Book of 1 Timothy - Ch. 2, Vs. 4-7 (04/07/2002)

We're, let's see, we're, 1 Timothy chapter 2, and we covered,

I know we covered verse 4, probably where we stopped with verse 4.

Okay. Well, I'm going to pick up with verse 4 and go, so it'll go smoothly. We've got a little passage here going from verse 4 down through verse 7 that covers one idea, and then when we get to verse 8 and down through verse 15 covers another idea, and I don't know if I'd get into both ideas today or,

I know we'll get the first one done. We may start in the second idea, and I've asked Brother Otis to allow me to teach the rest of this chapter even if I don't finish it, so he'll be starting with chapter 3 next time whether I finish today with chapter 2 or not, and if I don't finish, then we'll come back and finish it next time

I speak. It's an important passage, and the second part of the passage down toward verse 8 through 15.

There's a lot of controversy in the country and churches and seminaries and commentaries on this passage, and to be honest,

I don't see anything in this passage that is difficult from an interpretation point of view.

It's one of the clearest, most easily interpreted passages in the whole Bible. It's just that most people will not look at all the parallel passages and first mentions and the different things, but when you look at it all, it's very, very clear, although I will say that I think there's some clarification we can do that will be helpful, because there are some questions that can be asked about this passage that, they're very, very good questions, and I think they need to be answered, so it's my hope that the

Lord will help us to be able to answer this to the extent that our congregation anyway will not have any questions left on this passage when we get through.

It's not one of the more difficult passages, fortunately. I don't have everybody here today, so I probably will not finish it on purpose, so I think we won't finish chapter 2 today.

I'll come back and finish it when we have more of our folks here, but we'll certainly get a good start into it.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for your presence with us this morning and for your word and your direction that you give us in these last days, and we know that however long we are here, you will give us the steps we are to take, and even a glance down the path a little ways, and your word is the light and the lamp that accomplishes that, and we thank you for the way your

Holy Spirit enlightens us to see things as we need them, and so provide those things this afternoon as we study together again, and we ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen. Okay. Well, let's start with 1

Timothy chapter 2 and verse 4.

Who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth, for there is one

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

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

Gentiles in faith and truth. Verity means truth. I will therefore, that I will therefore that the men, in the

Greek language it has the word thee right before the word men, that the men pray everywhere lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting, and we'll stop there.

We may not get much further than that today. Let's go back up to verse 4 just for a moment.

I want to ask some of you, if you could, and this isn't quite fair because I didn't warn you so you don't have your cheat sheets and you don't, hadn't looked at this in a while, but can some of you name some of the principles of proper

Bible interpretation that we studied a long time ago when we were talking, going through the word of God, when we first started the doctrinal study and we talked about the word of God itself, we got on the one

Sunday at least where we talked about proper interpretational methods. Who can name, there are seven of them and we had eight,

I think, in ours. We added one that sort of was an overall picture of the whole thing, but really seven very important points, seven or eight depending on where you read, who can give me one out of those?

They don't have to be in order. I don't think there is any particular order. So with Brother Clarence's then we're talking about the immediate context.

You have a verse, you can't just pluck that verse out to prove your point. You have to start maybe at the first of the chapter and read all the way to the verse and pass it, maybe go a little into the next chapter, make sure that you understand the context.

What is the whole thing talking about in that particular passage? That's very important. What's another one? Very good.

That's one of my favorite ones. And they said, if you didn't hear them, they said, let the

Bible interpret the Bible. There's a beautiful verse that is in the parallel passage that we'll use when we get down to verse eight and down through verse 15 that has the scripture for that principle.

And I don't want to get ahead so I'm not going to give it. But it exactly gives that in principle in the scriptures.

But let the Bible interpret the Bible. Very, very important. You can't just take a passage. This is so dangerous because people, new

Christians especially, will take a passage and read it and they're thinking this way.

They're thinking this is God's word. God is the author of it. It is absolutely true.

Therefore, this passage has to be true and they'll develop a doctrine around that passage.

And what they may not understand at their stage of growth is there may be five other passages that the way they're interpreting it, it contradicts those five other passages.

So you can't do that either. Not only do you have to hit the immediate context, you have to grow and mature to the point where you can take the scope of the whole

Bible and make it fit within that and not do damage anywhere. Let the Bible, let other places in the

Bible, we have what we call parallel passages. Look at them all. Let these other places, sometimes there'll be one word or a little phrase or a sentence that's not in this passage that is in the other one and it'll say, oh, that's what that means.

And so you let the Bible interpret the Bible. Yes. That's good.

Does it, exactly. Does it relate to, for example, if you were over in the

Old Testament and you read the passage where it says if you find a witch, you're supposed to burn them. Okay.

Does that mean we do that right now today or not? I mean, the Bible says so and God wrote it and it's inspired and it's perfect.

It says burn the witch. How do you handle that? Well, a new Christian might actually go out and burn a witch.

So that's why I like new Christians so much. But we always need them.

They go out and pop an abortion doctor, you know, that's just how they are. They're zealous. They read one passage and they say, there it is.

And they go after it. And God accomplishes his will in that way through new

Christians sometimes. But as we grow, we learn that you have to say, does this, is this primarily related to me today in this dispensation, the church age?

Does it relate primarily to me? Or is there a secondary teaching here?

Or is it, is there some symbolic teaching that's for me? In other words, here it is a physical story.

Here, could there be a spiritual truth? For instance, do we burn the witch? Or do we just learn from this that spiritually we burn the witch?

And our hearts and minds, kind of like we talked about this morning. Do you really go in there and kill all the Canaanites, the unbelievers?

Or do you just kill them in your heart and mind and you don't let them in? So that's a very good point. You have to ask, who's it speaking to primarily?

And what's the secondary application? And so forth. What's another one? Well, we covered the ones

I needed to for purposes of today. But you have some grammatical issues. You want to look up proper definitions of words.

And use your strongest concordance in the Greek. And the Hebrew is a good starting place. Grammatical considerations.

You know, young people, grammar is so important in school. I used to ask, why do I need this?

I'll never use it. Ain't that the truth? And then when I got saved, I realized why.

Because you can interpret a passage entirely incorrectly because you don't know grammar. So you need to know good grammar and so forth.

So let's stop there. We've named a lot of the good ones. I know we didn't catch all eight of them. But this particular passage, verses 4, 5, on down through 7, there are several very important interpretational points that you have to make sure you cover.

Or you'll get this one wrong every time. I say you. I don't really think you in this room will. But your friends will.

Out there that go to other churches and places, this is a particular place where you're stronger than they are for the most part.

And so maybe you need to understand why it is that you believe like you do. And this is a great passage to study

Bible interpretation, why it's so important to hit all eight of those points where they're appropriate. Sometimes you don't have all eight of them coming into play.

But when they do come into play, be honest with it and careful with it. Now, we know that this verse says, now if I were a brand new

Christian and all I knew was this verse, in verse 4, it says that Jesus will have all men to be saved.

Now, I'm going to start thinking, my goodness, that's wonderful news. That means every single man, woman, boy, and girl is going to be saved.

That's what it seems to say. And it goes on and says, and he will have all men to come unto knowledge of the truth.

Well, isn't that wonderful? Everybody is going to know the absolute truth. For there is one God, one mediator between God and men.

The man Christ Jesus seems to even further to strengthen this position that Jesus Christ is the mediator between God and man and he brings lost man to a holy

God and makes it where they all can be saved is what it would seem to be saying to the new believer, perhaps.

Then it goes on and it strengthens it even further. It says, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time.

That's usually about where the person would stop that wants to prove what theologians call universal atonement.

In this church, for the most part, we believe in limited atonement. We believe that Jesus died for his own but not for Satan's children because if he did die for Satan's children then he failed because they're not saved and that's impossible.

So, we don't believe universal atonement. Universal atonement is taught in nearly every other church in this city and in this country, besides a few.

Some of the Bible churches even that hold to Calvinism per se they will hold back on that one issue and say, well, but that one,

I think Calvin was wrong. I believe it is universal atonement. So, even probably the

Bible church across the street believes Jesus died for every man, woman, boy, and girl and they would teach that.

There's just too many unanswerable questions with other scriptures if you take that position but it is a popular position and they'll take passages like this now,

I'll say this there are a few other passages that seem to teach that out of all of them, this one would be the most difficult to deal with if you were a novice and had not studied much and hadn't put much thought into it now,

I don't believe it's difficult but I'm just saying, out of the ones we have, this one's the most difficult because on the others the one

I'm thinking of, I think it's in 1 Peter maybe 2 Peter, I don't remember exactly but it's the one where it says he is not willing that any should perish you go to the first part of that chapter and you do the context rule that was mentioned and you see very clearly that that's written only to God's children so it's easy to see in that passage that it's saying that I'm not willing that any of my own perish that one's very simple to deal with this one, you can go up to 1 chapter 2 you know it says all men and you go into the next verse and start talking about kings and authorities we're supposed to pray for, well we know they're not all saved so it really seems in the immediate context that it's dealing with all men which would lead us to think even lost people makes it a very strong passage for those who believe in universal atonement to use as ammunition the problem is they are violating one of the most important principles of Bible interpretation and that is let the

Bible interpret the Bible there are way too many other passages that this would contradict if it meant that and so it cannot mean that unless you want to go mess with those other passages and sometimes they'll do that, they'll go change them but you can't do that, you can't change any of it it speaks for itself it is written, thus saith the

Lord so this cannot contradict the other plain passages that teach that Jesus died for the elect such as John chapter 17 which we've been in just recently, if that comes to mind it's just so clear, he says

I pray not for the world, but for those that the Father gave me, etc, etc so what does this mean?

well if you were Jewish this afternoon this would not be difficult if you think with a

Jewish mind what you'll understand is when it says in verse 4 who will have all men to be saved obviously it doesn't mean all men there's no one in this room or anywhere in any church even those who believe universal atonement they wouldn't sit there and say yeah

I think all men are going to be saved so all doesn't mean all there it obviously doesn't mean all men are going to be saved what it simply has to mean the best interpretation when you use all eight points is all men to a

Jew all men to a Jew means not only just Jews all men means people from the Jewish family people from the

Gentile family whether it be Japheth people from Shem even people from Ham all men

Jesus died for all men in that sense it's the only way that it can fit the whole

Bible and I believe that's exactly what it means let me take you to a parallel passage and there's more information in the immediate text we'll get to in a minute that verifies it too matter of fact let's do that first I'm going to take you into Ephesians chapter 2 if you want to turn there but I want to read on down through verse 7 because verse 7 is extremely important in the immediate context if you're going to get a proper interpretation for these verses he says who gave himself a ransom for all now

I'm telling you that I believe that means all families of the world not just Jews it means the

Gentiles and the Jews he gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time now

I offer verse 7 as immediate contextual proof that that's what Paul the sense of it is where he comes in and he says where unto

I am ordained preacher an apostle a teacher of the

Gentiles in faith and truth he is making a special point that he as proof of this as proof that Jesus died for the whole world as proof that he desires that all kinds of men from the different families as proof of the fact that he died not just for the

Jew but for also the Gentile he says I am an apostle called to preach to the

Gentile it proves it you Jews look at me you know why am I not going back to Jerusalem to preach to the

Jews why am I preaching to the Gentiles why did God call me if it weren't true that Jesus died for them too that's what this passage teaches and Paul that is the sense of his message now to get a parallel passage to let the

Bible sort of speak about this passage let's look at Ephesians chapter 2 starting with verse 12 you know

I should mention this verse 8 says I will therefore that men pray everywhere the phrase everywhere is a subtle but important proof everywhere means other than just in the

Jewish parts of the world let men pray everywhere so it is in the immediate context but now in Ephesians 2 .12

that at that time you were without Christ being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel now

Paul the human penman of this passage is speaking again only this time he is writing to the church at Ephesus and he begins to talk about these people who were called aliens strangers having no hope and people without God that's all in verse 12 of Ephesians 2 now these are the

Gentiles by the way verse 13 and now see the contrast but now in Christ Jesus says you who were sometime or once upon a time far off you are made near by the blood of Christ who is that?

that's the Gentiles he is proving that Jesus Christ desires that all men be saved that all men he cannot mean all men because it doesn't mean all men not everybody will be saved in fact

Jesus himself said very few there be that pass through the narrow gates so it doesn't mean all men in the sense of individuals it means all men in the sense of nations in the sense of peoples it means

Jew and Gentile and he goes on to present this case but now in Christ Jesus who were sometime far off or made nigh by the blood for he is our peace now obviously verse 13 doesn't mean that every

Gentile everywhere is going to be saved what it means is now you Gentiles who were far off as a people can be made nigh for he is our peace who hath made both one now you see he didn't say he made every individual one he said both both

Jew and Gentile the Jew and the Gentile he has made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us not only between God and man as the curtain was split in twain from the top to the bottom but also between Jew and Gentile if you have a born again

Jew and a born again Gentile they're brothers they don't have all this problem going on like just secular people do between Jew and Gentile they're all of a sudden they're brothers and they love each other and so he has broken down the middle wall of partition between the

Jew and the Gentile having abolished in his flesh the hatred even the law of commandments contained in the ordinances of the two one new man so making peace of the two one new man it means he brings us all under the covenant of Abraham and we're one family now it's not

Jew and Gentile it's not like Old Testament everybody got to become a Jew to get saved never meant that in fact both have to come out from what they were in and be put into the family of Abraham and the two are made one it teaches very clearly and so making peace that they might be reconciled both unto

God in one body by the cross having slain the enmity thereof came and preached peace to you who used to be far off that's the

Gentile and to them that were near that's the Jew for through him we both that's both

Jew and Gentile have access by one spirit unto the Father now therefore you're no more strangers and foreigners if you're a

Gentile but you're fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God now notice verse 20 this has nothing to do with today's topic but we're here so I want to throw it in here and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets notice it doesn't say that you were built on the foundation of Judaism isn't that interesting?

because he's speaking to Jews and Gentiles and he says no you if you're a Christian if you're born again you're built upon the foundation of the apostles

Christ's apostles and the prophets and by the way that means the New Testament prophets that lived in the book of Acts and through the first time early days of the church age those early

New Testament prophets and apostles are the foundation Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone

Judaism is not mentioned anywhere in that passage in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth into a holy temple in the

Lord the whole building means Jews and Gentiles people from every nation in the world in whom ye also are built together for a habitation of God through the spirit in verse 3 chapter 3 verse 1 says for this cause

I Paul the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles you see it's the same thing that he says in 1

Timothy chapter 2 verse 7 where he says I am ordained a preacher an apostle to the

Gentiles in faith and truth he always brings this fact in when he's starting to talk about Jew and Gentile my contention is that that is very strong evidence in verse 7 and the very first part of verse 8 that Paul just as he does in Ephesians 2 he brings in this idea of the two the

Jew and the Gentile when he's trying to discuss the fact that Jesus is not willing that any should perish now if you take that particular line where you can line up the whole

Bible without contradicting anything anywhere in the Bible you can certainly line up this immediate contact text when you drop down to verse 7 and you include the fact you don't just stop with verse 6 you go into verse 7 you include the fact that he is saying now listen

I'm talking to the fact that the Gentiles can be saved you can go into the book of Acts in many places especially chapter 10 where God himself had to prove to Peter that a

Gentile could even be saved he had the sheep come down with all the unclean animals and he said Peter kill and eat

Peter said not me Lord I don't eat that stuff it's unclean God said Peter what I call clean don't call unclean anymore and then he had him witness to a

Gentile immediately and the Gentile got saved his name was Carnelius maybe he's already saved but Peter instructed him in the right way and it taught

Peter for the first time in his life the understanding that Jesus is not willing that any should perish so I think that's enough said about that point

I think you can see how it clears up a passage that some would use to try to teach a universal atonement is not necessary that this passage teach that at all when you consider the fact that Paul is simply talking about Jew and Gentile can be saved he is quite understandably not saying every individual can be saved or will be never would he say that even the rankest

Armenian around us today wouldn't say that every single man and woman are going to be saved so this does not vary from anything that Jesus teaches in John chapter 17 doesn't vary from anything in all the whole book of John where he says all that the

Father has given me I will lose none it fits in perfect harmony with everything that the

Bible teaches about the fact that when Jesus died on that cross his death was absolutely perfectly powerful and sufficient

I don't like the word sufficient but it's what the theologians use they say his blood was sufficient what they mean by that it doesn't take anything else one drop of that blood was enough to save every single person that God knew before the foundation of the world as we discussed in Deuteronomy 6 and 7 this morning every single one of them that God knew as his children that blood perfectly atoned and took their sins away that blood did not take one sin away from a goat or one of Satan's children because if it did they would end up in heaven too so universal atonement is a lie it is a modern lie it's not so modern the

Roman Catholic Church has believed it for 2 ,000 years but the Protestants picked it up only in recent days and it's a lie so don't believe it it's a popular lie sounds a whole lot better to say

Jesus died for everybody like the guy says over in Wortham coming through Jesus loves you no matter what you do it sounds really really good to some people but unfortunately it doesn't fit what the

Bible teaches so Jesus loves his own

Jesus died for his own it's absolutely true we don't know who they all are and we're therefore to witness to everyone the

Lord leads us to witness to and to give good news as God leads one thing we do know

John chapter 10 says this is a fact my sheep hear my voice doesn't say they might hear my voice it says they hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and none of them shall perish so I think

I'll stop there because I'm going to take that same amount of time to cover from verse 8 through verse 15 it'd be unfair to you to try to get that done this afternoon it'd never work so we'll cover that Brother Otis do you want to start with chapter 3 next week and then let me teach this the week after or do you want me to just finish this next week ok well why don't you do this why don't you prepare the first part of chapter 3 and if I don't see the crowd

I want nearly everybody here when I do it and that will give me the option of doing it next time or the next alright let's stand and pray together it's the kind of message that really the whole church needs to get on the same page

Father we thank you for your word once again and Lord we thank you that you help us to be able to interpret scriptures we know that we don't get them all interpreted on the same day we don't get the revelation all at one time you give it to us as you know that we need to have it but we thank you that you give us the equipment you give us the word of God you give us in some cases many many passages that speak to the issue of other passages and you give us your

Holy Spirit who can teach us the absolute truth as he wills we thank you for all these things and help us to glory in the truths that you've given us up to this very moment in time and help us to be um always curious about the new truths that you will give us tomorrow be with us today help our young people remember the message this morning help all of us to be reminded of the message and Father protect us on our ways home and we ask it in Jesus name