Wednesday Evening Devotional, PRBC, 8/6/08

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Wednesday evening devotional drawn from 1 and 2 Timothy.

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Turn with me, please, to Paul's first epistle to Timothy, 1
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Timothy chapter 2. I'm going to do something rather unusual this evening.
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I mean, this is the third Wednesday night in a row. And I just start running out of things to do.
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Pastor Fry always knows what he's going to do, because when you get down to Psalm 150, you go back to Psalm 1.
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I've got to come up with other stuff, so it's pretty challenging. So, I'm looking at 1
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Timothy chapter 2. I'd like to look at the first seven verses.
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And then, there was a connected thought in 2
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Timothy, and when I looked at it, I realized it was 2 Timothy chapter 2 beginning at verse 8.
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Isn't that weird? You do 1 through 7 in 1 Timothy 2, and then you do 8 through 13 in 2
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Timothy chapter 2. It just so happened they were connected, and they also would run concurrently in that way.
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It's rather interesting, but hopefully you'll see the connection between them. Let's start with 1 Timothy 2.
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Paul's exhortation, first of all then, and this seems rather appropriate at a prayer meeting.
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I urge that in treaties, prayers, petitions, thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings, and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
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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.
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For there is one God and one mediator, also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time.
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For this I was appointed a preacher, an apostle, I'm telling the truth,
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I am not lying, as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
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Now we know the text very well, and we know that it speaks of Christ and his mediatorship, and we know that it speaks of the apostle
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Paul talking about being appointed a preacher, an apostle. Well, keeping that in mind,
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I want to connect that together this evening. We'll see how at 2 Timothy 2, beginning at verse 8, which says,
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Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel, for which
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I suffer hardship, even to imprisonment as a criminal. But the word of God is not imprisoned.
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For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, or your translation might say, for the sake of the elect, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus, and with it eternal glory.
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It is a trustworthy statement, for if we died with him, we will also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him.
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If we deny him, he also will deny us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.
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So here you have two statements, both made to Timothy, Paul's beloved child or son in the faith.
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And they are connected in their subject, and I think they shed light upon each other.
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And what I'd like to illustrate this evening is how Scripture functions in such a fashion.
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So as to, not so much, and I accept this terminology interpret itself, but as to provide safeguards to keep us from becoming imbalanced or making errors.
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You probably know that the text in 1 Timothy 2 is one of what
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I have styled in one of my books, the Big Three. The Big Three, 1
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Timothy 2 .4, 2 Peter 3 .9, and Matthew 23 .37.
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I refer to them as the Big Three because in a book I responded to, it's hard to believe it was this long ago now, but about eight years ago now, written by Dr.
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Norman Geisler called Chosen but Free, those three verses are cited over and over and over again.
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They're never executed, but they're cited over and over and over again, the assumption being that each one of them is a plain statement that there is no true divine election, that all
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God has elected to do is to save people who believe in Jesus, but it's all up to us as to who that is.
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And of course, the text that is normally used here in 1 Timothy 2 is verse 4, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
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Well, how could anything be more plain than that? Here is the plain statement that on God's part, it is
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His desire that every single individual who's ever lived, because that's what all men means, right?
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Every individual who has ever lived or ever will live or is currently alive is to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
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Now, that sometimes is then connected with those who read far enough in the text to find it, verse 6, who gave
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Himself as a ransom for all. And so here you have another plain statement of universal atonement and Jesus' death doesn't actually save anyone, it just makes men savable.
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All in the same context, right? Well, it certainly is assumed to be that way on the part of many.
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But while you can certainly try to make that kind of an argument from these particular words, can you do so in a way that is consistent with everything that Paul says to Timothy on this subject?
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And that's why I read the second text, because there Paul makes this odd statement about enduring imprisonment and being called an evildoer, a wrongdoer, and he endures all these things.
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But he doesn't speak like someone who just wrote these words in a previous letter.
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Because he says that he endures all these things for the sake of the elect.
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The elect. And he does so in order that they might obtain, they might get salvation, the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.
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For some reason he thinks that the reason to endure this kind of difficulty, this kind of imprisonment, this loss of His freedom, the possible loss of His life, which undoubtedly did take place sometime shortly after the writing of 2
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Timothy, was so that there would be this group of people, the elect, to receive eternal salvation.
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How can we put these things together? Well, the way to put them together is to be serious about context.
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It's to follow things carefully. And when we do that, we realize that Paul, in 1
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Timothy 2, is urging that something be done. Why would he have to do so?
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What's he urging? He's urging that entreaties, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men.
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Now what does that mean? Does that mean that what he's saying here is that each and every prayer meeting of the church at Ephesus was to involve...
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I mean, Ephesus was a major, major city... was to basically go on for the entire week as every single individual in Ephesus and then really all the world and everybody who's ever lived and everybody who will ever live.
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You pray for all of them. Well, that seems a little bit silly even though that's exactly what people are saying.
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The obvious meaning is that every time it says all men, it means every single individual person.
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But isn't it odd that when Paul says, be made on behalf of all men, why does he then have to feel like he needs to explain what he means?
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Do you notice what he does? He says, for kings, all who are in authority, not kings, and those who are in authority, are individuals who the
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Christians might not actually want to pray for because those are the people who most often were guilty of persecuting the
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Christians. So it seems that there was a reason for Paul to say all men and it wasn't that you were supposed to drag out the
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Ephesian phone book and start with the alphas and end with the omegas. Instead, there was a danger that the
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Christians might not be willing to pray for the people who were mistreated because you've got to admit that can be a little bit difficult to do when there is especially a certain group, a certain kind of people.
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You know, you look at James. Who's persecuting the Christians in James? Well, the rich.
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They're depriving them of their pay. They're doing things like that. They're not afraid to pay for the rich, but the rich are a kind of people.
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Kings and rulers are a kind of people and that of course is what Paul is talking about. He says all men. All kinds of men.
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Don't leave the rulers out just because they're not nice to you. Don't leave the rulers out because they've imprisoned some of your loved ones.
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Pray for all kinds of men. Kings, those are in authority.
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Elsewhere in this chapter, he's also going to talk about groups of people. For example, likewise, verse 9,
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I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly. Women. A group.
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And so, you have that kind of context right there in the text itself.
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And so it actually makes perfect sense. For kings and all who are in authority, so we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
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Isn't it interesting what he says there? He doesn't say pray for them so they might all be converted. Because Paul knows that's not going to happen, at least in his lifetime.
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Certainly we pray for their conversion, but we pray that God would allow us to continue to worship in freedom.
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That He would have His hand upon the rulers, even evil, ungodly rulers.
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That He would restrain their evil. And we have to pray that way a lot these days.
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And we may have to pray that way a whole lot in the future. Even more so. The reason being, for the reason so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
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That's the whole point of prayer in that context. That's the reason he gives.
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This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth.
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Well, again, people say, see, there is the universal salvific desire of God. And I know there have been
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Reformed men who have taken that view. I understand that. But if the all men before of verse 1 is all kinds of men,
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I don't know why once you get to verse 4, you would read it individualistically.
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In fact, may I suggest that ancient men generally did not think in those ways. We as Americans do.
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We as Westerners do. We think individualistically. That was a time and a place where you did not think as individualistically as all you thought, much more in a generic sense.
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And the natural reading would be all kinds of men, not all individuals.
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But does it make sense? Can we say, who desires all kinds of men to be saved? We have evidence in the
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Scripture that all kinds of men will be saved, of course. What is the song of the redeemed in Revelation 5?
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Men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation have been made to be a kingdom of priests unto our
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God. So we do have evidence of that. But I think the text forces us to that conclusion because notice what it says.
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Who desires all men to be saved to come to knowledge of the truth? For there is one
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God. Now why would you say that? Unless the point is, there is one God of all kinds of men, whether they be
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Jew or Gentile, bond or free, male, female, Scythian, Greek, it does not matter.
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There is only one God for all men. There is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man
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Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all the testimony given at the proper time.
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So, two ways of reading the text. Each all is individualistic and universal.
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Or reading the text, each all is generic. All kinds of men. Which one makes sense?
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Because if you follow what was just said, the inevitable result of being a universalist in the sense of individuals being what is referred to here, is that Jesus Christ is the mediator between God and every single individual.
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Now, what does that mean? Did the Apostle Paul teach that Jesus is the mediator for every single individual?
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We don't know who wrote Hebrews, but what if we were even to take the supposition that He did?
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What does Hebrews say about Christ's work of intercession and mediation? Does He not enter into the holy place having obtained eternal redemption?
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Not having made us savable, but having obtained eternal redemption, He stands in the presence of the
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Father in our place? If you force this into the scheme that most people do just by quoting it and never thinking about it, you're forced to conclude that Jesus Christ intercedes for, is the mediator for everyone who is currently under the wrath of God, everyone who ever will be.
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Indeed, Jesus will be the mediator for the inhabitants of hell. What on earth is that supposed to mean?
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How can that be? Is that Paul's doctrine of mediation? Is that the
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Bible's doctrine of intercession? When the Bible says in Hebrews 7 that He is able to save to the uttermost or forever those who draw nigh unto
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God by Him, is that supposed to mean, well, as long as they cooperate? And yet for this whole other legion of people,
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He completely fails in that work? Is that what we're supposed to understand? Or does it not just follow very obviously that when it says, who gave
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Himself a ransom for all, Jews and Gentiles, no person, no matter what their genetic background, if they turn to Jesus Christ, will be turned away by Him.
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There are no boundaries to where the Gospel needs to be preached. The testimony given at the proper time, for this
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I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the
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Gentiles in faith and truth. You see, if there was a limitation on who
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Jesus died for in the sense of genetic, in the sense of the nation, well,
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He only dies in the nation of Israel or you have to enter into the Old Covenant, and then Jesus can die for you, or something along these lines.
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A limitation in that way, then Paul's entire ministry of the
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Gentiles, which of course the Judaizers were always arguing about, would be vain and empty.
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There is one God. And there is one mediator also between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
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Why is He a mediator? Because He gave Himself as a ransom.
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That's why He's a mediator. No one else has a ground of mediation before God.
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And I emphasize that because as some of you know, there is a great movement to have Mary defined as co -redemptress in the
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Roman Catholic Church. Not equal to Jesus, but a participant in.
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The problem is of course that Mary has no grounds of mediation.
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None. The grounds of mediation are pointed out right here.
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She does not give Herself as a ransom. Nor could she, because she is just as dependent as any of the rest of the fallen children of Adam for her salvation by that ransom that Christ gives.
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And so we have two readings of this text. One I think leads to insuperable difficulties.
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The other does not. One requires us to see this work of mediation as basically non -salvific.
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It doesn't really bring about salvation. It only makes salvation a mere possibility.
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And I see no reason to go there in light of the fact that the text itself has defined what all men is in verse 1 by defining it in verse 2.
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For kings and all are in authority. Those are genres. Those are kinds.
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To break that usage is to insert something in the text that is not there to begin with.
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But then in looking at the second text, I think this casts light back upon what was said before.
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For here the Apostle speaks of His Gospel. He finished the section we looked at in 1
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Timothy by talking about the fact that He's not lying. He's telling the truth. He has an apostleship, a ministry to the
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Gentiles. And then He speaks again of His Gospel in 2
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Timothy 2 .8. This Gospel which is about Jesus Christ risen from the dead, descendant of David.
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And it's because of this Gospel, it's because of this message that He suffers hardship.
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And we know so often what was the motivation of His enemies, but the very fact that He was proclaiming this
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Gospel of grace to the whole world, to Jews and Gentiles. He says
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He suffered His hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal, but He recognizes that the
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Word of God cannot be imprisoned. But instead He reveals to Timothy, for this reason
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I endure all things. Remember the all things that Paul endured. It's a pretty long list.
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Stonings and shipwrecks and the constant worry about false teachers within the church and outside the church.
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And can you imagine what it was like to be an apostle of Paul? How many times runners came up to where he was and they had letters from churches and this was going on and that was going on and this person's been arrested and that pastor's been arrested and there's this problem in this church.
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And wow, it must have been pretty difficult. All these pressures. And He could have made it so much easier on Himself if He had just stayed in one small little area and said, you know what?
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I was a Pharisee, so I'm really well equipped to reach just this one group.
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So I'm just going to stay in this one area. He didn't do that. Instead, He endured all these things for the sake of the elect.
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In their behalf. For them. And if He didn't believe there was a group like that, if He didn't use that kind of terminology, then why endure all these things?
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And it's interesting. Try to read the standard definition of the elect into this.
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The elect is an amorphous, faceless blob of people. And we sort of fill in the elect when we believe.
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That's how most people understand this term. God has elected to save anyone who believes in Jesus. So the elect or name was until we sort of punched the card.
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But notice, Paul realizes this elect exists in reality and that he is being used instrumentally by God in their salvation.
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People often ask, what's the motivation for a Reformed person to do evangelism? I remember just a couple weeks ago, someone directed me while I was in our chat channel to a
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URL and I started listening to this guy on the internet. And he's a former Mormon. You know why he's a former
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Mormon? Because some crazy people from Alpha Omega Ministries about a decade and a half ago were standing outside the
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Mormon temple during the general conference passing out tracts. He took one, got angry with them, as they often did, decided to go prove them wrong, and guess what?
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He went to the library to look up every reference in their tract and guess what he found out? Every single reference was exactly right.
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And now he's no longer a Mormon and he's seeking to reach out to Mormons. I never heard of the guy, but I was convinced back then,
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I'm convinced today, that God has his elect there and he has a means for bringing them out.
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Has a means for bringing them out. And that's what the Apostle Paul believed. So that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with an eternal glory.
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Now, you could argue, I think correctly in some ways, that this could refer to people who are already saved in one sense because limiting the idea of preaching the gospel to just lost people is not biblical.
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Paul wanted to evangelize the church in Rome. And so every time you open the
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Word of God and you speak of what God has done in Jesus Christ, that's gospel preaching. It doesn't have to be the four spiritual laws to be gospel preaching.
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But I think it's the entire realm. I think it is the entire ministry that the
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Apostle Paul has. But still, there is a reference here to obtaining salvation.
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And so clearly, even if you see it as having to do with the entire proclamation of God's Word, part of it is, there are elect.
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They have not yet received the grace of God in being regenerate. There is a mechanism that God uses to bring them unto itself.
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It's through the proclamation of the Word of God. And I endure imprisonment and stoning and everything else so that I may have the opportunity of being used by God to bring those people into the salvation that God has determined they will possess.
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Does that mean gods depend upon Paul? And if Paul doesn't make it, oh no. No, of course not.
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What it means is Paul recognizes that the power that works within him, the power that gets him up after the rocks are dropped on his head, the power that gets him through all those long journeys across those dusty roads, is a divine power that doesn't come from he himself.
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It's grace. And so, the Apostle speaks with clarity about the elect, about the means by which they're saved.
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And earlier, in 1 Timothy, he likewise has spoken about that and he recognizes that the elect are among all the peoples of the earth,
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Jew and Gentile. And God uses means to bring them unto
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Himself. And isn't it wonderful that long after the
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Apostle Paul has gone to his reward, that mechanism continues to function to this day.
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God uses means. To our glory, to our blessing, to our benefit,
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He continues to use means. And how much of an encouragement should it be to all of us that when we encounter difficulties and trials, we can endure all these things, we can press on, we can keep working in the kingdom knowing that God will continue to save His people and He will use us.
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We need that encouragement. Because we see a lot of real big churches out there and it's real easy to look at our little fellowship and go, hmm.
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But we also see a whole lot of false conversions out there. We see a whole lot of people who really bring a lot of disrepute upon the name of Christ because they tip their hat toward God, but they've never been told a word about repentance.
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They don't know a thing about godliness. They've been given a quarter of a gospel. So we have here two texts.
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And when we put them together, I'm not saying just ignore their context, but when we realize we have the same author addressing similar things, they shed light upon one another.
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And the one helps us to determine that our interpretation of the other was in fact correct.
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That is so often the result of handling the
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Word of God with care rather than just simply quoting a verse, assuming that what we've always been told about it's right, and then running from there.
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And so I hope you'll keep these texts in mind when someone brings up one of the big three, 1
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Timothy 2 -4, you might want to immediately say, so what you're saying then is that Jesus is the mediator for all the lost people in hell, right?
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That's what you think Paul's saying? That's the encouragement to Timothy? Is that what you're saying? And they'll go, what are you talking about?
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And that gives the opportunity of opening the Word. And where do Christians want to be when you're in a conversation about God's truth?