Book of 1 Timothy - Ch. 2, vv. 5-7

If y 'all want to turn with me to 1st Timothy, Paul's epistle, 1st epistle to Timothy.

And just to bring everybody up to speed a little bit, we've been working our way through this slowly but surely, and it's good.

And been going verse by verse through it, and we are now at this point, well underway in chapter two, and we're going to be covering verses five through seven this morning, hopefully.

Five through seven, we'll see what we can fit into our time. But basically what's going on in this portion of scripture is the

Apostle Paul starting in verse one of chapter two, he starts giving Timothy this very interesting exhortation that of course

Timothy is then to share with the rest of the congregants at his church. And as we know, through this inspired epistle, it has now been an exhortation to all

Christians throughout all time. And that is to do what? To, first of all, he says, supplications, prayers, intercessions, giving of thanks be made to all men.

In other words, lift up these men in prayer. But then he goes on and he specifies for us a little bit what he means by all men exactly.

Does he mean all men without exception? Okay, that'd be a little bit interesting, a little bit ambiguous, because if we start praying, you know,

Lord be with all men in that sense, it can be a little bit difficult to understand exactly what we're trying to accomplish.

Is this just blessings in general? Is this salvation? What is it? So Paul clarifies for us exactly what he means.

He defines the term all in verse two by saying for kings and for all that are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

We spent a number of weeks on that verse because there are so many implications there. What he wants us to do is, first, he's having to remind these first century

Christians you need to be praying for your pagan, heathen leaders because despite what you may feel in the moment, even under persecution in many cases,

God is a powerful God. He's a saving God, and he desires that they be saved for what purpose?

Of course, for their own individual benefit. But Paul takes it even further than that, and he says, pray for them that you,

Christians, may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity is another way you could translate that.

And so to pray for our civil leaders in general, but more importantly than that, to pray for their salvation, if it be the

Lord's will to open their eyes and ears, is for our benefit and that we can then live in a

Christian nation in an environment that is conducive to our own personal growth, our own personal holiness.

And that's what he's saying there at the end of verse two. He goes on in verse three to say, this is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our

Savior. So these prayers, this isn't just an arbitrary exhortation from Paul because he's wanting us to feel pious or anything like that.

He's saying, you are to do this because it is intrinsically good in the eyes of God to pray for these men, to pray for people that are in authority over you.

And he says, why is that? Why is it good in the eyes of God? In verse four, who will have all men, he's talking about the same people in view here, who will have all men to be saved and to come into the knowledge of the truth.

So one thing that we learn from this passage, which is just absolutely steeped in some of the richest theology that we have in the

New Testament, is that God's salvation is non -discriminatory by social class or regarding social class.

So picture yourself, you're in the shoes of our first century brothers and sisters, okay? You're in the heart of the

Roman Empire. You understand the scriptures and you understand what Jesus just came to do in fulfillment of those scriptures and now acting as your

Lord and Savior, but you are still under the iron fist of the pagan Roman Empire that is persecuting you for your faith, that is saying, they're saying, sure, call

Jesus God. We really don't care. They had this panoply of gods that all of their citizens worshipped, and some, of course,

Rome had their own gods, but they gladly allowed any foreign religion to come in and continue to worship however they wanted to worship, regardless of how degenerate it was, as long as Caesar was

Lord, as long as you bowed the knee to Caesar. And so they were totally fine with this idea of worshipping.

I mean, they thought it was bizarre. You're worshipping a man that we crucified in the most humiliating fashion, that doesn't make any sense, but go for it, do whatever is pleasing to you, but you have to yield to Caesar's lordship.

And the Christians would say, no, Christ is Lord, Jesus is Lord, and thus the persecution began.

And so it was very difficult for our brothers and sisters at this time to understand that God could save people like that, or that God may have a plan for people like that even.

So Paul tells us, pray for them. Pray for them, lift up prayers, lift up intercessions, give thanks for them, pray for their salvation, because God saves, let me put it this way, he saves without regard to what position people are in.

They could be the highest ranking pagan civil rulers, or they could be the lowly but genuinely pious and religious

God -fearing people down here. It doesn't matter what social class you find yourselves in,

God can and desires salvation to come about. And so there you go.

He wants our civil rulers, our civil leaders, our kings, our civil magistrates to be saved and to come into the knowledge of the truth.

So that we can live in a Christian nation, so that we can be in an environment that actually supports the advancement of the kingdom of God and isn't a persecutor in that context.

So that is a very quick nutshell version of the past many weeks we've been diving into these concepts in these opening verses to bring us to where we're at today.

Now in verse 5, we covered that last week as well, but we took a slight diversion mainly to discuss one of the significant things

Paul is doing in verse 5 when he says, For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man

Jesus Christ. And this is an incredibly abused verse by those that are antagonistic toward the

Christian faith, Muslims, Unitarians, Jehovah's Witnesses, anyone that would deny the doctrine of the

Trinity or the deity of Christ, they're going to look at this verse and they're going to say, Ah, see, there's one God implication there being the father and one mediator, two different categories,

Jesus isn't God. That's kind of their conclusion there. We talked about this at length last week, but I'll just repeat one thing, and that is to make that argument based upon an isolated verse in the

Pauline epistles is to completely ignore the rest of Paul's work where in Titus 2 .13,

he explicitly refers to Jesus as God, where in Philippians 2, we may look at that in a little bit if we have the time, where he explicitly connects passages and concepts that are attributed to Yahweh in the

Old Testament or Jehovah in the Old Testament to Jesus Christ, to places where he proves the deity of Christ by his singular lordship over the creation in 1

Corinthians 8. And of course, we know that he attributes creatorship to Jesus in Colossians 1. So to say that Paul here all of a sudden is making this distinction between Jesus and the father in the sense that Jesus is obviously not

God is to ignore the rest of the Bible and it's cheating, it's unfair interpretation of the scriptures, and it is abusing

Paul's very words and what he means. What does he mean? Why is he making a distinction here? Why is he focusing in on Jesus as mediator?

Well, we're going to dive into this more in just a moment. But the conclusion we came to last week is that Paul is emphasizing something particular here, and that is

Jesus's humanity, which we do affirm. Trinitarians 100 % affirm the full humanity of Jesus just as much as we would affirm the full deity of Jesus.

Why? Well, because he had to come as the second Adam. He had to come as the son of David. He had to be born of woman in order to redeem the human race that by the first Adam fell into sin and all of these things.

And so Paul is simply emphasizing a particular doctrinal truth here. He's not trying to make some strange contradictory claim that Jesus isn't

God, and I say contradictory because it would contradict the rest of the Pauline corpus.

But here we are. He's not doing that. He's making another argument. That's what we talked about last week.

So now that we're brought back up to speed, we'll slow down a little bit and we will continue on with our study here.

Now, in verse 6, we can read these verses together at this point. Verse 5, one more time, for there is one

God, one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time.

Now, here in verse 6, in only a few words that we receive from Paul here, we have one of the most theologically dense statements in the entire

New Testament. There is so much here in this one phrase, this one sentence, that we could spend an additional number of weeks just unpacking the doctrine that is underneath it.

Now, we're not going to do that simply because we are wanting to progress through this study of the epistle. We want to keep everything in full view of what

Paul is talking about here. But we do need to spend some time on it because it's so important.

And the first thing we want to note here in verse 6 is when Paul says, who gave himself, who gave himself, the thing that really pops here, and the thing that we don't want to move over too quickly that we may miss it, is that when

Paul says that Jesus gave himself, this is a total, a complete, a comprehensive or exhaustive self -giving.

It wasn't a sacrifice in part, and it certainly wasn't anything that was forced or coerced for him to do.

Not even the Father coerced or forced this upon Jesus. Jesus did this completely voluntary.

This was a completely voluntary act on the part of Jesus. And that is what

Paul is hitting on in this brief phrase here, who gave himself. The action was completely on his part.

Now, was there obedience on the part of Jesus? Absolutely. But obedience is not the same as being forced to do something.

Obedience, in fact, implies that you are willfully yielding to a preordained plan, and that you are doing so by your own will.

And that is exactly what Paul is saying here. This may eat up a little too much of our time, but I want to look at it anyway, because it's unbelievable.

Look at Philippians really quick. Philippians 2, where Paul leaves this incredibly brief, who gave himself a very limited phrase, but that carries so much theological weight elsewhere, he expounds upon in such detail that it's really amazing to think that we even have the kind of information that he gives us here in Philippians 2.

Over the course of a few verses, roughly verses 6 through 11, we have something that some theologians refer to as the

Carmen Christi. The way that Paul speaks here is in the form of a hymn, and many believe that Paul is possibly reciting an early hymn of the early church that had been written and sung throughout the earliest churches of this particular time as a confession, but also again as a hymn.

And because of the poetic structure of what Paul does here, it seems that that's what he's doing, and that he is, of course, affirming it completely.

And so this is an unbelievably significant passage here, and we can't dive into it in full, but I just want you to see something.

Look at verse 6, Philippians 2, 6. "...who," that's Jesus, "...being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God."

In other words, he didn't find his equality with God something to be grasped, is another way you could translate that.

"...he found it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself," you see that phrase?

That's our key at the moment. "...he made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself." You see the emphasis here.

"...he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is

Lord to the glory of God the Father." Isn't that amazing? Again, we could spend a great deal of time just breaking that down, but for the purposes of this morning, he gave himself, he made himself of no reputation, he humbled himself, and that's what we want to focus in on.

That's what Paul has in view in this first phrase, now back at 1 Timothy 2 .6.

"...he gave himself, this was a total self -giving, not in part, but in full."

So that's the first thing we take note of. But there's another thing here, and that is the word ransom in verse 6, back at 1

Timothy 2 .6. The word for ransom here is a particularly strong word, and in other places in the

New Testament, we'll see the English word ransom pop up. We know that there's a thread of significance just in that word, but what's fascinating about it is in other places, in the

Gospel of Mark is a good example of it, where Jesus uses the term himself, or at least in English, we see him use the term ransom.

Usually, when we see the English word ransom in the New Testament, the Greek word that is underneath it is the

Greek word loutron, which essentially is that picture that we all know so well of a person who has maybe a loved one that has been taken captive, and what do they do?

They pay the bad guy the ransom price, however many dollars that is. They pay the ransom price, and then the person is set free, and we talk about that a lot.

And that is the picture, the concept that is behind that Greek term loutron, which is used in other places.

In the New Testament, but what's fascinating here is that Paul uses an even stronger term than that.

He uses the term anti -loutron, which denotes that not only was a ransom price paid to free someone, as we understand that to mean, not only was a ransom price paid, but the price itself, the ransom payment, was the person himself.

It wasn't just a dollar figure. It wasn't just a particular amount of assets that were given in order to free someone else.

This particular term that Paul uses is stronger than that. It carries the connotation that if you had a child that was taken and was enslaved by an evil man, you know, put in chains, put in bondage, forced to do slave labor, the thing that you do to free that child, the thing that you pay to free your child is by becoming enslaved yourself.

That's what the term anti -loutron connotates that Paul uses here. It's even stronger than the normal Greek word for ransom.

And of course, we know that this was the case. The term carries this connotation of a great exchange taking place, as in Christ exchanged his life for ours.

He died so that we didn't have to die the final death. He paid for our sins so that we didn't have to pay for them ourselves.

He became the total and complete substitute for his loved ones. And that's what this term ransom refers to.

He didn't just pay a price in monetary terms. He gave himself, he enslaved himself to death and to sin on the cross so that we could then be freed.

And so the apostle Paul here, he doesn't leave anything up for guesswork. He makes it as explicit and as vivid as he can with the words that he chooses to use.

And so that's what we see in verse six. Again, a brief verse, who gave himself a ransom to be testified in due time, who gave himself totally and completely a ransom, enslaving himself to death and to sin so that his loved ones could be set free.

All packed in that very brief statement. And then he gets to verse seven, or no,

I'm sorry, at the end of verse six, to be testified in due time. That is an interesting little phrase there.

Another way you could say it is it is to be a testimony in its own time. And I take this to be a reference to a couple of things.

The first one is pretty obvious. It's a reference to God's providential timing.

In other words, Jesus, the man was born, showed up, if you will, to do the work that he came to do right on time.

That's what that's what the phrase is referencing in part is that this was right on the money, right on the dot, exactly according to all of the innumerable prophecies of the

Old Testament. Looking forward to that messianic figure, the anointed one, the one that would come as the son of David, but also is the root of Jesse.

And all of the things that, of course, that are discussed in the Old Testament, referring to Jesus.

And so to be testified in due time, that is a reference to God's providence. He's never late.

He's never early. He's right on time. It is exactly according to his decreed will. And so that's the first thing.

But I think another interesting thing that this phrase probably references is just the fact that Christ's power in that ransom itself was on cosmic levels, that there was great power in Christ's ransom.

It was the crux of the gospel. Now, we understand that without the resurrection, our faith is in vain.

It couldn't have just been a crucifixion. He had to be crucified. He had to be buried. He had to be risen again.

And so Paul tells us in Corinthians that without the resurrection, our faith is in vain. We are to be pitied above all else.

But elsewhere, the apostle Paul tells us that we preach Christ and him crucified.

And so when you consider the full view of redemption, the full view of what the gospel is, the cross is central in that it had to be done in this way.

It had to be done right on time. And not only that, but the ransom that was made on the cross had to be and was efficacious.

And so when Paul says he gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time, yes, that's

God's timing. But it is also a reference that it was his finished work.

This didn't need to be something that was ever going to be done again. Really, really amazing stuff.

Now, let's take a look at verse seven. He goes on and he says, where unto

I am ordained a preacher. So in other words, all of the stuff I just talked about, the ransom, the mediation, the heralding of there being one

God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, this idea of God being such a powerful savior that he can even save the worst of the pagan kings, all of this stuff that I just talked about,

I am ordained a preacher in verse seven and an apostle. I speak the truth in Christ and lie not.

A teacher of the Gentiles in faith and in verity or in full sincerity.

Now, I just realized something. I started my notes in the wrong spot.

So I actually skipped a great deal. This is okay. We'll go back in just a second because there's something really important I want to cover with you guys.

I somehow completely skipped a full page. We're going to look at Job in a minute with regard to this idea of mediation.

I want to talk about Jesus as mediator a little bit more, but we'll go ahead and finish this thought while we're on verse seven.

I've never done that before. He's a preacher. He's an apostle. He is the teacher of the Gentiles in faith and in verity.

And it is to this end that Paul was ordained to be that preacher, to be that apostle that he was for the church.

And we have to note this final phrase at the end of verse seven with a special calling to the Gentiles.

Note that he mentions that a teacher of the Gentiles specifically, he mentions that. And anytime he does, we have to take note of it because there is an unbelievable fulfillment in that every time it's mentioned.

And we'll talk about this more in just a moment and you'll see why this is important. But first, he was a preacher.

He mentions three things, preacher, apostle, teacher of the Gentiles. When he says that he is a preacher, the

Greek term for this, it literally means to herald something. It carries the connotation of open air preaching.

And you know what I mean by that. We think of street corner evangelists. We think of people, amazing men that go out and they preach on the streets in the open air to those around them.

And at the time that Paul was alive, this was actually kind of the way that you communicated. This was the streams of communication were extremely limited still.

And so one of the ways that important people would go out and make a message or proclaim a message of any kind for the populace to hear, they would go and herald that message in the public square.

And so when Paul says here, I am a preacher or a herald of Christ's gospel, that is what he's talking about.

He is going out to share this gospel story publicly, again, kind of carrying the idea of in the open air.

And we know that he did this. You read the book of Acts and we have story after story of him doing this very thing.

He's going out and he is preaching this idea that Christ went to the cross as ransom, as we just discussed, that payment of himself to free his loved ones at the cross, but then that he rose again as mediator.

And we'll have to go back and talk about that more in just a second. That's the part I skipped. He rose again as mediator between God and men to continue that work.

And so he's preaching all of this while serving the role of apostle. And what were the apostles?

Well, Paul tells us this in Ephesians, that the apostles and the prophets played part in laying the foundation of the church.

Paul's work here and the reason why he is bringing his apostleship in view is to remind us of that as well.

This is foundational stuff. This is him laying the foundation that the church would be built upon for the next 2000 years.

And this, of course, is why it is so important for us to understand that apostleship was unique to these called men.

You can't stack foundations over each other for 2000 years, and a number of different traditions believe that you can.

It simply doesn't work. And that's one reason why. The foundation is laid once, the church is built on top of that, and it's one of the things that gave the actual apostle so much authority.

And so he is the apostle. He is playing a part in laying the foundation of the church.

And then he goes on to say what? He is a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

And I want you guys to notice he emphasizes truth two different times in this one verse.

He says, number one, I speak the truth in Christ and lie not. And then he immediately says, I'm a teacher of the

Gentiles in faith and in truth or verity, as the KJV puts it. And it's truth in the most sincere way that you can deliver truth.

That's what he's referring to there. And so you can see why that would be kind of an important thing, an important connection with where Paul began this entire context.

Him talking about the Gentiles, him talking about being a truthful teacher of the Gentiles. His audience that he is talking to here needs to understand that God wouldn't just save them.

He wouldn't just save the faithful, believing Jews at that time, but he would even save a believing

Gentile king in some cases. Paul is still working on having to make this point crystal clear to the people he is talking to.

He has come to herald the gospel to the nations, the Gentile nations as well, who have just as much right to this gospel as the

Jews did. And when you read the Old Testament, it's interesting because we see flickers of this even in the

Old Testament. It was prophesied about. It shouldn't have been a surprise to the believing

Jews in the first century, but it was still difficult for them to grasp because we're talking about those that have mocked our religion for millennia.

We're talking about those that worship false gods and false idols in the most egregious, degenerate ways that you could possibly imagine.

These are Christians having to go to church and walk by pagan temples that had prostitutes enacting in the worship of those false deities, and they're seeing sacrifices being made to them and all of these egregious things.

This was an incredible turnoff for the first century Christians, most of which were

Jews. They just couldn't believe it. Even though the Old Testament talked about it, they just couldn't believe that this could possibly be how it was, that God could be that merciful, that God's mercy was that much more powerful than any amount of sin that human beings could engage in.

And yet this was the truth, and this was the truth that Paul was teaching them. And it began by him going to the

Gentiles and saying, essentially, what Jesus said, go and sin no more. He gave them the gospel, he brought them to a knowledge of saving faith, and then taught them how to be obedient Christians from that point forward.

And his letter to the Corinthians was him having to continue to go back to that idea and correct them out of all of the paganism that they were still so tempted by.

And so this was a gospel that was just as much for the nations as it was for the

Jews. He is a preacher of this gospel. But one more time, he is also an apostle, and he speaks truthfully.

In other words, he has complete authority to speak on these issues.

And when he speaks, they are to be taken with authority. So it's one thing for him to say,

I have authority because I'm an apostle. It's another thing for his hearers to receive that obediently and understand, yes, we do need to take these things, these doctrines, these teachings of Paul with the authority that they are due.

And so in this case, he was writing under the inspiration of the Spirit. We know that in the case of 1

Timothy. But even in general, Paul's speech regarding the very things that he is speaking of here are inherently authoritative because of his apostleship.

And that's why you see this constant refrain with Paul, as well as some of the other apostles as well, throughout their epistles.

Anytime you see them mention the fact they are an apostle, that's always meaningful because, again, it is bringing what they are saying under the umbrella of Christ's authority exclusively and not based upon their own opinions.

Nothing in Scripture is the opinion of the one that is writing the epistle. It is all the words of Christ, just as much as Christ's words in the gospel.

And that's why we have to be careful about people that emphasize the red letters, quote unquote. We see this kind of in the current church.

And it makes sense. It goes perfectly with the flow of modern -day Christianity, which is very much kind of a cheap grace, you know, easy believism, that sort of stuff.

Red -letter Christianity, so to speak, is a very good companion piece to that because when you start getting into the epistles of the apostles, you start getting some really strong doctrine that people want to be able to cast off as, well, that's

Paul, that's not Jesus, completely missing the fact that the apostle Paul was speaking the words of Jesus, that all of his teachings, as well as the other apostles, were in perfect, consistent harmony with the teachings of Jesus across the board.

And so when we see this pop up, when we see one of them, such as Paul, say, I am an apostle, what they are doing is they are bringing that authority, not just their own, but the authority of Jesus to the table.

And in this context, I believe that he is bringing up this apostleship specifically to prove that he is fulfilling something unbelievable, something, again, that first -century

Christians, specifically the Jewish believers, had a great difficulty in understanding.

And that is that he was the fulfillment, or at least part of the fulfillment, of all of the great prophecies of the day in which the

Gentiles would come and enter a covenant with God, something that was absolutely bizarre to think about in much of the

Old Testament context, even though we know that the Ninevites could be saved, or Nebuchadnezzar could be saved, or Cyrus could be saved,

Job, guys like that who were not Hebrews, they could be saved, but it was still a very alien idea, especially for the covenant people of God in the

Old Testament to understand that he would enter a covenant with the Gentiles. And that was very much the case.

Let me just go through a few passages briefly, and I'll go through this quick so that I can hopefully have a little bit of time to look at what

I skipped accidentally a moment ago. Psalm 18 .48 -49 says this, this is

David talking, He delivered me from mine enemies, yea, thou liftest me up above those that rise up against me.

Thou hast delivered me from the violent man. Therefore will I give thanks unto thee, O Lord, O Jehovah, O Yahweh, among the heathen, and sing praises unto thy name.

Now, the Hebrew word under the term heathen there is goi, which you see translated in a number of ways in the

Old Testament. Heathen, nations, Gentiles. These are all completely, perfectly good translations of that Hebrew word.

I will give praise and thanks to thee, O Lord, among the heathen. Elsewhere in Psalm 117, which is literally just a two verse

Psalm, he says, O praise the Lord, all ye nations, same Hebrew term, and in context, it's referring to non -Jewish peoples.

O praise the Lord, all ye nations, praise him, all ye people, for he is merciful.

His merciful kindness is great toward us, and the truth of the Lord endureth forever. Praise you, the Lord. Now, those are from the

Psalms, and there's way more than that. When you get to the prophecy of Isaiah, you start to really see this idea of God entering covenant with the

Gentiles unfold. The prophecy of it hadn't happened yet, but it being just as sure in prophetic form as it would be in the

New Testament. In Isaiah 42, 6, just to give you one of many examples, the prophet Isaiah says,

I, the Lord, well, this is God talking through Isaiah, I, the Lord, have called thee in righteousness and will hold thine hand and will keep thee and give thee for a covenant of the people for a light of the

Gentiles. That was the day that was coming, and it was one that was talked about with great anticipation and great joy even in the

Old Testament. And so, in 1 Timothy 2, 7, in the same verse, when you have the apostle

Paul say, I am ordained a preacher and an apostle, I speak the truth and lie not, a teacher of the

Gentiles in faith and verity, he is saying, on the basis of my apostleship, on the basis of the authority that I have as apostle,

I am here teaching the Gentiles as it was spoken of in the prophets of old, which is a really amazing thing.

Does anyone have any thoughts or anything they'd like to share up to this point? We have about 10 minutes left. I want to give you all an opportunity if you all have any comments.

Go ahead, Miss Bonnie. Okay, sure.

So, what Paul is doing here is there is a Greek construction that sometimes the writers of the

New Testament would use to add emphasis, and it's referred to a hooper preposition. And that is what he is doing is he's adding this to add the sense of superabundance, superabounding, and these types of things.

It's a hooper preposition that just drives the force of the grammar to new heights. And so, when it's used elsewhere and in some of the other contemporaneous literature of that time, what we see is that in context, what

Paul is doing is he's saying, this wasn't just a monetary ransom. This wasn't just a monetary price.

This was Christ giving his own life into the enslavement of sin for a moment in time on the cross in those hours of darkness with the wrath of God upon him so that we did not have to experience that ourselves.

That was the ransom that was in view there. Is that helpful? Okay, let's back up just a little bit.

And I got to give you all a few thoughts of this part that I skipped somehow. And go back to verse 5.

So, a little bit out of order. We've kind of addressed the thrust of Paul's argument in verse 5 in context anyway.

I just want to emphasize, and we'll end with this, on the importance of Christ as mediator.

So, we'll just kind of end broadly on this idea. And one more time in verse 5, there is one

God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ. So, Paul has already established his definition of the term pos, or all, by giving us the context of his argument.

God's salvation is nondiscriminatory with regard to social class. He will die for a pagan king.

He can save a pagan king just as much as he would save a faithful believer like Simeon or Anna.

God's salvation is nondiscriminatory in that way, and that includes pagan kings and civil authorities. So, that's the context.

Now, within that context, Paul gives us then this apologetic against Gnostic heresies.

What is Gnosticism? It's saying that there is a great antithesis between the physical and the spiritual, that everything physical is evil inherently, and everything spiritual is good inherently.

And therefore, if Jesus is truly this Aeon, this God that came to do what we as Gnostics say he did, it was all in spiritual form only.

His death on the cross was merely an analogy. He was a spirit. He didn't actually die. He couldn't have, because that would imply that he had a real body, and that doesn't work.

If we saw Jesus walking down the beach with the disciple and we looked back, we'd only see one set of footprints, because he's not actually there.

You'd only see the footprints of the disciple and not Jesus, because he's only spirit. These are the Gnostic ideas.

And so what Paul is doing, which by the way, this was a cancer to early Christianity, to the early church.

This was the greatest threat to early Christianity that our brothers and sisters faced. And so we see

Paul give us a number of apologetic material in the epistles in order to fight that, and Colossians is probably the preeminent example,

Philippians as well, and right here we have another one in verse 5. So he is giving us an apologetic against the

Gnostic heresies by pointing out that the basis for the kind of salvation we are talking about, the kind that is enough to save a pagan king, it came and it had to come in a man both paying the necessary ransom that we just talked about, and at the same time, fulfilling the role of mediator that who once held prior to Jesus?

Who is the other individual that is referred to as mediator in scriptures? Very significant guy, wrote the first five books of the

Bible, the greatest prophet that ever lived other than Jesus himself, Moses.

He was the mediator of the old covenant, the one that prophesied and said that one like me will come prophesying about Jesus in the book of Deuteronomy, and you will hear him and you will follow him.

And of course, Jesus came in the form of prophet and mediator as Moses. And so Jesus came to fulfill that which was once prefigured in Moses.

And so in verse 5, Paul emphatically states that the man, remember, apologetic against Gnosticism, he was fully man as much as he was fully

God. The man that fulfills this role of mediator is whom? Jesus Christ.

Of course, in verse 6, he goes on to state that that same man is who gave himself a ransom, as we already talked about, for the very people that he now mediates for.

Constantly pointing back to his blood is the justification for his mediation between God and man.

I know it's a mouthful. There's a lot of terms being used in this particular passage that Paul is saying. What is going on here?

You have God who is perfect in holiness, perfect in justice, perfect in wrath, perfect in judgment, completely sinless, that is now in this strange predicament.

Not that he himself is in a predicament. Humanity is really in the predicament of being separated from this holy

God because of our sin. What do you do with that? How do you reconcile that? How do you bring

God and man back together so that they can be friends like they were in the Garden of Eden prior to a fallen state?

Well, it requires a mediator, which is why Moses came as the first mediator in order to arbitrate the covenant terms that God gave in Mount Sinai between these sinful people down below the fiery mountain.

There had to be a mediator in order for that to work. But Moses was an imperfect mediator.

Why? Because he himself was a sinner. And that's why there's this very interesting episode we have in the

Old Testament in Exodus where Moses has had enough with the people.

He has had enough with their sin, but he still had a heart for them. And God was about to come down on them with his full wrath, wipe them off the face of the planet, and he said,

Moses, I will raise a new people through you. Think about that for a second. And think about the humble and meek nature that Moses would have had to have had in order to advocate for those people.

It sounds like a pretty sweet deal. Most people would probably take that. Wow, I get to be the patriarch now, and all these pitiful people that have been mocking me anyway are going to be snuffed out.

Sounds good. What does Moses do? What he does is he says, Lord, take me in place of them.

Allow me to be, and I'm paraphrasing, but this is what Moses was saying. Allow me to be a substitute for these people so that you can fulfill the promises that you've made to them.

And what does Jesus say? What does the Lord say? It was Jesus before he had that name. But the Lord tells him no, and then they continue the discussion, and obviously

God's mercy shone through. But why did God say no? Because had Moses been the substitute, it would have been a vain substitute because he himself was a sinner, and a sinner cannot pay for the sins of other people.

It has to take a sinless substitute. And so as amazing as that was, the answer had to have been no, because Moses was an imperfect mediator.

But he still represented something. He still represented something greater, and that was one that would come, sinless, that would offer that ransom, the blood price, then step into the role of mediator post -resurrection and is now the man that stands between God the

Father and mankind still in sin and points the

Father back to the blood that he shed, saying, this is the basis for my mediation.

This is why I can bring you and these people together as friends once again. The blood price has been paid.

Now, I want to show you guys something fascinating. We'll have to end here for the sake of time, but look at Job chapter 9.

And I know we've covered a ton this morning, really flying through some extremely deep things, and we haven't given justice time -wise to these things, these ideas, but hopefully it's enough to encourage you all and get you thinking and maybe looking into some of these deeper.

In Job chapter 9, verse 32, you have Job prior to the days of Moses, certainly prior to the days of Jesus, but he is still a faithful man.

He's upright. He's righteous. He follows the one and living God. And in the middle of his discourse with his friends, in the middle of his toil, of his turmoil, of his tribulation, some that would be unimaginable for most people.

In verse 32, listen to what he says. For he is not a man as I am, talking about God, that I should answer him and we should come together in judgment.

Neither is there any daismon betwixt us that might lay his hand upon both of us.

Now, in the old English, you see that term daismon and you think, okay, maybe

I get an idea of what's going on. Then again, this is poetry, this is

Job being poetic in his dialogue and what is he talking about exactly?

Well, the Hebrew term that is used there that we get the translation daismon from in the

KJV, which isn't a bad translation, by the way, it's just such an old English term, we miss what is going on.

A good modern day literal translation of that would be umpire or adjudicator, or to, if you want to match it with the vernacular of the

New Testament, mediator. And so what is he saying here? He says, I am not a man, or excuse me, he is not a man, talking about God, as I am, that I should answer him and we should come together in judgment.

Neither is there any mediator betwixt us that might lay his hand upon both of us.

Now, in Moses, God's people had a foretaste of what it was like to have a man connect them to God, to have a mediator connect them to God via his arbitration between the two parties, his mediation between the two parties.

And so when the Hebrews sinned, God, in his righteous fury, wanted to obliterate them.

And we see this more than once, by the way. But what would happen? Moses, as a mediator of the

Old Covenant, would remind God of his promises to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He would remind God of his mercy. He would remind God in a very odd, if you think about it, a very odd argument to choose, but he chose it and it worked, which was, think about what the other nations might think if you wipe out these people and the promises you've made to them.

Moses, as mediator, would make these arguments to God saying, listen, yes, you would be just and righteous and holy for wiping them out completely because of their sin, but think about your mercy.

Think about the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And even though God would say, hey, I can still continue that promise through you,

Moses, Moses would still go back to God's mercy. And he would still go back to things like, what would the other nations think?

They saw what you did bringing us out of Egypt. That's not in the story here. That's the kind of stuff that Moses would remind

God of. And when he would do that, it was all for the purpose of connecting men to God again.

That was what Moses was doing. But Job didn't have a Moses, and he certainly didn't have a

Jesus Christ. He did, but you know what I mean. Jesus, the man, had not been born yet.

He didn't have Moses, and Job felt that in this dialogue here.

He felt what it was like to not have a mediator and for that curtain, that wall of separation between God and man to exist.

He perhaps even felt helpless to a degree, even though he knew he served a living God who was there.

And we know that he knew that throughout the rest of his dialogue, but it was still a point of distress for Job.

He still knew that he was a grave sinner that could not answer back to God because God is not a man like I am.

And I don't have a mediator betwixt us to lay his hands between both of us and to connect us as friends.

And so what Job's words here would act as an ancient recognition of the need for a perfect mediator of who, of course, did come is the man,

Jesus Christ. When Jesus came, he restored peace, he ratified the new covenant with his own blood, and he made many friends for the

Father again so that man and God could have what they experienced in Eden once again.

And that's what we have now. And that's why we get to go before the throne boldly, the throne of grace boldly, as the writer of Hebrews tells us, because Christ is there as our mediator, connecting us to God and constantly pointing back to that ransom price, saying, this is the basis, this has been paid, everything's good to go.

And so that's where we'll end today. Now, next week, we'll dive into verse 8 of 1 Timothy chapter 2, which is amazing, and it begins to unfold a completely different, what will feel like a completely different area for Paul, but is still intimately connected with everything we've talked about at this point for verses 9 through 15.

One of the most controversial passages in all of Scripture, a hated passage among the egalitarian church of today, the feminist movement, all of these types of things cannot stand the teachings of Paul.

And so we're going to look at it meticulously. And what did Paul mean? What was his intent? All of these types of things, verses 9 through 15, but we'll have to dive into that next week and beyond.

So does anyone have any final thoughts in our last 60 seconds here? Yes, Robert. And what greater example do we have of that patience and long -suffering than the

Old Testament, not to say that we're any better than them, but simply because God chose through the

Old Testament to show us his patience with the human race, and even those that he called and set apart as a holy people.

The patience that he has, everything Dad has been talking about for the past many weeks in Hosea, with regard to the whoredoms of God's people, and yet patience, long -suffering was still there.

Mercy was still there. Prophecies of restoration are still there. It's unbelievable. And you're right, that passage in 1

Timothy 3 there is just a very brief summary of that massive picture.

2 Peter 3, thank you. 2 Peter 3, 9. That is just unbelievable. It truly, truly is.

All righty, everybody. Well, I'm sorry. I know I didn't leave as much time as usual for comments and stuff.

I wanted to cover a number of things today, so I appreciate y 'all's patience there, but I'm going to go ahead and dismiss so we can move into the next service.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful day, for bringing us together and giving us another opportunity to open up the pages of Scripture so that we may be edified by them, so that we may grow in them and by them, so that we can understand the degree and the majesty of your saving grace and what that looks like, not just in some past event on the cross, as magnificent as that was, not even in a past event in the resurrection, as magnificent as that is, but rather in your active mediation for us right this moment, as our intercessor, as our advocate, in your active obedience toward the

Father, and all of these things that you are doing at the moment we are speaking right now on our behalf, even still pointing back to that ransom price that you have paid.

We thank you, Father, for the perfect mediation of your Son and for the realities that we get to experience every day practically as believers so that we can be in friendship with you, in communion with you, and come before your throne rightfully so.

We thank you for these things, for these realities. We ask that you please be with us for the rest of the day, be with our next service, bless our time together, and we ask all these things in the name of your