(1 Timothy) God the Savior of All Men — Brian Brodersen

Paul's Instruction to Timothy on Prayer for All People

So here we are, chapter two of First Timothy, and in our previous study, we looked at verses one through eight, and we concentrated primarily on, you know, just looking at the whole issue of kings and those who are in authority over us, and we considered that in in some detail.

How we are to to function as Christians in the sense of being citizens as well. And so we talked about prayer and we talked about just politics and things of that nature because the text does lend itself to it.

But I want to go back and look at some of those same verses again tonight. But I want to take it in a different direction. And so let's read together verses one through six this evening. And Paul says, Therefore, I exhort, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to 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.

So Paul's instruction here, remember Paul's writing to Timothy, Timothy is Paul's protege. He's his colleague in ministry. And Paul has left Timothy in the city of Ephesus in order to make sure things run smoothly in the churches and make sure that everything stays on track, basically.

And so throughout this epistle, Paul is basically giving Timothy instruction so that Timothy might in turn instruct the church. He says at one point he says, I've written these things that you might know how to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of the truth.

So here now Paul tells us that the church is to be a place of prayer, and we talked about that in the previous study. But he says that prayer is to be made for all men. Because God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, God wants people to be saved.

That's what God is all about. You know, today people say, hey, well, you know, I'm all about this or I'm all about that. Well, God's all about people getting saved. That's what he's into. That's what he longs for.

That's what he desires to see happen. He desires that people come to him. He desires that all men be saved. Now, of course, this isn't a reference just to men. It's generic. It's humanity. It's mankind, ladies included, obviously.

But this is God's desire. He wants people to be saved, not just a few people, not just a handful here and there. God wants all people to be saved. Now, the fact is, though, not all people are going to be saved.

It's not because God doesn't want people to be saved. It's simply because God has chosen to save those who choose to be saved. And so that's where the limit comes in. God is not going to force anyone to be saved.

He wants all people to be saved, but he doesn't he doesn't force them to receive his grace. It's up to us individually to make that decision. But that's a decision that God longs for us to make. Jesus said, I have come to seek and to save that which was lost.

That's why he came to seek and to save that which was lost. He said on another occasion, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

So many people have the wrong idea about God. They think that God wants to condemn everybody. And honestly, sometimes Christians. Are guilty of giving that impression. But that's not the case, Jesus did not come into the world to condemn it, but that the world through him might be saved, Peter said, God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Salvation as the Bible's Central Theme

And so salvation, of course, is the main theme of the Bible. That's what the Bible is. It's the book of salvation. It's the book that gives us the history of salvation, the history of redemption. Sometimes people ask the question, you know, how come the Bible doesn't tell us about, you know, the different civilizations and empires and things like that, as though the Bible were to be sort of a world history.

But you see, that's not the the intention of the Bible. The Bible is not meant to be a world history. The Bible is the history of salvation. It's the history of redemption. And so it only deals with those things that are pertinent to the subject of salvation.

But of course, that's the most important subject in all the world. This is the most important book in all the world. No question about it, because it tells us how we can be saved. Now, the term saved is a term that is packed full of implication.

Of course, it implies that we're lost. It implies that we're in trouble. It implies that we need to be rescued, delivered and so forth. And that's exactly the case. And so when the Bible talks about people who are saved, it's talking about people who have been delivered, people who have been rescued from a certain danger.

Salvation from the Power, Punishment, and Presence of Sin

When you look at the subject of salvation, when you look at the just the actual idea of salvation, salvation has sort of a threefold application. You see, we've been saved from. Our sin, of course, we know that, but we've been saved from all the implications of that as well.

We've been saved, first of all, from the power of sin. Sin has a tremendous power. It has a power that's greater than any power apart from God. It has the power to bind a person up and to completely bring them into captivity so that that person, although they they don't even want to do the destructive things they're doing, they can't seem to stop doing it.

That's the power of sin. But when a person becomes saved, the power of sin is broken in their life. And suddenly they're they're liberated, they're no longer in bondage. The captivity is over and now they're free.

So we're saved from the power of sin, but we're also saved from the punishment of sin. You see, sin has a punishment that. Will be meted out against it, and the punishment for sin is eternal punishment, it's eternal damnation, it's eternally being separated from God.

That's the punishment of sin. It's severe, it's frightening, it's horrific, but it's real. And that's why Jesus came, because God loved the world so much he didn't want anybody to have to suffer for their sin.

He didn't want them to have to bear the penalty of their sin. But because God is a just and holy God, the price had to be paid. And that's what Jesus did. He paid the price so we are saved now from the punishment of sin.

I don't have to dread. I don't have to fear. I don't have to worry about. Going to hell. That's all been dealt with, Christ took the punishment for my sin when he died upon the cross, and as I believe in him and I'm saved, punishment is no longer part of my future.

But it is a reality for those who are still in their sin. But thirdly, we're saved not only from the power of sin, the punishment of sin, but ultimately will be saved from the presence of sin. You see, even though we're saved from the power of sin, sin no longer has that binding control over my life.

I still sin, sin is still a problem to some extent, not nearly what it was previously, but it's still an issue, I'm not perfect, in other words, and there's still sin present in my life and because there's sin present in my life, I don't always act the way I ought to act.

I don't always think the way I should think or speak the way I should speak because sin is present in the world. We have suffering, we have problems that are directly related to sin because sin is actually part of my constitution, I suffer sickness and things of that nature.

That's all ultimately due to sin. You can trace it back to sin because none of those things existed before sin came into the world. But a person who is saved is a person who one day is going to be completely freed from the presence of sin.

There's going to be no more sin, and that's what we're told in the book of Revelation, that in that future world that God is going to bring into existence, there will be no more death, there will be no more sorrow, there will be no more crying, there will be no more pain for the former things that passed away, the former things all related to sin, but they pass away.

And so that's what we're talking about when we're talking about a person being saved, that person is saved from the power, the punishment and the presence of sin. To not be saved is to be lost. To be lost presently.

To be lost to the love of God. The love of God is there, but yet you're lost to it in a sense, you're not able to experience it. Because you're not saved. Somebody came to me the other day and they said, you know, can you rightfully say that God loves the sinner?

Is that correct? Can you tell a sinner that God actually loves them? And I said to him, yes, you can tell him that, but you can tell him that. Although God loves them, they're not able to experience God's love because they're in their sin, they need to come out of their sin and then they can actually experience the God, the love that God has for them.

You see, the Bible tells us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He didn't wait till we cleaned up our act to die for us. He died for us while we were sinners, demonstrating his love for us.

God demonstrated his love toward us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Romans five, eight. But although God loved us and demonstrated his love in that sense, we're not able to experience it, we're lost to it, we're outside of it because we're in our sin.

If I'm not saved, I'm lost to the purpose of God. You see, God has a purpose. Life is not meaningless. It's not purposeless. There are those who say that it is. Say life is is. It's meaningless, it has no purpose, you just you know, whatever you make of it is what you make of it and you're here for a while and then you're gone and that's all there is to it.

And life, your life doesn't really mean anything at all. Everything in your person cries out against that. There's nobody that really believes that, that they're there without significance completely, that life is utterly purposeless.

Nobody really believes that even the people who promote the idea, they don't really believe that they're usually standing in classrooms and universities and they think that it's very significant what they're doing and saying to people.

So they don't even really believe what they're saying. The reality is life is. Purposeful, God has a purpose, but you see, if I'm not saved, I'm outside of the purpose of God. And being outside of the purpose of God, I don't really know why I'm here, I don't really know what I'm doing.

And I'm just sort of meandering through life, wondering, you know, what is this all about? Is there any rhyme or reason to it? And I think of people who live their entire life and then come to the end and just, you know, just sort of wondering what was this about?

What was the purpose of it? Why was I here? I hope no one here comes to a place like that. You don't have to, because God has a plan. He has a purpose. But if we're not saved, we're lost to that purpose presently.

And then we will be lost eternally. We will be lost to God eternally. You see, everything that we know, we know because we were created by God and he put us in the midst of all that that he did create.

So people say things stupidly like, hey, I don't believe in God, I don't care about God, you know, hey, you know, if God wants to cast me in hell, no big deal. I'll be there with my friends anyway. We'll be partying.

It'll be great. Not so. Every good thing, any anything pleasant or remotely enjoyable, anything that you've ever experienced like that is because of God. And hell is being cast out of the presence of God to the extent that you no longer experience anything that's of God.

And the Bible describes it as outer darkness, where there's wailing and gnashing of teeth. So that's what happens to a person who's not saved. But God, remember, he desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

God wants people to be saved, but each and every person has to make the decision themselves. I can't make it for somebody else. They can't make it for me. My parents can't do it for me. My kids can't do it for me.

My wife or my husband can't do it for me. I've got to do it for myself. I have to come to the recognition that I'm lost and I need a savior. And then what do I do? I simply call out to that savior. The Bible has made it so simple.

Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It's as simple as that. But you see, before you call upon him, you've got to realize you're lost. You need somebody to deliver you. You need somebody to rescue you.

And of course, that is what the Holy Spirit does in our lives, brings us to that place of understanding that that is our condition. Now, God is all about saving people. God uses prayer as a means of bringing people to salvation, and this is really what I want to concentrate on tonight.

Prayer as God's Instrument in Salvation

Everything I have said thus far is sort of preliminary. But we want to talk about prayer as an instrument that God uses in bringing people to himself, because that's really what Paul is talking about here.

He says, I exhort, first of all, that prayer, all kinds of prayers, supplication, intercession, giving of things, all of this be made for all men, for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all men to be saved.

So Paul makes the connection with people being saved and prayer. This is a means that God works through to bring people to salvation. It's often the case that someone had been praying for those who come to Christ.

People find that out quite often. They come to the Lord and then they find out that their grandmother had prayed for them many years ago, they find out that their aunt had, you know, known the Lord and had been praying for him from the time that they were a little child or or maybe somebody down the street, a family friend who was a believer.

And they just had begun to pray and they prayed for that person, they find these things out quite often after the fact, they didn't even know that anybody was praying for them, and then they come to know the Lord and suddenly they find out, wow, somebody was praying for me.

Quite often, God uses prayer to bring people to salvation. Now, prayer. Does several things, prayer, number one, loosens the grip of the devil on a person's life, the devil has a grip on the lives of those who aren't saved, as a matter of fact, John tells us in first John, chapter five, what is it?

Verse 17, I think, or verse 18, John says the whole world lies in the grip of the wicked one. The whole world lies in the grasp of the devil. You wonder why the world is the way that it is. Well, that's the explanation for it right there.

The world lies in the grasp of the devil. And that's why our world is so insane. That's why it's full of all of the misery and the suffering and the sin. But prayer loosens the grip of the devil on a person's life.

When Paul, the apostle, was commissioned by Jesus Christ to preach the gospel, he tells King Agrippa when he's standing before King Agrippa, giving his testimony, he says that Christ sent him to turn people from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to the power of God.

That's what Paul was commissioned to do, to turn people from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to the power of God. In Second Corinthians, chapter four, verse four. Paul speaks of those who are blinded to the truth of the gospel.

And he says to whom our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who do not believe whose minds the God of this age has blinded. He says Satan has actually blinded the minds of people who don't believe.

And then in writing to Timothy in the second epistle, chapter two, verse 26, he spoke of people coming to their senses and then being delivered from the captivity of the devil. But he talks about this, this darkness that's upon people, this this this control that Satan has over the lives of people, and we see that in people's lives, you know, there is absolutely no rational explanation for the hostility that people have toward Jesus Christ, there isn't any rational explanation for it.

You read the gospels, you read the story of Jesus. My goodness, he was the most wonderful man that ever lived. He went around doing good, he went around blessing people, he went around healing people, he went around feeding poor people, taking care of them, he was just the most wonderful person that ever lived.

And yet they hated him, some of them, they took him and they murdered him. And even today, you find that among people there is an irrational hostility toward Jesus Christ. There's just something in them that when you mention the name Jesus, they just sort of, you know, there's just something about that.

But you can talk about anything else. You can talk about any other religion. You can talk about any religious leader. You can talk about the most whacked out, loony kinds of religious things you want.

And nobody cares, but boy, you mentioned Jesus and sparks begin to fly. It's an irrational hostility toward Jesus Christ. And I think the best explanation for it is what we're talking about here. The devil influences people.

He blinds their minds. He deludes them. He deceives them. And so they have this bias against Christ. They couldn't even explain why, if you asked them, it's because of the influence of the devil. So prayer loosens the grip of the devil on a person's life.

And so God desires people to be saved. What do we do? Well, one thing that we need to do is pray for people. We need to pray. That God will open the eyes. That have been blinded, that God will soften the heart that's been hardened, that God will deliver the mind that's been deluded.

And so people can come to an understanding of the truth. Now, not only does Satan have a grip over individual lives, the Bible indicates that he also. Has. A grasp on certain geographical locations in a significant way, when Paul is referring to the spiritual battle that we as Christians are in in Ephesians, chapter six, you remember how he describes Satan and his forces.

He uses the term principality. He said, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. The word principality literally means a prince over a geographical region. That's the meaning of the word.

So what Paul is telling us is that there are invisible, demonic powers that rule over geographical regions. And the reason why there's a revival of neo-paganism in Norwich, John, is because there are principalities, there are powers, there are the rulers of the darkness of this world.

They come in and they take people captive, of course, willingly. People go along with it. They rebel against God and in rebelling against God, they submit to these forces. But how do we see that grip broken?

How can we help in paving the way for the gospel to come into a place like that? Of course, the gospel is what ultimately breaks the enemy's power. But we can pave the way, so to speak, through praying.

That's why we need to pray. That's why we need to pray, not just for these guys who are going out to the mission field. We need to pray for them, but we need to pray for the specific place as well. You know, I was thinking about this today and I was trying to think of a verse that, you know, specifically says that.

Through prayer, we can we can break the influence of the devil in people's lives and in geographical locations. And you know what? I can't think of a single verse that actually says it, but the overall picture that's given to us in scripture certainly supports that as the truth.

That's the picture that we get in scripture. And in a sense, probably the best verse for it is the one that we're looking at right here. Paul says to pray for all men because God desires all men to be saved.

And so we're praying for their salvation, but sometimes we've got to pray that that power will be broken in individual lives and also in regions so that when the gospel comes in, it might have. A reception, a warm reception, prayer, thirdly.

Prayer and the Sending of Gospel Laborers

Sends forth laborers into the harvest. You see, because it's prayer alone is not going to do all that needs to be done, because primarily salvation comes from God through people to other people. In other words, it's highly unlikely that we could just all sit here at home and pray for some part of the world and never actually go there and do something.

It's highly unlikely that people are going to get saved unless we take that next step. But we need to, as I said, we need to to pave the way through prayer. But God uses people. And so as we pray, we realize that it's through prayer that laborers are sent forth into the harvest.

Jesus is the one who told us to pray the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers. So we pray for laborers. We pray that God would raise up people. We pray that God would send people. And, you know, I have to say, I am I'm blessed that John's here tonight and that he shared with us what he shared, because I've been praying for England for a long time, and that's the prayer that I pray constantly.

Lord, send forth laborers. We need more workers. And I see it as an answer to prayer. God's doing that very thing. And so prayer sends forth laborers into the harvest, the harvest of individuals as well as nations.

How many here have family members that they love, they want to see come to Christ, but they don't know the Lord. You have that. I have that, too. Now, for many of us, and maybe this is the case with you.

It is the case with me. I don't have a whole lot of connection with those family members that we live at, you know, long distances from one another. We don't have a whole lot of personal contact. I don't have much of an opportunity to give the input into their lives that I would like to if I was around them all the time.

But, you know, this is what I can do and this is what I do. Lord, send forth a laborer into that harvest field. Lord, bring somebody into the life of that person that I love, that person that I care about.

And, you know, sometimes with your family members, it's actually probably more likely that it's going to be somebody from the outside that's going to have an impact on them rather than you. I don't know if you've sensed that or not, but, you know, it does seem to be the case.

And so we pray, Lord, send a laborer, send a person, somebody that they can have a relationship with, somebody that will engage them in conversation about Christ, somebody that will be bold and and speak out to them and somebody that they'll listen to, maybe, you know, somebody that they'll respect.

And I think that that's something that we need to do as believers for our loved ones, for friends of ours, for people that we're not closely connected with geographically or not able to have that kind of relationship with.

So he sends forth laborers into the harvest on an individual level, but he also sends forth laborers into nations because, as I said, prayer is a vital part. But there's also another component. God uses people to touch other people's lives, Paul tells us in Romans chapter 10, verse 14, he asked the question, he said, How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?

And how shall they hear unless someone preached to them? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? And so there is that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So we're praying. A couple of things, we're praying that God will pave the way, we're praying that God will remove the blindness, that he'll soften the heart, that he'll deliver the mind so that when the gospel does come through the laborer that God sends into that harvest field, that there's a receptive heart rather than a hardened heart.

That there's an open mind rather than a closed mind, that there is an ability to see the truth rather than a blindness that's upon that person. So this is what Paul is talking about here. Now, he goes on and he says.

One God and One Mediator

For there is one God. And one mediator between. God and men. The man, Christ Jesus, you see what Paul wants to remind us of is that there's really just one God. Now, of course, there are many so-called gods.

But there's actually only one true God. And all of the people in the world, sometimes we forget this, I think, but, you know, everybody in the world was created by God. Every human being that lives on the Earth today, everyone that's ever lived, all six billion and whatever the rest of the number is presently.

Everyone was created by God. Everyone is loved by God in the sense that Christ died for everyone. Everyone's a candidate for salvation. There is just one God. He's the God of the East. He's the God of the West.

He's the God of the North. He's the God of the South. There's not a different God and a different way of salvation for people that come from the Eastern world, you know, sometimes you hear people say, well, Christianity is the religion of the West.

Christianity is good for people in the West, but of course, the people in the East, they have Hinduism and they have Buddhism and they have Islam in the Middle East and so forth. That's not reality. They do have those religions, of course, but according to the scriptures, they're false religions.

Somebody ignorantly says, hey, all religions teach the same thing. Don't you know that, man? No, they don't. Hindus believe in literally millions of gods. Muslims believe in one God. You try to tell me that Hinduism and Islam teach the same thing.

They don't teach anything remotely close. Buddhism doesn't even teach that there's a God, Buddhism is really, in a sense, an atheistic religion. So we have to. We have to remember, we've got to keep these things in our minds because there's constantly voices, you know, that are saying, you know, we don't need to bother with that and they've got their own way and, you know, don't bother them.

Don't rock the boat. Some Christians have foolishly suggested that there are other ways to be saved apart from Jesus Christ. When my wife was attending college. Twenty five years ago or so. She was going to.

A quote unquote evangelical college. Up in. Montecito, California, and they're at Westmont College, I'll go ahead and just tell you which college it was because they haven't changed any, they've gotten worse.

So don't send your kids there. They were teaching back then. That you don't try to convert a Buddhist to Christianity. You just. Try to make them a better Buddhist. You don't want to convert Hindus to Christ, you just help them along in their Hinduism and the same with Islam and all the way down the line.

And this was a quote unquote evangelical college. That's that's basically what they were teaching the kids back in those days. Now, that flies right in the face of what the Bible says right here, there's one God and there's one mediator.

Now, that was 25 years ago, as I said, it's only gone from bad to worse since then. And even recently, we hear outcry from certain so-called Christian leaders upset over the fact that Christians are out trying to evangelize Jews and convert them.

God forbid. And Christians are out there telling Muslims that they need to come to know Jesus. And, you know, there are people in the Christian community so-called that will stand up against that and say, that's wrong.

We shouldn't be doing that. You need to respect the fact that, you know, they've got their own way to God. Where do they come up with this stuff? Well, this is the influence of of humanism. This is the influence of secularism.

This isn't what you find in the Bible. The Bible's crystal clear, there's one God. And not only is there just one God, there's one mediator between God and men. In other words, there aren't many roads.

There aren't many mediators. You take your pick, whichever one suits your fancy. It's not the way it works. You see, God's in charge of salvation, not man. Now, I know that's hard for people to believe because man wants to be in control of everything, although he's ultimately in control of nothing.

But that's just the way we are as human beings. I don't like somebody else calling the shots. Well, guess what? God's calling the shots on this issue and it's never going to change. And he says simply, there's one mediator between God and men.

There's only one. And that is the man, Christ Jesus. He's the mediator. You see, Jesus is the only one that qualifies to be the mediator. He's the only one that could possibly do it. You see, the idea that you could actually just come to God on your own.

People say I've talked to Jewish people. They've told me, you know, hey, don't talk to me. I don't need Jesus. I go directly to God. They're fooling themselves. They don't even know their own religion.

A Jew who says I don't need a mediator, I go directly to God, does not know their own religion because there wasn't a single Jew before the time of Jesus that thought I don't need a mediator. I just go straight to God.

Their whole history is full of mediators. That's what the priesthood was all about. That's what the sacrificial system was all about. As a matter of fact, when they had an encounter with God on Mount Sinai and God came down in all of his awesomeness, the people were so frightened they they were exceedingly afraid.

They said to Moses, they said, Moses, Moses, don't let God speak to us. Moses, we're afraid, Moses, you talk to us, but don't let God talk to us, Moses. And God said to Moses, he said, you know what the people told you there, he said, they're right.

They can't approach me, you will be the mediator, you will be my representative. And then God establishes a system, he sets up a priesthood and Aaron, he becomes the high priest and there's a tabernacle that's made and there's a sacrificial system that's established and God's presence is visible presence in the sense of his glory resides in this place called the Holy of Holies.

And there above the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant, the glory of God resided. And that Holy of Holies was sectioned off by a curtain that was thick. And there was absolutely no access into that place, and any person that would try to pass into the Holy of Holies would be struck dead immediately, only the high priest could go there and he could only go once a year and he could only enter in with the blood of the sacrificial animal.

What was that all about, that was all about the need for a mediator, you see, man can't approach God directly. Job understood that when Job was going through all of his struggles and all the difficulty, all the suffering, he said, I wish I could get before God, I wish I could talk to him, but I can't.

God's too awesome, he's so far beyond my ability to even comprehend or conceive, he said, I can't even get near him. Job said, oh, if I only had a mediator. If there was someone who could be a go between.

Now, who could be a go between who who could, you know, meet the criteria, who in the world could lay a hand on God and then lay a hand on me and connect us together. There's only one person that could do it.

That's the person who was both God and man. That's Jesus Christ. You see, that's why Jesus is the only possible mediator, because Jesus is the only person who is not only a man, he's God. He's got the sun, as we know, and therefore he's able to lay a hand on God because he is God, he's got the sun and then he's able to lay a hand on me because he's a man and he's able to bridge the gap.

He's able to bridge the chasm between me and God, he's able to bring us together, but he and he alone is able to do it. There's one God and one mediator, and so those who discount the idea of the necessity of a mediator, they simply don't know who God is.

As I said, the Jews forget their own history, they don't understand their own religion, Muslims have a similar sort of an idea, they don't really need a mediator, they can go directly to all of it, yet they can't really go directly to all of there's no Muslim that thinks you can go into the presence of all and actually have a meaningful conversation with him.

All it is by his very nature, disconnected, separate completely from this sinful world. But you see, only through Christ do we have the ability to access God because he is the one mediator between God and men.

And so what do we do? God wants people to be saved. We pray, we pray that God will open their eyes, soften their hearts, deliver their minds. We pray for individuals that God will do that. We pray for regions that God will move and pour out his spirit.