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Welcome to the live big broadcast with Derek Greer. We believe this teaching from God's word will empower you to live a full, impactful life in Christ. Let's dig in.

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You're gonna need your running shoes this morning because we're gonna be in Acts chapter seven, Acts chapter eight. I think we're even gonna be in Acts chapter nine. And then we're gonna go to 1 Timothy. So we're gonna move around just a little bit. Let's start out in Acts chapter 7. 54. And when the crowd had heard these things, Stephan was about to become the first Christian martyr. His crime was teaching, as Matthew 1:23 says, that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. He preached that Jesus was greater than the temple, that he was greater than all of the Jewish traditions, that Jesus was the fulfillment of the law. And when the Sanhedrin began to press him on these issues, instead of backing up and shutting up, he gave the longest speech in the entire book of Acts. I believe it's Desmond Tutu that said, if you remain silent in the face of injustice, you are on the side of the oppressor. And Stephen wouldn't allow himself to be silent. He recognized that men and women's lives depended on the Gospel. And when they heard this message, the Bible says they were cut to their heart. And if you don't let truth do its cutting, you will never heal. A surgeon only slashes to repair. And you know, sometimes God must break our hearts to save our souls. And this is what's happening. If God has to be hard, it's never to punish you as much as to get through to you. And sometimes, you know, you know, if you can understand nice, God will do nice. But if you don't understand nice, God has to give it to your heart. And Luke goes on in Acts and says, how many of y'all like this line upon line teaching? Yeah. Yeah. You know, every Sunday, I'm reminded, you know, 25 plus years ago, people tell me people will never listen to you preach. Give them a story, pat them on their head, tell them about your journey, but no one's interested in the Bible. Give them a couple points. But guess what? Every Sunday, y'all show up to hear God's word. Line upon line. You may hate everything I say, but you never leave here without learning God's word. So after he taught, they gnashed at him with their teeth. And we have two choices when we hear God's pride or humility. Either we soften our hearts to receive it, or harden our hearts to fight. It how many of us have lived long enough to know that fighting God is always a losing battle? But Stephen or Stephan, being full of the Holy Spirit, and by the way, being full of the Holy Spirit is so much more than just speaking in other tongues. When you're full of the Holy Spirit, when life squeezes you, the Spirit's character begins to pour out of you. God's love, God's joy, God's peace, God's long suffering, God's goodness, God's kindness, God's faithfulness, God's gentleness. And the final one is self control. It's a bookend. It starts with love, but it ends with what? Self control. Because the highest form of government is health, is self government. You know, I can't always govern events, but because the Holy Spirit lives on the inside of me, I can govern myself. I can wait a few seconds before I speak. You know, I know for me, one of the signs that I'm tired is I start speaking over people. And that's when I know I need a break. I'm close to trouble. And I've learned, though, if I'm really resting in the Lord, though I can hold it for a second. I don't have to say that thing. I could just hang on. And the Spirit of God gives us power not only to control our bodies, but that most difficult member, our tongue. And Stephan gazed into heaven, so everyone's mad at him, but he has a vision of God, and he saw the glory of the Lord or God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And the truth here is whenever you stand up for Jesus, he will stand up for you, because the Bible said he was seated on the throne. But when Stephan stood up for him the way he did, God had to stand up and give him an applause. Matthew 10:33. Jesus continues. He says this, but whoever denies me before men. And this is why sometimes I say things you don't like, because I'm more scared of God than I am of you. Now, please don't get me wrong. You're scary and everything, but between you and God, he's the scariest. Jesus said, whoever denies me before men, him I will also deny before my Father, who is in heaven. And what we see here is that even Jesus had boundaries. Ladies, if a man is ashamed to be with you publicly, you should be ashamed to give him your heart privately. Skip to verse 57. Then they cried out with a loud voice. These were older, distinguished men with long robes and. And long beards. This behavior was just not becoming. They should have known better. So they cried out with a loud voice and stopped up their ears like children, you know, wiggling their tongue. I don't want to hear you. I don't want to hear. This is what these distinguished men were brought to doing. You see, some people don't want to hear the truth because they can't handle their illusions being destroyed. And they ran violently at Stephan with one accord. Why? Because truth sounds like hate to those who hate the truth. And they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of. Of a young man named Saul. This is the Bible's first mention of Saul, who later becomes our beloved Paul. And the fact that he was there collecting coats. And I shared this with you once when I was a kid and there was a fist fight. There'd always be an instigator there saying, give me your coat. Give me your coat. Because the moment you gave up your coat, you were committed to the fight. So Saul here is the cheerleader, and he's, you know, rousing this thing on. And the Bible says they stoned Stephan. But Stephan didn't flinch. His heart was at peace. And he was willing to pay the ultimate price for sharing this wonderful gospel. And if this guy would lay down his life to tell someone the truth, how much more, you know, in this country where we have laws and police officers, should we be willing to share with those we love the truth of the Gospel? Acts, chapter 8 and verse 1. Let's do some skipping. Now. Saul was consenting to his death. The original language here says more than the English translation. Saul here didn't just agree. The Greek speaks of a person taking special, almost in this case, a sick pleasure. You see, on the surface, Saul had enough respect to sit on the highest and most respected and powerful religious body in the land. But underneath it all, he was bitterly jealous of the success of the Jesus movement. Actually, in Matthew 27:18, we actually find out that the reason Jesus was crucified was because of envy. People were envious of his crowds. People were envious of his power. People were envious of his miracles. Envy is not an innocent emotion. It murdered Jesus on the cross. So whenever I see it in me, I want to deal with it. And not just kind of wink at it and say, it's just part of the human experience. It's very, very, very dangerous. So we have this again. He had on these pharisaical robes, but also robes of the Sanhedrin and well respected. I mean, he looked absolutely secure on the outside. But just because you look secure on the outside doesn't mean there's not a storm raging on the inside. But even more frustrating, hating someone else's success never gets you your own. Skip to verse 3. As for Saul, he continued to make havoc of the church. And the term havoc there is also very, very descriptive. It describes an animal, a wild animal, wildly biting its prey. So, I mean, there was a viciousness and it was beastly. The types of things that Paul was saying and doing, entering every house that he could find and identify and dragging men and women. The only thing worse than harming a woman, a man, forgive me, is harming a woman, committing them to prison, which, as I said to you last week, this was a death sentence at this time in history. But we're about to discover envy is not only a thorn in the side of the one that is directed toward, it's actually a cancer to its carrier. And when Saul finally met Jesus, God not only saved the church from persecution, Jesus saved Paul from himself. Acts chapter nine and verse one. We're covering a little bit of ground and we're gonna land in Timothy. And then Saul still, I mean, this went on for chapters breathing threats and murder. This man was not just a killer, he was a murderer. In fact, the Bible where it says in the ten Commandments, thou shall not kill. I believe, if my memory serves me right, the Hebrew is hirak. And that word does not mean kill, it means murder. And he's not saying that you can't be a part of the military. You can't. In case of self defense, you cannot do the ultimate. But what it is saying is we are not to murder out of ill will and vengeance and the rest. Saul was still breathing threats and what murder. Here we have this religious leader again. The man. I'll get to this a little bit later. He memorized the entire Old Testament. But he has a murderous spirit. And he was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. Words turned into action and you got to pay attention to the things you say. And he went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogue of Damascus. So this Saul was so successful, you know, wreaking havoc in Jerusalem, he wanted to spread Murder Inc. 150 miles away and continue to kind of, you know, franchise if you will, his hateful and murderous spirit. So that if he found anyone who were of the way, whether men or women, no sensitivity, the fair agenda got no pass. He might bring them bound to Jerusalem. What was happening here is the success of Christianity Brought out a mean streak in this man. And you know, all of us will feel pulled to the dark side from time to time, but Saul moved in and he lived there. You know, jealousy is really a backhanded compliment. It just means that someone fears you live a better life than they do. Someone just fears that somehow you're better off than they are. Now, Saul was jealous because on the inside, he knew he didn't have what those Christians had. And as he journeyed and came near Damascus, suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. And we know the rest of the story. The light knocked him to the ground. He got up a changed man. And when God calls you, you have a choice. You can come easy or you could come hard. But you're coming. 2nd Timothy 2:19 tells us, the Lord knows who are his, and you know it too. So why waste our time fighting and resisting like the Apostle Paul? Now we're going to look at 30 years later in first Timothy chapter one and verse 12. You still following with me? All right, so by this time, Saul has become the beloved Apostle Paul. And this is important. Since God waits until our lives are over to judge us, maybe we should wait too to judge others. See, a lot of folks would have just given up on Saul. They couldn't see Paul in Saul. And a lot of folks would give up on you. But thank God, it's not up to folks. It's up to God. God sees and God knows. Underneath all of that rank, all of that clamor, God saw you. It's amazing, the imagination, goodness of God. Ezekiel said that when I saw you in your blood, no one washed your navel, no one salted you. He's talking about a baby that was just thrown in a garbage heap. But I took you and I clothed you and I washed you and I cleansed you. I made you beautiful. And God, he took all of us out of the junk pile of life. He saw something in us that no one else could see and made us into the things that we're becoming today. Thirty years later, he said, and I thank Christ Jesus our Lord. Listen, if you think about your own story, we all got reasons to give him thanks. The Bible doesn't say this, but I think the scroll got a little bit wet because as he wrote this, his mind was flooded with his grateful memories of what the Lord had done to him on that road to Damascus 30 years earlier. And it's hard not to get misty eyed when you think about the goodness of God. You know, since the beginning of time, God has chosen the Unlikely to do the unimaginable. And we're all part of that journey and part of that story. And he said, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord. He's trying to write some doctrinal truth, but he gotta break into doxology and praise because of the goodness of God. And if you really ever understand these truths, if you ever really reflect on where you could be, but where you're not, you would break into some praise and give God some glory right now too. And I thank Christ Jesus. Not just my Lord, our Lord, he delivered me and he delivered you. That's why when we come together, we're so happy. There's a strength in this room. Cause we all got a story. We've all been on a journey. And God has been so very good. And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has enabled me. So grace not only pardons you, but enables you to live like you could never live on your own. Who has enabled me because he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry. But what we see here is God did not put Paul into the ministry because he was so talented, but because God recognized that he would live such a life of so much gratitude for the mercy of God. He'd be faithful to anything God asks. People sometimes ask me, you know, at this stage of life, why don't you just take it easy and coast? But I say, you weren't there the night he found me. You didn't experience what I experienced when he placed his hand upon me. And I'm gonna do whatever he asks as long as I live, as long as there's breath in my lungs, strength in this body, I'm indebted. And it's not an arduous thing to do what he asks. He said, God, I'm grateful. And if you could take someone like me, give me a life, clean me up, give me a hope, give me a future, give me images of you, God, help me understand who you call me by name. The least thing I could do is say yes. So he had to stop his writings as to say, and I thank Christ Jesus, Lord, because you enabled me, God, to do better. And although I was formerly a blasphemer, which literally means one who spoke against God, how many of y'all used to speak against church People speak against God. But now you're doing church stuff and doing things, you see? Yep, yep, yep. But God knows how to reverse even the worst. And this man who spent years speaking against God, spent the rest of his life speaking for God, formerly a blasphemer, but then he has a list here, a persecutor. We just read about that. He not only disliked Christians, he hurt them and maimed them and murdered them and killed them. And then he continues, an insolent man. And sometimes you got to remember where you came from to appreciate where you are. Outwardly, he was once this highly, highly respected individually. But inwardly, and his wife knew it. He was mean, he was arrogant, he was unhappy. And you say, why would God use such a man? The reason God uses sinners is because those are the only types of people he can use. Okay, all six of you in this rainy Sunday morning, all of us. And don't look at me with that tone of voice on your face. All of us have done things in our lives that we are not proud of. Things we don't want nobody to know about. Things we don't want to be reminded of. All of us were ain't before we were saints. We all had horns before we had halos. But I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly. In unbelief again, as a Pharisee. Now, many Jewish boys were required to memorize the first five books of the Bible. The Bezateuch, you know, the law of Moses. But the Pharisees had to take it a step further and they memorized the entire Old Testament with their mind. But Paul never knew all that memory. God's mercy in his heart and the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant. Jesus did not come just to shame sinners, but to save sinners. But after God forgives you, the next step is you gotta learn to forgive yourself. And there's a few of you. This goes right over my head. I ain't never been as bad as Paul. I ain't never. No, this message is just for you. You see, the reason God chose a man like Paul was to show us, if God could forgive him, and then if God could help him forgive himself. Why can't you? Why can't I? And he goes on, he says, this is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance. Paul uses this phrasing five times in his letters. And he typically uses it to say something that's commonly known, that he wants to reinforce and vouch for. Here's the statement that everybody was whispering. And he said, you know what? I'm not hurt when people say it. Cause it's true that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Who I am chief. Hail to the chief. Paul was not. Or Saul was not only a bad boy, but the worst type of boy I can't think of any pride so dangerous, so subtle, so insidious as self righteousness and religious pride. But watch what God can do with even our worst sin if we look to him. However, for this reason, I obtained mercy. So if the worst of us could obtain mercy, how about you? How about me? But this next part of this sentence, and I'm going to wrap up there, I need you to see. You know, when Jesus shined a light from heaven, and he who thought he knew everything and saw everything, he walked away blind because that was his real spiritual state. And sometimes God lets your natural state match your spiritual state. And that's a mercy when he does it. But when Paul finally snapped out of it, God was actually able to use this man's wicked and worse sins to help others. Please don't mishear me. Sin is terribly destructive. It'll always take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay. But when he gets you out, he uses you to help get others out. I don't remember if it was Plato or Aristotle, but one of those guys, I used to read those guys when I was in school. They said the best guard or prison guard or better, the best guard is a thief. Why? Because a thief knows all the angles. So if God's gonna put you on guard in his house, he wants some folks that know the angles. You hear what I'm saying? God? God can use your worst days, your worst times, your worst behaviors for his glory. I'm gonna look at this side of the room in the house of the Lord. All right? And I'm gonna wrap up in just a second. However, for this reason, this is the important part, I obtain mercy so that in me first, Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering. Watch this. As a what pattern? As a what pattern? As a what pattern? Pattern. This is why God redeemed. This is why God healed. This is why God cleansed a man as bad as Saul. To reveal a pattern for you and a pattern for I. If God could take that joker and turn him into one of history's greatest saints, why can't God do something with you and with me? You see, every saint has a past, but also every sinner has a future. And the reason God used Paul the way he was, the way he did was to demonstrate a point. And things in your life you think disqualify you from use are the very things God wants to use. Use to bring him glory and honor. I'm not saying do stupid things so grace can abound. Sin is a mess and like I say. What did I say? It'll take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay and cost you more than you want to pay. But despite that, how many know we still do it? None of y'all lifting your hand, okay? But God can even redeem our sins. For this reason I obtain mercy that in me first Jesus Christ might show all long suffering to the worst of them as a pattern, a model of what God could do to those who are going to believe in him for everlasting life. God wanted to show us through Apostle Paul he could take people as bad as the worst and make them as good as the best. Say again. Through the life of the Apostle Paul, God wanted to show us he could take people as bad as the worst, make them as good as the best. No past sin is ever greater than God's present mercy.