A teacher came into a classroom one morning and saw a group of boys huddled over in the corners on their knees. She was quite concerned. And she asked them, "What are you doing over there?" And they said, "Don’t worry. We’re just shooting craps." And she said, "Oh, what a relief. I thought you might have been praying." Isn’t it funny? We have removed prayer from the public schools. And it’s easy for us to decry the removal of prayer from public schools. But it makes me wonder what’s stopping us from praying. We may say, "Oh, it’s not allowed in the public school system." But, it’s allowed in our houses, isn’t it? It’s allowed in our churches. It’s allowed in lots of places. And it’s even allowed in public schools. I’ve heard that as long as there are final exams, there will be prayer in public schools.
There are many programs, lots of plans, that are laid out for the Church today. There are many ways to make the Church explode. Lots of ways for the Church to do this or that or accomplish this or that. But I found it interesting this week, as I thought about prayer, that back in Acts 6 when the Church was first forming and there were a lot of things going on and there were people who needed help, notice what the Apostles said. "Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. And we will turn this responsibility [that is, the feeding of a certain group of widows] over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word." That’s a very instructive verse of Scripture, right there at the beginning of the Church as it first was getting off the ground.
These men, filled with the Holy Spirit and full of the wisdom of God knew that they could be distracted and gone out in all kinds of different directions, and those directions were important. It was important that those things be done. It’s important that the lights go on. It’s important that people are fed. But, at a foundational level, these elders said, "We want to make sure that we give appropriate and prioritized attention to two things: prayer and the ministry of the Word."
Now Paul, here in this passage he is writing and giving instructions for the activity of the church that this young man, Timothy, was the pastor of. And in doing so, he wasn’t exclusive, but there is a certain priority listed here. In verse 1 of chapter 2, he says, "I urge you first of all [and this isn’t just the first thing I’m going to talk to you about, but in terms of priority] the first thing that I want you to remember is that you should be praying."
I was in a church one time where the Pastor said, "I’m going to tell you the key to the Christian life." And people were all aquiver waiting for this wonderful thing. And he said, "Prayer." The air went out of that crowd like the air out of a balloon. Prayer? Yes, prayer. We have become so bored with prayer. Perhaps, it seems ineffective. Or perhaps it seems like doing nothing, compared with doing something. "Oh, let’s not just pray about it. Let’s do something about it." When are we going to learn that praying is doing something
Paul is going to expand our horizons this morning, as he calls us to pray, because he’s going to give us reasons – what we should be praying about. Normally, as you know, I preach three point sermons. Last week you might have been surprised to find I preached a five point sermon. This week it’s eight! I can’t tell you what next week is going to be, but I’m on some kind of a roll. Some of you may say, "Oh, here’s another sermon about prayer. It’s boring. I’ve heard it all before." Brothers and sisters, I’m going to tell you from experience of 45 years of being a believer, 25 years of being a Pastor, prayer is foundationally critical to an effective Christian life, and an effective church. Because what Paul is going to tell us here is that we have been called to something. We have been called to the great path of being intercessors for the greatest enterprise ever undertaken in the history of the world; the taking of the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a world lost in sin. That’s what we are. That’s what we’ve been called to do. And here we are called to pray, then, for certain things Paul says.
The first thing we are to do is to pray for everyone. When I was a kid, this was easy. Pray for all the missionaries. It was a very general prayer. It covered the whole waterfront in one short phrase. But that really isn’t what Paul is talking about here, just praying in a blanket way for everyone. But, he’s saying that, "I want you, with these four ways to pray (or these four statements) requests, prayers, intercession, thanksgiving. I want you to be doing that on a regular basis for everyone that you can think of, everyone who you can maybe call by name. I want you to be praying for people because there is no person who is to be outside of the sphere of your prayers." Everyone in the world is one of two types of person. He’s either a captive to the lies of Satan and the deeds of darkness, or he is a rescuer for those people. He is either one who is in chains or one who is bringing the bolt cutters to rescue someone from chains. And in that light, we can pray for everyone either to be an effective witness or to be freed from the chains that they are in.
I don’t know about you, but you drive around and you see people. You see people maybe dressed certain ways. I was driving around Arizona Avenue the other day and I saw a young man and if we were going to classify him we would say he was a Goth, you know the whole black thing, the black thing and the spiked hair. You know, he had all that stuff on. The chains were jangling, you know the whole thing. The first response is, humanly, typically to say, "Oh, there’s that Goth. Stay away from him!" But, maybe it was because I was working on this message, starting to think. I said to myself, "You know what? The thing to do when you see a person who you identify (very, very possibly wrongly. Who said he wasn’t a believer?), but just to say if he wasn’t, but ’Lord, would You bring someone into that young man’s life to share the gospel with him?’" Pray for someone, to see someone and say either they’re a believer who needs to be prayed for their effectiveness or they’re a non-believer who needs to be freed from chains.
We need to begin to see the world in spiritual terms. It’s so easy sometimes to identify someone as, "Oh. They’re skinny. They’re tall. They’re heavy. They’re something." They’re people in need of the Lord. To see the world as God sees the world. We need to start to pray for people, to make it a regular habit to see someone and say, "Let’s pray for them." Do you pray sometimes when you hear a siren? Because that siren means someone’s in trouble somewhere. There’s been an accident. Someone’s been hurt. There’s a fire. Stop and pray.
So we pray for everyone, and specifically we pray for those in authority. "I urge you, then, first of all requests, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for everyone." And then he gets more specific in verse 2, "For kings, and all those in authority." Who can tell me who the emperor was during the time this book was written? Nero. A fine Christian man if there ever was. Why should I pray for Nero? Why should I pray for Krushchev? (Who was the bad guy when I was a kid.) Because those people have been given authority and power by God for a period of time in a particular place to make things better for the world or worse. Look at what Romans 13 says, "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God." You notice the lack of caveats in that verse? You notice the lack of "except fors" in that verse? Even bad leaders are established by God. They may not last very long. They may go down in flames. But, they are authorities that have been established by God and they’re used by God to punish evildoers, and even evil men will punish evildoers.
History tells us that rulers can make it very tough for the Church to function as it should. Not only in times of active persecution, but sometimes leaders lead the nation into moral decay. Isn’t it amazing in our day that we are finding out that mayors of small towns can turn this nation on its ear by marrying homosexual couples? Some little mayor somewhere, who God has put into position of authority, has decided that he is going to use his puny office (and mayor is a puny office, especially in a puny town) to decide that he’s going to marry somebody, and someone who according to the laws of the land he shouldn’t marry. But he’s going to do it anyway. And suddenly, the whole nation is in an uproar. Isn’t it amazing the power that one person can have? And so we pray that even those who are not believers that they will stand for order, for peace, for a semblance of righteousness.
"For kings, and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness." That’s what God wants. And so we pray that there will be peace, which is a quiet arising from the absence of outward disturbance. It’s harder to be an effective believer, sharing the gospel in an orderly fashion when the society is in chaos. And so, God has a stake in keeping things peaceful, and orderly, and lawful. And we should pray to that end. Satan is the one who promotes anarchy and lawlessness and death. That’s what he does. So, pray for those in authority. This is because we are called to be intercessors. We are the intercessors for the world. We have no idea how our prayers impact our city, our state, our country, our world. And yet, God uses them.
So we pray for everyone, and specifically for those in authority. We also pray for the purity of our Christian testimony. Verse 2, "that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness." Isn’t that an interesting phrase? Sometimes we have painted the Christian life as this frenetic life of activity, going here and going there and always on the fly. And God said that He wants us to pray that we may live peaceful and quiet lives, impacting those in our sphere of influence for the glory of God.
Lifestyle is incredibly important. What we say with our mouth is part of our testimony. How we act, how we act is the larger part of our testimony. I have a friend, not a good friend but better than an acquaintance, who worked for a while in an office with a group of believers. They were obvious believers. They were vocal believers. And yet, the way they treated him, the accusations they made against him, the things they said about him and to him, caused him to want nothing to do with Christianity. He’s okay with me as a preacher, he just doesn’t want to hear what I’ve got to say. Because someone has already blown out his light by their behavior. So we pray that we might live righteously. Living the Christian life is tough enough in a godly atmosphere. And so we pray for an atmosphere that is godly, where our lights can shine. It’s important. It’s important that we live lives that reflect the holiness, the righteousness of God.
Several years ago a commuter train was stalled on the tracks just a few minutes before a fast freight was due to pass through. A conductor was quickly sent back down the tracks (this was the days before telephones, perhaps) to flag down the approaching freight train. And being assured that all was well, the passengers in the commuter train all patiently relaxed in their seats. Suddenly, however, the speeding freight train came bearing down upon them and crashed into the stalled commuter train. The impact caused hideous destruction and death. The engineer of the freight train escaped death only by jumping from the cab just before impact. Following the accident, a full investigation was conducted. The surviving engineer was called into court and asked to explain why he hadn’t stopped. He said, "I saw a man waving a warning flag. But it was yellow. It wasn’t red. I thought he just wanted me to slow down, not stop." When the flag was later examined, the mystery was explained. It had been red, but because of long exposure to the sun and weather it had become a dirty yellow. And in other words, the conductor thought he was communicating one message, but in reality he sent out an entirely different one. (illustration from SermonCentral.com)
We need to pray that our testimony would be one of God’s work. God’s powerful work in a person’s life to change you and I. When people see us, they should see clearly the person of Jesus Christ.
We also need to pray for proclaimers of the Gospel because there are people doing it. We are told to pray, and verse 3 tells us that, "this prayer is good and pleases God our Savior who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." God says in His Word here, that He wants all men to be saved. Now, this is interesting, this verse, because all men aren’t saved, are they? In fact, not even most are saved. And we know from elsewhere in the Scripture that there is this doctrine called ’predestination’ that says that there are people who are elect by God to be saved. That is a truth that is so commonly taught and so widely taught in Scripture, that we would not be biblical Christians if we did not embrace that as truth. So how can we say then that God wants all men to be saved?
We need to recognize here that the word that is used here in the Greek is not the word used for God’s will of decree, but it is in fact the word for His wishes. In fact, you could say that God wishes, God would like it, if all men were saved. God doesn’t want people to disappear into the fires of hell. If He had wanted that, if that had been His desire, that is where we would all be going, if not already be there. And yet God has sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to spare us from that wrath and to free us from what sin has done in our lives. God desires people to be saved from hell. We know this for a fact. And clearly throughout Scripture this kind of idea is taught: God wants people to hear the Gospel and we’re the ones to tell them and we’re the ones to pray that they do so. And so we teach that God presents salvation as a choice and He also elects His own. I can’t explain that. I can’t tell you how to harmonize that. All I know is that both of those things are taught. And as believers we need to avoid the mistake of fathers centuries ago who said, "If God wants to save them, God will save them. It’s not up to me to tell them." For centuries the Christian Church was lulled into inactivity by that false doctrine. Here’s the truth from the Word of God. God wants everyone to be confronted with the truth of Jesus Christ. God wants the choice presented. God wants the people of God to live such wonderful lives in front of the world that they will say, "Man. I may not agree with what they believe. But you can’t argue with what impact their faith has had on their lives. You can’t argue with what God has done in their lives." And so we pray. And we pray for those who proclaim, who are the ones who are telling people, who are sharing the knowledge of the truth.
We are in a battle. We are in a battle for the souls of men and women. Many of you have heard of the man D.L. Moody, a fine evangelist from another century. He was in England one time, not there to preach but to listen to others preach. And one Sunday in London he was asked to preach even though it wasn’t part of the original plan of his being there. He was asked to preach in a London pulpit. But, somehow when he got up to preach the right atmosphere was not there. He confessed afterwards that he had never had such a hard time preaching. Everything seemed dead. He said to himself, "What a fool I was to commit to preach. I came here to listen and here I am preaching." And then the awful thought came to him that he had to preach again that very night in that very church. And he wasn’t looking forward to it, but he said that he had made the promise so he had to go through with it. But, when Moody stepped into the pulpit that night and faced the congregation, he was aware of a new atmosphere. He said, "The powers of an unseen world seemed to have fallen on the audience." And as he concluded his message and offered the invitation, he said, "If there is a man or woman here tonight who will accept Jesus Christ, please stand up." And 500 people stood up. And now, as Paul Harvey would say, for the rest of the story. When D.L. Moody preached at that morning service, there was a woman in the congregation who had an invalid sister at home. When the woman who was at church returned home, she told him that the preacher had been a Mr. Moody from Chicago. "What?" the invalid sister exclaimed, "Mr. Moody from Chicago? I read about him some time ago in an American newspaper. I’ve been praying for God to send him to London and to preach in our church. If I had known he was going to preach this morning, I wouldn’t have eaten breakfast. I would have spent the whole time in prayer. Now, sister, go out of the room. Lock the door. Send me no dinner. And no matter who comes, don’t let them see me. I am going to spend the whole afternoon and evening in prayer." And so it was that Sunday night when D.L. Moody preached that there was a completely different atmosphere and 500 people said they wanted to accept Jesus Christ. (Illustration from SermonCentral.com)
Sometimes I think that the reason we think that prayer is so (can I use the word) boring for us is because we pray for ourselves. As Keith Green said in one of his songs, "Bless me Lord! Bless me Lord! That’s all I ever hear." Prayer, offered in God’s name and according to God’s will, is going to reflect the character of God. And we all know that the character of God is oriented toward the needs of others. And so, effective prayer is prayer for the needs of other people. Effective prayer is prayer that says, "Not for me. I’m praying for this person. I’m praying for this proclaimer. I’m praying for this other person." And we find that the prayers for ourselves become prayers that, "I would live an effective Christian life for the benefit of others." God is an other-oriented, other-focused being. And prayers that are offered for the needs of others are prayers that are powerfully used by the living God.
Not only do we pray for the proclaimers of the Gospel, but we pray for the captives of Satan. The clear indication of the Gospel message is this: people are lost. When Paul writes in verse 4, "He wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," what does that mean? Well, it’s the converse of that. If He wants them to be saved, it means that they are presently lost. If He wants them to come into the knowledge of the truth, that means that they are currently in ignorance of the truth and are believing lies. Satan’s very good at hiding the truth. Satan’s very good at hiding the fact that God is the source of every good thing we enjoy. Satan is very good at hiding the character of God that is manifested in these verses, verses 1-4. Peace, godliness, orderliness, external and internal peace. That’s what God wants for His people. He doesn’t want chaos and destruction and death. He wants good things. But, Satan’s very good at hiding that. He’s done a wonderful job of taking the credit away from God as Creator and giving it to Mother Nature. Who is Mother Nature? A false god. He’s giving the credit to evolution to explain away a wonderful and complex creation that we enjoy that shouts out of the goodness and the creativity and the wisdom and the power of God.
When mankind turns from God and worship the creation rather than the Creator, bad things happen. Look at Romans 1, "Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore [and here’s the bad part] God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, for the degrading of their bodies with one another." And of course, Romans 1 is full of not only this kind of degradation, but other kinds as well. Satan would love to have us believe that God isn’t real, that God isn’t good, that God isn’t powerful. And that’s what he keeps telling the captives in his prison. Brothers and sisters, we need to pray for those locked in the cells of ignorance, that God will free them.
And while we’re praying for those folks and the proclaimers, we also need to be praying for the advancement of the Gospel. Have you noticed how different Paul is from John? We saw John. He was a random, cyclical thinker. But, Paul is being very linear. He goes in logical steps. He’s a definite left-brainer. Look at verse 5, "For there is one God and one mediator between God and man. That man is Christ Jesus who gave Himself as a ransom for all men, the testimony given in its proper time." ’For’ means ’because’. We pray about these things. We make the praying for the proclaimers and praying for the captives a priority in our lives. Why? Because this is their only hope. For there is only one God and that God has set up only one Mediator between a offended God and an offensive people. There’s only one. There’s only one.
I have a lock here. I bought it at a garage sale. And fortunately, on the back of it there is a combination. Allright! 21-43-32. I could spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the combination is. Or I could believe that the combination that they wrote on the back of this thing is the right one. Truth. This is truth. I can either accept that truth, or I can spend the rest of my life going through all the possible combinations and see if I can find a different one than the one that was told to me. The fact of the matter is that there is only one combination to this lock and it’s 21-43-32. There is only one way to get to an offended God and not be slain by His righteous wrath and that’s J-E-S-U-S.
There is only one God and one Mediator. So, we had better pray for the advancement of the Gospel because the Gospel is the only hope of the world. That’s why Jesus said to His disciples, and to us, "You are the light of the world. And a city set on a hill cannot be hidden." So, don’t hide your light under a bushel basket of sinful behavior and ineffectiveness. Get it off of there. Because there is no hope for the world. George Bush is not the hope of the world. Al Qaeda isn’t the hope of the world. The United Nations isn’t the hope of the world. The World Health Organization isn’t the hope of the world. The Center for Disease Control isn’t the hope of the world. Jesus Christ crucified and risen is the hope of the world. Amen? And so, we pray for the advancement of the Gospel.
This spring, our missionaries John and Susan Kopf in New Guinea are going to be finally, after years of preparations, ready to present the Gospel to the Hewa people. 2,000 people living out in the jungles of New Guinea. Brothers and sisters, when they give us the word that they’re ready to present the Gospel, this church should be on its knees. Because they have taken the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, penetrating a very, very dark place where there is no understanding of God. Only spirits and demons and and murder and death and theft and all kinds of discord. The Gospel is going there. And as it goes there, it should be empowered by the prayer of God’s people. Jesus said to His disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field." This is part of the prayer of the advancement of the Gospel, that God would raise up people who would take the Gospel to places where it has yet to be heard.
Two more. Praying for the purity of the message. Have you ever noticed that the message can get kind of messed up, get kind of hidden? I love verse 6, speaking of Jesus Christ, "who gave Himself as a ransom for all men, the testimony given in its proper time." He gave Himself. He gave Himself. I don’t know if you have yet seen the movie The Passion of the Christ. How many of you have seen it? You know, there are parts of that movie that just hit you. Probably my favorite part: the actor who is portraying Jesus is lying on his face on Mount Calvary, the cross is there on the ground and it’s time to put him on the cross. Do you remember this? He crawls up there by himself. Now, it doesn’t say that in the Bible. But I believe that that was a wonderful visual statement of what Jesus was doing. They didn’t nail Him to that cross. Those nails did not hold Him there. His will held Him there. That is what He came to do and He did it. He gave Himself as a ransom, sufficient for the sins of the world. And this is the sworn witness of God. See that word ’testimony’ there in verse 6, we’ve seen that before haven’t we? Just recently in the book of 1 John, that word ’testimony’ it is the sworn witness of a person who either saw something or believes something. And it was the sworn witness of God that if a person would put his faith and trust in the crucified Lord Jesus Christ, His sins would be paid for. That’s the witness. That’s the statement. That’s the testimony of God. And as jurors, we either say, "Yes. I believe in that testimony." Or we way, "No. I think He’s lying. I think I can do it myself. I don’t need a Savior."
Jesus died in your place. Jesus took your sins upon yourself. Jesus did for you what you could never do for yourself. And in a world that is fast becoming politically correct, that message of the Gospel is as politically incorrect as it can be because it says, "You’re bad. But somebody else was good. And His goodness can wipe out your badness."
And, finally, we pray for boldness. We pray for boldness. We have an overwhelming task. Paul had this task. "For this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle – I am telling the truth – and a teacher of the true faith to the Gentiles." That was who Paul was called to. And he was a bold proclaimer of the truth. Boldness is a scary thing. The hard thing about rescuing these captives is that maybe they are enjoying their captivity. There aren’t that many people who are just coming up and pounding on the doors of the church and saying, "Man. I’m a captive of sin. Would you help me get out?" It’s a little rare. Most captives, are relatively content in their captivity. And so we can offer them the Gospel and they can sometimes be quite hostile in their rejection.
I didn’t ask Tom if I can use this illustration, but I’m going to. My son Tom had a job experience on Thursday where he got to try to be a telemarketer for a day. And he did not have fun. And he didn’t get the job and he was glad of it. Because who of us like to get rejected. Even over the phone it’s tough. And it’s even tougher face to face when we present the Gospel and someone turns us down. And so we’re afraid. We all know. We’re learning, aren’t we, that fear is the enemy of the Christian life? And so, many times, we have been so petrified by rejection that we are just, "I’d rather leave you in your chains than offer you a way out of those chains because I’m afraid of what you’ll do if you don’t like my offer." When faced with opposition, we need to respond like the early Church who in their prayers said this, "Now Lord, consider their threats [There were threats that the Jewish people were making against the Church.] and enable Your servants to speak Your Word with great boldness." What an interesting response. Because you’d think their response would have been, "Keep Your servants safe from harm." Okay, that’s not a bad thing either. But, here’s their priority, "Don’t let us chicken out. Don’t let us go into a hiding hole. Let us preach the Word with boldness." That takes prayer.
Friends, we’re at war. We are involved in the greatest rescue operation in the history of the universe. People are dying. It’s not something money can solve. It’s not something an army can solve, though it’s been tried. It’s only something prayer can solve. Prayer for ourselves as we work to proclaim, prayer for those who are captive, prayer for those who are taking the Gospel. I am calling us to prayer. This Saturday would be a great time to start. It’s the best thing. The best thing that we can do is to pray.
