Pray for All Men and For Kings--1 Timothy 2:1-4 (September 22, 2024)

Church Order for Godliness in 1 Timothy

You can turn in your Bibles to 1st Timothy chapter 2, 1st Timothy chapter 2. We're just kind of moving our way slowly through this book of 1st Timothy. We're going to be in chapter 2 verses 1 through 4 this morning.

Verses 1 through 4, and we'll begin just by reading this passage. God's Word says this, 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. Amen. This is God's Word to us this morning, and as we begin, I want to remind you of one of the main themes of 1st Timothy that we have seen and that we are going to continually point out as we go through this letter, and that is the theme of church order for godliness.

Church order for godliness. Paul is giving Timothy instructions for the church in Ephesus, and by extension to all churches of Christ Jesus, instructions of how to order things within the local church for the purpose that the church would be godly, that they would grow in holiness.

As part of that, Paul, he gives instructions for the public worship of the church throughout the letter. And the two main ministries of the church during worship being the ministry of the Word and ministry of prayer.

And so the ministry of the Word is the reading of God's Word, which Michael did for us just a little bit ago, the preaching of God's Word. Ministry of prayer being, well, when we pray together. Singing combines these two as we sing the Word of God as prayer.

And so thus far in chapter 1, thus far in the letter, Paul has given attention to the ministry of the Word by charging Timothy to allow no other doctrine to be preached, to be taught, to be given quarter in the church.

Allow them to teach no other doctrine, he has told them. Now in chapter 2, in these first few verses, Paul is turning his attention to the ministry of prayer in the worship of the church. And so the question that I want you to be thinking about this morning to consider is this.

What are we doing when we pray? What are we doing when we pray? Specifically, what are we doing when we pray as the church? During our gathered Lord's Day worship? And even more specifically than that, think about, what are we doing when we pray as the church during our Lord's Day corporate worship?

And then how does that relate to evangelism and missions? Those are the questions before us. Now, we pray at various points in time in our service. We pray during the call to worship often, as we respond to God's Word calling us before Him to worship.

We pray during our gospel focus, when we confess our sins and we ask for God's mercy, and we thank Him for forgiveness that we have in Christ. We pray at the end of the sermon, asking God for help in applying that sermon to our lives.

The benediction at the very end of the service is a prayer of blessing upon our congregation as we go back out into the world. But then, at the very center of our service, right before the sermon, we have what we call the pastoral prayer.

This is the main, and some of you might say the long, prayer of the service. And during that prayer, we pray for all sorts of things. We pray for our church, specifically. We pray for various specific needs as they arise.

Somebody that's having surgery, somebody that's been sick, somebody that's going through the death of a loved one. We pray for the godliness and spiritual vitality of our members. And each week, what we do, we just go three names or three families at a time, going through our church directory.

And we pray specifically for those members in accordance with a scripture passage. We pray for other churches in our area. We recognize we're not the only game in town. There are many other faithful churches just within a few miles of here.

We want God's blessing upon them, and so we pray for them. But you'll notice in verse 1, Paul exhorts the church to pray for all men. That is, we don't only pray for ourselves. We don't only pray for our church.

We don't only pray for believers, but we are to pray for all humanity, all people, all men. We pray for other people groups than our own. And so that's why during our pastoral prayer, we also pray for lost people.

I mention about every Sunday, the 8 out of 10, within a few mile radius of here, that are not believers. They're not connected to Christ, to the church. Soon, we're going to add that pastoral prayer, praying for an unreached people group, working on a missionary partnership with missionaries in an unreached area of Central Asia.

And once we get that going, we'll start praying specifically for those missionaries and for the work in those particular cities, that particular region, particular people. We'll pray for unreached peoples and the gospel work being done among them.

And we do this because of verse 1. Pray for all men. And then also each week, we also pray for those who are in positions of governing authority. And so this week, we pray for travel-addressed city leaders.

Next week, we'll pray for Greenville County leaders. The following week, we'll pray for state leaders. Following that, national leaders. And we do this because of verse 2, where God tells us to pray for kings and all those who are in authority.

Now, if you've ever wondered why I pray according to the same pattern every week during that pastoral prayer, well, 1 Timothy 2 is your answer. God here gives us instructions for the public prayer of the church during the worship service, and so that's why we do that.

Now, we might ask, why? Why does God want us praying for all men and for kings? What are we doing when we do that? What are we doing when we pray? And I hope to answer this for us, at least in some measure, from this passage this morning.

God Desires All Kinds of People to Be Saved

But to do that, I want to begin at verse 4, and then we'll swing back around to verse 1. But in verse 4, we see it says, talking about God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of truth.

This locates the instruction in God's evangelistic missional desire for all peoples to come to know Him. Now, one thing we need to consider when we look at this verse is the meaning of all men. Does this mean all manner or all types of men, people, humanity?

Or does it mean every last person, every last man? Now, when we read it, we already saw verse 1, this phrase of all men being used. And there, I don't believe Paul is saying that the church, when he says pray for all men, they say we need to go through the census and pray for every single name that's there in our county, state, nation, whatever it is, worldwide.

Rather, he's speaking of mankind generally, and specifically about all types of people. And so the Greek phrase that's used there means all manner. It means God desires all types of people to be saved, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, man and woman, slave and free, rural and urban.

And this goes along with the Great Commission. Make disciples of all nations. Psalm 67, let the nations be glad. Revelation 5, 9, where the focus is on the gospel salvation that goes to all peoples, every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

If the meaning was every last man, every individual man, and every last man is not saved, and we know some people are not, then what we would have is two contradictory wills within God. Or we'd have a God powerless to bring about His will, and neither of those accord with the right and true doctrine of who God is.

And so, I believe this is referring to all manner, all types of men. But understanding it that way doesn't limit the scope of salvation at all. Rather, we learn the global scale of God's redemptive project that God is bringing about the salvation of the world.

That God is gathering a people to Himself from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. Back at 2 .14,. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

You see, God desiring the salvation of all men means nothing less than the gospel taking over the world. Every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. This is our prayer. We are to pray for this during our worship.

We are to pray for all men, all peoples, because God wants it. And we pray for the salvation of all men because the primary, not only, but primary God-ordained means of bringing about their salvation is the public worship of the church.

Now, this may sound a little bit counterintuitive. After all, most of those unbelievers, the eight out of ten within a five mile radius, they're not here this morning. They're not sitting here this morning.

But the reason it sounds counterintuitive is because we often misunderstand what is going on at this very moment. We misunderstand what is going on in public worship. Lord's Day worship, we think of worship as kind of like a Christian club gathering.

A meeting of a Christian club. Or maybe we think of it as a theological, hopefully kind of practical, but a theological lecture with some good music on either side of it. And that's if we think about it at all.

Most Christians probably don't give much thought to worship outside of the fact that they're a Christian and they know they're supposed to go to church, so they do. But here's the thing. Lord's Day worship, the assembled congregation of Christ, worship is incredibly potent.

Because when we come together as God's assembled congregation, when we are called into His presence, to the very throne room of God Almighty, we ascend the heavenly Mount Zion, Hebrews 12, and spiritually appear before God in that holy city.

And we hear from the Lord. We receive grace from His hand. We are assured of our forgiveness in Christ. We hear His Word preached, giving us instructions for our lives. We bring our supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings to Him.

And as sons of God brought into the counsel of God, we ask that His will be done on earth. We ask that His will be done in Traveler's Rest, in Greenville County, as it is in heaven. So our worship has massive power.

That's not because we're powerful. We're not. But it's because we are granted access to the Lord of the universe, to the King that is above all kings. And He, He is all-powerful. In fact, our most important and potent political work is done in this very room every Sunday as we pray for all men and for kings and those in authority.

That doesn't mean it's our only important political work. Not at all. But it does mean it's our most powerful. And it's our first. And so we pray. We pray. Paul tells us there in verse 1 to offer supplications and prayers.

These are two words referring to making requests of God. And so we are asking for specific and definite things when we pray. We're not just praying in generality. We want to ask for specific things. Supplications is often understood to be referring to requests about removing hard or evil things.

And prayer is kind of a general term for making requests to secure goods. Intercessions refers to prayers on behalf of other people, praying for someone else. And then the giving of thanks that Paul mentions in verse 1 refers to gratitude for mercies and gifts that are already received.

And by giving us these four different types of prayer, I believe Paul is exhorting us to comprehensive prayer. To not be sluggish in prayer, which, if we're honest, we're all often tempted to be. But we are to fervently pray for all men.

Why We Pray for Kings and Authorities

And we are to, as verse 2 says, pray for kings and all who are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. So I want us to remember the context here for just a moment.

We are praying for all men because God desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. And then Paul tells us to pray for, right after that, he tells us to pray for kings and those in authority.

Why? I think it's rooted also in verse 4. Because he desires all men to come to salvation and knowledge of the truth. And this is because, these things are connected because the ideal circumstances for all men to come to salvation and to the truth is in times of peace and security, which is secured by the governing authorities.

You see, God has ordered the world in such a way to give the duty and the responsibility of civil order, earthly order, to the state governing authorities. In fact, Romans 13 calls the king, or we might say the civil magistrate, the government official, God's deacon for good.

God's minister, God's servant, God's deacon to punish evil and promote what is good. And this means that the role and responsibility of the government is to secure the good of its people, to create the conditions whereby the citizens can live quiet and peaceful lives.

And these are the conditions which are ideal for the propagation of gospel. Now it's true, you've heard the stories, and it's true, that God's spirit has often worked mightily during times of persecution in various places around the world.

And by God's grace, the church has often been resilient and anti-fragile during times of persecution. So we praise God for that, and we don't slight that in the least. But that doesn't mean we need to have a persecution complex.

That doesn't mean that we need to seek it out or desire it or even romanticize it. Because also in areas of persecution, the witness of the gospel has been all but snuffed out in some places. That's also true.

God says here in 1 Timothy 2 that the ideal conditions, the conditions that we are to pray for and ask God for, the conditions that the government ought to secure if they're being obedient, is that we can live a quiet, peaceful life.

When the government does its job to restrain evil and to promote good, that is when the iron is hot to strike for the proclamation of the gospel to all men. And so, we pray for kings. This is because the essential duty of the governing authorities, in our case here, mayors, sheriffs, county councils, state legislatures, governors, congressmen, senators, presidents, their essential duty before God is to maintain public order by punishing evil and promoting good.

As one commentator put it, the government is not like a school. The government is not the principal. They're the hall monitor. They're not the principal. Christ is the head. He's the principal. He's the head of all society.

King of kings. And the government, the civil magistrate, is duty bound to maintain order according to the word of Christ. He maintains public order through law. Laws that restrain evil, laws that promote good by encouraging it or not hindering the good.

And through law, the magistrate is to order earthly, social life toward God and heavenly life. They're to make it possible for Christians to live godly and peaceful and quiet lives. They're to make it possible to maintain order in such a way that promotes the public proclamation of God's word.

They're to maintain public decency so as to promote godliness and reverence. Say that in verse 2. Now this doesn't seem like the naked public square that we've been taught over the last 70 years is ideal.

It does not sound like a neutral secular government that makes no value or moral judgments at all. And that's because neutrality is not an actual option that's on the table. It's actually not possible.

There will be a God of the government system. It's what we call an inescapable concept. It's not whether but which. It's not whether there will be a God over the governing system. It is which one will it be?

A true God? A living God? The Father of the Lord Jesus Christ? Or some idol? Some false God? Let me put it more bluntly. We'll either have Christ as God of the system or we'll have another God. But here's the thing.

You cannot have neither and you cannot have both. So we've been socialized into believing that God and government ought to be separate. But that's impossible. You can have a separation of the institutions of church and state and we ought to.

For these are two separate institutions of authority ordained by God. Or maybe a better way to say that, we're talking about this in Sunday school, maybe a distinction between, not a complete separation, but a distinction between church and state.

But we ought not and we cannot separate God and state as our current rulers insist. No, Christ is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He is over every nation including ours. It means all governing officials report to King Jesus.

And they ought to submit to Him. Psalm 2 says this, Psalm 2 verse 12. Kiss the Son lest He be angry and you perish in the way when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.

And so when we pray for kings and all those in authority, we should pray that they kiss the Son and submit to King Jesus. And when they do, they'll be like Isaiah 49 .23 says, they'll be as nursing fathers to their people.

Punishing evil according to what God has said is evil, thereby restraining it. Rewarding good according to what God has called good, thereby promoting it. And ordering society in such a way that points people towards their true, ultimately heavenly good.

Which is only found in Christ Jesus. And they will fulfill what a friend of mine calls the chief end of government. Which is joy in Christ and justice in the land. Now that's the design. That's what government does.

I don't think I need to tell you that we don't currently have that type of government. We have a regime that calls good evil and evil good. We have a regime that has set itself up against the Lord and His anointed.

So what do we do in that situation? What do we do with that? Well, we pray. You see, when Paul was writing this to 1 Timothy, he wasn't exactly living under the ideal Christian republic then either. What do you do?

You pray. We pray for kings and those in authority, even the bad ones, while giving thanks for the good ones. And we have some good ones here in our county. But we pray even for the bad ones because God hears our prayers.

We do it because God tells us to. We do it because there's power in the corporate prayer of Christ's church assembled on the Lord's day for worship. When we're gathered in the name of the King of kings and we're filled with the Spirit of God.

When we pray in accordance with God's Word and God's will. And so I would encourage you to believe, to trust, to pray with faith that God works through the prayers of His people. That we're not just going through the motions here.

Commenting on this passage, Calvin said that magistrates are appointed by God for the protection of religion as well as the peace and decency of society in the exact same manner as the earth is appointed to produce food.

And so we pray for our daily bread. Pray the Lord's Prayer. You pray for your daily bread. And when we're doing that, we're praying for God to make the soil fertile. Likewise, when we pray for kings, we are praying to make them godly.

So that they, by their governance, might produce good for their citizens. And so we pray for wicked rulers because we know that the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord like rivers of water. He turns it wherever he wishes.

Proverbs 21. We pray for wicked rulers because we know that God can make bad men good. We pray for wicked rulers because we know that God can overthrow the wicked. He can make their feet slip and their plans falter.

How many times do you read about in the Old Testament where God sows confusion in the enemy camp and they turn their swords on one another? God can do that. We pray for even wicked rulers because we know that only God can deliver us.

Now there's one other thing that we should note about the existence of wicked rulers. They are often a judgment of God against a rebellious people. In much the same way that a barren land that doesn't produce fruit is also a judgment of God against rebellious people.

And so part of our prayers for rulers should also be prayers of repentance for the sins that have brought such wickedness upon our land. Because we can't have legalized baby murder and a constitutional right to gay marriage and endless wars of economic aggression and a nation that just flips its nose up at the Lord's day and also at the same time expect the blessings of God.

It just doesn't work that way. Rather we should repent of our personal sins and we should pray for the repentance of our national sins that have brought God's displeasure upon us and ask Him to graciously move that chastisement, His discipline and cause us to submit to Him and obey His word.

Prayer, Evangelism, and the Public Good

Now, that's kind of a long tangent about the government's role. And the reason for that is I want to set it in context of why we're praying for them in the context of evangelism. How does this relate to evangelism and world missions?

How does this relate to our prayers for the salvation of all men? Well, when governing authorities do their job rightly restraining evil, promoting good conditions are peaceful allowing Christians to live quiet and godly lives of reverence.

And this promotes cultural conditions that are conducive for conversion. Social conditions, cultural conditions that are conducive for conversion. So I want to speak here just a moment about what's known as cultural Christianity.

Now, cultural Christianity often gets knocked and not without some good reasons. I mean, hear me clearly here. There is a danger in Christian cultures where people think they are saved simply by abiding by cultural norms when they have never truly repented of their sins when they have no living faith and they've never trusted Christ personally.

There's a real and present danger there. However, there's a sense in which cultural Christianity is good. Let me put it this way. Which is better? A culture shaped by Christian norms and customs laws derived from God's word even if imperfectly or a pagan culture divorced without any reference to Christ and His word.

In which culture are you going to be more safe? Are your children going to be more safe? In which culture will they try to trans the kids? In which culture will you be able to have high trust with your neighbors?

In which culture are babies safe in their mother's womb? In which culture are you more likely to find justice in the land? Obviously, the good side of all those questions you're going to find that in the Christian culture.

You see, cultural Christianity made Billy Graham crusades possible where millions heard the good news of Jesus. Cultural Christianity created social conditions whereby church attendance was expected and advantageous socially.

And think about how many people got saved on a random Sunday night when they heard their regular preacher preaching God's word and God's gospel. Cultural Christianity shaped the public sense of morality getting basic categories of good and evil right.

Now, I'm not saying cultural Christianity is enough to save anyone. It is most certainly not. I'm not saying that it's ever been a perfect utopia because it certainly has not. But I am saying that the cultural Christian order maintained by the government in years past created conditions that were conducive to conversion.

Conditions that were conducive to the public good. And many of you in here are beneficiaries of that. Maybe you came to faith in that Christian order of the past. Or maybe your parents or grandparents or great grandparents did.

And you have inherited those blessings down through the years by having a family of faith. Think about the difference. That's why you go door to door in years past and people invite you into their homes to hear the gospel.

And you might get the law called on you if you do that today. Or worse. We want social conditions of peace and safety secured by the government so that we can more effectively and widely proclaim Christ.

And that's the connection to evangelism. We pray for kings so that they would do their God given duty for our own good that we can live quiet and peaceful lives. Without any hindrance from the government on that.

And for the good of our neighbor. That they might be prepared to hear the good news and to actually hear it and receive it by faith. So often when we think about evangelism we go immediately to personal evangelism.

Explaining the plan of salvation to someone. That's not exactly the first step. The first step in evangelism is to get the gospel right. Paul is going to get to that in verses 6 and 7. We'll get to it in two weeks.

Get the gospel right. Second thing is to get public worship right. That is we must come before God in ways that He has prescribed for us in His word. And that includes praying for all men and for kings.

Because corporate worship and in particular the prayers during corporate worship these are the primary. I don't mean only. Hear that clearly. Not the only. But what I mean by that is the first and most important part of evangelism.

And this means that all of you every week through our prayers as a congregation are taking part in the evangelism of our community at one level. Now this is not discouragement from the personal proclamation of the gospel which is also necessary.

We must speak the gospel to people. But rather it is a call first to prayer for all men and kings when we gather knowing that the prayers of righteous men and women availeth much. Two quick applications and we're done.

First application for us is each Sunday I want to encourage you don't check out during the pastoral prayer. I know it can go for 5 -7 minutes long or so. Don't check out on the pastoral prayer. It's some of the most important work that we do together.

And so muster up that attention span for those 5 -7 minutes each Sunday to pray for all men and for kings. A second application is an opportunity to pray this Wednesday night. So we meet every Wednesday night at 6 .30 for midweek family fellowship.

We're going to do something just a little bit different. An application of this sermon is we are going to meet here in the parking lot at 6 .30 and we are going to walk down or if you're not able to walk, drive down or we can have somebody drive you down to the gazebo there on the Swamp Rabbit Trail.

And we're going to take a few minutes of silent prayer together for our community, for our nation. Then we're going to voice a prayer. We're going to pray together as God's people. And then we're going to sing a couple of songs, sing the doxology and then come back here for snacks down in the fellowship hall.

This is an opportunity to pray as God's people for the good of our community. Now the point isn't to pray as to be seen by men in order to make a spectacle of our praying, but rather to give joyful witness to our love for Christ and this community in particular and this nation by praying together and singing in the public square.

And then next Sunday at 10 .30, we're going to assemble here once again to boldly draw near to the throne of grace and offer our supplications and our prayers, our intercessions, our thanksgiving to the King of the Universe asking that His will be done in Trevor's rest as it is in Heaven.

Let's pray together. Our Father in Heaven, first of all we thank You that Christ gave Himself a ransom for all. Lord, we thank You that there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.

We thank You that He died in our place. He was resurrected that we too could be raised to new and everlasting life. We thank You for the Gospel. Lord, we pray for all peoples, rich, poor, rural, urban, man, woman, every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

Lord, we pray for the good news of this Gospel to go out to them that they would hear it and that Your Spirit would convict them of sin and righteousness and that You would take out their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh, that You would breathe Your Spirit into them, that You would renew them, You would remake them, that they would be born again by the Spirit.

So we pray for all people. And Father, we pray for that end because You desire all men to come to salvation and knowledge of the truth. We thereby also pray for those in governing positions of government authority that they would lead in such a way that secures the peace and quietness and stability of our community, of our state, of our nation.

They would do what You have called them to do, maintaining order, punishing evil, rewarding good, such that we can live quiet, peaceful lives and proclaim Christ. We can live quiet, peaceful lives and give joyful witness to the glories of King Jesus.

And so will You work in hearts... Father, I thank You for godly people that we have in positions of government power. Lord, I pray that You would encourage them because I know it can get lonely, it can get frustrating.

It's hard work. But we also pray for those who are ungodly, knowing that their hearts are like water in Your hands Lord, turn them wherever You will for the good of our people and for the glory of Your name.

We ask all of this in the name of Christ. Amen.