Dennis Tuuri

# 1 Timothy 2:1-8

I exhort therefore that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who will have all men to be saved and to come into the knowledge of the truth.

For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time, whereunto I am ordained a preacher and an apostle, I speak the truth in Christ, and lie not, a teacher of the Gentiles, in faith and verity. I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. Let us pray.

Lord God, we thank you for your word and we thank you for the value your word tells us is to be placed upon it. And we pray Lord God that we would value it highly now as we consider it and meditate upon it and listen to your servant teach us about it. Father, we pray that your Holy Spirit would do his work. We know that without your spirit, all this is pointless and indeed redounds to our hurt if we close our ears. Help us Lord God then by your Holy Spirit open our ears to receive the things of your word to transform our lives and the life of our culture.

We ask this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in the sake of his kingdom and not ours. Amen.

I want to open with something quite gruesome at the beginning of this sermon. I’ve talked with a couple of you during the week and I know at least one of you have seen the same show that I saw last week on the Discovery Channel and I want to open with this for two reasons. First of all to remind us about what we learned last week from the scriptures.

Remember last week we dealt with the first of five faithful sayings in the pastoral epistles. First by way of chronology, first also by way of emphasis, that faithful saying is that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And I want to use this illustration first to remind us of that truth. But I also want to use it as a transforming text to go into the text we have today as a segue so to speak.

I watched a show on the Discovery Channel called Animal Cannibalism and I wish—well, I shouldn’t say I wish I didn’t see it. The Providence of God, I did, but it was very disturbing. They show different sorts of animals, beginning at least in some ways with small insect-like creatures and going to fish and up to chimpanzees that eat each other and eat their young particularly. So it was horrific to watch that development.

But as I turned the show on, I just didn’t know it was on. I had intended to see it, but I saw this interesting thing on the screen that drew my attention to the show. And they had film—I don’t know how they do this, but they do it these days. They showed the womb of a particular variety of shark. And in this womb, they showed a fairly good-sized shark not yet born.

And the way this shark grows and the way this particular species of shark works is they got lots of little sharks in there. And only one makes it out. And you can imagine why that is. The one eats the rest of the sharks. And they showed this shark in a feeding frenzy within the womb, gnawing, devouring smaller, malformed, immature sharks, brothers and sisters. Blood is in this womb and it’s a picture to us.

The Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Remember we talked last week about the Canons of Dort, some of us are going through Friday evenings, and how in the section on the third and fourth head of doctrine—now that is dealing with what we call today total depravity and irresistible grace, the T and the I, high of the TULIP formulation, the five points of Calvinism—but those five points really come back from the Canons and it wasn’t arranged that way. They started with unconditional election and it isn’t even entitled that. But in any event, you know, in terms of the Canons, they deal with total depravity along with irresistible grace. Why? Because the Remonstrance, the Armenians, they held a position. They said they gave feigned submission to the doctrine of the depravity of man. And they made a statement that probably a lot of people would agree with, including us, about what they thought about man’s depravity, but they went on to speak about the resistibility of God’s grace.

And in the Canons of the synod at Dort, the international synod there, tried to teach through their mechanism and still do to this day, that those two positions are in contradiction. And the way they did that was to start in the section on the third and fourth head of doctrine where they really—the subject was irresistible grace. They began with several series of statements about the depravity of man because if you fully understand how depraved man is and how fallen he is and how the fall has reached into every element of his being—he’s not as bad as he could be, but he’s depraved totally in the sense of touching all of who he is—then you understand the complete need for irresistible grace.

And so we talked about the fact that in those Canons, they start with saying, talk about man’s fall and the things he gave up, but not just the things he gave up, the things he clung to, then and the moral perversions that now he was given over to as a result of the original fall. And then in the second paragraph of that third and fourth head of doctrine, it talks about the fact that man then propagated a seed. Like he was fallen by propagation. And then in the third point, they said these were children of wrath. Man’s wrath or God’s wrath resides upon all men or upon children, not just from the womb on, but from conception on.

And so that picture of the shark in the womb is a picture of your child, folks, in the womb, in my children in the womb, upon their conception, what they receive from Adam as their covenantal head is a corrupt nature. And they are no different—the scriptures say in the womb—than that. No, they’re different. They’re men. They’re not sharks. But they’re no different in terms of what that image brings to us of the understanding of the depth of man’s depravity.

I’m going to refer to this again later, but I’m going to bring it up now. In last Friday night’s study, we talked about the call of God. You know, does God give a well-meaning offer of the gospel? Is it a—and the word used by the synod was it was a serious call that God gives to man. And they’re talking about that. And you know, today you hear people use the word invitation. You give invitations and some people respond to the invitation, others don’t. And that’s too bad. They don’t respond and some do. But that wasn’t the word that was used. And it’s not the concept that’s given to us in our modern sense of invitation of the call of the gospel of God.

The Jesus gave a parable of the king who would invite men to a marriage supper for his son and he sent messengers out to call them to that marriage supper. And the messengers he sent out were killed by the men that they were sent out to. And the king then sends out and kills those people. And then he calls others. And what’s Jesus talking about? He’s talking about the Pharisees. He’s talking about Jerusalem in the context of which he’s saying. And he’s talking about the spread of the gospel to the Gentiles. But he’s talking about that in a way that is applicable to us today.

The call goes out to men and it is not an invitation. It is a command for man to repent of his sins and to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And men reject that. And in the rejecting of it, God slays them. The sword is a two-edged sword. And the preaching of the gospel is the effectual means whereby God accomplishes that call.

Now, it’s important then to understand the nature of the preaching of the gospel by that illustration, that it is a command. It is not an invitation. Okay? But secondly, that parable says, you know, he doesn’t just go out and some men reject it and then he kills them. The men that reject the call kill the messengers. Why is that? Why does he say that? Well, you know, in the first application, he’s talking about the fact that they killed the prophets. They’re going to kill Jesus and then he’s going to give them another 40 years and they’re going to kill, you know, the prophets from the church.

But it also tells us of the nature of fallen man. We’re going to talk later about wrath. We’re supposed to pray without wrath. And Jesus says, if you’re angry with your brother, you’re guilty of murder. We hate our brother in our fallen state because we hate God and we want to kill God and we will kill his messengers. That’s the shark in the womb. That’s our children in the womb. That’s how people are born. That’s the corrupt, depraved nature that God has given to us according to the scriptures.

We’re children of wrath, totally given over. Now, we don’t all do that and we’re glad we don’t all. We’re not all as bad as we could be. But in terms of who we are and in terms of our relationship to God, we actively suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness and all the rest of that wicked recitation of sins, the recitation of wicked sins that Romans 1 contains is you and it’s me in our fallen state before the regeneration, the new creation, the new birth that God gives us of his sovereign good pleasure through the preaching of the gospel to the elect that he’s called.

Okay. Now, I bring all this up because I want to remind us of the depth of man’s depravity. Because what we’re talking about today is not a nice little formula that Paul gives Timothy that people say, well, he wants all men to be saved and so we got to pray that God would bless the president and bless the civil rulers. And you know, it’s not what this prayer is about here. Let’s talk about it. We’ll talk about that, but what I remind you of is that this is a prayer for civil authorities.

And we’ll look at that in just a minute. Civil authorities in many ways, they really are a representation certainly of God to man, but of man as well. You get the rulers you deserve. Okay? And the civil state is sort of like the amplified voice of the people. And the people are murderous sharks who would just as soon devour the brother and sister, you know, and would just as soon reach out and kill God if they could and did.

And so the amplification apart from the grace of God is not going to be a good thing for us. It’s going to be real difficult. And it’s in the context of that I think that we have to understand what Paul writes to Timothy in this epistle.

My title is Prayer in the Church. It certainly concerns prayer, but it is prayer specifically, I believe, in the church. And it’s prayer in the church for the civil state. That’s the title of the sermon today. It has to do with worship. It has to do with prayer of the corporate church. And it has to do with prayer specifically for civil rulers.

Now, why do I say that? Well, I don’t want to spend all the time talking about it, but chapter 3 tells us right at the middle of it. We talked about it before. Why does Paul write the epistles? That we might know how to behave ourselves in God’s house. Okay? Particularly the context of the church.

And he’s writing to this—this is a pastoral epistle—to tell Timothy how the pastors under Timothy should go about using the office that God has called him to do. And so that’s what this epistle is about. And so we know that this section prayer is turning, referring primarily to corporate prayer.

We know it also a couple other things though. Where is this place contextually? Chapter one is dealt with the wannabe elders and the wannabe pastors. And Paul has said I left you there to work, you know, to tell those guys to knock it off, to shut those guys down, to exercise church discipline in its various forms if necessary to shut those guys down. And he brought off that section, completed it in verse 20, which precedes the verse we’re dealing with today, when he talks about two specific gentlemen by name that he delivered over into Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme.

So he’s talking about church discipline in the first section specifically in reference to officers and wannabe elders. So he’s talking about the institutional church. And then right after this in verse 9, after the text we’re to talk about today, he says, “And like men are also, the women should adorn themselves in modest apparel.” And he begins to talk about women because he says in verse 8 that it’s men, not women, who are to pray in the corporate convocations of the church.

Okay? And then he gets into talking about women and we’ll talk about that next week, Lord willing. So the context as well as the statement in Timothy 3 tells us that what this prayer is about is prayer, but it is prayer in the context of the corporate church.

Let’s look specifically at this command then. And notice first of all it is a command. I exhort you. I command you. He says first of all this command has preeminence over the other commands he gives them relative to the conduct of the house of God, the conduct of behavior in God’s house. And he says first of all I command you that the sermons be really good in the preaching services. He doesn’t do that. What he says is I command first of all that these prayers be made for all sorts of men.

Now the preaching of the gospel is extremely important and we simply you know if we omitted the preaching of the gospel and the worship of the Lord it would be a horrific thing and yet that’s the very thing that is happening more and more as different forms of entertainment drive out pulpit time in congregations. Well it’s not going to happen here. So we do emphasize the preaching of God’s word. But understand here that what he’s talking about is the liturgical service of the church. Prayer is a general term. He gets some specifics relative to it here, but it is a term that’s used in terms of corporate prayer, but really it’s a synonym in the New Testament for the worship of the church. Okay.

So, it emphasizes here in addition to the obvious emphasis in terms of the instruction to women not to teach or exercise authority, that teaching and authority must be brought to bear from the word of God to the proclamation of God’s word and the preaching of the pulpit. But he says also to be emphasized here and almost preeminently it seems from the text is the corporate worship in the terms of the prayers of the church.

Well, what is the content? What’s the content of this command that prayer? What are these prayers? Well, he gives us several terms. First, he says that supplications. So, I exhort therefore that first of all supplications. Supplications is a term that has specific reference to needs. Now, some commentators say personal needs, but the word is used throughout the New Testament to talk not just about supplication for our own needs, but also supplication for other people’s needs. This term speaks of specific needs that we see in our lives or lives of people around us or our culture, whatever it is. And those supplications we bring to the one and the only one who can do anything about them, God.

So, supplications. Secondly, prayer. This is a more general term. Hendrickson in his commentary says that well, supplications—he believes we may say that supplications deal with specific needs that arise. You know, you may have a particular need today or this last week, but prayer is a more general term for the continuing need we have apart from specific details. We have a continuing need to be more steadfast in our devotion to the word and in our prayers and the love we exhibit toward our wives or toward our husbands or toward our children. There are those general things and prayer is kind of a summation sort of term.

The third term used is intercessions. And now you normally think here from the English word that what this is talking about is supplications for other people. But remember that I just said that supplications includes—and I don’t want to take the time, but if you do a study of the word—includes various ways in which supplications are made for other people. So that can’t be the meaning here. He would be repeating himself. What is this intercession?

Well, it’s an interesting word, this intercession. The word means in its more literal sense—in its first application, the verbal form means to fall in with someone, to draw near so as to converse familiarly. Doesn’t really, in its denotation, it doesn’t mean intercession as we think of the term. It means to draw near to someone.

Now, in Romans 8, we read that the spirit makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Well, if you look at that word, if you want to look at that just as the spirit making supplication or prayers for us, you’ve got to kind of read that as a connotation into the word, which can be done by the context. But understand that as well, you’ve got to understand that supplication is not the word it’s used one because this is God we’re talking about.

The spirit makes intercession for us. The Son makes intercession according to Hebrews. So, both those terms are used in Hebrews, that is found in chapter 7 verse 25, that Christ ever liveth to make intercession for them, that is, the us, the elect. Well, but what I’m trying to say is that in the denotation of the word in Romans 8, the spirit is said, in by understanding this term means to come into contact with, to enter relationship with, to become in contact and familiar with—the spirit can be said to throw himself into our case. You see, that’s kind of the stress.

If the connotation is that he makes intercession, or in the sense of bringing our request to God, that’s okay. But the specific denotation is the closeness of the Holy Spirit to our particular needs and the state in which we find ourselves. In the same way, when we read that Christ makes intercession for us, yes, we can talk about the intercession he makes through his redemption and always applied to for us to the Father. We can talk about that. But again, here in Hebrews, the specific denotation of the word that’s used really is more that the Lord meets us at every point in our lives in terms of the application of the intercession that he makes with the Father. It is his nearness to us. Okay.

So what does it mean here? Well, here I think that the specific denotation of the word, okay, what does it mean as opposed to what the connotation, what we can draw out from the meaning? The denotation of the word is our nearness to God in prayer. We come into the chamber of God, into his council room, to use some people’s phrase. It’s the nearness with which we can approach God. It is our being accepted by God through Christ’s work. And that supplication talks about that drawing near on our behalf.

Now let me say what other thing about this use of the term as intercession. There is a related term that can be said to have the connotation as I said of intercession, but let me read you a verse in which the same verbal form is used and that’s in Acts 25. This is Festus and Agrippa. Those of you have been here for the last year or two will be familiar with this. We preached on this. And Festus says to Agrippa, he says all men which are here present with us, you see, this man, about whom all the multitude of the Jews have dealt with me. He’s talking about Paul and he’s saying that all the multitudes of the Jews have interceded with me on behalf of this man. That’s the word he’s using. It’s the same word. See, well, what’s going on?

Well, the intercession and the drawing near to Festus can be positive, but it can also be negative. You see, and here it’s negative. And in other places of scripture, it’s negative. So, when we read that we’re to make intercession for the civil state, we don’t want to read into that we’re to make intercession in a positive sense that God would bless the civil state. That’s not said in this text anywhere in any way.

It talks about our drawing near to God and bringing with our nearness to God, our intercessions and prayers and the needs that we see around us. And it brings with us prayers and statements about the kings and princes that rule in the context of the world. And those are not necessarily praise prayers to bless. And in fact, it can be said that to ask for God’s blessing upon an apostate ruler, using those terms, God’s blessing upon an apostate ruler, God doesn’t—those prayers are not acceptable and good in the sight of God because we want to pray in accordance with the revealed word of God and what it tells us.

And God says he doesn’t send blessings upon men that are ethical rebels. He doesn’t bless that shark in the womb as he’s gnawing on his brothers and sisters. And he doesn’t bless the civil state that encourages and even takes children from Christian families. And he doesn’t bless civil rulers who sign declarations of genocide against children in the womb. Doesn’t bless those people. And if we ask him to bless, he’s not happy with us because we’re saying that our emotions, our feelings, our understanding of what should happen in the world is what we want to put into place instead of this.

And see, we’re in our fallen nature, in our old habits. We twist these texts to make them comfortable for us. But the text doesn’t say that. The text says that supplications are to draw near to the one with whom we’re praying. And in that nearness, we’re to speak to him about our civil rulers. But those statements, there’s nothing in these statements that speak against imprecation specifically and to ask for God’s temporal judgments upon wicked rulers. Nothing here that forbids that sense in terms to use supplication.

However, I want to quickly go on to the next thing he says in the verse. He does say you know that we’re to usher out supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks. Giving of thanks. No matter how bad our situation is and no matter how wicked that shark has grown up to be in the context of Nero, who was the Caesar when this epistle was written and Paul knew it was coming down the pike—we’ll talk about that in a little bit. No matter how bad our state is, it’s never so bad as what we deserve. Number one, and it is always in the context of the sovereign God who has brought that to pass, who has ordained it. And so God says we’re to give thanks in everything.

We’re not supposed to grumble or be unthankful about the civil ruler who takes away kids or signs abortion proclamations. We’re not to ask God’s blessing upon him. We’re to pray that would stop and stop soon and that God would Christ would come and bring judgment. But we’re to be thankful in the context of that. Our discontent is spoken against here. The discontent that we have about nearly everything in our lives in our fallen state.

We’re discontent with our physical surroundings. We’re discontent with our pay. I don’t know how. I don’t—well, there probably have been people who are content with their pay, but I don’t. I’ve never met one who’s made a big deal out of it to me. And I’ve never met one who’s real, you know, content with his co-workers necessarily either or with his boss. And I’ve met a lot of men and women who aren’t necessarily all that content with their husbands or their wives or their kids. Discontent.

And we’re all discontent with our rulers to varying degrees if you’re alive, if you’re awake in terms of what’s going on in our country. But it’s sin. It’s sin to fail to give thanks, you know, for our wages or for our employers or for our fellow workers or for our wives or our husbands or our kids or the civil rulers. No matter how bad it is, it’s sin to be repented of—not to give thanks for it. Sin, plain and simple.

You know, every time I talk to people about when somebody brings to me a discussion of my sin, my fallen tendency and your fallen tendency is to make all kinds of excuses for it. And we never get around to actually discussing the sin and hearing confession of that sin. But that’s where it all begins is to confess our sin and move in repentance in terms of thanksgiving for these civil rulers.

So thanksgiving immediately attached to these other things I’ve said about supplications not being just asking for God’s blessing upon the civil ruler. Text tells us that first of all of great paramount importance to the local church is that supplications and prayers and intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and that all are in, and all that are in authority.

And let me just say here then moving on that what we have here is that this prayer is specific to be made for all men, but particularly civil governors. And see, if you look at the way the text is laid out, he says, “Prayers be made for all men, particular.” And then he says, “This is acceptable.” And then he closes it off in verse 8 by saying, “Therefore, I would that all men everywhere pray with holy hands without wrath or doubting.” So, we have the beginning and the end with some reasons in here why this is acceptable, this command.

And so, when we read kings and those that are in authority, it’s not a separate category from the introductory statement that we’re to pray for all men. You see what I’m saying? It’s wrong to break those things off if there wasn’t a verse division then because he’s not saying all men and by the way civil governors. I think the specific point of this prayer is to exhort Timothy for whatever reasons we don’t know that prayer be made for civil governors and all in authority.

And the all men here doesn’t mean all men. It means all sorts of men, all categories of men. And he’s saying that to lead up to the specific point of this is to pray for the civil governors. You see, he doesn’t mean that what to pray for all men. How would we pray for all men here? Do we start with Adam and then Adam and then there was Eve and then there was Abel and there was Cain and there was and go on and list all men in our prayers or we just going to make some kind of vague generalizations about it. I don’t think it’s the prayer that’s being talked about.

Here he’s using all men and he uses it repeatedly. Let’s look briefly here about the use of all men. He says in verse one, prayers be made for all men. Verse four rather, God who hath all men to be saved. Verse 5, there’s one mediator between God and man. God versus all men are in the context of all men. Verse six, he gave himself a ransom for all or all men to be testified to in due time.

Well, he’s not saying each and every person there. What he’s saying is all categories of men, because his point is he wants to get Timothy and the pastors to pray for civil governors and they didn’t want to do it for whatever reason. They were negligent in the obligations or they at least needed to understand how important it was in the corporate worship of God. So he says I believe here very explicitly that prayers be made particularly for the civil rulers.

Now let me just spend a little couple of minutes on that, because you know our natural tendency, I think Arminianism, one of the reasons that become so prevalent in a culture is because it fits our natural man so well. Our natural man wants to do things his way and he wants to have merit in terms of his salvation. He accomplishes something. So when he becomes a Christian, that part, that our sinful tendency is to want some credit for that. And so our Arminianism feeds that desire we have for credit to be given to our works in terms of being, you know, acceptable to God. And so it’s a very, it’s a real tough thing to drive out of yourselves.

Now listen, you’re saying, “Well, you’re making fun of the words here, all men, all sorts of men.” But, but look at now in 1 Timothy or in Titus 2:11, we read, “The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.” The grace that brings salvation has appeared to all men. In Romans 5:18, we read that the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. All men have received the free gift unto justification. And then in 1 Corinthians 15, we read in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made alive.

What does that mean? Does that mean that every last person has been the recipient of salvation’s grace and has been brought into justification and has made alive from as he was made dead in Adam’s fall? We sinned all. So in Christ’s resurrection, did we all, literally every last man, have we all been brought back to spiritual newness and rectitude with God? Well, no. It obviously doesn’t mean that, because then you’d have to throw out most of the rest of the scriptures that talk about God’s wrath abiding upon people and upon those in hell particularly. So that just isn’t the case in scripture.

This term is used repetitively as it is in our culture to mean all sorts of men or a lot of people. You know, you’ve heard this stuff before, but in Mark 11:32, are we to read there that every member of the human race regarded John the Baptist as a prophet? We read that all people did in Luke 3:15 that every member of the human race wondered whether John was perhaps the Christ. Is that what we’re supposed to believe? The text is telling us in Mark 5:20. Are we supposed to believe that every member of the human race marveled about the gathering demoniac? Did everybody in the whole world marvel about that?

In Mark 1:37, are we to understand that text is teaching that every member of the human race was searching for Jesus when everybody—it says all men were searching for Jesus in John 3:26—as it was reported to the Baptist that all members of the human race were flocking to Jesus. Is that what was being said? Well, of course not. And when I tell you that everybody was at Howard’s last night, I don’t mean everybody in the whole world. And I don’t mean everybody at this church. I mean a lot of people were there. That’s the way the language works. And that’s the way the language of the scriptures work.

Scriptures tell us here that we’re to pray for all men in terms of all categories of men. You got to be consistent as this word goes through these eight verses and you can’t consistently apply it to every person because we know that salvation doesn’t come to every person in the providence of God. I mean, in other words, that there’s not one mediator between God and every man because most men at our particular point in our culture don’t have that mediator between God and them who has made peace through his redemption, through his ransom that he’s paid to God the Father on our behalf.

So what the term means here, and I guess I belabored this point a bit, but I want to drive out you know that prevailing tendency that we all have toward Arminianism, but in any event, so this prayer is made for all men, but particularly and specifically—I might even say not even just particularly, specifically—he wants prayer, these prayers to be made for kings and for all that are in authority. That’s what the scriptures tell us.

Now why is this? What’s the purpose? The purpose of this command is given to us in the second half of verse two. That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life with all godliness and honesty. So our purpose, the purpose of God for this command is to have a quiet and peaceable life. And that’s for the elect. God doesn’t want the wicked to have a quiet and peaceable life. He wants their life to be troubled. And he’s promised it will be such.

So when we read this, we read it in terms of God’s particular purposes for the elect. These are unusual words, very infrequently used in the context of the scripture. These words quiet and peaceable here. In 1 Thessalonians 4, we read the word to study to be quiet and to do your own business. That word is used there. It’s used also, references the same sort of thing in 2 Thessalonians 3:12 where we read that with quietness of work we should eat our own bread. It speaks, I think also, want to reference 1 Peter 3:4 where we read of the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.

It speaks, I think, of quiet and peaceable. Quiet in the sense of no interference, as Lenski in his commentary put it, and peaceable in terms of no outward harassments, no inner fears or outward harassments. Quiet and peaceable life. And the text goes on to say this life is to be lived in all godliness and honesty.

Godliness is the attaining to the moral rectitude that exhibits the characteristics of God. It’s something to be strived after—godliness. Putting on the new man is godliness. And then the second word there is honesty. And this is the word that we talked about as the characteristic of the deacon, the deacon’s wife, and the sort of man the elder should be in front of his children. Reverential. Remember we use that term reverential. That’s the word here. Honesty is a bad translation except if you understand honesty in the older use of the term. Shakespeare said this. He said he is of noble strain of approved manner and confirmed honesty. Confirmed honesty. He didn’t mean by that the guy was always telling the truth. He meant his character that he’s speaking of there drew and invited reverence from those that were in the context of.

And so what we’re praying for here in terms of the civil rulers is that our lives might not be troubled by a lot of problems, a lot of gangs going on around us, a lot of fighting problems, theft, increase of crime, increase of foreign wars, etc., leading to problems externally. We don’t want a government that is going to threaten us in the context of our homes with taking away 50% of our earnings every year or threatening to take away our children.

So, we have these interferences of what they’re going to take away next. We don’t want that, the scriptures say. And the scriptures say we’re supposed to live our lives in godliness. That’s supposed to be rewarded by the civil government, not punished. And we’re supposed to be able to do this in such a way as to bring reverence from people to us. We’re not supposed to have a civil government that makes our children mock us or encourages them or allows them to do that or give them sanctuary for that.

You see, so if we understand this verse right so far, we got a lot of things to pray for relative to our civil authorities because our lives are increasingly marked by a lack of inner calm and more external problems, and the punishment of godliness and the reduction, the tearing away from us of the reverence that we should be due by our conduct, whether it’s our children or friends or the culture or whatever. You see what I’m saying? Things are bad, things are bad for us.

But this is the goal. Is this what you want? Would you like a life with less inner fears and more external calmness and more reverential composure and dignity in your home and in the workplace? Well, then this tells us how we’re supposed to get that. This tells us how we’re supposed to do it. And really, the rest goes on to for Paul to say why all this is true. Goes on to say then the reasons why this is what we’re to be praying for.

Recognize that, you know, the truth of Proverbs 21: the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord. And that’s where the hand that can change the king’s heart is. It rests in the providence and sovereignty of God. And so we’re to pray to that end. The acceptability of this command is then laid out for us. And this is very significant, too. It says that this is good and acceptable. So he’s already given the command and now he’s given why it’s acceptable.

Okay? So we’ve already got the main thrust of what God commands us to do in our corporate worship. We’re to pray for the civil state. We’re to pray for them in such a way as to affect this goal that is given for us in verse two. In verses three through six really tells us again why this is acceptable in the sight of God. And he begins that very significantly. He begins that statement by saying this: This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior. God our Savior. This is not, I don’t think, inserted. I don’t think Paul wrote this to Timothy to talk about the doctrine of the trinity. We can use it to talk about that. We can use it to assert the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s fine. But I think in its first application, what he’s talking about here, what is he talking about? He’s talking about prayers for what? The civil state. And which civil state was then ruling? It was Rome. And it was the Caesars. And the Caesars, Octavius, Augustus, the Caesars were said to be Saviors. Caesar is savior, the Greek word here Savior. Caesar is the savior that was proclaimed—that was the faith of the Caesar cult—and that’s what dominated the world at that time.

This is a polemical statement. This is an in-your-face to the false assertions of salvation through the civil state that Caesar made. That’s what it’s here for. This is good and acceptable because Jesus is king of kings. He’s the head of the civil state, not Caesar. And the same thing must be said today in American pulpits that the United States government is not going to usher in salvation for this country. They’ve tried it and it’s producing a wreck in our country. There’s only one Savior and that is God. It’s the triune God, and it’s your faith to remind us again that these prayers are not supposed to be some sort of submissive lackey prayer for God’s blessing upon a civil state that shakes its fist at God and tries to usher in salvation on its terms.

We want to be thankful that God has given us those civil governors. But we want to understand that when they assert their preeminence and their ability to bring in salvation, that they are usurping the crown rights of King Jesus. And they need to be told that and they need to be prayed for in that way, that they would be humbled by God. And isn’t he doing it? Look at the humility that has accompanied this culture in the last few years. God’s humbling. Well, anyway, so Paul importantly here as well says that this is acceptable, good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who will have all men to be saved and to come into the knowledge of the truth. All sorts of men.

What is he saying here? He’s saying that part of your prayer for those civil governors is that God would humble them so that they’d become Christians. You’re not supposed to hate President Clinton. You’re supposed to pray for his regeneration. You see, you’re supposed to pray and believe that God would bring humility to him and if in the providence of God he’s a member of the elect that would become evident and they begin to rule differently. He wants all categories of men. He wants some civil authorities to be saved.

I think by way of application we can make this much broader as well, that the peace and quiet in which we can live is a means by which the gospel can be proclaimed in our neighborhoods and people, most of the people around us, you know, long term are converted through that preaching of the gospel. So I think he says that as well.

There’s one God, one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. So this is good and acceptable. First, because God is the Savior, not Caesar. Second, God would have all men to be saved. Third, God would have all men come to the knowledge of the truth. And by the way, there again, knowledge of the truth isn’t just an external intellectual knowledge. It’s epignosis here. It means a deep, heartfelt understanding and knowledge. Not just head knowledge, but heart knowledge combined.

Jesus said he did not pray for all the world in his intercessory prayer, for the elect, says I do not pray for the world with these particular portions of my prayer. And we’re not to pray that men apart from the salvation and the submission of the gospel of Jesus Christ come to any kind of deep knowledge about anything. You see, that’s special. That’s for the elect.

Fourth, it’s acceptable because there’s one mediator for all men, all sorts of men. There’s men here and God there, and there’s one mediator. And the word mediator there means it’s a go-between between two people. Job cried out in chapter 9:33, “Neither is there any daysman between us that might lay his hand upon us both, between me and God. I can’t enter into this.” He says, “Because I’m, you know, terrible. He’s exalted and there’s no intermediary. There’s no daysman to mediate between us.”

But that’s who the Lord Jesus is. Jesus has come as that mediator. That’s what’s being spoken of here. Who puts his—who brings mediation, who mediates and brings us back into correct relationship with the Father. A mediator was someone who would make covenant, ratify a covenant, make treaty with people. And Jesus came to fulfill the terms of the covenant that we might be brought back into relationship with God.

And how does he do this? It says that he is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all. Again, not he doesn’t give himself as a ransom for Hitler or for Judas the Iscariot. Says be better that he had never been born. Hard to see how we would see him in heaven.

No, he gives himself here as a ransom for the elect, for all sorts of men, including civil governors. But he gives himself a ransom. The word ransom is a price paid for a servant, but additionally, it’s the compound word. It has the idea of substitution. Another price paid. And so, it’s the substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. He doesn’t pay the ransom to Satan. He pays the atonement for our sins to God the Father.

You see, the substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ produces this mediation and produces this ransom of us. And so this is good and acceptable for those reasons. And then he then goes on to say that I am ordained a preacher and an apostle, a proclaimer, a herald, not an inviter, a commander, a commander who only speaks the command of the king. No more, no less. He’s a preacher. He’s an apostle with authority over doctrine, with authority over life.

He asserts his apostolic authority here in the context of what he’s telling Timothy, a teacher of the Gentiles. Again, the theme is all men have been brought together. Now, there’s a commonality to the human race. No Jew-Gentile distinction. And then he ends it off by saying again, I would therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.

The command is then repeated then at the end of the text. Here the command is repeated, the scope of the prayer again is repeated: all men. That is, again, however, in the context of as we understand this, particularly the rulers, the authorities, because that’s who he specifically pointed out in verse two. The location of the prayer is to be everywhere. There’s not a centralized sanctuary. There was in the Old Testament. Our responsive reading at the end of our worship service will be from the intercessory prayer, the long prayer of Solomon in the temple, and there was a particular place that it was to be done.

Now we have decentralized sanctuaries. Everywhere there are local churches. These sort of corporate prayers for the governmental authorities are to be made. The manner of the prayer is towards heaven with the praying with the hands. The lifting up toward heaven, which we do in this church in terms of some of our elements of our praise as we come into the presence of God. The lifting up of holy hands.

Holy here is not the word for consecrated to God’s use. It’s the specific term of ethical experience. It is the actual things you do that is talked about with holy hands here. It’s not your position before God. It’s your actions. And so if your actions have created sin in your life, as you have to, as David said, wash his hands in innocency. Okay? Sin, unrepented of, sin prevents this kind of prayer from being made by the men of the church as they go to be with God in supplication or represent rather the congregation as the congregation goes in prayer. Sin gets in the way of that as we’re talking about here: holy hands.

And specifically he’s talking about men praying. And what are what’s men’s normal tendency? What is going to defile their hands? He says lifting up holy hands and then he says without wrath and doubting. Men, you’re prone to wrath. I know you are because the scriptures tell me you are. You want to be God and God gives you a position of superiority functionally in the family, used to be in the workplace, used to be in the civil state, still is to some degree. And because of that, you turn that good gift of God into sin by wanting to exercise that authority in your own strength. And it doesn’t work and people don’t respond well, and you get mad. That’s what we do. Our sinful tendency is talked about here. We’re prone…