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Are we a mess? So was Paul. Can God use us? Absolutely.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
Paul describes himself as “formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man,” yet he was still chosen for ministry—and he notes he received mercy because he “acted ignorantly in unbelief.” What does this tell us about how God evaluates our fitness for service? Is there a difference between sinning knowingly versus unknowingly, and does that difference matter for how we understand forgiveness?
The sermon contrasts earthly missions, which depend on human strength and preparation, with God’s calling, which depends entirely on His strength. Yet we’re still called to prepare and train. How do you hold these two things in tension in your own life? Where’s the line between resting on God’s strength and abdicating responsibility?
The preacher uses the image of a “dumpster fire” to describe human worthlessness apart from God’s grace—stinky but insignificant, yet still capable of shining when God works through it. Does this metaphor resonate with you, or does it feel too harsh? How does it challenge the way you typically think about your own worthiness or readiness to serve?
Paul emphasizes that even the faithfulness he was credited with came from God—that faith and love in Christ Jesus were gifts of grace, not achievements he earned. How might your approach to spiritual growth change if you viewed growth itself as something God produces rather than something you accomplish?
The sermon opens with a spectacular sunset as a moment of awe, then pivots to Paul experiencing that same awe over God’s love and mercy. What role does awe play in the Christian life, and how do we cultivate it when grace starts to feel routine or theoretical? What would it look like this week to live from a posture of genuine wonder at what God has already done?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Have you ever seen one of those things? Sunsets you just can’t stop thinking about. I think we all have. We take the sunset for granted, but then we see that one spectacular one every so often that just captures our attention.
Hi, welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be with you tonight. Let me explain for a moment what sunset I’m thinking about at the moment. Or better yet, I’m not going to explain it, I’m going to show it to you. Take a look at this picture. This was Table Rock Lake a few years ago. This was a sunset that I don’t think I’ll ever forget, because there have been a lot of beautiful sunsets that I’ve seen, but this one was just spectacular. It just went on and on with this radiating brilliance around the sun. The picture captures a little of it, but not really all of it. And I think we know that from those really beautiful sunsets or other beautiful things that we see, those times that we feel awe.
Well, tonight we’re going to be talking about another moment of awe, a moment of awe for the Apostle Paul, where he didn’t see a sunset. He saw God’s love. And he saw God’s love in such a clear way that as he reflects back on it, he can’t help but be filled with awe again.
Here’s the thing. While Paul, if you know his story, his conversion, and how Jesus intervened—we’re going to get more into that in the next few minutes, yeah, it’s a spectacular story—every time any of us think about God’s love, we should feel that same awe, because he loves you just as much. Every time we see a sunset, we should feel the awe that Paul’s talking about, because guess who made those sunsets?
So let’s think more about how God cares for us and empowers us to do what he’s called us to do in a way that should and really must lead us to awe. Will you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your Word. We pray that you would help us to do your will, to understand your majesty. As we’re contemplating what it is that we’re supposed to do and how we’re supposed to do it, would you help us to be those who have awe? Because Lord, when we’re reflecting on the wonder of what you do for us, it makes such a difference in how we understand everything. Pray this in Jesus’ precious name, amen.
So the reason I wanted to share that sunset is I do think that probably all of us have had those sorts of moments where you saw something really spectacular, not just even beautiful, not even maybe someplace that we love to go and see. I love that particular spot, but that sunset was something unexpected in its grandeur. We’ve had those experiences, and when we do, those stick in our brains, those moments of particular awe. And yet as Christians, how often is it, even if at one point we felt that about our God, we lose that. God’s love is so strong and so sure, and yet how often is it that we talk about it sort of academically, sort of like this factual, hey, here’s what’s in the newspaper today kind of thing. We lose the sense of awe of experiencing it.
Well, Paul didn’t lose it, and he wants to share that with Timothy and with us. And we see that as we turn to 1 Timothy 1, verse 12. Here’s what Paul says there: “I am grateful to the one who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he considered me faithful in putting me into ministry, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man, but I was treated with mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief.”
Paul, as he’s thinking about his calling—the calling he’s been instructing Timothy on in the verses that we’ve been looking at over the last few weeks—says, and here’s how I got there. His strength is what enables me to do the charge he’s given me. Yes, he’s given me a charge, and yes, that charge is true and sure, but here is the other thing that you need to know: he didn’t just give me a charge.
I think about the brave men and women serving in our armed forces in conflict zones right now. Many of them are being given charges, given orders to go do different things, and sometimes put their lives in jeopardy. We heard over the weekend about those who lost their lives, but even those who don’t lose their lives may struggle to get all the way through the mission. Something might go wrong. The machinery might not work right. They may not understand the command, no matter how well trained. They may simply not have the strength. And sometimes, yes, the enemy proves stronger, and life itself isn’t strong.
When we think about the charge that God is giving us, he’s sending us to an enemy far stronger than any earthly enemy. The worst country in the world, the worst leaders in the world, they’re not strong. So we say, how do we fulfill this mission? How do we go and proclaim the gospel? How do we take the spiritual battle that’s out there and face it? How do we do that?
Paul had been part of the forces that were in the spiritual battle on the other side. He’d been working against the church, working against the gospel, so he knew how strong it was. He’d actually been one of the people who took other people’s lives who were heroically fighting the good fight. So how do we do it?
Paul’s answer is simple. We do it through him. We do it through our God. He’s the one with the mission and the strength. And that’s the crucial difference with the charge that Jesus gives us. Earthly charges, even when they’re heroic and good, they’re still dependent on our own human strength to do them. But God’s charge is dependent on him and him alone. We may or may not be able to completely finish that charge, but we, as those with his strength, can do the part that he has called us to do, that he intends for us to do, as long as we’re resting on his strength and not our own.
And so Paul here is brought into that state of awe, of being overwhelmed, starting with simply recognizing the strength that he has. Where did it come from? Well, it wasn’t because he got everything. In fact, he says he was an unbeliever. And just go back for a second. How had he acted? Ignorantly. He blasphemed and persecuted. He was arrogant, he says. He was treated with mercy.
You think about that. What’s Paul saying in this text? He’s saying that he isn’t bringing the strength. We’re talking about those in the military today. They went through an awful lot to have strength. If they’re going to go and fight a heroic battle, they’re going to fight with the strength that they have cultivated, they’ve been trained to do, but they have cultivated. But here Paul says when fighting the spiritual war, God’s the one who cultivates, God’s the one who trains, and God’s the one who provides every single step of the way. It’s not us having enough spiritual muscles or enough strategic understanding. It’s God doing it all.
Paul says, make no mistake, I didn’t even earn it. I wasn’t worthy of it. I received it because of mercy. We’ve probably all, at some point, done something for a friend or family member, something that maybe we’re even being relatively generous with our time and our abilities. Didn’t think a whole lot of it, didn’t do it to receive anything. But as we finish it up, someone surprises us with a gift, maybe a gift card to a place that they know that we like, and they say, I just want to thank you for doing this, and I wanted to give you something.
Now when we look at that, maybe that gift is actually worth more than what we did as far as we’re concerned. We look at it and think, I didn’t do that much. I don’t—no, no, no, please take it. I want you to have this. I appreciate what you did, the person says. And so we take it and we appreciate it, right? And we say, well, shucks, I didn’t deserve this. But we also think, but I did do this thing, right? And we don’t even have to be prideful to think that. Maybe we genuinely did, right? We really were helping. We might not have thought it was worth what we were given in return, but we know we did something. We contributed to it. We brought something to it.
The temptation as we go about God’s mission is to think, well, what am I bringing to it? This God’s being merciful. He’s giving me gift cards galore. He’s giving me all kinds of wonderful gifts. He’s doing all this stuff. But what am I bringing to it? How am I still going through boot camp and preparing? And yes, we should prepare. But here’s the thing we need to understand. When we’re standing for the gospel, we can’t prepare. And we can’t even be worthy to prepare. So when we receive the gift that God gives us, the question isn’t, well, was it more than we deserved, but we still deserve something? No, the question is, how do we get something we don’t deserve at all? No matter how much we do, we don’t deserve it at all. That’s so different from what we see in human experience.
Now, Paul says here that he was judged faithfully. And the interesting question, I think, for us to ask is, well, Tim, having just said what you said, how can it be that Paul is judged faithful? Take a look at verse 13: “Even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man, but I was treated with mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief, and our Lord’s grace was abundant, bringing faith and love in Christ Jesus.”
That last part that he adds on there is so crucial, right? He didn’t just receive some mercy, he received faith and love. Paul says everything, even the faithfulness that I’m judged to have, where’s it coming from? It’s coming from God. It’s like being given a gift for doing something, and the thing we did, well, the person giving us the gift actually did that, too. They thank us anyway. They give something to us anyway. Doesn’t make a whole lot of human sense, but God loves us enough to do that.
He wants us to be a part of his mission, to send us out into the world as his ambassadors, facing the things of the world but in his strength and because of his love. He’s the one who’s faithful. If we think about the strength that he gives us, something else of his, his love and his grace, are what empower that strength.
And so, if you think back to verse 12 that we looked at to begin with, the interesting thing going on there is commentators have debated a little bit how we should translate the phrase that’s essentially being empowered. Now, it could be empowered in the past, or it could be empowering, and you can make a good case for either based on the way that Paul writes it, how he intended it to be meant. But whatever he meant here, clearly he viewed both as true. For example, Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” How can Paul do it? You can do it through Jesus. There’s the source. There’s the whole source. There is the entire source.
I don’t mean to belabor this, but the problem is our human intuition doesn’t want to go this way. It doesn’t really let it sink in. We always say, yes, Jesus did it, but look how good a person I am. Yes, Jesus did it, but look at all this preparation I’m doing. Yes, Jesus did it, but… There isn’t a “but” to place here. It’s purely, completely Jesus. That’s how he feels all. You can see it in his words here.
As he reflects on what God has done for him, he’s just saying, how could I deserve this? He sees the beauty of what God’s done, and he knows that his life is the opposite of that sunset. It isn’t a beautiful, glorious sunset to see. You can’t say, Timothy, look at my life, a beautiful, beautiful, majestic manifestation of human faithfulness to the Lord. You can only say, look at what God’s done. Because I’m not, in fact, able to do anything. I’m not worthy of what’s going on.
About a decade or so ago, a phrase entered into our common vocabulary, the phrase “dumpster fire.” We put that phrase all over the place, right? We like to apply it to years. Last year was a dumpster fire. And I think it really has fit over the last decade or so, because there have been a lot of really strange years happen there. I think most of us have felt these are strange. So we say, well, this year was a dumpster fire. Sometimes people say it about athletic performances. That’s where it became popular, right? Last year’s Cardinal season was a dumpster fire.
Well, I was curious, where did that phrase come from? And we don’t have a completely clear answer, but it’s thought it may have actually originated in a movie review of the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, of all things, back in 2003. The reviewer, as he reviewed this remake of a horror film, said it was the cinematic equivalent of a dumpster fire, stinky but insignificant. That’s quite possibly that insignificant review became where we got a phrase that by 2016 was named the phrase of the year, and by 2018 was actually placed in the Merriam-Webster dictionary because it gets used so much.
But you think about what we’re saying when we talk about dumpster fire, right? Stinky but insignificant. Big mess, right? Don’t want a bunch of garbage burning. But it’s all contained in this metal thing, this container. You hope it doesn’t spread out of it. A lot of times that’s really our lives. I’m not talking about how our lives have gone, but how our lives are, how we act. Stinky but insignificant, right?
Paul’s life was stinky but insignificant. He could have gone through life as a persecutor of the church, never converting, never believing. You know what? We probably wouldn’t even know his name today. Yes, he persecuted the church, but there were a lot of people that persecuted the church. A lot of people that you and I can’t just name off the tip of our tongue because they were stinky but, in the grand scheme of God’s plan, insignificant.
This is why Paul felt so much awe. He looked at his life and said, my life is stinky and insignificant. I am a dumpster fire, but what has God done? Well, sunsets aren’t the only thing that shine.
I have this little sign here that says, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.” And we all know that tune, but here it is, a smiling dumpster. And I thought, isn’t this a perfect picture of us? Because we’re not that beautiful sunset. The best we can muster is being a bunch of garbage on fire. But this little dumpster has the right attitude. This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.
Why is that the right attitude for a dumpster? For the very reason that Paul can say what he says here. He says, yes, I’m a dumpster, but I’m going to shine because God is taking that dumpster that isn’t contributing, right? It’s just stinky. It’s just making the world seemingly less pleasant. But God looks at us in that stinkiness and says, yes, you’re stinky. Yes, you’re insignificant. I’m not going to leave you there. I’m going to do the sort of amazing, awe-inspiring work that I do when I create a beautiful sunset with you. I’m going to use you in my significant plan.
That’s why we need to ask, how can I serve him better? Not because of how much I plan, not because of how much I bring, but because of how much he brings. So often when we try to think, well, how can I live the Christian life better? How can I make this new month that we’re in, a month where I serve Jesus better? We start thinking about what we can do. But if we remember that we’re that stinky, insignificant dumpster fire on our own, well, what can a dumpster fire really do? How can it actually do anything? Unless someone says, but I value you. I’m going to use you even though you’re a stinky, insignificant dumpster fire. Make that dumpster something good.
That’s what God does with each of us. Whatever stinkiness, whatever garbage you have in your life, God says, I’ll bring my light and let you shine. Because I’m doing it and I’m doing this amazing thing that’s so undeserving. Your light’s going to be a beautiful, awe-inspiring light, not because of you, but because of what I’m doing. I’m going to use you in my significant plan.
I do believe if we can stay on that and remember that, the question “How can I serve Jesus this month?” changes because it’s not about what can I do, but what has he done? And I believe that’s why Paul wanted Timothy to understand this so clearly, so that Timothy never thought, well, what can I bring? I’m not as significant as the Apostle Paul. I don’t have as much of a testimony as the Apostle Paul. And Paul says, all of us are dumpster fires. I was a dumpster fire. I was useless to the Lord, and look at how he used me.
All of us can say, this little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine. Because the light that’s shining, it isn’t ours, it’s his.
Would you pray with me? Father, we do want our lights to shine. We don’t have anything other than a dumpster fire to offer, but we know that you take our brokenness, our stinkiness, our insignificance, and you take it in your grace, you work through it. And so, Lord, we pray that even this day, you would take us and use us for your significant, beautiful plan. You remind us that if we’re full of garbage in our lives, that’s not a reason you’ll reject us. But you are the God who takes garbage, who takes awfulness, who takes brokenness, and does awe-inspiring things with it because of your grace and your love. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name, amen.
I hope this was an encouragement to you today. And if it was, I sure would appreciate it if you’d give us a like and a share. It really does make a difference when you do. So, just hit that like button, hit that share button. When you hit that share button, you’re telling all that AI stuff that’s trying to figure out what all of us should see, “Hey, let’s talk about Jesus.” So please do share. In the meantime, if you have any comments or questions, you can always leave a comment in the comments below, or text to our texting line 833-356-4032. That’s 833-356-4032. Hope you have a wonderful and blessed week, and I’ll see you again very soon.