd be saying, well a Christian is this because that's what I am and that's what I'm good at. And sometimes we'd be saying a Christian is this because this is where I need to grow. And other times we'd say, well, Christian, is this the other thing? Because I've seen the other people around me who are Christians, they're good at that. This is the gift they have. This is what they're like. And there's not really one exclusive answer to the question. There are many answers that we could give, and they would be good and faithful answers. But this morning I want to focus on one of them, and that's thankfulness. At its core, being a Christian means being thankful for what God has done for you in Christ Jesus. Our lives as Christians,

before God are meant to be a living demonstration of that thankfulness, returning to God our joy and our praise and our gratitude for him sending his son into this world to save us. And if you're like me, you realize thankfulness isn't a natural response. It's a particularly Christian response. It doesn't come out of you without effort. It doesn't come out of you without paying attention. As you think about thankfulness this morning, I want you to think, what makes me thankful? What makes me smile? What do I get excited about? I had a friend tell me years ago, I'd been hunting. And if you know me, you know I'm not, I have to work at being cheerful. I'm often happy and I'm often content, but the people around me don't usually know that. And so I have to work at it. I've been told for years, Dave, smile. Just smile. Could you just smile, please? Yes, I can. So anyway, I was talking to this friend and I called him and I was happy and I was excited.

I didn't realize it. I mean, I knew I was excited and happy. But what had happened is I'd been hunting, and I'd killed a deer. And I called him, and he's not a hunter. I don't even think he knows how to hold a gun. I mean, I didn't call a fellow sportsman, you know. I just called a friend, and I said, you'll never believe it. I killed a deer. Here's a picture of it. And he's going, well, that's great, Dave. He has no idea what that means, right? And he said to me later, he says, You really enjoy hunting, don't you? And I said, I do. I really do. It makes me happy when it's successful. It really does make me happy. And he said, I could tell. I could tell you were happy and you were thankful. And I thought, that's right. And then the more I thought about it, I thought, you know, there's so much time in my life where that sort of thankfulness and that sort of just unhindered joy is stifled and muffled in me.

And I see it as a weakness or a failure. And I think that you are similar to me in some ways, each of us. We all struggle with this. Because it's one thing to say that being a Christian is being thankful for what Jesus Christ has done for us. And it's another thing to demonstrate that joy or that thankfulness in the midst of life's ups and downs. And I think often it's life's ups and downs that stifle this joy, that cover it over. They're like clouds hiding the sun away from us so we can't see it. And my hope this morning is that by the end of our time, our faith will be strengthened and we'll be stirred up to demonstrate and to actually be thankful. Not simply to say, I know I should be thankful. We already know that, right? Every one of you already knows, I'm supposed to be thankful to God. My hope is that by the end of our time this morning, you'll say, I am thankful to God. Even in the midst of my imperfect life, even in the midst of the sufferings and the trials and the hardships and the burdens, the things that make me groan, thankfulness. Our text this morning is 1 Timothy chapter 1.

It's just verses 12 and 13. Would you please stand for the reading of God's Word? This is the Word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he considered me faithful, putting me into service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy, because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. This is the Word of the Lord. You may be seated. I want to begin by recapping just briefly the context of this letter. Paul's an apostle writing to a young pastor named Timothy, and the aim of his letter is to encourage and to exhort Timothy to faithfulness in his work. And in our text this morning, Paul begins to use himself as an example of thankfulness, of faithfulness. Paul talks about who he is, who he was, so that Timothy would be strengthened and not lose heart.

but that he would press on in the work that God had given him to do. And so this passage is supposed to, at its most basic level, it's meant to encourage Timothy. It's to draw his eyes to the things that he ought to be thankful for, so that he might demonstrate that, and not only for himself, but for his people. So that's going to be the aim of what we're looking at this morning. So Paul starts off this passage. He says, Now I've left out a couple of the phrases, the qualifications, but that's the main... thing that Paul is thankful for. I'm thankful to Christ Jesus our Lord for putting me into service. And so right out of the gate, we have to face the issue, or the question at least, of is that our natural disposition toward the work that the Lord gives us? Are we thankful for the work that the Lord gives us? And some of us, you know, if you're honest, you're probably like, well sometimes yeah. Because that's actually true. Sometimes you are thankful. You get good work and you say, I'm very thankful for it. But in the times where you're inclined to not be thankful for the work,

thankful to the Lord for the work. Why is that? Is it not because the work is hard? Because it's difficult? Because it seems unfruitful? We live as though hardship in our lives is reason enough to take away our joy and our thankfulness. That we would thank God when things were easy, when hardship had passed, when the storm was over. And yet we have to consider Paul, the man who's writing this, and go, were the storms over when Paul thanked God in his life? And we say, no, not for Paul. They weren't over. Paul wrote this letter after his first Roman imprisonment, before the second imprisonment. And what happened the second time he got locked up? Well, they killed him. And in the intervening time between these imprisonments, between them as well as before them, Paul suffered many, many things. Being beaten, being shipwrecked, being whipped, being abandoned, left for dead. And he says to this young pastor, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord for putting me into service. And you understand the service that he was put into. All of this hardship and all of this difficulty and all of this burden that made up Paul's life. This is what he thanks God for. It's quite different than we're inclined to, isn't it? Paul says, I thank God for the... And you could restate what he says as, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord.

for all of the suffering and all of the hardship and all of the burdens and the toil and the trials that have come upon me as an apostle, as a Christian. I thank God for them. Another way we can understand it is that God called him to suffering. Do you remember when Paul was converted and he was blind and he went off for a period of time and he prayed and he fasted? And the Lord came. to Ananias and said, you've got to go to him and you've got to tell this guy what I'm going to have him do. And Ananias says, this guy is terrible. He's bad news, Lord. He wants to kill all of your people. And what does the angel say to Ananias? He says, go to him and I'm going to show him how much he's going to have to suffer for my namesake. This was his commissioning. Think of it like going into a job interview. You come in and you say, I saw a job posting. I'm interested. But the job posting was sort of vague.

What is it that I'm supposed to, what does the job entail? And the man sitting across the desk, he slides you a piece of paper and he says, sufferings at every turn, pain and hardship and being hated straight on through to the end. When can I start, right? Sign me up. Well, here's the thing. Is that all that would be written on the job description? It's not all that's written on the job description. That would be under the liabilities, the hard part. right? The grueling hours. But what good stuff would be written on that job description? You're going to be used by God to plant how many churches, Paul? You're going to be used to bring how many people to faith? God's going to use you in a mighty way. That mighty way comes with these sufferings and these burdens and these difficulties. But in the end, it will not have been worth it because God's going to put you into service and he's going to use you mightily.

Would you take the job? Paul took the job immediately. Sign me up. Put me in, coach. I'll start off this morning bringing this up because I want to shine the light on the fact that thankfulness and gratitude are not based on the troubles of your life. And they're not meant to minimize the troubles of your life. I don't say it to minimize the troubles of your life and to say, well, it doesn't matter that things are hard for you or you really ought to just get over it. That's not the point. The point of saying all of this is to give context to your suffering, context to your difficulty, so that you won't lose heart, so that you'll be encouraged, so that thankfulness will break through the clouds of suffering and hardship. I don't want us to be put off guard when we encounter various trials and think there's no joy for me in this. Why am I in this spot? Why is this happening to me?

There's a time and a place to ask, why are these things happening to me? But there's a time to stop asking that question. Especially if you can understand that the reasons you're into these things is because of your affiliation and your commitment to and your love for Jesus Christ. When hardship comes into your life because of those things, you have nothing to be surprised about. This is what Jesus endured when he lived on earth. This is what Paul's endured. And countless other saints before us have endured as they've served God. Have you ever been around people who are thankful in the midst of their suffering? Here's the funny thing. You probably wouldn't characterize them as suffering because they wouldn't talk about it a whole lot. I've got a pastor friend here in town, and I'm convinced he's got it ten times harder than I ever have. He lives in a super poor area. I remember him telling me one time, he says, Dave, we were at church, and we parked the car outside the church.

And we had one of those little plug-into-the-cigarette-lighter air compressors because the car had a flat tire. It just kept going flat. Well, we had to drive it home, so we plugged it in. And we went into the church to do something. And then one of my kids said, Dad, Dad, Dad, someone stole our car. And they literally got in his car with the air compressor still hooked up to the tire and drove away down the street. The air compressor, ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk, down the road. And the kid hears the ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk, and goes out. And there goes their only family vehicle down the road. And somebody's stolen it. And when he's telling me this story, you know what he's doing? Laughing to the point of crying. And you know what he said to me? He says, Dave, this is the third time this has happened over the course of our ministry in here. This is where we live. This is what it's like. And so he called the police.

My car has been stolen. Heading this way down 10th Street. And the police are going to go to this depressed neighborhood and they're going to find his old van. And so what he does is they walk home. I don't know if they walk or someone gave them a ride. They go home. They eat dinner as a family. And they laugh about the car being stolen. Laugh about it. And then after dinner, he and some of his older sons go out looking for the car. And they find it. just a few blocks from their house in some alley at some meth head's house. And they're all around the car trying to figure out what to do with the flat tire. And he says, hey, that's my car. And they all scatter like cockroaches when the lights come on. They're all gone. One guy, the owner of the house, tries to argue with him. No, I didn't know that they stole the car. And what's he do? Well, he gets in his car and he drives it home. And he and his family have the most delightful laugh about all of it.

Because this is life. This is the ministry for them where they live. And I love them for it. I wouldn't laugh. How many of you would laugh? If you walked out of church right now and your car wasn't in the parking lot, or someone busted out the window and stole your radio, or your iPad, or whatever you have in there, the pocket change in the console, would you laugh? Oh, we wouldn't laugh. All our thankfulness and our joy, away it went. So has my friend who laughed over his car being stolen suffered? Oh, he's suffered. But he doesn't think of it in terms of suffering. He doesn't talk. When I call him, he doesn't say, Dave, it's been so hard. He says, Dave, you'll never believe what the Lord's done. These are the kind of people we want to be. This is what a Christian is. They say, look what God has done for me. Look at what he's done for me. Look at his son. Praise him. And he's put me into service. What would you have me do?

Paul's sufferings don't remove his thankfulness. They're the occasion of it. I'm thankful for the suffering. I praise God for it. That I get to share in the same work, in the same ministry, in the same sufferings as our Lord Jesus Christ. If I have to go into battle and I have to suffer and die, the Lord Jesus is the only one I want to follow into that situation. And then I want you guys with me, right? I thank Christ Jesus our Lord for putting me into service. Now Paul also describes, what God did for him as he put him into service. He says two things. The first is he says that he strengthened me. I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has strengthened me. You get familiar with the saying, very common, God will not, he'll never give you more than you can bear. It's a very common thing. We often say it in the midst of trials and suffering. He'll never give you more than you can bear. How's it go when someone says that to you in your heart? Do you like that? Does it resonate with you? Do you say,

That's right. I think when we say that, what we mean to say is, it's not as bad as it feels right now. Or it's not going to be this bad forever. Or this is only for a short time and God is faithful. I think we mean things like that when we say it. But when we hear it, what we hear is, it could be worse. And the last thing the world we want to hear is, it could be worse. But there's something more dangerous in that saying. And it has to do with strength. And it's this. It assumes, when you say to someone, the Lord won't give you more than you can bear, the part that's not being said is, you will never bear it on your own apart from God's grace and him giving you strength. It doesn't ever call the person explicitly to look to Christ for their strength. It just says, it's all going to be okay. It's just a storm and it'll pass. Because God's faithful. Now I want to read to you the passage that this idea comes from.

Because it's close. It's close to true, but it assumes some things that are very important for us to give attention to. This idea that God doesn't give us more than we can bear comes from 1 Corinthians 10.13 that says, It's a little different. The context is temptation, not suffering. And it does say that God is faithful. And it says part of his faithfulness is that when you enter into temptation, when you enter into some sort of hardship, when you get this, I can't take another step in your mind. It says that God will give you a way of escape. And then the question comes to us, will we take the way of escape? When we face temptation, will we take the way of escape?

Like Joseph did when Potiphar's wife came after him. What did Joseph do when Potiphar's wife tried to seduce him? He fled. He ran away, leaving his coat in her hands. She tried to grab him. He slipped out of his garment and ran away. That was his way of escape. And what was the result of him fleeing? Jail. She lied about him. She said, he did this. He came in and tried to seduce me. And look, he left his coat. Joseph goes to jail. I won't tempt you beyond what you're able to bear, but with the temptation will provide a way of escape. Sometimes, oftentimes, that way of escape is scary, it's dramatic, and it's dangerous. This is what the scripture says about temptation. It's different than saying, God will never give you more than you can bear. And I don't think that's a helpful thing to say to one another by itself because it sets us up to believe a lie, that we can bear this stuff on our own.

And yet Paul says here, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who strengthened me. And so Paul says, I need strength. And I need strength from God. I don't have strength in me. In 2 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul writes this to these same people. He says this. He says, I don't want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia. That we were burdened excessively beyond our strength. That we despaired even of life. This is very, very different than God won't give you more than you can bear. What this passage says is, you're going to face circumstance in your life that max you out.

and then push you even further. What would it take for you to say, I despair even of life, which is to say, I would rather die than to continue on at this level of difficulty. What would it take? This is what the apostle says. Far beyond all of our strength. Burdened excessively so that we despaired even of life. What is this statement in 2 Corinthians other than Paul's confession of how difficult Christian ministry can be. He goes on and he says, we had this sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves. And this is very important that we understand the burdens and the sufferings and the trials that we face have a purpose. And one of those purposes is to keep us from trusting in ourselves because each one of us, don't you want to trust yourself? Don't you want to look to your own hands? Isn't that what you do? When you have a problem, you've set to figuring it out.

fretting about it, worrying about it, getting angry about it. Paul says these sufferings, these intense things that brought us to the point of despairing even of life, were given so that he would learn not to trust in himself, but rather in God who raises the dead, the one who gives strength, the one who strengthened Paul. And so the Lord is the source of our strength. Psalm 46, 1 and 2 says, God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear. If we live our lives saying, I don't want my life ever to get out beyond the boundaries of what I'm able to bear in my own strength, we haven't begun to think and live Christianly. Because to serve God, to be put in service as Paul was, is to be pushed beyond what we can bear. And it's an ebb and a flow. It's not constant. It's not all of the time. But this is the trajectory.

of the Christian life, that we would be growing, that we would be in our faith and are looking to God and trusting him to provide for us. Even as Paul says, we're about to die. We trust that God can raise us from the dead. That's our hope, even in death. That if we die, we won't have lost. Without going into a bunch of detail, when I became a Christian, I processed it through strength and provision. I always thought I can clean up the messes. that I make. I've always lived that way. I think a lot of us do. You think, oh, I'll make a mess, so I'll just work hard and clean it up. And when I became a Christian, isn't the only time I've thought and lived this way. But it was an acute time in my life where I went, I'm working to clean up the mess. And you know, I thought I had cleaned up the mess that I'd made relationally with people. And what I found is that within a month of

having cleaned up the mess as I thought it was relationally for all of my sins and the way I'd hurt people, what I found was that I was in a situation so much worse than I had ever been in before. And what occurred to me as I became a Christian was this very simple thought. And it was this. Dave, you are an incredible idiot. And you are going to destroy not only your life, but all kinds of other people's lives because of how foolish you are and how poorly you make decisions. This is who you are. This is what I was convinced of about myself. Because I was looking at the body of evidence of my life and went, what is the trajectory of it? Down. From bad to worse. And picking up speed. And it was at that time that it occurred to me that I don't deserve anything good.

I don't deserve to be able to pull out of this nosedive or to be pulled out of it. But I wanted to be. I desperately wanted to be. And so I prayed. And it wasn't a pretty prayer and it wasn't a theologically correct prayer. You know, we've all learned how foolish we were early on. But it was an honest prayer. And all I said was, in my heart, I said, Lord, keep me from getting what I deserve. I know what I deserve. I'm overwhelmed by the reality of what I deserve. Keep me from it. And not only that, keep me from getting into this mess again. If you'll do that, if you'll get me out of this mess here, this is my prayer, if you'll get me out of this mess here, I'll never do the things that got me into that mess again. I'm done fornicating. That was the bottom line.

I'm done. If you get me out of the messes that I make because of fornication that I'm living in right now and don't have answers to, I'm done. And he did. And I can tell you in the weeks and months that followed, I had opportunity to return to my former way of life. And I was controlled by his grace not to. You know, it's like you jumped off the cliff and you broke your leg and then you find yourself. after your leg's been healed, walked right back up to the cliff with your toes over the edge again, going, am I going to jump again? I think I might have learned how to land. And he pulled me back from the cliff. He strengthened me. There was no strength in me to turn away, but there was strength in him to turn away, to turn me away. And so when Paul speaks of God strengthening him, this is what we're talking about. Strength to turn away from sin. Strength to say no to ourselves.

Strength to persevere in the face of suffering and adversity. Strength from God to be faithful to him. And that's the next thing he says. He says, in addition to strengthening me, he's considered me faithful. Now, it may be easy when you look at Paul to think, well, Paul was a faithful, faithful man. I mean, he's written the most of the New Testament. Incredibly, incredibly godly man, used of God. Faithful. But you have to ask, was Paul a faithful man? Would Paul have considered himself a faithful man? He says the Lord considered him faithful. But what did Paul think of himself? He says he's considered me faithful even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. This is Paul's recollection of himself. If he were to submit his resume to us for examination, he'd say, you know what kind of man I am. Do you know? You can look and be impressed about this stuff, but do you know? I want you to know.

A blasphemer. Speaking against God at war directly with Jesus Christ. A persecutor and violent aggressor against your people. Hating them. Trying with all of my might to kill them. Looking on with glad approval when Stephen was killed. Getting letters from the high priest to persecute your people as they fled and drag them back to Jerusalem to kill them. This is who I am. This is what Paul tells us of himself. So is Paul a faithful man? Only because God made him faithful. If you were to look at his life and his manner of life before the Lord got a hold of him, would you ever choose a man like that to be an apostle, to replace Judas, to write the majority of the New Testament? No. You'd say, if there was ever a man who was not qualified for being put into service, Paul was him. So why Paul? Why would the Lord pick a man like Paul? Were there not better men to pick? Well, as you and I judge, certainly there were. But as the Lord judges, there was none better. He who's been forgiven much loves much. Paul knows what kind of man he is. He knows what he's done. And as a result, he loves his Lord. And he's thankful to have been put into service because he knows how unworthy he is.

And Paul doesn't ignore his former manner of life when it comes to his ministry. He says, you know what kind of person I was? I know why you guys look down on me. I know why you think that I'm out of place. But I thank God for having put me into service. I thank God that I'm useful to him. I thank God that he's given me strength and that he's considered me faithful, that he's changed me. And so if you won't approve of me and you won't listen to me, the Lord does. And it's enough. Because he's considered me faithful. And so if we live our lives, which one of us would say, I don't care if I'm considered faithful? Well, all of us would say, I want to be considered faithful. And then the question becomes, by whom? Faithful by whom? Faithful by your wife? Your husband? Your parents? Your boss? Your pastor? Your neighbor? Your co-worker? Who do you want to say, faithful?

He's faithful. You want the Lord to say he's faithful. I consider him faithful. And it's not because he hasn't messed it up. Boy, has he. Look at Paul. But that one there, says the Lord, that one there is mine. And I put him into service and I changed him. He's faithful. Paul knew who he was and he knew what he'd done. He also knew what he deserved. And this was the occasion of his praise and his thankfulness to the Lord. What sweeter thing can happen to a sinner than that God would get a hold of them, change them, and make them useful? What greater higher calling do you have as a Christian or desire of your heart than to be useful to God, to be put into service, to build his kingdom and to give him glory? There's no greater calling. Now we come to a strange part in our text. Paul says, I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly and unbelief.

And there's a couple of ways that that verse can sit with you. One of them is it can scare you. Because what it does, the way it's written and the way it communicates is it says that mercy is contingent upon ignorance. That where there's not ignorance, there's not mercy. So is that true? Is it true that there is no mercy unless there's ignorance? And we all say, I sure hope not. If you're saying, I sure hope not, then you're saying the right thing. Because which one of us can say, all of the sins I've ever committed were committed in ignorance? Certainly you've committed sins in ignorance. But how many have you committed with knowledge, knowing what you ought to do or not to do? And you went ahead anyway. So it's a strange thing. If there is mercy for willful sin, what is Paul talking about? You have to consider who Paul was and what he was doing. Think of it this way.

The Ten Commandments are broken up into two tables of the law. And the first table of the law, which is the first four commandments, has to do with how we relate as people to God. It has to do with our worship. It has to do with the Sabbath. It has to do with the Lord's name. It has to do with idolatry, false idols. It has to do with how we relate to God. Don't do this, don't do that, don't do the other things. The second table of the law... Has to do with how we relate to one another. Honor your father and mother. Don't kill people. Don't commit adultery. Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't covet. Has to do with how we relate to each other. Which is a greater sin? Breaking commandments on the first table of the law or the second table of the law? Yes, says Abram. I submit to you that if you break first table commandments, you're committing a worse sin. Because what you're doing is you're not only sinning against

Your neighbor. And it is true that when you sin against your neighbor, you are sinning against God. But not in the same way. You remember when David says, I think it's in Psalm 51, he says, Against you and you alone, O Lord, have I sinned. But he was talking about his sin with Bathsheba. Had he sinned against her? Yes. Had he sinned against her husband? Yes. But he says, Against you and you alone, O Lord, have I sinned. But there was a thing about his sin. It wasn't in opposition to God's existence and his rule and his authority. Even in his sin of adultery and murder, he had not set up another God. His sins of adultery and murder had not sought to displace God as the creator, the maker, the judge of all heaven and earth. There was a difference. First table sins, when you commit them willfully, you've set yourself across the line from the Lord God himself and said, I want you gone.

That's what it is to break the first table of the law. So which was Paul guilty of? He was guilty of breaking the first table of the law. He was opposed to Jesus Christ. He was opposed to the true religion. And he did everything in his power to tear it down. Now here's the question. Did he do it knowing that's what he was doing? No, he didn't. He acted in ignorance. When Jesus revealed himself to him and he says, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? What's a Saul response? Lord, who are you? I'm Jesus whom you're persecuting. And if you read the consequences in the first table of the law for breaking those commandments, they're severe. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations, we don't have that in the second table of the law. We don't have those sorts of severe consequences because the nature of the sin is different. So not all sin is exactly the same and equal. Some sins are opposed directly to God and his reign and his rule over this world. And other sins are primarily against our fellow man. And so when Paul says, I received mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief, he's referring back to his persecution, his blasphemy. What's the unpardonable sin? The unforgivable sin?

blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, right? He says, I was a blasphemer. My sin is unpardonable. And he says this, I found mercy because I acted in ignorance, in unbelief. So that's the particular context of Paul's saying, I received mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. He sinned against the Lord Jesus Christ, not knowing who he was. But there are other types of ignorance that exist that we might cultivate. Think of it this way. If you sin, if you do something wrong, sinful, but you didn't honestly, honestly didn't know it was wrong, will you face the same consequences as if you did it willfully, knowing that it was wrong? And you did it anyway. All you have to do is think about the house you grew up in and say, how did mom and dad act when I did something I had no idea was wrong versus did something I knew was wrong? Was there a difference? Of course there's a difference.

There's an acknowledgement of ignorance. Now, what's the answer to the ignorance? Well, the answer is to remove the ignorance by giving wisdom, understanding, knowledge. Honey, I don't want you throwing balls in the house. I didn't know that, Daddy. Okay, well, now you know. So now the next time it happens, there's a different level of understanding going on. Now, what's the temptation when the kid gets caught throwing the ball in the house after they've been told not to throw the ball in the house? What do they want to say to you? They want to say, I didn't know, daddy. But it's no longer true that they didn't know, is it? They did know. And so their sin went from being an ignorant sin of naivety to a willful sin of rebellion. And the consequence is worse. Jesus talks about this in Luke chapter 12 in one of his parables. He says, the slave who knew his master's will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will will receive many lashes.

But the one who did not know it, didn't know his master's will, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few. So you have two people doing the same thing. One with knowledge, one without knowledge. Different punishments. Both of them receiving punishment, but one more severe. For everyone who has been given much, much will be required. But to him who is entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more. And so... There's a danger here about ignorance in our own hearts. And it's that we want to cultivate ignorance concerning what God requires or what God has said. And we do ourselves great harm when we do this. When we say, well, I didn't know. Well, I didn't know. Because the one who doesn't know doesn't avoid the consequence. They may avoid for a time a severe consequence, but ignorance will never save them. Proverbs 10.21 says, Proverbs 7, 6, and 7 says, For at the window of my house I looked out through my lattice, and I saw among the naive and discerned among the youth a young man lacking sense. And what's that young man's end? His death. And in Proverbs 5, it says this, Solomon's describing to his son the end of his life if he gives himself to sexual immorality. He says, You groan at your final end when your flesh and your body are consumed, and you say, How I've hated instruction!

And my heart spurned reproof. I've not listened to the voice of my teachers nor inclined my ear to my instructors. What have I done? I've cultivated ignorance and naivety. I've made that my life's mission, to not know. And at the end of it, when it's all said and done, you'll say, what a fool I've been. Because I haven't avoided the consequence. I haven't been saved. My aim in bringing this up is to say to you, all of us have ignorance. There are places or blind spots where we're unaware of what God requires of us. And all of us also have some level of knowledge of what God does require from us. If we cultivate ignorance or if we plead ignorance on our own behalf, what we are choosing is death. It's that simple. If you say, I didn't know, you're still liable for what you did. If you say, I didn't know and I certainly didn't mean to, you're still liable for what you did.

Think of Paul for a minute. Stood by as Stephen was executed. He acted ignorantly in unbelief. Knowing what he knows now, could you conceive of him wanting to cultivate ignorance? Wanting to remain in the dark, as it were, about who God is and what he says? It's inconceivable to think that Paul would say, I just didn't know, and this is going to be my perpetual... Answer so long as I can be. I just didn't know. I just didn't know. I just didn't know. Paul would say, no. Get understanding. Acquire knowledge. Don't be ignorant. You will do things when you're in your ignorance that will be destructive, not only to you, but to the people around you that you love. Don't cultivate ignorance. And it's because he knows who he is and what he's done. So I want to wrap up with this. I started off by saying that we ought to...

That I want us to be encouraged and I want us to be thankful by the end of it, right? And then here we have been run through by the apostle, all of his failures and all of his sins and all of his struggles. And if you know yourself, you're going, yeah, I identify with the failures, but not so much with the thankfulness. And I want us to come back around and find thankfulness. Because as you see your failures and as you see your sins and as you see unfaithfulness, and you see sin committed in ignorance, and you see willful sin committed, those things aren't, in the end, the point. The question is, what are you going to do now? What are you going to do now? You've seen yourself as we've looked at Paul. Which one of us can stand there and say, I didn't do that. What are we going to do? We can either despair and run away and hide for a time, or we can look to Christ.

And we can say, I'm thankful to God who's strengthened me and considered me faithful and put me into service. I see who I am. I see what I am. I see what I've done. I see what I want to continue to do. But I thank God for giving me strength to resist it, to carry on in the fight against my own temptations and my own lusts in pursuit of his righteousness and his holiness. That's what I want. No good will come from any other thing. Not for us, not for God's glory. But good will come from that. I was talking recently with a friend about work. And he says, there's lots and lots of work to do. You have lots and lots of work to do. And I said, you're right. I have lots and lots of work to do. And lots of it I'm no good at. But this last month or so has been freeing because I'm free to learn and do it. I'm free to screw up the right stuff instead of the wrong stuff. And I'm thankful to God for giving me good work to do. Knowing that I don't deserve it.

The privilege of being able to do it. Paul would have seen all of his sufferings as a privilege. Thankful that he was able to be put in to those situations. And this needs to be our disposition, can be our disposition by faith. That when we suffer, we go, it's okay. It's more than okay, it's good. And I'm thankful to God for it. Because he's at work. In me and through me. Changing me and using me. What more can we want? What more can we ask for? Heaven on earth? Another way of saying heaven on earth is your reward in full. You can have ease and comfort now, but you won't have it for eternity. Or you can have faithful service now, and you can have joy inexpressible for all eternity. This is what's set before you, and this is what makes Paul thankful. This is why he labors and he strives, and it needs to be the reason we labor and we strive.

We want to be put into service and to be used of God just like he was. Let's pray.