Communion | I Timothy 1:12-17 | Pastor Neil McClendon

Does your past feel so heavy that it keeps you from seeing who you can become in Christ? Discover the transformative power of God’s mercy and grace at the Lord’s Table.

In this communion homily, Lead Pastor Neil McClendon preaches through 1 Timothy 1:12–17, exploring how the Apostle Paul—formerly a violent opponent of the church—became a prime example of God’s boundless patience and grace. Unpack why your past never disqualifies you from God's mercy, learn how receiving forgiveness empowers us to extend grace to others, and discover the mission behind every story of redemption.

In this episode, we cover:

• Everyone Has a Past: Why our history doesn't define our future when we come to the Lord's Table.
• Anybody Can Receive Mercy: How recognizing our past puts us in touch with our genuine need for Christ.
• Grace Brings Faith & Love: Understanding that God's overflowing grace equips us with gifts found only in a relationship with Jesus.
• Mercy Always Comes With a Mission: Why God displays His patience in our lives to inspire hope in others.
• Withholding What Others "Deserve": How the cross enables us to extend forgiveness to those around us, just as God withheld judgment from us.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Everything they think they are or did takes a hold so hard that it won't let them see what they can be. Some of you in this room have done things in your past that have taken a hold of you so hard that you can't see what you can be. When you come to the Lord's table, it's a reminder of what you can be because of what Christ has done.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God. For more information about Grand Parkway, visit our website at grandparkway.org. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Amen. Oh, amen. Let's pray together, church. Uh Lord, we've come to testify that what you've done in our place and on our behalf, that we are a lifted people because we've been raised from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive. You didn't come to make bad people good. You came to make dead people alive. And so, Lord, we're grateful for that. And so, Lord, we as we approach your table, get our head and our heart ready for what we're about to experience. We pray in Jesus' name. And everyone said, Amen, amen. You could have a seat. And while you're having a seat, let me explain to you what you're seeing around the room. We're today's a communion Sunday here at Grand Parkway. And the way we do communion, uh, every once in a while we have the little portable cups, but but but but we prefer to do it like this, and that is it's not tacked on into the service, it is our whole service, and so I'll do a little brief homily. A homily is just a big word that means short sermon. And you hear short sermon, you think, amen, right? You jerks. Anyway, uh and so I'm just gonna give us a little thought to kind of shape, and then we'll spend some time doing what the Bible says. The Bible says, hey, don't approach this in a rote manner. Don't just come and sleepwalk through this, okay? So you come to the Lord's table, it is a big deal. Uh so let me just say this: if you're visiting today, we practice open communion here at Grand Park, right? Which means if you're a Christian, you're more than welcome to come and receive. What will happen is I'll I'll talk just for a little bit. I'm gonna read from 1 Timothy, give you some things to think about. We'll have a time of reflection. And then people go to these different stations. There's 13 set up all around the room. Uh and uh we'll just in the context of worship, we'll just get up and when you're ready, you can just go to any station and we'll serve you the elements, and we can pray for you after you receive the elements. Just say, hey, here's how you can pray for this. Is what I got going on, okay? Uh and so this is what we do. Here's the other thing I want to say about communion. If you're not a believer or if you're a Christian, but you know you're living in willful, deliberate sin, I'm gonna encourage you to abstain from receiving the elements. Come to a station, let us pray with you, okay? No one's gonna look down on you. I had people come to me in the first set uh service and say, I need to abstain because I'm having a hard time forgiving. Or I need to abstain because I've not made the best choices here here recently. And so there's no shame in that. No one's gonna say anything. We want to pray with you. The Bible says it like this in Galatians chapter 6. It says, bear one of those burdens. And when you do, you live out the gospel. And so what we want to do is come alongside you and say, hey, let me take about 50 pounds of that off you. Let me carry that for a while. All right? And so, if you're not a Christian, I want you to ask yourself this question: why would you not want to know a God who's done for you what nobody else has done or could do, okay? Let me read from the Bible. This is 1 Timothy chapter 1. So I'll start reading verse 12. And now, this is a guy named Paul, but he's referred to as the Apostle Paul. Before he was a Christian, he was a very violent man. He hated Christians, he hated Christ, he hated everything to do with it, and he persecuted, he killed Christians, all right? He's very religious, but he did not have a relationship with God. Now he's writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he's writing in 1 Timothy, and he says this. He says, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, an insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of the Lord overflowed for me with the faith and the love that are in Christ Jesus. The same is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost. But I receive mercy for this reason that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life, to the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. There's four things I just want to point to by way of reminder as we get ready to come to the Lord's table. Number one is simply this everybody has a past. Everybody has a past. I have a past, you have a past. Some of you are like, yeah, my past was last night. That's okay. Everybody has a past. People in the Bible had a past. Uh I was flipping channels this weekend and I came across the movie Open Range, which is a beautiful, sweeping epic of justice and a little love story tucked in there. And Kevin Costner plays a guy that was a gun hen. He was a guy that he killed a lot of people. And so he comes to this little town, and it's a character played by Annette Benning. They kind of see each other, and you're kind of like, hey, hey, uh, and so they fall in love without ever telling each other. But he is embarrassed, he's ashamed of the things that he's done in his past. And he's like, I don't deserve a woman like you. And and if you if you'll look, you'll start seeing the gospel all around you. This was so powerful. I paused the TV and got a pen and paper and wrote it down because he says, Hey, I'm leaving town. I'm a bad guy, I don't deserve a person as good as you. And she said this. She said, People get confused in this life about what they want, what they've done, and what they think they should have because of it. Everything they think they are or did takes a hold so hard that it won't let them see what they can be. Hear that last part. Everything they think they are or did takes a hold so hard that it won't let them see what they can be. Some of you in this room have done things in your past that have taken a hold of you so hard that you can't see what you can be. When you come to the Lord's table, it's a reminder of what you can be because of what Christ has done. Here's the second thing I want to say to you: anybody can receive God's mercy. Anybody can receive, Paul says, though formerly, verse 13, I was a blasphemer, persecutor, an insolent opponent. Uh uh, even though I was all these things. See, your past doesn't disqualify you from God's mercy, it prepares you for it. It doesn't disqualify you, it prepares you for it, it puts you in touch with your need of it. Here's the third thing I want us to see this morning. Grace brings stuff with it. Grace brings stuff with it. What do you mean? It's verse 14. He says, And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me. Now let me just stop right there. When the Bible says the grace of the Lord overflowed, it talks about this all through the Bible. It says where sin did abound, grace did abound all the more. And so you cannot outsend the grace of God. So none of you in this room, whether you're here in the front row or in the very top row, in the very back, none of you have ever done so much that God just kind of said, That's it, dude. You're on your own. I give up on you. I've forgiven this thing 712 times, and you just did it again. I this is no longer a good investment of my love and forgiveness. It's not the God of the Bible. He says, This the grace of God overflowed uh uh for me, and here's what it came with with the faith and the love that are in Christ Jesus. When I say grace brings stuff with it, two things it brings, the faith and the love that are in Christ Jesus. There's things that you cannot experience unless you are in Christ Jesus. That means in a relationship with Him. I'm not religious, not spiritual. Someone said to me recently, you know, I'm I'm spiritual. And I said, What does that mean? Well, I mean, I think about God, you know, in the terms that I define Him, but you're probably true. You're probably spiritual too. As a pastor, I said, I'm not spiritual, I'm Christian. And he said, What's the difference? And I said, How much time do you have? And here's one of the differences that in Christ, there's things that I experience in Christ, faith and love. Now, what do you mean love? Not just love, but there's a love that you can only that's in God that you can own in Christ that you can only experience in a relationship with Christ. The Bible says it like this in Proverbs 19, 22, what a man desires is unfailing love. Somebody that's gonna love you like nobody else can, and it's never, ever, ever going to fail. Here's the last thing I want you to see as we prepare to come to the Lord's table that mercy always comes with a mission. Mercy always comes with a mission. In other words, God doesn't just come to forgive you and go, all right, you're good. Try not to do bad anymore. No, no, no. God works in your life, hear me now, so that other people who struggle with the things you struggle with can look at you and go, hey, Bill over there is a dumpster fire man, and God forgave him and God changed him. Maybe God can change me. Listen how the Bible says it. Verse 15, he said, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. I'm the chief of sinners. I screwed it up more than anybody ever could. But I received mercy for this reason. Mercy always comes to you for a reason. Mercy comes with a mission. I receive mercy for this reason that in me, as the foremost of sinners, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. See, God has mercy on you so that people who've given up on themselves, like you had given up on yourself one point, can look at you and kind of go, you know what? When we were in the tenth grade, I couldn't stand that girl. But man, now that we're in the 11th grade, she's different. Maybe, maybe there is hope for me after all. This is what I mean when the Bible says when I say that mercy always comes with a mission. Let me say it like this, and then we'll get ready to come to the table. Uh, on the cross, God withheld from you what you rightfully deserve. Okay? We preachers say it like this grace is is God giving you what you don't deserve. Mercy is God withholding from you what you rightfully deserve. And so if you come to one of these stations today, you're proclaiming the Lord's death. You're saying, hey, I understand that Christ died in my place and for my sins. I am so sinful and separated by nature, separated from God, I need a perfect person to die in my place and for my sin. You're that sinful. I'm that sinful by nature. But here's the other part you're also so loved by God that Jesus Christ was glad to do that exact thing. Okay? And so here's where it kind of works out and gets in our business because God withheld from us on the cross what we rightfully deserve. You have the capacity to withhold from other people what you think they deserve. That starts with your spouse, your kids. It extends to the person that cuts you off in traffic, that won't let you cut in despite the fact you have your blinker on and you've been waiting for seven cars flying by. Yeah. Because God withheld from you what you deserve, you can withhold from other people what you and your mind think they deserve. Because the cross doesn't just make atonement, it makes us responsible for being people that they're to others what God was to us. Now I'm gonna voice a prayer. Here's what I want you to do. For the next minute, I want you to just think about getting your head and your heart ready. Don't sleepwalk to the Lord's table. Just get your head and your heart ready. Okay? And we'll give you some more directions in just a minute. But for right now, just kind of just say, okay, Lord, I'm gonna proclaim the Lord's death. That's what you're saying. When you receive communion, when you eat that little stale cracker and you drink that juice, you're saying the body and the blood of Jesus is my only hope. Let me voice a prayer. Father, we just want to pause because the Bible tells us to pause and think about what we're about to do to examine ourselves. Not to get ourselves right or whether, but it's not self-hatred. We don't need more self-hatred in the church. We need understanding. So, Holy Spirit, just kind of brood over us and get us ready for what's about to happen. Just be still for a moment before we're dismissed. One of the greatest reminders of God's provision and that God will provide is the cross. You say, What do you mean? Uh Romans 8 31 says this he who did not spare his own son but freely offered him up for us all. And then it asks this question how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? The cross is a reminder that God will provide. So, whatever you lack today, you should appropriate the reality of the cross over that. Let's just stand in that for just a moment. Father, we come to the end of ourselves and our ability and our bank account, and we realize that we can't we can't provide everything we need. And the reason we can is not because we're not good people, we're not a good mom, we're not a good dad, is that we're not God. And so we have to look to you for provision. We say with the psalmist who said, Where does my help come from? I lift my eyes up from to the hills, my help comes from the Lord. And so, Lord, we look to our God whose name is Jehovah Jireh, the Lord our God who provides, and thank you that you will provide, you have provided, you are providing, and you will provide. Give us eyes to see you at work so we don't lay down anxious tonight and get up determined tomorrow. Lord, let your provision calibrate us and calm us down on the inside. We pray in Jesus' name that everyone said. Amen, amen. We'd like to conclude our service with a spoken blessing. So if you would, before you hold out your hands, let me just by way of reminder, remind you, ladies, today, tonight at midnight is a deadline to register for women's weekend. We've got over 350 women coming. You don't want to miss this. Uh, if money's an option, don't worry about it. We want you here, okay? Tonight at midnight is your deadline. Don't sleep on that. Hold your hands out. He's your dad. He's never not gonna want to be your dad. He loves you. He calls you by name. He says you are mine. Your name is not Brandon, your name is mine. Your name is not Laura, your name is mine. Depart now and live. As if your father has claimed you as his. In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Bless you.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Thank you for listening to this message. Be sure to give us a five star rating in review and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you'd like to go deeper with our sermon content, you can hear more on our Circling Back with Neil McClendon podcast at Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.