Sunday Morning Worship Service August 9, 2020

Praise for God’s Help and Upcoming Church Announcements

Health and strength and safety, protection. And I trust your week has been a good one and you have seen the Lord answer prayer. And you see Roger here today, he has some restoration of health and there's others who have seen some clear answers to prayer.

We are grateful, Niko got back last, a week ago yesterday and then we were on vacation with him for the past week. So he seems to be doing pretty well. So thank the Lord for that answer to prayer and for his being back with us.

Also, I'm sure they're on their way here. My wife will be here shortly. You'll have to, when you see her, you have to congratulate her on her marathon endurance. Today is our 40th anniversary. So she has endured four decades of a pastor's wife and being my wife.

So just think of all that she's had to put up with for the last 40 years. Anyway, I'm grateful for her and for our life together and for all that the Lord has done for us and with us and in us and through us and looking forward to, I was gonna say 40 more, but that might be a stretch.

But anyway, a couple of announcements. I'm going to work on having the devotions ready, the daily devotions, the noon and six o 'clock devotions this week. So be watching for that on Facebook or on the website tomorrow at noon or six o 'clock and then each day this week.

So there won't be reruns, Lord willing. So looking forward to that. And then Wednesday night, the midweek service, we're continuing our journey around the world with Tim Chalice in this series called Epic.

And this week we go down under to Australia and Australia and New Zealand. So that should be an interesting find to see what we discover in those countries related to the history of the church. And then, so this is the second Sunday of August and normally on the first Sunday we do the Lord's Supper.

Didn't do that last week, not doing it this morning, but we will next week. So next Lord's Day, let's plan on that. Again, we'll be using the little cups that you get when you come in in the service. So pick one of those up and we'll have the Lord's Supper next Sunday.

Glad to have Ron Burnett with us today and gonna be sharing the messages of God's word this morning and then again at six o 'clock this evening. So I hope that you'll be able to get back for the evening service tonight as Pastor Burnett will share the message from God's word.

This morning I wanna open with Psalm 91 verses one and two. It says, he who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.

Jim's gonna come and lead us with our opening hymn, praise to the Lord, the Almighty. And this first verse, we abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

Jim.

Thank you, Pastor. And that is on page number 26, 26 in your hymnals, praise to the Lord, the Almighty. King of creation as the first verse says. Let's all stand together. We'll sing the first two verses only.

First two verses of number 26, praise to the Lord, the Almighty.

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty. Oh, our Father and our God, we are grateful that you are the Almighty. As we think of what's going on in our world and there is so much that is far, far beyond our own might and control, either as individuals or as nations or even a collection of nations and allies in nations.

We're glad that we do not have to put our trust in men, in governmental leaders, and even in our own selves, in our own strength, our own flesh. We're thankful that you are the Almighty. And truly, Lord, we come before you today wanting to offer unto you our praise, our thanksgiving, our worship.

May it be acceptable in your sight, we pray. And we ask this in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. Thank you, you may be seated. On your sheet that you, I hope, picked up when you came in, we're going to read together Psalm 69 and verses 30 through 36.

Psalm 69, verses 30 to 36. I encourage you to follow along in your copy of scripture. So I read verse 30 and following. Psalm 69, 30, I will praise the name of God with a song and will magnify him with thanksgiving.

This also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs. The humble shall see this and be glad and your heart shall live that seek God. For the Lord heareth the poor and despiseth not his prisoners.

Let the heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moveth therein. For God will save Zion and will build the cities of Judah that they may dwell there and have it in possession. The seed also of his servants shall inherit it and they that love his name shall dwell therein.

Lord, add his blessing to this reading of his word.

Number 53. In your hymnals, 53, come we that love the Lord. We'll sing all verses together.

Well, as we pray together today, we want to remember to pray for Harold Smith. Harold had the shoulder surgery the other day and that was designed to repair a shoulder surgery, what was it, a year ago that he had that?

And what they do these days with these kinds of things is amazing, but he had some kind of a screw. If this is too much, please maybe close your ears here, but had a screw put in bones in the shoulder and apparently he was having a terrible amount of pain and discovered that when they went in for the surgery, discovered that the screw had broken.

And I didn't think those things would do that, titanium or whatever they're made of. But anyway, that was Friday and the surgery was successful. Just pray for recovery. He's got a long road of rehab with that and pray for his pain as well as associated with it.

Bob Kline had his, what was it, third round of chemo this past Wednesday and he responded pretty well to that. He's got one more round and then the test to see how effective that has all been. So continue to pray for Bob and for Jerry both.

Also pray for Kathy who has, you know, had that knee replacement. She starts rehab this week. Pray for that to be effective and she responds well to the rehab. Also the Shedders, Larry and Emily Shedder, they're our missionaries of the week.

And as you know, it's a church family. They came home from the field, had to leave the field of Bolivia because of Larry's health and resettling in Wisconsin. Still waiting to get an update on how they're doing as far as that resettlement.

But continue to pray for Larry and Emily. And then, of course, we wanna continue to pray for our nation and the variety of crises that we're facing as a nation. It sounds in so many ways apocalyptic, doesn't it?

I saw, we have some friends in North and South Carolina and I posted a little tribute to my wife this morning for our anniversary and someone had mentioned that there was a 5 .1 magnitude earthquake in Charlotte, North Carolina, of all things.

So we've had hurricane, earthquake, we've got all kinds of rioting in the streets and so on and so forth. So we have political crises, moral crises, spiritual crises, relational crises. It makes the health crisis seem relatively insignificant.

Let's pray together, shall we? And so, our Father and our God, we do come before you as the Almighty, the King of creation. And we are grateful that you are because we look at the creation and our hearts are heavy and we're grieved.

We look at what happens just in natural disasters and calamities and difficulties that are caused by these things. And Father, we pray that you would use all of those natural things, these disasters in nature to bring men to repentance.

Father, you think of how the book of Revelation talks about the disasters coming upon men and instead of bowing the knee and crying for mercy, they scream at you and curse you. Father, there's far too much of that in our world today.

We beg of you, we beseech you, bring people to repentance. We think of our nation and the political, the political drama that is unfolding before us and will only become more intense and probably more bizarre in the next few months.

And we pray, Father, that you would be merciful to us as a nation and give us good leaders, good leadership that will stand for righteousness and truth and justice. And may all that is dark and unseemly and criminal, may it be brought to light and may justice prevail.

We think of the moral crisis of the elevation of profanity and vulgarity that just seems to be rampant today. Father, I pray that, I pray that you would bring forth righteousness that would squelch even that vulgarity and profanity.

We think of the spiritual crisis. Men, women, boys, girls need Christ, need the word of God, and yet we're seeing, we're seeing that vilified in a more dramatic way than we have ever seen in our nation.

Father, I pray that this stark contrast between what is and what is needed would penetrate and pierce the hard hearts of men and bring them to repentance. And we think of the, we think of the crises relationally, how there is probably greater division in our country in more ways, in more levels, than even existed in the nation's worst days of the Civil War.

Father, I pray that, I pray that you would bring healing to these divisions, although we know not how that could be other than through Christ. And we pray that you would do a gracious work. And then we think of the health crisis, and Father, we hear so much that is conflicting and it is incredibly difficult to discern the truth.

But Lord, we know that there are people who are sick and suffering, and we pray that by your grace, you would bring healing and that you would cause this virus that has created so much turmoil and upheaval in our land.

We pray that you would bring about a solution to it and bring about a dissolving of that crisis. We thank you that only you can, and we trust you to do your perfect will and using it in your perfect way.

We think of these in our congregation who are hurting today, and we pray for Harold and the pain that he's enduring, and pray for continued strength to his body. I pray that he would recover well and his rehab would be effective for Kathy as well as she begins that this week.

I pray that it would be productive and she would be able to get the full movement that in her leg and her knee that she needs to have. For Bob Klein, encourage him, and Jerry as well. And I pray that the chemo that he's been receiving would be effective.

We pray for Maxine Gomer today and continue to strengthen her body, and we look forward to her being able to be back with us. Just give healing to her, we pray. And for Larry and Emily Shetter, Father, bring healing to them emotionally and physically.

We pray that you would provide for them in wonderful ways. May they see your hand clearly at work in their lives. Father, we are so thankful today that we can bring these petitions before you, and yet there are some that we cannot personally bring and publicly share at this point.

We just pray for those who are hurting even silently today that you would give comfort and you would give a peace of mind and heart that only you can give. And we trust you for that as well. Meet these needs, we pray, and we ask these things in Jesus' name and for his sake.

Amen, amen. All right, Jim, come lead us another hymn.

And that hymn is on page 143, 143. I stand amazed in the presence. Let us all stand amazed in the presence of God and sing verses one and four, one and four of 143.

I stand All right, as I mentioned, we're glad to have Pastor Ron Burnett with us again today. He's been here before and shared God's word with us. Look forward to his ministry of the word this morning.

Brother Burnett.

Prayer for All People and Leaders in a Troubled Age

Thank you, Pastor Bice. It's good to be here. We're glad to be here today. Last time we were scheduled, unfortunately with a pandemic and everything, we canceled out. You all canceled out all your services.

And during that period of time, our church in Germantown Hills did the same thing. We canceled out. And that meant for me that there was no public supply opportunities for me to do. However, since churches have started to gather together again, this is my fifth Sunday in a row now preaching.

And so I'm glad to be back on the pulpit and enjoy that, doing that ministry. My pastor, Pastor Mike Carlson, gave me the opportunity of speaking last Sunday at Germantown Hills. And so that was a joy to minister there too.

I had spent 46 years of ministry as a pastor and then retired. And after that, I got elected a deacon. So now I'm sitting on the other side of the desk. I guess it is the other side of the table and enjoying that ministry as well.

And being a support to my pastor there at Germantown Hills. I'm going to be reading for you this morning from 1 Timothy chapter two, 1 Timothy chapter two and verses one to four. Paul writes, "'Therefore I exhort first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and for all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time.

For which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. I am speaking the truth in Christ and not lying, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.". In 1859, Charles Dickens wrote a book entitled, A Tale of Two Cities.

The setting of the story is in London and in Paris. And it is also set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and ultimately the reign of terror. In describing the times, Dickens wrote words that are now considered to be immortal.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of light. It was the season of darkness.

It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair. We had everything before us. We had nothing before us. I don't know about you, but I think that sounds a lot like the day in which we are living.

Think for a moment of the things that we're facing in our day. Pastors all prayed about many of them already this morning. There's the accessibility to abortion. There's a proliferation of pornography.

The practice of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and now most recently at a community in Massachusetts, polyamory or group marriage. There's also transgenderism. There is the rewriting of American history and the civil unrest of recent days.

I suppose I could go on this morning, add to that list, ad nauseum. But that in itself would not resolve the issue or relieve us of the anxiety or even sometimes the frustration and the anger that seems to accompany dealing with these issues or the very thought of them.

In a day of great difficulty for the church of Jesus Christ, Paul the apostle urged upon his fellow believers the practice of prayer. Our day is a good day in which to begin the good habit of praying for all people, especially as our passage has said this morning, those who are in positions of authority.

It is to the practice of praying for all people, especially those in authority that we are encouraged this morning. And I would encourage you to do as well. So this morning we're going to study 1 Timothy 2 1 -4 with a view of adopting the practice of prayer as our first line of defense as well as our first line of offense for the spiritual warfare in which we are currently engaged.

Paul shares, I believe here, at least we can look at it in this fashion, three encouragements in the practice of prayer. First of all, I would say in verse one that we are encouraged to pray earnestly.

He says, therefore, I exhort, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men. We are encouraged to pray earnestly. I say encouraged because the word exhort here is not in the imperative, that is in the mode of command.

Paul uses this same word in Romans 12 in verse one when he says, I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. As such, then, it is not a command, but it is an appeal to our conscience.

D. M. Hebert says, genuine, heartfelt prayer cannot be forced upon us by a command, but must be prompted in us by an inner conviction of its need. Take a look also here at the words first of all as found in verse one.

At first glance, we might think that the words point to an order of importance in the words concerning prayer, you know, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and finally, thanks, but that is not the case.

I don't believe that it's the case there. After further study, I came to the position that it seems best to apply the words, first of all, to the word exhort. First of all, I exhort you. And he has more that he's going to be saying, but that's the first thing he's going to do.

He's going to exhort them, especially in the ministry of prayer, encourage them in it. Prayer is the first and the foremost ministry we can assume especially in our day. And Paul suggests four ways in which we should pray.

I think there are four interesting words there concerning prayer. And the first one is the word supplication. The word has the idea of praying for people when there is a need in their life. The word simply means to make a request.

Interestingly, the root word for supplications means to lack, to need something. Therefore, it speaks of prayer that springs from a sense of need. Who do you know currently who has some specific need?

Pastor has made known to us this morning, several amongst you who stand in the need of prayer. We received a phone call recently concerning my wife's sister. They found some nodes up on her lungs. They also found an enlarged duct in her pancreas.

And so that's something we're praying for with her. There are needs that you are praying for for one another as well. I would encourage you to pray for them in your personal and private devotions, but I would also encourage you at your dinner table when you sit down and you thank God for the food that he's placed on your table today to remember someone, some of those who stand in need of prayer.

One thing I just think it is a good example for us to set for our children as they hear, they see us bring these requests before God and lay them before him. And then we wait and we see God answering prayer.

A conscious sense of need is essential to all praying. The next word here is the word prayers. And I think that has the idea of praying to God with a sense of attentive reverence. The word is used only of prayer to God.

Therefore it carries with it a sense of reverence, a respect for who God is and what he is like. So irreverence is always inexcusable in prayer. I remember in the first college I went to up in Northwest Iowa, that there are some guys who made mockery of prayer.

They would sit down at the table, it's a supposedly Christian college that I went to and we're supposed to have prayer before our meals and so forth. And I remember them sitting down and saying, rub-a-dub-dub, yay God, thanks for the grub.

How more irreverent can we be in prayer? I'm sure that none of us experience that kind of irreverence in prayer. But when I think of God, that we need a spirit of reverence is when we come before him and approach him.

He's eternal. He's without beginning, he's without ending. He's almighty, all things are possible to him.

He's all knowing.

He knows every need that you and I have. He's holy, he's separate from sin. He's just, he is awesome in majesty. And we could go on and on and on and say much more about our God. In a different vein, however, I would ask you, what is going through your mind as someone is praying publicly?

As pastor prayed publicly this morning, what was going through your mind? I don't know about you, but sometimes I struggle with that. You know, someone starts to pray publicly and personally, I have to admit it that sometimes I find my mind wandering.

Do you realize that your mind can process what you hear seven times faster than someone else can speak? And that just lends our mind, you know, to wandering sometimes in prayer. You know, what's for dinner today?

Or where are we going for lunch today? Or what time's my tea time tomorrow? You know, it's something of that particular nature. Have you ever, you don't have to admit it. You don't have to put your hands up and say, yes, I've done that, but I have.

I know my mind has wandered and I have to discipline myself. And I just consider that when I allow my mind to wander like that and not give attention to what is being prayed publicly that I'm being irreverent in prayer.

I struggle with that. We need to pray in our minds with the person who is praying and responding in our own minds along with that person in prayer. We are irreverent in prayer when our minds become occupied with something other than what is being prayed.

Well, I guess that's probably meddling a little bit. So I'll move on. The third word here is the word intercessions. And that word carries with the idea of praying for others when they are in a time of difficulty.

It is a particular time in difficulty when you need to come before God and plead on behalf of this person. And this word is rich in meaning, but it only occurs here and in chapter four and verse five of this book where it is translated simply as prayer.

It is a word that simply has the idea of to meet or to address something. It carries with it the idea of pleading the cause of another person or interceding for them in a time of difficulty. And it may be a time of illness or injury.

It might be a time of loss of income or some relationship that they're struggling with. It is what we do when we bring a difficult or troublesome situation before the Lord, whether for ourselves or for another person, we intercede.

It is a bearing of our innermost concerns and desires, not only for ourself, but especially for others and their needs. This word also contains a sense of confidence. Confidence that when we pray, our Father in heaven hears and he answers according to his infinite wisdom.

Leads us to the fourth idea here, and that is of thanksgiving. Pray to God with a sense of gratitude. The three previous words emphasize the nature of prayer, but this word speaks of the spirit in which we pray, a spirit of thanksgiving.

It is the attitude we have when God answers our prayers and grants us his blessing. And we are confident that he will continue to do so as we come before him in prayer. However, has it ever happened with you?

It has happened with me. That when we ask God for something and he answers in a wonderful way, that we forget to stop and to say thanks. There is an incident in the gospels in which there are 10 lepers.

Jesus heals them, it cleanses them, and he sends them on to the priest to go to the priest according to the law and present themselves to him. And they did that, but one of them turned around and he came back and he thanked the Lord for his cleansing.

And the Lord asked the question, were there not 10? But here is one and he is a Samaritan. So we need to adopt that attitude of thanksgiving. Someone said to me a long time ago that one of the keys to praying is thanking our way through prayer, being thankful for how God has heard and how God has answered.

So thanksgiving, when God answers prayer. But have you ever had the experience of bringing a need before God and God answers, but he hasn't answered in the way that you have desired? We should thank God for the fact that when he answers our prayers, he doesn't always answer them the way that we ask.

He might say, no, he might say, wait a while, you know, he might say yes. But sometimes God answers in a fashion that we did not ask, but we can be guaranteed that however God answers in prayer, it is according to his infinite knowledge and his infinite wisdom.

And we can be thankful that God answers in that fashion. And so we should be thankful for those things. God always answers our request, not necessarily as we asked, but according to his infinite wisdom.

And for those things, we should thank him. So we are encouraged here, I believe in this passage, to pray earnestly. These words kind of bear out that particular idea. We move on though into this passage.

And my next thought is this, that we are encouraged to pray inclusively. I hesitate to use that word inclusive because sometimes it doesn't have the best of connotations. But what I do mean by that praying inclusively is that we are to pray for all people, especially for those who are in positions of authority.

So first of all, all of us here this morning, all people stand in the need of prayer. I don't know about you, but I do. And I'm sure you do too. The word translated men, by the way, in this particular passage of scripture is not the word that means male.

It is the word anthropos. It's the word that speaks of male and female, humankind. So it's all people, and all means all without exception. So that means we are to pray for all people, whether they, can I say this, saved or unsaved?

But I would suggest this, that when we are praying for people who are unsaved or some particular need in their life, perhaps we should also pray concerning their salvation. That God would make them aware of their need of a savior.

For all has sinned and come short of the glory of God. No wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. We should pray for an unsaved world. And how should we pray for them?

I remember one time I had taken my car to have some work done on it, and had not made any, I had to leave it there, and I had not made any arrangements to get a ride back to my office. But fortunately, there was a young man there that day that had recently come to our church.

He had recently trusted Christ as his savior. I think it was his brother-in-law who led him to Christ. And we got started talking about salvation as we drove back towards the church, my office. And he said to me, he says, you know, when someone said to me, have you been saved?

My first thought was, from what? Saved from what? Now, you can laugh at me if you want, that's fine. But I remember as a child, a young man, singing the song Jesus Saves. And I thought, hmm, yeah, he really does.

I fell into the Rock River once, and a guy pulled me out, and I didn't drown. I'm here today. You know, yeah, the Lord saved me. But then I remember when I was in college, first time in college, when a young man sat me down and shared with me that I was lost, that I needed a savior, and that savior was Jesus Christ.

And I learned that day that I had a need of being saved, a need of being saved from my sin, a need of being forgiven. And so those are things that we should pray that God would bring into their hearts, the spirit of God would bring into their mind a sense of, as it's spoken over here in the book of John in chapter 16.

I like what is said over there in John 16, and beginning with verse 18. Ah, sorry, verse eight. And when he, the Holy Spirit, has come, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment, of sin because they do not believe in me, of righteousness because I go to my Father and you see me no more, and of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged.

So I just stop and ask you this morning, just answering your own heart, is there someone for whom you are praying that they would come to know Christ, the Savior? Are there certain people that you're just bringing before the throne of grace that God would work within their hearts and bring them to a saving knowledge of Christ?

Well, then the next thing I want to say about this matter of inclusivity or inclusively here is Paul says that we should pray for kings and all who are in authority. Well, we're not only to pray on a worldwide scale, but also on a national and patriotic level.

You know, all people around the world live in national groupings, and therefore the church needs to pray for those who lead those nations as well as our own. I'm thinking right now of the situation that is going on in Africa that seemingly our news media is not saying much about, but what's happening in Ghana, in Cameroon, and in Nigeria, where 30 ,000, it is estimated 30 ,000 Christians have lost their lives in the last three years.

Their churches have been burned by Boko Haram. Young ladies have been kidnapped and taken off and forced into marriage and so forth. And we need to be praying for the leaders of those nations. We need to be praying about that situation.

There are several of them. But I begin to think of our own government. Government affects us profoundly. It influences us, it affects our lives, and it has an influence on our spiritual lives as well.

The leaders for which we should pray might include our president. I don't care whether you like him or not, you should pray for him. That God would give him wisdom and understanding and the ability to make good decisions, to discern between right and wrong.

We should pray for our governor. The same type of thing, that he would have wisdom to make good decisions. We should pray for the mayor of our communities. Many of them are under particular stress right now because of what is happening with the unrest in our cities.

We should pray for council members. We should pray for our senators and our representatives, state and federal and local representatives. So we should be in prayer for these people. So what do we pray regarding them?

How do we pray for them? How do we bring them before the throne of grace? Well, I would suggest that number one, we need to pray that God would give them wisdom. That God would give them insight into the issues that they are dealing with.

And at the same time, give to them a spirit of fairness, of honesty, of integrity, a spirit of justice. We should also pray that in the process, they will acknowledge God, His sovereignty, that He rules, and that they might come to faith in Jesus Christ.

As it is true with any leader, we will likely not agree with them or we might disagree with them on some or even many of their positions, especially on moral issues in our day. So what can you do then?

Well, you can write them. And maybe you do. I don't know about you, whether you do or not, but what I do, I write to them, and I try to write in a civil, intelligent manner. I get letters back from them.

You know what? I get tired of hearing, well, I do not agree with your position. And then they invite me to the prayer meeting that they have. We should, you can write them, you can send them a fax, send them an email or whatever, but I suggest every before you do that, what we need to do is to bring them before the throne of grace.

Pray for those who are in positions of authority. It is our responsibility to pray for those in authority because it's not ultimately them, but it is to the true and the living God that we owe our allegiance, our loyalty.

Praying Expectantly for Peace, Godliness, and Salvation

Third thing here, we are encouraged to pray expectantly. Look at verse two, and I'm going to start at the midway through the verse. He says 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 come to the knowledge of the truth.

We are encouraged to pray expectantly. And what we learn here is that when we pray for our leaders, we receive something for which millions of people long. At least he indicates that we should pray so that certain conditions might be true.

I think there's an immediate result and an ultimate result that we should be concerned for here. And by immediate, I do not mean that it necessarily comes to us quickly, but in time and its results will then presently benefit us.

Praying for our leaders and those in authority will make a definite difference in national affairs and bring about conditions favorable to the proclamation of the gospel. That's part of our goal, and praying for those things is part of what we need to do.

Paul envisioned that his believers pray for those in authority. The result would be a civil society in which we could live peaceably and quietly in our homes and our neighborhoods. Such circumstances will allow us to live a peaceable life.