Paul’s instructions in 1 Timothy 2:1-7, emphasizes the critical priority of united, corporate prayer for all people, especially governing authorities. Praying in this kind of way is driven by God’s universal desire for salvation, made possible exclusively through the one mediator, Jesus Christ.
Transcript
Turn with me again to this really precious book that we have, 1 Timothy. We are moving out of the first chapter into chapter 2 today. And before we read, let me just remind you once again what we’ve looked at in chapter 1. The issue is for the soul of the church at Ephesus. There’s a struggle there. False teachers have infiltrated the congregation. They’re promoting, as we have learned in chapter 1, Jewish myths, speculative genealogies, and they had a merit-based system of the Mosaic law that has taken the place of the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
It’s a serious problem in this church. This church would be lost if these serious problems are not corrected. And so Paul writes this letter to Timothy. It was a letter to Timothy, but it was a letter also to be read in the church. He writes Timothy to confront these teachers and restore the church to sound doctrine. Sound doctrine is the foundation for the very health of the church. How do you live your life before God in a godly way? How does a church conduct worship that is godly and received by the Lord?
Chapter one moves from these things. In verses one and two, Paul has given the history of his call as an apostle which establishes his authority over the church. He also affirms Timothy in those verses. In verses 3-11 he talks about the charge, the command to Timothy to correct the false teaching and to correct these false teachers that are in the church. In the next section, verses 12-17, Paul gives his own testimony which shows how wonderfully superior the grace that comes to us through the gospel of Jesus Christ is over any merit-based religious system like those being promoted by these false teachers. And then finally, as we looked at last week, there’s the solemn command. Paul, like a commander, is issuing a command to Timothy to fight the good fight. And then the chapter closes with a very solemn warning that has to do with these two men, Hymenaeus and Alexander, and the discipline. The warning is to make sure we don’t suffer shipwreck of the faith as these men have done.
And so then we move into chapter two, and verse one is a transition verse, but it focuses on something very important. It’s the beginning of the instruction basically to the church. In chapter 2, we’re beginning to talk about public worship. What’s to take place in our public worship? How is that to be corrective to the church of Ephesus? And what does that mean for us today? That’s where we’re going with this this morning.
So, we’re talking about this call to prayer and to worship that is Paul’s instruction. I’ll read verses 1-7 and we’ll consider these verses this morning. We’ll survey these, and let me say at the beginning, there’s a couple of very important doctrines that come up in these seven verses. So in the next couple of weeks we’ll probably explore those in a little more depth. This is God’s holy, inerrant word:
First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying) as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
Father, as we reflect on these words this morning, as we take in the truth of your word, Lord, we can’t do that without the power of your Holy Spirit applying it to our heart. So we ask, Lord, your help. Father, I ask your help that as we explain this passage that we stay true to your word, that we explain accurately your word this week and in the next couple of weeks as we look at this passage. Father, I pray that you lead us into your truth. And Father, I pray for unity in this body in our thinking, Father, that we have unity as we pray our prayers before you, that we come together in harmony as only a church filled with your spirit can. We ask your help today as we glorify your name as we look at this passage and see the glorious truth of the nature of your great love for us, of the sacrifice and ministry of our savior, the Lord Jesus. Father, as we consider your glorious attributes, Father, lead our hearts to great thanksgiving for you. And Father, as we look at the practical entreaty that Paul has given us to expand our horizon and our prayers to consider all peoples and peoples around the world, Father, our nation and its leaders. Help us, Lord Jesus, as we consider these things. Father, everything depends on the truth of your word. Every revival comes about through your word being heard and responded to. Father, we ask your blessing on this word this morning that you begin this revival in our hearts. We ask this to the glory of our savior, the Lord Jesus. May you be honored through everything that happens today, we pray. Amen.
The Priority of Prayer and Worship
We’re going to talk about the priority of prayer and worship. Now, we’ve talked a lot since the beginning of this year about prayer. We’ve had several sermons on prayer and all of those really have been focused mostly on our individual prayer life. Today we’re talking about something that’s a little bit different than that, and that is corporate prayer—what we do when we come together to pray, what a church is to do.
It’s interesting that when Paul is beginning this section that has to do with what happens in a worship service, he says, “First of all.” The priority is prayer. It’s an easy thing, because of time constraints, to push out certain elements in your worship practice. And it’s very important, I think, that we pay close attention to what it is that God wants us to do in our worship, because it is so easy for us to do what we want to do in our worship practice. And Paul puts this emphasis on prayer.
The true value of united prayer is that God works wonderfully through the prayers of His church. I was thinking about people’s practice in worship, prayer, and our attitudes. Sometimes we think we just need to pray a little louder or pray with more people. We pray and make a request to the Lord, and we aren’t patient, but God is not answering our request right away and we solicit more prayer from other people. It’s not wrong to do that. Certainly not. But sometimes we keep pressing that maybe if we do a little more, if we start practicing a few things called asceticism, if we fast longer—we can get to the place that’s like the priests of Baal in Elijah’s time where they’re cutting their wrists, they’re cutting their arms and bleeding, they’re appealing to God and nothing’s happening. And so they’re doing all these things, crying out, wailing. You can do that, but that’s not Christian prayer.
What we’re seeing in this passage, and what Paul is saying that a church needs to do when we come together for any of our public prayers, is we’re to come together in unity. We’re to come together in harmony. One person will be praying. Maybe the pastor of the church is praying. He’s like the voice of the church lifting up requests to God. We’re coming before our holy God to make requests for Him. We’re in His presence making requests of God. And it’s important that we have unity of mind and thought as we, as a whole, as a group of people in unity and harmony, are making these requests to the Lord. God honors that. That’s what God is looking for in our corporate worship.
We need to be coming together first of all to pray. Prayer is literally having an audience with God. We’re in His presence. We’re coming directly into the presence of God to ask for and to receive things from Him. And so that’s what we’re to do. And then Paul explains and gives us several words to describe what that means:
- Entreaties: The root meaning of that Greek word has to do with a shortage, a lack. It’s kind of interesting, isn’t it? You’re entreating for a need to be met. There’s a need. The need in most of our prayers is in the person we’re praying for. When we pray for mankind in general, we’re generally praying that people come to Christ because there’s a need for Him, but they lack it. There’s a need in us as well. We don’t have the power for that to happen. I mean, we’re equipped with the word of God and we’re given responsibilities and these things, but we can’t make that happen. We’re appealing to God to meet these needs. That’s what it means to have an entreaty.
- Prayers: This is the very general word for prayer, and it is usually what we mean when we say pray. But one thing you should know is that whenever this word is used in the Bible, every time it’s used, it’s only used in reference to God. We can talk about pleading with people in all sorts of other contexts. But in the Bible, it’s always used of God. And so it has to do with worship. We’re coming together as a people of God to worship God in reverence and devotion. And we’re speaking directly to our God.
- Petitions (or Intercessions): The idea has to do with falling in with someone to get involved with their struggles. You recognize this family is going through a difficult situation and so you lift them up. You feel the suffering that family, that person, that individual is going through, or you see the great need that they have because they may have a lack of wisdom that they need from God. So, we recognize that and we have compassion, and out of that compassion our prayers are offered up to God.
- Thanksgivings: This is talking about prayers of thanksgiving offered for others.
The Universal Scope of Prayer
And so we need to keep that in mind when we’re praying and we’re making these prayers on behalf of all men. If you read that as on behalf of all mankind, you do no violence to this text. That’s the idea. We’re praying for mankind. We’re praying for people. We’re to be praying for all kinds of people. All people.
Before I move to the kings, let me just think about the scope of this prayer. The universal scope being praying for all mankind. The reason he brings this up here in particular, the reason he exhorts the church at Ephesus to do this, is because it’s corrective for the church at Ephesus. There’s a correction that he’s doing here because they’re not praying for all people. They’re not doing this. And that correction for the church at Ephesus is a wonderful guide for this church in Mayflower Hills.
As we have looked in chapter one, as we’ve gotten to know the issues that these heretics had brought into the church, we recognize that they are coming from some type of Jewish expression. They’re taking the principles of the Old Testament and applying it in a way to the church at Ephesus that is wrong. Among the things we’ve talked about is using the law of God as a means of merit to win merit with God to be saved through the keeping of the law.
It is almost certain that they are looking with the kind of Jewish exclusivism that was characteristic in Old Testament times or among the Pharisees in the New Testament. These are people who have identified themselves as Christians but they’re saying all this stuff we need to bring into Christianity. And so part of that was Jewish exclusivism. The idea that salvation belongs exclusively to law-keeping Jews. And if you want to be saved and you’re not a law-keeping Jew, then you need to become a proselyte so that you can be embraced by the Jewish community and be a law-keeping proselyte Jew.
That’s almost certainly where these people are going and so what are they not doing? They’re focusing completely on themselves. They think that they have a special unique knowledge and understanding and when we get this knowledge and become part of this inner group, this exclusive group, you have merit with God. And Paul is confronting that. It means they’re not praying for all mankind. They’re not praying for the kings and for all those who are in authority.
So the corrective for the church at Ephesus is for them to see the need for this. They need to be praying for all mankind. I don’t know if you noticed it when we were reading, but one of the really interesting things that happens in this text is this emphasis on all. Did you notice that? I’m going to give you four of the six right now:
- In verse 1, all men.
- In verse 2, all who are in authority.
- In verse 4, all men to be saved.
- In verse 6, a ransom for all.
You hear that repetition of that word all? He’s saying we’re not to be just praying for us in our group. Our prayers need to push out to the true mission of the church, the outreach of the church, the purpose of God’s kingdom in this world. We’re to be praying out not just for ourselves. So Paul in a very powerful way corrects their narrow thinking and he encourages them with these truths that God’s desire is for all people to be saved. Christ gave himself a ransom for all, and Paul is appointed as a teacher and apostle to the Gentiles.
Praying for Kings and Those in Authority
The next thing he moves from this very broad general praying for mankind, specifically for kings and all who are in authority. Now, for us to really get this, to appreciate it, you need to think about the Apostle Paul and the church at Ephesus, Christians in the first century. Who was the greatest political authority over the church of Ephesus? Who was the ultimate political leader at that time? It was Nero.
You remember that name? Paul is in prison. He’s appealed to Nero. In a fairly short time, a few years later, Nero will have him executed. He will be put to death. Nero is not a friend to the church. The leaders in Rome are not friends of the church. These are the very enemies of the church. I mean, if you didn’t worship Nero—and a Christian could not do that—you were persecuted.
Paul says, remember, think about their needs. Pray prayers for them. Do so with compassion and thanksgiving for these leaders. You are to thank God for them. You’re to lift them up because they have great need. We’re to pray for our leaders. We’re to pray for our president, for his cabinet. We’re to pray for the Supreme Court, for Congress, both sides of that. We’re to pray for these people. We’re to lift them up before God. We should be doing that corporately. I think I’ve failed to do that in a regular way corporately. We need to do it far more often.
We do pray often for issues like this. We get caught up thinking about issues. We pray that this bill would not be passed. We pray that this person would not be elected. We pray all sorts of prayers like that. And I’m not sure it’s wrong to pray some of those prayers, but that’s not the focus of this passage.
The lens that I often pray with when I’m thinking about our political leaders, I pray with these glasses of our partisan politics and I can’t help that’s the way I think. And the prayers that I pray, a few of them, have a tendency to move toward the imprecatory side where I’m asking for God’s judgment on this or that. It’s easy for us to do something like that. That’s not what he’s talking about here.
He is saying that we’re to pray for our leaders through the lens of the cross of Jesus Christ, through the one who loves all mankind and wants everyone to come to faith in Him, whose heart’s desire is for people to come to faith in Him. We’re to lift up our leaders, the ones we hate, the ones we have a tendency to hate, we’re to lift them up asking for God’s blessing for them. It’s hard to do that, isn’t it? It’s difficult to do that. We’re to do that.
You know, if you’re lifting up someone to God in prayer, you can’t do that and hate them. One of the ways that we are to love our enemies as Jesus instructed us to do is to lift them up in prayer and pray for them. We need to practice that and we need to begin with these leaders, so that God’s church around the world can operate in peace and cultivate godliness and unity.
The Doctrines That Drive This Practice
One of the things that we need to move to now is the doctrines that drive this practice. And we see the first of these in verses 3 and 4. Why are we to pray these prayers? Because this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.
And I probably ought to back up because I skipped over this verse: “…for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” What this verse is saying is not just that we are at peace, but that we are able to live the kind of life that reflects godliness. That’s a word that flows through these books—1 and 2 Timothy and Titus—Paul goes back to that word over and over again. A godly life, a life that reflects the nature of God Himself, a life of piety. And dignity: we’re to live a life that conveys unity. We’re to pray this prayer so that we can sound forth the gospel of Jesus Christ to this world, because that’s good in God’s sight. He wants people to come to faith in Him.
In the church of Ephesus, they didn’t have that kind of unity. They didn’t have dignity. They were arguing over trivial things. They’re bringing up trivial things for people to debate. It’s the sound of the purity of the church not going out.
Every Sunday morning, David, just a few minutes before the service is ready to start, goes out and he rings that bell. You can hear that bell ringing in the park. You can hear it houses away. Pure and beautiful sound of the bell. If we had construction workers working on our duct system and they left some sheet metal against that bell when he got up to ring it, well, it wouldn’t sound so pure, would it? It would be deadened by that sheet of metal and there would be a clamoring and a clanging.
Now, for the purity of the gospel to go out, for us to be able to express that in a way that people hear and respond to it, we have to have been changed on the inside. We have to reflect the truth of God’s word in our life, in our demeanor, in our fellowship. We’re to have unity in our fellowship so that the sounding of the gospel goes out. For this reason, this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our savior who desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.
One God and One Mediator
The doctrines that come up here in the next section have to do with God’s heart for all people to come to salvation. And the second one is that we have one God and one mediator.
We live in an age today where truth is lost actually by making it universal for every group. In our postmodern age, truth is only true for your group. You decide on what’s true for you and it’s true for you. Another denomination or religion decides on what’s true for them. Well, that’s true for them, it’s truly true for you, even if those truths contradict themselves completely.
Religious pluralism says that everybody has truth that leads them up to heaven. And there’s churches in this valley, all over the United States and all over the world, that teach this this morning—that Christians are approaching God through Jesus Christ, but a Buddhist comes to God through the teachings of Buddha, and a Muslim comes to God through the teachings of Muhammad, and Hindus come to God through their gods. Everybody is on their way to this glorious place and we come through different paths.
Well, that’s not true at all. If you believe what I’ve just said, then you are not a Christian. You don’t believe what Jesus Christ has said. It’s important that we recognize that there is a true exclusivism. Today if you say that your way is the only way to heaven, people treat that as if you are speaking hatefully for every other group. You’re treated like a bigot. That’s the way people view Christianity today.
Exclusivism is the belief that only one specific religion or one particular interpretation within a religion is true and constitutes the only valid path to salvation or ultimate reality. Christianity is certainly not pluralistic in that sense. Jesus said:
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
This passage is saying that there is one God, one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. There is one bridge that leads us to God. There’s one truth. Jesus is the ultimate reality and the source of all reality. He’s the source of spiritual eternal life.
“And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)
“For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:14)
So, it’s exclusive in the sense that the only people that are ever saved are those who come to God through Jesus Christ. No other way. And yet that way is opened up to all mankind. It’s offered to all mankind. The gospel goes out to everyone and everyone is responsible to hear and respond to the gospel. It’s offered to people equally whether they’re Jews or Gentiles or good or bad or educated or uneducated, whether they’re rich or poor. Jesus Christ gave Himself as a ransom for all.
A couple generations ago, a preacher, Donald Barnhouse, used an illustration from Euclidean geometry, actually from Euclid himself. Euclid was a Greek philosopher considered the father of geometry. You can read the translations of his works and learn a great deal about how geometry works. He didn’t happen yesterday. He didn’t live a century ago. He lived 300 years before Jesus was born. One of his students was a prince of Egypt named Ptolemy Soter, and he became ultimately one of the kings of Egypt.
While he was a student of Euclid, he began to complain about his studies. It was hard. He says, “Can’t you make this simpler? Can’t the study of mathematics be made easier for me?” Euclid regarded his pupil seriously and then in a serious voice he said something that has echoed through the ages. He said, “There is no royal road to learning.” Just because you’re a prince, there’s no easy path for you. And it’s true with salvation. There’s only one way. And that way is through Jesus Christ. A king or a peasant, a righteous man or a monster of iniquity, they travel exactly the same road to find salvation. The way is open to all, but there is only one way.
The Apostle Paul concludes this argument by pointing out that he was called as a minister, an apostle to the Gentiles. See how that contradicts the idea that it’s exclusive to this Jewish group? No, it’s open to all Gentile peoples, to every nation and group and every class of person. The gospel is available to them. Paul makes that final point and in doing that he’s echoing the mission of the church:
“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Putting It Into Practice
Let’s put this into practice. I want to begin by praying for our leaders in our country this morning. This morning it came up naturally in the Sunday school lesson that the great revivals in history have come about through the reading and the hearing of the word of God. So here’s an opportunity this week for us to pray for our leaders because there’s a televised event happening this week. The Bible Museum in Washington DC is doing a reading of the entire Bible this week and it’s televised.
We should pray for the people who hear the word of God read. Many leaders and famous people, more than 400 of them, are going to be doing the readings, including a portion read by President Trump. His cabinet will do readings. Other governors and people from across the country are going to do readings to read through the entire scripture, the word of God.
Now, I don’t know their heart. They could be motivated because of politics to be doing this. I don’t know their heart. But I do know this: the word of God is powerful and it changes hearts. And what a wonderful time to pray that this word changes people’s hearts. So I’m going to begin with that as we pray and close our service. I want us to think expansively about our prayer life.
Father, we thank you for this beautiful thing that’s about to happen. It’s always good, Lord, for your word to go out. We pray for your word going out through our nation and throughout the world. Father, we thank you for this work of the Bible Museum to televise this event of the full reading of the word of God. We thank you, Father, that many have consented to participate in this from our president and his cabinet to many significant leaders across this country and other people who are prominent. Father, we recognize they may not know you, but Lord, they’re reading the very word that can bring them to you. We ask, Father, for the power of your word to make its place in their heart, that many would come to faith, not just them, but those who hear the reading of the word this week.
Father, we pray for our nation. We pray that you do a work of grace, bringing many to faith in you, to those people that we would not want to lift up, not want to ask blessing on. First of all, Father, they so need you. And Father, we pray for your work going forth around the world. We pray for all mankind. Father, we support Heart Cry Missionary Society who have indigenous missionaries all over the world. We pray for that work. We pray for the individual missionaries. We pray for difficult situations like the orphanage situation in Myanmar. We ask Lord that you protect those Christians there and bless them.
Father, we pray for the evangelism efforts, the gospel tracts that have been distributed, the thousands and thousands of tracts in East Asia, that you would bless that and bring people to faith through the work that’s going on. We pray, Father, for people in that ministry who have loved ones that are so sick, it’s even distracting from the ministry. Please meet needs. Father, we pray for safety for the missionaries and give them wisdom and encouragement in the difficulties that they face.
Lord, we pray for another ministry, Gideons International, that we support. We thank you, Father, for this ministry because they distribute scripture all over the world. We pray that many individuals and whole families would come to faith through the reading of the Bible and the New Testaments that they put out. We pray that you open doors so that they can be distributed. We pray for safety in their travels. And we ask, Father, that you provide funds that are necessary for them, for these ministries, for other ministries, Father, that we’re connected with.
Lord, you have a great work going on throughout the world. And Father, we are connected directly with that work through the power of your spirit, through your word, and through the commission of Jesus Christ. We ask Lord your blessing. As we look outward, we look up to you in praise and adoration. We look outward to this needy world and ask, Father, for your redeeming grace, for your work to be done, that many would come to faith in you, that many would become worshippers of you, that many would for all eternity give glory to your name. May our savior be glorified in every way. We ask this truly to the glory of Christ in his name. Amen.
