Praying For All People

 

Praying for All People

 

Guests, we are in a series from the book of 1 Timothy. It's a letter written by the apostle Paul to his son in the faith and co-laborer Timothy who has been left in Ephesus to pastor the church and to confront certain teachers of false doctrine.

 

Although Paul begins with this urgent charge to Timothy to deal strongly with false teachers, the primary purpose of Paul's writing this letter is found in 3: that they would know how to conduct themselves in the church, the house of the living God. It's a letter written to Timothy, but he meant for the church in Ephesus to read it over his shoulder.

 

1 Timothy 2:1-7

 

I.                   The priority of prayer

 

With all the things Paul could address first concerning life in the church, he begins with prayer. First of all, then, I urge... Places prayer at the top of the list - in essence he's saying, church I urge you to make prayer of first importance. Make it a top priority.

 

Jesus placed same priority on prayer. When Jesus entered the temple he was angered to see the way they had transformed the temple into a profit center, buying and selling religious merchandise, and he quoted Isaiah, saying, "My house shall be called a house of prayer - you have made it a den of thieves." God's house is to be known as a house of prayer. It is of first importance.

 

As we neared the end of 2007, the Lord was convicting me that as a church we needed to have more corporate prayer being lifted to the Lord. With that in mind, we have sought to provide more contexts for corporate prayer, including Sunday mornings between 9:15-9:45am for the service. God's house is to be known as a house of prayer.

 

• Recently I have heard several Christians say very honestly that their personal devotional time with the Lord is weak, and even neglected. I have no doubt that if I asked each of you individually, most if not all would say that you need to grow in the area of prayer. I share that struggle and am not satisfied with my prayer life.
• One thing that this indicates is that we need a fresh vision of the power of prayer!
• The most powerful weapon in believer's arsenal is prayer.
• Mary Queen of Scots said of John Knox, "I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe."
• Prayer is so powerful because it is calling upon God to do what only God can do. And when a church prays and then sees God move, God gets the glory.
• I met with Mike, Matt, and Pat to pray and discuss what we felt the Lord had for the church for this year. The reason we were doing that is so that we could share those things with you soon so that we as a church body can join hearts and prayers together to ask God to do great things in this year. And after we had written out everything, noticed that several of the things were things that we had no power to do - had to be done by God. That is exactly right! That is what is exciting - to ask together that God do great things that are out of our reach and then watch Him do His work. That is what testimonies are made of - remember when we needed God to answer and He did?

 

II.                 The connection between prayer and the mission of the church

 

Prayer is essential part in our relationship with God and therefore is necessary in every point of our lives, but in this passage Paul is focusing on one particular direction in prayer: the connection between the prayer and the mission of the church. Paul's passion is for the gospel and his appeal reflects that passion!

 

Follow his train of thought. We should pray for all people - including for kings and those in high positions (reminder to us during this election year - pray for nominees, pray that the best leader will be elected, whoever is elected) so we can live quiet, peaceful lives with godly, dignified testimonies. Paul's concern isn't that we live the American dream, with everyone having a white picket fence and get to watch Superbowl without being interrupted. Paul urges the church to pray for a peaceful society because he believes that a peaceful society facilitates the spread of the gospel. It always comes back to the gospel for Paul - that is the driving passion of his life!

 

The first thing Paul says about life in the local church is that it should be marked by prayer for all people to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ

 

a.       This is good and pleasing to God, because He desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (vs 3-4)

 

There is a doctrinal difficulty here. Notice Paul's emphasis in verse 1 - pray for all people, and in verse 4 - God desires all people to be saved.

 

This could take us into some doctrinal deep weeds and could even seem to contradict other passages - that God is sovereign over the salvation of lost souls, that no one will be saved of their own will but by the will of God. Is Paul saying that everyone will be saved - we know that isn't true. Is he saying God wants everyone to be saved, but can't make that happen? Is God not sovereignly able to save whom He chooses? These are deep weeds.

 

Not the only place where there is mystery and seeming contradiction about this very point.

 

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. John 5:39-40 (ESV)  

 

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. John 6:44 (ESV)  

 

Which is it? Do they refuse to come to Jesus? Or can they not come to Jesus unless the Father draws them. Is it that they will not? Or cannot? Jesus taught both. Here we come to mystery - and we must leave it at that. God does love all people and desires them to be saved, yet for reasons we cannot fully understand, He does not choose to save all.

 

Both truths are true: God is the One who must save. We cannot save ourselves. Even the faith we have to believe in Jesus Christ is the gift of God. The saved are the elect - chosen by God before the foundation of the world. That is true. Also true that the call of the gospel is universal - it is to all people. Not to some, not to most, but to all. All who believe the gospel will be saved. True.

 

John Stott makes an excellent point about this tension:

 

Election is usually introduced in Scripture to humble us (reminding us that the credit for our salvation belongs to God alone), or to reassure us (promising us that God's love will never let us go), or to stir us to mission...Election is never introduced in order to contradict the universal offer of the gospel or to provide us with an excuse for opting out of world evangelization. If some are excluded it is because they exclude themselves by rejecting the gospel offer. As for God, He wants all men to be saved.[1]

 

We don't need to solve the mystery between God's sovereignty and human responsibility - our finite minds cannot resolve it. What Paul is combating here is the kind of passive exclusivism - "we are the frozen chosen mentality" - that false teachers were producing in Ephesus and can be a blight in churches to this day.

 

The same kind of paralysis that came to the church in William Carey's day when he proposed to go to India to bring the gospel to lost souls there. A Baptist minister rebuked him with words, "sit down, young man. When God wants to convert the heathen, He'll do it without your help and mine."

 

That Baptist minister distorted the doctrine of God's sovereignty in man's salvation into an attitude that the Bible never meant for us to have. In fact, in his second letter to Timothy, Paul writes:

 

Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.  2 Tim. 2:10 (ESV)  

 

The elect, but no passivity there - I endure everything - knowing that it is God who does the saving, Paul was energized with faith to work and labor and endure for their sake! May the glorious truth that it is God and God alone who saves never paralyze us from entering the labor, but rather fill us w/confidence that God saves and God uses us as His vessels.

 

Life in the local church should be marked by prayer for all people to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ

 

b.      It is knowledge of the truth that saves - For there is one God and one mediator

 

What is the truth that saves? That there is only one God and only one mediator between God and man - the man Jesus Christ.

 

Sin has created a relational breach between God and man - a breach of enmity that is uncrossable by any effort man can make. At one point Job cries out a prayer that reaches through the ages for all mankind:

 

If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both.

 

Calling for someone to arbitrate (mediate) between God and himself. If only there were someone who could. There is one - one in all of history. As fully God and fully Man Jesus is uniquely able to stand between holy God and sinful man. He laid his hand upon both - satisfying the justice of Father, and

ransoming us back to God!

 

That is the testimony that Paul has been appointed to herald and teach to all people, particularly the

Gentiles. That is our message as well. To all people.

 

Life in the local church should be marked by prayer for all people to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ

 

c.       Application points

 

1. Pray for all people

 

1.  
   • God loves all people, not just certain kinds of people. Our prayers should reach across all ethnic lines, across all economic lines, across all educational lines.
   • Also across all moral lines. One form of self-righteousness that was true of the Pharisees and we must be on guard for is looking down on those who are in the grip of what we might consider a "big" sin. Homosexual lifestyle, cheat on their spouses or get drunk and high every weekend or are angry, violent people.
   • We see their sin. God sees their souls and He loves them. Just as He loved us.
   • Pray for all people!

 

1. Pray specifically for people

 

1.  
   • Having encouraged us to pray for all people, I mean people from all walks and nations and lifestyles, but we must pray specifically. The "God bless everyone in the world" or "Please bless all the missionaries" kind of prayer is quite useless. We need to pray specifically if our prayers will have power.

 

A family in a church I pastored years ago brought a young man to church who wasn't a Christian. He was a fine young man, but openly skeptical about claims of Christ. After getting pretty involved in life of the church, he stopped coming. He had moved in with a girl, gotten into drinking and drugs really heavy.

 

I met with family who had befriended him and brought him to church. Their young daughter was especially devastated and it was my counsel to her that she needed to realize that he had heard the gospel clearly and had decided to reject it. She must go on - pray for him, but not hold onto false hope. Honestly, my faith was pretty weak. But hers wasn't. She declared that she would continue to pray for him and she was sure he would come to know Jesus Christ as his Savior.

 

Several months later, I got a call at midnight from that young man. Alone in a fire station, and knew he needed help. I met him there in middle of night and he prayed to receive Christ as his Savior. I had the joy of baptizing him a few months later!

 

That young girl that prayed for him? He married her, and they now have three kids and he is a very strong Christian man. Believe in the power of prayer specifically for someone you might think is beyond reach.

 

Conclusion:

 

• There is no easier way to be involved in evangelism. You may say I'm not any good at witnessing. Well, we all need to do it because God calls us to do it and will use the feeblest witness in ways we can't imagine. But here is a way that does not require speaking to man - requires speaking to God on behalf of man. Let it not be said of Sovereign Grace Church that we were a prayerless church, lacking power and seeing little conversions because we didn't pray.
• I encourage you to write down one or two names of people God puts on heart to pray for and then remember them every day.
• If you are not a Christian, prayer begins by asking God to save you based on finished work of Jesus Christ. It is God who saves us, but He will not save us without prayer - must ask Him to save you and cleanse you and change you. Do that today.

 

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[1] John Stott, The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus, pg. 64-65