1 Timothy 2:1-7

I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede

on their behalf, and give thanks for them. 2 Pray this way for kings and all who are

in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and

dignity. 3 This is good and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants everyone to be

saved and to understand the truth.5 For there is only one God and one Mediator who

can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus. 6 He gave his life to

purchase freedom for everyone. This is the message God gave to the world at just

the right time. 7 And I have been chosen as a preacher and apostle to teach the

Gentiles this message about faith and truth. I’m not exaggerating—just telling the

truth.

Tonight we will go back to 1 Timothy and start in chapter 2 where we left off. In chapter 1, we

went over the greeting of the letter which tells us to whom it was written and by whom. We went into

Paul’s warning about false teachers which we took the concept of checking from. We then moved into

God’s mercy and Paul telling us his story and showing how God gives us His grace and mercy. The first

chapter ends with Timothy’s instructions from Paul. Paul tells him to cling to his faith and do not violate

his conscious.

Now we see that Paul is instructing Timothy on how worship should be conducted. This letter

was written later in Paul’s missionary journeys, so he is seeing that he needs to

give instruction on how the church should run knowing he will soon die. In the portion

we are looking at tonight, we see Paul telling Timothy to keep the leaders of the time in prayer. He

commands him to pray for the leaders of the area and the entire Roman Empire, so that they could go

on in their faith in peace. At this time, Nero was emperor in Rome. Nero was not the best person to a

citizen, or a Christian under. He was known to kill Christians in Gladiator games, or use them as lawn

torches at parties. Sickening, I know. But Paul tells the people to pray this way for kings and all

who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by

godliness and dignity.

Here at our church, we are big on prayer. In all my years of attending church and

going to weekly prayer meetings, I have never seen a church get between 10-20%

of their members to come to a weekly prayer meeting regularly. Paul is telling

Timothy here to keep prayer as a priority in his church. The people should regularly

come together and pray for the leaders and for the people. Paul is also saying here

that prayers should be said for all people, and that it should not be only for certain

people that we like. Prayers should go for Republican and Democrat. Rich or poor,

black or white or Asian. We should pray for the people if we like them or not.

The next verses go along with the prior verses. Paul also makes a claim that

God wants all to be saved and to understand the truth. What is the truth? Pause

and listen for Gospel. Right, the Gospel is the truth. As Paul said earlier in the

letter, “Jesus came to save Sinners”. Paul says here that Jesus is the only mediator

between man and God who can reconcile man to God. Paul again gives the Gospel

message here and says that Christ gave his life to buy freedom for everyone. Paul

goes on to say that he (Paul) is the messenger to the Gentiles to tell them about

this good news. One commentator writes these verses like this, “Paul’s argument

can be paraphrased like this: If God is one, and there is only one Mediator with one

way of redemption, and if God has chosen me to save some of the Gentile peoples

in the scope of my apostolic mission, then we can legitimately conclude that God

desires any sort of person to be saved regardless of ethnic origin.” So what does

this all mean? Simple, God wants all kinds of people to be saved, regardless of

where they are from.

Just in time means that God had planned that His grace would go beyond

Palestine at this time and be opened to the whole world. Paul calls himself a herald.

Back before we had the internet, these are people who would go out and proclaim

the news in a public place. This is preaching or teaching.

So what? We look at this early model of the church and see that it is still

useful today. Paul wanted Timothy to focus on prayer for all people. He wanted

Timothy to pray for those in leadership in the nation and world. Guys, as a

leadership team, we are working on starting a prayer group of youth. Tiara is

helping to oversee it. Please get involved. Right now, we want to encourage you all

to come out on Wednesdays to Prayer, and the last Wednesday of the month, we

the youth will be running it. We want to get the youth involved with the church in

prayer for the leaders of our nation and all people no matter who they are or where

they’re from. This is not just a corporate setting, but also in your personal times of

prayer, pray for all people. If you do not have a personal prayer time, make one.

Start off small, take ten minutes before bed and just pray for the leaders of the

country, the church, your friends. Prayer is important, and let’s not forget that.