Pray For Peace - [1 Timothy 2:1-4]

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Well, I have a very special July 4th message prepared for you.
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So I would invite you to open your Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 2. And I thought, what would be appropriate for July 4th?
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And I thought, you know what? Why not just preach the next segment of 1 Timothy? So that's what we're doing.
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I titled this message, Pray for Peace. And I thought, you know, people are gonna read that and just think, you know, has
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Steve lost his mind? Isn't that some kind of bumper sticker that you see on, you know, the little old ladies who are leaving the
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Catholic Church, you know, pray the rosary, pray for peace, all that stuff? What's next? Next week he's gonna do, what, coexist with all the little different things?
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Probably not. But, you know, the great thing about today is we have the
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Internet where we can go and we can find all sorts of things. And I just thought, you know, I'm gonna look and see if there's a group online called
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WorldPeace .org. And guess what? There it is. Let me just tell you, they've got four principles here.
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Let me just read these principles to you and see if these align with your own. First of all, the power of thought.
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We're talking about peace. They're all about world peace. Thought forms create an energetic field strong enough to empower the course of planetary destiny.
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Bet you didn't know that. So that's the power of thought. The power of words.
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Words carry vibrations strong enough to inspire, heal, and transform the human heart, as well as the kingdom of plants, animals, and all creation.
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Third, the power of peace. And they say, the power of, of just this phrase, of may peace prevail on earth.
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This is an all -inclusive message and prayer. It is a meeting place of the heart, bringing together people of all faiths, backgrounds, and culture to embrace the oneness of our planetary family.
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Finally, they say, our mission is simple, to spread the universal peace message and prayer.
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May peace prevail on earth, that's their prayer, far and wide to embrace the lands and people of this earth.
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And I read that and I just thought, there's only one problem. The human condition, that is sin.
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When sin entered the world, everything fell apart, and until sin departs, we will not have peace.
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Let me assure you, my message this morning is not going to be anything like their message. All faiths are not equal.
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The only oneness in this world is the oneness of opposition to the true gospel and to the true
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God of that gospel. And the only peace that can prevail is a peace that God will establish after he vanquishes his foes.
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And yet, as Christians, we are to pray for peace. It's not just the sort of, it's just not the peace that they envision, it's not the peace of worldpeace .org.
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They want to establish peace, they want men to establish peace, they want, actually
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I should say they want people, you know, it would be wrong to, very patriarchal of me to say men, but people, they want people, mankind, oh sorry, humankind to establish peace.
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Kind of a Star Trek sort of view of the world. But the Bible declares that only
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God can establish peace. And this morning we're going to see peace of a different sort.
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Just to kind of set up our context here, we've been talking about 1 Timothy for a little while now, and Paul wrote this book of 1
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Timothy, so that Timothy would have basically, you know if you get something, and Timothy was getting, you know, here you go, here's your gift, a church, a church with a lot of trouble, when you get something you get an operator's manual and that's what 1
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Timothy is, it's an owner's manual, what do you do when you get a church? Here Timothy, take this, read it, study it, and you'll know that how you ought to conduct yourself and how the church ought to conduct itself.
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Just kind of review, Paul left Timothy behind in Ephesus to stop certain persons from teaching errant doctrine, there was difficult work to do and it was of a spiritual nature.
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And Timothy was chosen by Paul who called Timothy his true child in the faith.
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Paul explained later on in chapter 1 that the law is good, we don't normally think of it that way, but it is good if one uses it lawfully, if one uses it rightly, it serves a good purpose, it shows us where we fall short of the standards of God, how holy
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God is and how wicked we are. And then in verses 12 to 17,
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Paul bursts into praise as he thinks about his own salvation and about how he was one of those false teachers and about the grace of God in his own life.
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And last time I preached we looked at verses 18 through 20 of chapter 1 and we saw three elements of Paul's battle plan for Timothy.
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First we saw the orders, the orders that he gave him, Timothy was to war the good war against the enemies of the gospel.
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He was to stop these men from teaching errant doctrine and he used war the good war because it was going to be difficult, it was going to be a struggle, it was going to be long.
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And secondly we looked at the implements of war, Timothy was to live a life above reproach and thus to maintain a clear conscience, a good testimony so that his message would be in stark contrast to that of the false teachers with all their failings and their sinful lifestyles.
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This was a spiritual war and one that would not be won by strength of spiritual arms but by strength of character and an unwavering devotion to the truth of the gospel.
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And finally last time we looked at the enemy, Paul named names, he said here are the guys that you have to watch out for,
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Hymenaeus and Alexander were called out by name in a way that frankly shocks us today, we think how can he do that, how unloving of Paul to sort of pick out two guys and say those guys and to even say that he put them out of the church, that he turned them over to Satan, to the world system, not because he disliked them or hated them but because he wanted them to repent.
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Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Paul named these two enemies of the gospel and gave a blueprint of what ought to be done with those who are within the church who blaspheme
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God. Now with that kind of set up let's go ahead and read our passage this morning, 1st
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Timothy chapter 2 verses 1 to 4, a very challenging passage.
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Paul writes, first of all, first of all then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.
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This is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
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Now this morning I want to draw your attention to five commands, five commands drawn from our text that ought to inform the way we pray as a church.
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I want you to see this, I want you to see five areas of corporate prayer that should be reflected in how we approach our
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Father when we perform this vital act of worship and may I say that it also should impact the way you pray privately.
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First command, pray for peace for all men, pray for peace for all men and by the way as you're going to see as we go through this
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I'm not talking about peace on earth, I'm talking about spiritual peace and there's a reason for that, it's because of the flow of the argument here.
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Again notice verse one, first of all then I urge that supplications, prayers and intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people.
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The priority of prayer for the church could not be more obvious, why? Because he says it right up front, first of all.
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Now it could mean it's the first thing, I mean theoretically it could mean it should be the first thing done in the service or it could mean that it is of the utmost priority.
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Either way you look at it, this is something that the church is to prioritize. A church that doesn't pray when it gathers together is not obedient to God's word.
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And again think about the context, Paul's just turned, I mean we have all these you know chapter divisions and verse divisions but when
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Paul wrote it was just one big slew of letters. These were added later. So this is just one continuous argument that he's making.
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Right after he's turned Hymenaeus and Alexander over to Satan, Paul instructs Timothy to have the church pray for all people.
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Now you don't have to sit there for hours, you don't have to go get an advanced degree in Greek to figure out that all people would include
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Hymenaeus and Alexander. He just said I've thrown them out of the church, why? So that they can be buffeted basically, so that they will no longer have the protection of being within the church.
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Would it be wrong to pray for Alexander and Hymenaeus? No. And yet what a challenge.
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These are enemies of the gospel and Paul would suggest that we should pray for them. Look again at verse 1.
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First of all then, the word then helps us understand that it is connected to the previous section. We don't just take these verses in a vacuum, we have to follow
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Paul's entire argument. Timothy and the Ephesian church were locked into a spiritual warfare, into a spiritual war, truth versus error.
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Preachers of the saving gospel versus preachers who wanted to dilute things, who wanted to appeal to the flesh, who brought in new truths or repackaged old ones that were nothing but damning heresies.
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And spiritual warfare demands spiritual weapons, spiritual action, prayer.
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And after setting up the difficulties that the church faced, Paul's first admonition was to pray.
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In other words, when the church gathers together, prayer is to be a priority. And by the way, as we say often, but I want to stress this because I hear this all the time, prayer is worship.
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We hear, well you know I don't really care for the worship of that church. Well what do you mean? Do you mean the prayer, the giving, the preaching, the reading of God's word, the fellowship?
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What part of the worship don't you like? I don't like the music. Well that's not just worship, it's the whole thing.
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Everything we do here on Sunday morning is in fact worship. Paul uses four different words to highlight four different aspects of corporate prayer.
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But these are not limited to the times that the church is gathered. Never limited. I mean can you pray?
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You can pray anytime, anywhere, in any position you can pray. I pray driving in a car.
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I often pray for my enemies while I'm driving in a car. Thanks Pat.
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What are these different modes of prayer, these different prayer thoughts as it were?
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First supplication, which is an urgent request to meet a need exclusively addressed to God.
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We do this for individuals. We send out BBC announces. So and so's in the hospital. Please pray for them.
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What do we mean by that? We mean we have a specific request for a specific person. We want you to bring them before the throne of grace.
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Now let me ask you a question. How do you do that for all people? I haven't checked lately but I'm pretty sure we're somewhere around 7 billion give or take.
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You know a few hundred thousand. Can you imagine bringing specific requests for specific people before the throne of God for 7 billion people?
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It might change your prayer life. You might be there for a while. We couldn't do it.
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We could not do it but what can we do? We pray for situations that we know about.
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For people that we like, people that we love, people that we don't like. Are we to pray for our enemies?
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Yes. We're to pray for unsaved loved ones and family and friends?
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Yes. Pray for health needs? Yes. We are to cast all our cares upon him.
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Why? Because he cares for us. We can't pray for 7 billion people but we can pray for all kinds of people.
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Believers, unbelievers. The important as we'll see. You know kings, rulers, those in authority.
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Not so important. The people that might seem not so vital.
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The homeless, the poor. You can pray for them.
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Should pray for them. Why? Because every soul is created in the image of their creator.
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I was recently counseling a young woman married to an unbeliever and she married him at a time where she was in rebellion.
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And now she's having difficulty. Her mom is trying to get her to get a divorce.
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Her husband doesn't want her to go to church. Her husband doesn't particularly care for pastors.
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What could I do for this young woman? Two things I could do. One is
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I could tell her what the Bible says about her situation. And not in any kind of, you know, oh you should have known better kind of way because that's not the issue.
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What does she do now? What does the Bible tell her to do now? And secondly, what else could
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I do for her? Pray for her. That she would be able to obey. Pray for her husband whom
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I've never met. I've never talked to. All I know is his first name. Pray for him.
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Why? Because I care about that sister. I want that man to be saved.
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At the very least, I would love it if God would just soften his heart so that it wouldn't be such a struggle for her to get to church.
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We can bring specific requests before the throne of God knowing that he hears, that he answers prayer, that he acts on the requests of his children.
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Second term, prayer. It's a general term for prayer. But in this instance, it seems to carry the meaning of requesting insight, wisdom.
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You know, as James says, if you don't know what to do in a specific trial, what do you do? You pray for wisdom.
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Pray for insight. Pray for holiness.
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Pray to be set apart more. I mean, wouldn't you like to have a greater situational awareness?
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Think about that. Wouldn't you like to know what to say in a specific instance? Wouldn't you just like God to just kind of fill your head with instantaneously the perfect thing to say?
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Well, let me ask you this. Do you pray for that? Do you pray for wisdom and insight? Do you pray to be ready when someone says, you know, what must
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I do to be saved? And you could say, you have to be studying, but you also should pray to God that he would grant you those opportunities and that he would grant you wisdom to know what to say.
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I mean, what do you say to some young woman who says, I can't go to church. I can't do this. My husband won't let me. Ask for wisdom.
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I mean, you could just put your arm around her and say, gee, that's tough. But how much better if you could just say, well, this is what the
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Bible says about your situation. Third word, intercession.
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And it has the idea of meeting with another in order to converse freely. In this instance now, think about this.
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This is prayer, intercessory prayer, meeting with another in order to converse freely.
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We are meeting with the God of the universe and we're going to converse with him freely.
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That is what intercession is. We are going to meet God on behalf of another.
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A couple of examples of this word, Romans 8 .27 says, and he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the
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Spirit. Listen, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints. Who else intercedes?
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In Hebrews 7 we would see that the Lord Jesus intercedes on behalf of believers.
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So in that same way that the Spirit and the Son intercede, we are to intercede for others.
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It's a heavy responsibility. And again, who do we intercede on behalf of?
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All kinds of people. The people that we meet, the people who have need, the people that, I mean, sometimes do you just say, you know,
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I'll pray for you and you never do? Do you ever think about just carrying like a little notebook or putting that in your cell phone?
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You know, it's so funny to me, just a complete aside, people are always concerned about forgetting this code or that code.
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And I was talking to Bob Bureau about this a while back and he said, well, everybody has a cell phone and it's true.
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I found out the other day that it's something like a saturation rate of like 99 % or whatever on cell phones.
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So what if you just had, he said, what if you just put an address listing for your code and just punch the code into your cell phone?
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I'm like, that's brilliant and simple. Well, what if you just had on your cell phone a place where you just took prayer requests?
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What if you had a cell phone that was a prayer line? I'm, you know, but I'm getting too far ahead of myself. The calling is for us to pray.
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And when we are interceding, it is if we are literally in the presence of God pleading on behalf of others.
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I couldn't help but think as I thought about that word, what a stark contrast that is to running around and gossiping about everyone.
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What a contrast that is running around and complaining about people. What if instead of gossiping or complaining, you just say, you know what,
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I'm going to make a point of interceding with that brother or sister before the
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Lord. I'm going to pray for them. How many problems could be solved?
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We have a privilege to intercede with our father on behalf of others. We do that even here.
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Fourth kind of prayer, Thanksgiving. I sometimes think, especially in personal prayer, that this might be the single most overlooked item.
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Why? Because I think it's true of even of Christians that when do they pray? You know,
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I'll exaggerate a little bit for the sake of argument, but, you know, Christians like to pray when the blindfold is on, they're asking for your last request, and you hear the guy say, ready, aim.
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I mean, it's like, you know, your back's against the wall and it's all over. Well, I think I'd better pray now. At moments like that,
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Thanksgiving may not be the first thing that comes to your mind. Thanksgiving ought to be one of the first things we think of.
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When we think of all that has happened in our lives, I mean, I think of my own life. When I think about what
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I wanted for my life, the direction that I was going, and I look and I see what
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God has done since then in my life, all the blessings that I have, that's a little bit overwhelming.
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How can you not be thankful when you even just think, God saved me? Why? I didn't deserve it.
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If you think that way, Thanksgiving is almost the first thing that comes out of your mouth. MacArthur says this, he says, now, think about this,
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I mean, I almost wrote this twice because I think it's so profound. Thanksgiving is the only element of prayer that will continue forever.
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Forever and ever, every single believer will be thankful. They will be praising
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God. Worthy is the lamb who was slain.
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We'll just keep praising and thanking him forever and ever, amazed at the grace that has been shed upon us.
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And when we think about it, why would that be? Well, because in heaven, there's not going to be any illness, no debt, no injury, no need for praying for salvation of others.
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There'll be no unemployment. We'll have 100 % employment, whatever we're doing.
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No bills, nothing. Don't have to worry about the dandelions in the yard.
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I mean, there's nothing going on. It's all perfect. As a church, we have so much.
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BBC, we have so much to be thankful for right here. The Lord has blessed us in so many ways.
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And if we were to start cataloging them, I think the first one we should go to is this. He has opened the eyes of many here to the saving truth of the gospel.
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And that alone is cause, as MacArthur says, for never -ending praise and thankfulness.
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So our first commandment is to pray for peace for all men. We want all men to experience that kind of peace.
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We want all men to have peace. We want peace horizontally, I guess we could say. So I guess
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I could have said a pray for peace with all men. Secondly, we want pray for peace with our leaders. Look at verse 2.
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For all people, for all kings, and all who are in high positions, we're to pray for all people.
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For all kings and all who are in high positions. Keeping in mind how much turmoil there was within the
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Ephesian church with the false teachers, there was obviously plenty of church within the church, plenty of trouble within the church to keep her praying.
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I mean, I don't think they had to urge the Ephesian church to pray. But what about trouble from outside the church?
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We're to pray for kings, monarchs, rulers, heads of state, like our president. Well, why is that?
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You don't have to turn there. But it's important to remember that all authority is ordained by God in Romans 13.
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It says, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God.
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And those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what
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God has appointed. And those who resist will incur judgment. There is no room for a
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Christian who says, I will not obey the government. In the book of Daniel, Daniel mentions how
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God sets up kings and kingdoms and takes them down. We need to pray for our leaders.
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We need to thank God for them no matter what we think about them. Because God has ordained them.
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He has given us the exact leaders that we have and He has given us the exact right leaders at every moment in time.
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Are they godly? Paul doesn't qualify it like that. Do they enact God honoring policies?
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Paul doesn't qualify it. Because no matter what the government is doing, the worst government is better than no government at all.
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Even as we saw the riots in Ephesus, what if that clerk hadn't been able to calm the crowd?
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Government authority serves a divine purpose. In Romans 13, where we are to go on, it just says that government exists to suppress evil, to keep evil doers from being as bad as they could be.
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Government is ordained by God as a restraint on evil. Now think about it.
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No government would mean what? That those who are the strongest, those who have the most guns, those who have the biggest numbers would rule everyone else.
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They would force their will upon everyone. I remember, and I've probably said this before, inmates at the jail used to tell me that they were my job security.
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I didn't like that very much. I thought, you know, it offended me.
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So I used to say, well, that's really not true. My job security came when
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Adam fell out of the garden, because as soon as sin entered the world, and we had greed and envy and laziness and the desire to dominate others, as soon as that happened, there was need for government and for police officers.
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I mean, I don't know if you've ever watched any of those post -apocalyptic movies, but without government, that's the kind of dopey world we live in.
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All these motorcycle gangs, you know, and guys with, you know, crazy helmets on and all that stuff. That's what the world would look like.
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So blessing, government is a blessing from God. And we ought to praise that those who rule over us would be favorably disposed toward us.
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In other words, that they would like us, that they would not want to persecute us. We want the government at every level, federal, state, and local, to treat us well.
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And of course, even better, what if they got saved? What if the president got saved? What if the governor got saved?
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When we think about the world that Paul was writing about, where monarchs were absolute, when they had complete control over life and death of every single person, it brings it even into more focus.
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You know what? We need to pray for our leaders. Why? Well, because they could put us to death. First, we need to pray for peace for all men.
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Secondly, we need to pray for peace with our leaders. Third, we need to pray for peace in our own lives.
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Look at verse 2 again, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life. It's like we're just going to move out to Holden and have a nice quiet life.
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Remember when we first moved out there? I'll never forget Mark Westcott. For some reason I remember Mark more than anybody else.
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But we're all, you know, everybody's all tuckered out from moving everything in. And we're just sitting there and it's a warm day and all the windows were open.
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And we've been living in Sterling right on Route 62 and it was pretty noisy. So all the windows were open and I said,
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I said, do you hear that to my wife? She goes, I can't hear anything. And I go, exactly. Isn't that great?
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Just a quiet and peaceful life. Well, that's not really what it's talking about here. It's talking about not being persecuted, not having trouble with the government.
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But part of having peace in our lives is not creating trouble for the government.
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Look at verse 2 again, a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.
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Now, it's interesting that we pray for our leaders and look again at verse 2, you see the that there?
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That's the purpose clause. We pray for our leaders with the purpose of having a peaceful and quiet life, and then comma, godly and dignified in every way.
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That kind of shows we get the consequence of praying for them. That's what we want is that quiet, peaceful life where we're free to worship and do the things that we want to do.
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I mean, ultimately, what do we want from government? We want two things. We want the freedom to gather for worship and secondly the freedom to evangelize.
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But that's the picture of a quiet, peaceful and quiet life. It's free from persecution from the government. It's interesting too,
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I was reading this week, one of my good friends, actually a former deputy sheriff, received a citation from the
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LAPD, meaning basically he was arrested on a misdemeanor and then released in his own recognizance. You know what it was for?
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Preaching the gospel. Preaching the gospel. It will be overturned, but it's just shocking the kind of things that are going on.
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So we need to pray for our leaders. Why? Because, I'm telling you, persecution is coming and we want the
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Lord to forestall that as long as possible. We want to hold it off. But again, you the church, are to conduct yourselves in a godly and dignified way.
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In other words, the church, Christians are not to be causing trouble for the government. I don't think there's a problem with peaceful protesting, but whatever the government does, however they persecute the church, we are not to respond like, as my wife likes to call them, hooligans.
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We have Holden hooligans. Never seen one, but they exist apparently. In every way, at every moment, under all circumstances, so that we are exemplary citizens.
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So that our leaders never have an excuse to come after the church. Again, think about what happened in Ephesus.
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Paul was not trying to cause problems, but the gospel offended. So we read in Acts 19 -29, so the city was filled with confusion.
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And they rushed together into the theater, dragging with them Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians, who were
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Paul's companions in travel. They dragged these men. But Paul didn't go back and organize some kind of protest.
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Now what does that mean? It means, here's what it does mean. It doesn't mean that you cannot protest. It doesn't mean that you cannot petition the government for redress of grievances.
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But the church ought not to become the vehicle of political protest.
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Does this mean that the church must be silent on moral issues? No. Because we preach the
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Bible. And we teach what God has told us to teach. We teach the entire counsel of God.
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We don't hold anything back. But we want peace from the government, peace with the government.
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We want peace in our own lives. Why? Because it helps us to preach the gospel, to spread the truth, to gather together, to equip the saints for the work of ministry.
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Number four, fourth command. Pray to have peace with God. Look at verse three.
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This is good. It is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior. Well don't we all want to be pleasing to God?
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Praying for all kinds of men and living peaceful, holy lives pleases
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God. As a human father, I know that when my kids did what
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I told them to, I was pleased. It's natural. When they didn't, I was displeased.
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How much more, knowing our frailties, being mindful that we are but dust, is our Father pleased when we do as He has instructed us?
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How much more should we want to please Him, our God, our Father, our
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Savior? What do we have that He has not given us?
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What good thing would He withhold from us? What would we prize more than hearing from Him on judgment day?
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Well done, good and faithful servant.
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What would be better than that? We make supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions because we want to please the
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One who purchased our souls with a price that we could not pay. He is
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God our Savior. Even as Pastor Mike was talking about Jonah last week,
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I just thought, what a Savior. Jonah taking off for Tarshish and God having none of it, sending him right back to Nineveh to preach it.
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For everyone here who knows Christ this morning, He is your Savior because He saved you from your own desires.
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He saved you from your sins. He saved you from self -pity. He saved you from what you deserved.
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He is your Savior because He chose to be, not because He was obligated to be or because somehow you imposed your will upon Him, but because He changed your will, transferring your affections from the things of this world to Him.
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That is a Savior. When you think about what
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Christ saved you from, are you pleasing to Him? Is that your goal? Do you long to have peace with Him?
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Fifth command, pray that God would grant peace with Him, with God, to others. Look at verse 4,
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God our Savior, verse 4, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
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Now here is a theological question for the ages. Does God want all men to be saved?
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Well, it says so, doesn't it? Who desires all people to be saved.
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Well, we could debate what all means, but we'll get to that in a minute. It kind of depends on what desires means.
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Could God save all people? Is He powerful enough to bring that to pass?
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I remember a little Mormon excursion here. Mormons teach that we all existed in a pre -existence before the world, and God was looking for a plan of salvation.
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God didn't have one Himself. And two plans were put forth. One was Jesus saying that He would come here, that He would die for the sins of men, and that those who chose to believe in Him could come back to the
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Father. Satan said, he also had a plan, he said that he would force everyone to obey and that everyone would come back.
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God chose Jesus' plan. Of course, we know this is wrong, but my point is that second plan.
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Could God save everyone? Could God, as it were, force everyone to be saved? Could God bring to pass the salvation of all people?
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Is He powerful enough to do that? And there are some who say,
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He's too much of a gentleman to do that. He leaves us a free will to choose to love
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Him freely. That's what He wants, because that's the only way it can be true love. But isn't the scripture true when it says in Psalm 115 verse 3,
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Our God is in the heavens, He does, listen, all that He pleases. Is that true?
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And if that is true and He desires all people to be saved, then why aren't they saved? What do we know about God that can help us to untie this knot a little bit?
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First of all, we know that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Ezekiel 33, 11 says this,
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Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from His way and live.
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Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel? He doesn't take pleasure in the death of the wicked.
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Is He confused why people don't believe? Is He incapable of bringing people to faith?
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What we know as I just read a minute ago from Psalm 115, that God of sovereignty does all that He pleases. And in Hebrew, the verb pleases is the word delight.
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All that delights Him, He does. In the Septuagint, that is the
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Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Greek root is the same as our passages, desires.
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He does all that He desires. So He's sovereign,
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He does all that He desires, but maybe He's not too concerned about who's saved.
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In Ephesians chapter 1, from verses 3 to 14, we have this great doxology where Paul bursts forth talking about salvation.
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From verse 3 to verse 14, it is all about salvation, about how
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God from the foundations of the world has chosen a people and has worked, listen,
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God does the work, has worked to save them. And listen to verse 11, in that great passage where Paul is talking about salvation specifically.
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Verse 11, he says, in Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him, listen, who works all things according to the counsel of His will.
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Again, that context is specifically about salvation. God is sovereign and He is sovereign in salvation.
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He sovereignly saves those He chooses to save. What else do we know about God?
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We also know that we cannot come to God of our own free will. Not only did the apostles teach this, but the
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Lord Himself did. In John 6, verse 44, He says, no one can come to Me, no one has the ability, the capacity to come to Me, unless the
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Father who sent Me draws him. So our verse says,
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God wants all men, He desires all men to be saved. We know that He has the power to do it, but He does not save them all.
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That's true. Why not? For His glory.
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Keep your finger there in 1 Timothy for a minute and turn over to Romans 9. I say this often and I don't think
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I can say it enough, you know, if you want to know more about the mystery of salvation, because it's not a mystery,
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God has told us so much about it. There are certain passages, certain chapters of scripture that you should just know, that you should just read often and just really they are awe -striking.
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Romans 8, Romans 9, just read them from beginning to end and you'll see the greatness of your salvation.
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Romans 9, verses 22 and 23, Paul addresses this question of fairness or why
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God doesn't save everyone directly. He says, what if God, desiring, same word, to show
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His wrath and to make known His power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.
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Think about the patience of God since the fall, sin after sin after sin and yet He doesn't wipe out everyone.
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That's patience. Vessels of wrath, human beings who are going to bear the wrath of God, they're prepared for destruction and yet He patiently does not judge them in a moment.
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Verse 23, why? In order to make known the riches of His glory for the vessels of mercy which
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He prepared beforehand for glory. Vessels of mercy prepared beforehand for His mercy.
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That we might be, as it were, trophies. When we're in heaven we are, in fact, trophies of His glory.
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We are glorifying to Him because we are a people who never would have chosen to believe, never would have chosen to be saved and yet we are there and we're singing
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His praises. Why? Because He so changed us. Let's go back to 1
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Timothy chapter 2 and again look at verse 4.
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It is God our Savior who desires all people to be saved.
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Now the sense of that verb, to be saved, let me ask you this, is it an active or a passive?
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In other words, do people save themselves or are they saved? The answer is, it's a passive.
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People don't choose to be saved, they are saved. They are acted upon by an outside agent, that's what passivity is.
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God does not make people savable. He does not ask them if they would like to be saved, He saves them.
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Why is it passive? Because that is in keeping with everything the Bible says about salvation. You can debate this with me later, let me just give you a few examples.
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John 3, 3, Fred referred to this this morning, Jesus answered him, truly, truly
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I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Born again.
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Active or passive? It is passive. 1 Peter 1, 1, blessed be the God and Father of our
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Lord Jesus Christ, according to His great mercy He has caused us to be born again.
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Ephesians 2, verses 4 and 5, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which
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He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
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By grace you have been saved. Again, we are the objects, the saved Christians are the objects of God's activity.
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Even in that passage, dead in our trespasses, dead, but brought to life by Him.
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Now someone will surely complain, you always talk about the sovereignty of God and salvation.
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Well, that's just not true. I only talk about it when the Bible does. If it seems that I speak often about God's saving grace and our inability to choose
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God, it is only because the sacred text so often proclaims it. And I cannot and will not apologize for what
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God says. Someone else might object, but if that's true then we are just robots.
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Let me assure you this morning, you are not a robot. Because no robot could ever sin as much as you have.
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No robot could ever be in such a desperate situation and need a sovereign, saving, gracious God.
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Furthermore, look at all people in verse 4. Back in verse 1, we are commanded to pray for all people.
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As I said before, what if you had to bring specific requests, if you had to intercede with specific knowledge of the people with God for 7 billion people, you couldn't do it.
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Is God saying that through Paul that he really wants to save all people?
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I don't think so. I think he's telling us to pray for all sorts of people. And he's telling us that God saves all sorts of people, the seemingly important and the not so important.
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We're told in verse 6 that Jesus is the ransom for all. Did Jesus pay the price for the sins of those who were in hell when he died, when
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Jesus died on the cross? Those who were already in hell, did he pay for their sins? Did he pay for the sins of those who were going to go to hell?
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Did he pay the price of the sins for those who were vessels of wrath?
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No. How do we know that? We know that because the Father does not reject the sacrifice of the
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Son. We could go to a number of passages to demonstrate that, but listen to Isaiah 53 verses 10 and 11.
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Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief.
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When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring.
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He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.
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By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make all to be accounted righteous, make many to be accounted righteous.
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And he shall bear their iniquities. Hebrews 9 .28.
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So Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of all, no the sins of many, will appear for a second time not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
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The Lord himself said he was not dying for the sins of all mankind.
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John 10 .11. They say, he said, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for all.
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For the sheep, not for the wolves. For the sheep, not for the goats.
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For the sheep. All people will not be saved. The Lord does not delight in their deaths and their just punishment.
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Yet he causes this to happen when he could, if he desired, prevent it. Why? Again, for his glory.
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For his glory. No sin, no savior.
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No eternal reward. No eternal punishment. The greatness of Christ can only be seen in light of the punishment for rejecting him.
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Now can I fully reconcile that in my head? How God in some way wants all men to be saved?
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It's difficult. But I preach,
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I declare, I believe what he has revealed. What he has given to us of his mind, his will.
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And I trust that the one who establishes what is good and what is right will continue to do what is right.
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Now what does it mean to come to the knowledge of the truth? It goes hand in hand with being saved.
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When one is saved, one comes to the knowledge of the truth. You may have heard the gospel one thousand times before you believed.
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You may have intellectually even said, you know, that sounds true, or I believe that. But you never came to the knowledge of it until it took root in you.
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For that truth to take root, to grow, to grasp it intellectually in such a way that the gospel shapes, transforms, completely changes your life.
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Now if God is really sovereign in salvation, what are we to do?
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Pray. We pray that God would grant peace with him. Remember again,
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God is angry with sinners. He is angry with those who break his law.
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He is going to punish them eternally. We pray for the salvation of those.
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Why? Because God saves sinners. He is, by nature, a savior.
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His title is even given there, God our Savior. We pray that God would intervene.
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We pray that God would be pleased to pluck, as it were, brands out of the fire, even as he did with us.
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We, as a church, are to pray. Paul stressed that. When the church worships, it must pray because just as in Timothy's day, the body of Christ is under pressure from within.
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We read every day, Pastor Mike sends out these emails every day, of men falling away from the truth, of distorting the gospel, of compromising, of making friends with those who would provide the gospel.
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We are under pressure from within. We want to pray that we are not under pressure from without.
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We want to pray for peace with the government. We want to pray for peace in the body of Christ.
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We want to pray that any false teachers would be revealed. We need to pray, as a body, that the
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Lord would continue to bless us and protect us, that he would continue to bless the ministry here at Bethlehem Bible Church.
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Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we are thankful.
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Thankful to know you as Savior. Thankful to have forgiveness of sins when we consider the debt that each one of us owed you on account of our own actions, of our own sins against you.
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Father, even as we think about our lives now, lacking sometimes in passion, lacking in desire for your word for your people, lacking desire to see you glorified, what a great
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God you are that you would not just reject us even for our daily sins. Father, we would pray that you would grant so many blessings here.
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If we were to take the time, Lord, to get a prayer sheet for every person here, every person that they know that has some need, we could not possibly pray for all of them.
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Lord, would you make us a people that come to you, who pray to you, who trust in you, who long to see your name lifted high by the greatness of what you do.
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Lord, would you encourage us to be by answering our prayers. Would you convict us of our lack of prayer to you?
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Would you cause us daily to rely more upon you? Father, more than anything, would you cause each one here who knows you to just rejoice in what a great
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Savior you are, to reflect often of how great a salvation you have granted us.
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Lord, for those who don't know you here, would you bring such a conviction of their need for salvation, of their need to be forgiven, of their need to be adopted by you, to be granted forgiveness for every sin, past, present, future.