In this message on 1 Timothy 2, we explore the priority of corporate prayer and the importance of praying for the salvation of all people. By contrasting God’s sovereign and desired will with the self-serving will of man, we are challenged to ensure the worship practices of the church are grounded entirely in scripture rather than human preference. True congregational unity is found not in accommodating cultural trends, but in keeping our focus fixed entirely on Jesus Christ, our perfect mediator.
Transcript
One of the things that I really enjoy as a pastor about expositional preaching, where you preach through books of the Bible, is that you don’t have to spend a great deal of time thinking about the next text you’re going to preach. Which is really wonderful, because if you’re like me, you can spend a great deal of time trying to decide what you’re going to preach. But when you’re in a rich passage like the one we are today, I have the same problem. There are so many ways to look at this, so many doctrinal truths, so many applications, it’s hard for me to know what to focus on in a given sermon. So we’re going to take one of those this morning, maybe a couple of those, and explore it together this morning. But first, let’s do the most important thing, and that is read this passage. This is God’s holy and 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. Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension.”
Let me ask God to bless His holy word to us. Father, without Your help, we can’t comprehend Your word. Without the blessing of Your Holy Spirit to read this word to our hearts, we won’t make the right applications. We ask, Father, for Your protective grace today. Keep us in Your truth this morning. Guide us and teach us. Father, teach us individually as believers who worship and seek to bring You glory. Teach us corporately as a church who wishes to please You. Help us in these ways today, we pray. In the name of our Savior, I pray, Father, that the name of our Savior be glorified. Amen.
The Context of the Early Church at Ephesus
Well, last week, we pointed out that this section in chapter two begins practice in the church. Here we’re talking about corporate worship, the church coming together to worship. And the corrections that Paul is giving to that church at Ephesus and then making application from that to us. The circumstance was heretics had entered the church and had become leaders in the church and were steering the church. If you look at that very last verse of chapter one, he points out a couple of people who had suffered shipwreck of the faith. And others like them were seeking to make shipwreck of the entire work of God in Ephesus. And so this is a correction to the practice that was taking place there.
And while I’m here at the very beginning, let me point out something that you might not have realized about the church at Ephesus and early churches. They didn’t meet in large buildings where everybody gathered very often. That wasn’t typical. What happened in the early church was that they gathered together in homes. And they didn’t always gather together as one whole. The church at Ephesus was made up of many small groups that worshiped. You can see evidence of that if you look. This letter is to Timothy and is to be read to the church at Ephesus. That’s the first and primary application. But if you look down at verse 8, it says, “I want men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension.” Do you notice that phrase “in every place”? The idea is that the church as a whole in Ephesus are to be worshiping God in this way in every part of the church, wherever they come together.
So the heretics were leading part of this church astray. Likely other parts of the church were held pretty solid. Paul left Timothy behind in Ephesus to straighten out this whole matter, to correct the teaching of the false teachers, and to help them be able to have godly practice. The whole purpose of 1 Timothy is found in chapter one in dealing with these heretics that had come into the church. Part of the problem with these people is that they were looking inwardly. There was a lot of practice here that is obviously taken from Old Testament practice that they were trying to bring into the church.
The early church was plagued with people who were called Judaizers. There were people who tried to take Old Testament practice and say that it is necessary for our salvation or our sanctification to keep Old Testament practices like holy days. This group in particular was focusing on Jewish myths and practices and delighted in taking obscure passages and making controversies out of them. They looked wise by bringing these things. It was self-exalting. And so you had that type of people at work in the church at Ephesus. Paul is correcting it.
The Priority of Corporate Prayer
In chapter two, as we looked at last week, he begins with corporate worship. And the first thing in corporate worship is praying. He puts a priority on prayer. There are all sorts of things that we should do when we come together in the faith, and God tells us what those things are. For the Apostle Paul, his instruction to the church at Ephesus and to us is that we begin with prayer. We place a priority on corporate prayer.
One of the things I mentioned last week, we spent some time talking about prayer individually. But prayer is particularly powerful when we come together, where two or three are gathered together, the Lord Jesus makes His presence with us. When we come together as the body of Christ, a corporate body, and we are praying in unity to God, unified, there’s power in that. The church at Ephesus was not unified. Paul is instructing them in prayer so that they can develop this type of unity. Notice back again in verse 8, he wants them to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension. Because of the influence of these people, they weren’t praying for the right things, and they didn’t have a unified mind.
Understanding the Will of God
“First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men.”
I’m going to look at that, we looked at all of that last week. I’m going to skip over it so we can get down a little bit, but I’m going to return to it in just a few moments. Why does he say pray for all men? I think it is because they were not praying for all mankind. They were not praying for the salvation of people. They were focused on their own local group. Coming out of this Jewish thought, they’re thinking that in order for a person to be saved, he must become a Jew. And so they’re not praying for the rulers and the leaders. Notice that they are to pray particularly for those in authority, with the result that they may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
Then the next phrase is the reason that they are to do this:
“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.”
So here we come to our first thought this morning. How should we understand the will of God? What is it this passage teaches us about the nature of God’s will? We’re going to look at the will of God, the will of man, the will of Christ, and then consider what that means for worship.
Praying for All Mankind
Why do we pray for all mankind? Why do we not exclude anyone in our prayers for salvation? You’re not to exclude anyone because they are poor, or because they live on the street, and forget about wealthy people. It doesn’t matter the category, we’re to lift them up to the Lord. Everyone has that great need of salvation in Jesus Christ. Why are we to do that? Because God is pleased with that. He’s pleased when we pray for people to come to faith in Christ.
“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.”
That’s the desire of God. That’s the will of God. When we talk about the will of God theologically, there are two ways that word is used. The Greek word here is thelei, the root word is thelo. It means a desire, a resolve, or to take pleasure in. Let’s talk first of all about God’s sovereign will.
God’s Sovereign (Decretive) Will
Sometimes it’s called His decretive will. One thing we need to recognize is that it transcends anything that we know. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. The Scripture makes it clear that the sovereign will of God is an absolute. I began in worship with David’s prayer, which talks about God’s sovereignty over this world. There are countless scriptures in the Bible that describe the sovereign will of God, the will that brought creation into existence, unfolds history, and guarantees the future. Let me give you a few examples:
- “Many are the plans of a man’s heart, but the counsel of the Lord will stand.” (Proverbs 19:21)
- “The Lord of hosts has sworn saying, ‘Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand.'” (Isaiah 14:24)
- “Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure.'” (Isaiah 46:9-10)
- “There is no wisdom, no understanding, no counsel that can stand or avail against God.” (Proverbs 21:30)
We live in an age of supercomputers and artificial intelligence. Some people are beginning to say that in just a few years, these things will be many times all the knowledge, wisdom, and comprehension of humans on the planet together. Is that going to be? I don’t know. God could let that happen or He might disrupt the whole thing like He did the Tower of Babel. But I do know this: if they build that thing and it’s a million times smarter than all the intelligence on Earth, it is nothing compared to God. God is infinitely wiser, greater, and more powerful. We put our trust in the God who makes all things sure.
God’s Desired Will
There is also another definition for this word “will”. If you go back to the classical Greek period, there was a sharp distinction between the word thelo and another word reserved for a fixed resolve. When we’re talking about the sovereign will of God, we’re talking about His resolve—what He has decided previously that will unfold throughout history. It won’t change because God is immutable.
When we’re talking about the other word, a desire or a wish to have, that’s what we have actually in this verse. God’s desire is for all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. He has a will that expresses His desire. An example of this is when God says in the Old Testament, “You shall have no other gods before me.” That’s His desire, His commandment to us. Do people have other gods before Him? Yes, they do. It’s God’s will that we don’t use His name in vain, or covet, or lie. But people do lie. If this was God’s fixed sovereign will, no one would lie.
If this verse, “who desires all men to be saved,” was God’s sovereign will, everyone would be saved. Universalists go to this verse and interpret it that way. But the Lord Jesus Himself talked about the broad way and the narrow way, and the eternal nature of hell. So this verse is expressing something that is characteristic of God’s heart. He loves people. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Does He send people to hell? You bet He does. How can these two things both be true?
Think of a good and kind judge. People come before him who have committed crimes. It’s not his heart to see them put away in prison, but to preserve justice, those who are guilty, he condemns. If you were a judge, would you ever want to condemn someone to death? I don’t think any of us would. And yet, that’s what justice sometimes requires. God is absolutely perfectly just and righteous. When a lost person is found, God is delighted. All of heaven rejoices.
The Will of Man in Worship
Now, the will of man. In the Ephesian example, certain men were running the church into speculation and meaningless talk. They had narrowed inward, considering themselves an elite group, praying only for themselves. They were not looking outside. What people were doing when they came together was worshiping God in a way that pleased themselves.
Every evil that comes about in this world, and every problem that comes about in worship, comes about because people do what they want instead of what God wants. Today, if you look broadly at the church, it’s an anything-goes kind of world. Hiring professional rock groups, light shows, building sermon series around movie clips—why do they do these things? They marshal good reasons. They want to bring in people who are lost. They survey their group because they don’t want disunity. And yet, there’s no reason good enough to insert things into worship that God didn’t ask for. Everything in worship should bend to the will of God.
The Puritans called the practice of bringing things in that we want or like will worship. They pointed out from Old Testament examples—like Nadab and Abihu bringing strange fire, Korah’s arrogance, or King Uzziah offering incense—that it wasn’t a healthy practice. God struck them down or punished them because they did things He didn’t ask for.
The Will of Christ
Then we have the example of Christ.
“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.”
Jesus bent His will to the Father’s will. Notice the emphasis on the man Christ Jesus. If He were not a man, He couldn’t stand in our place. He is fully God and completely a human being, made the perfect mediator. In Matthew 26:39, in the Garden of Gethsemane, He says:
“O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”
It was impossible for Him to want to have the sins and filth of this world laid on Him, to endure the wrath of God. But He says:
“Nevertheless, not my will but Thy will be done.”
He says in Hebrews 10:9:
“Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.”
What is the will of God? That He offer Himself as a substitute in the place of sinners. He did that to please the Father and to bring about the salvation of man.
Before I close, I want to give an example of God’s sovereign will in salvation from John 6:37-40:
“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me. This is the will of Him who sent me, that of all that He has given me I lose nothing but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on the last day.”
That’s certain. That’s the sovereign will of God in salvation.
Bending Our Will to God
We need to bend our will to the will of God, especially in worship. What about evangelism? No one comes to faith apart from the word of God and the application of that word by the Holy Spirit to their heart. Prayer for people to come to faith is vital. It’s far more important than attracting them by a show. Revivals come because of the outpouring of the Spirit of God.
What about unity? A.W. Tozer said, “Have you thought about the fact that if you have 100 pianos and all of the pianos are tuned to the same tuning fork, then all the pianos are tuned together. They all agree.” He says, “So 100 worshipers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become unity conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for a closer fellowship.”
What’s the answer? When we look to Jesus Christ, when we bend our heart to the will of the Father willingly out of love, then we’re tuning our hearts to each other as well. We find unity in true worship and right teaching. Let me pray for us.
Father, I’m so thankful for the ministry of Your word and Your abundant grace and mercy, because we go astray in so many ways. We thank You, Father, for the work of our Savior, the Lord Jesus, because our hearts do drift. We thank You, Father, that being true of mankind, Jesus, our great Savior, took our place. We all like sheep have gone astray, we’ve turned everyone to his own way, but You, Father, laid the iniquity of us all on Him, and He paid that price. And we’re made right with You. Father, we want to please You. You’ve given us so much. Help us to have a heart to please You, not to seek our own way and our own purposes, but to bend our will to Your will. To seek what You have to teach us in Your word, and to follow it by the help of the Holy Spirit. Keep us in this, we pray. Father, we lift up countless people that we know all around us, loved ones, neighbors, and people that we brush shoulders with. People from every walk of life who have something in common: a desperate need for You. We ask, Lord, that You use us. Help us to pray for them, lift them up before You. Give us the words to say to communicate the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Help us, Lord, to be faithful in these things, and bless this church. May the name of Christ be magnified, especially by seeing sinners brought into being true worshipers by the grace that comes to them through Jesus Christ. Thank You, Father, for Your love for us, Your mercies in Christ. Bless us we pray, in Christ’s name. Amen.
