We’re going to be in 1 Timothy 2:1-7.

Let’s pray.

Father in heaven thank you for gathering us together to worship you. We glorify, and solidify your mighty name through our singing, through our hearing of your word. Lord, bless us with your Spirit as we seek you this week and I ask that you fill us with your power.

Affirm us in faith so we can pursue you with a commitment that will not waver. Grant us mercy, and grace to live with a heart like your own. Give us rest today and heal us from illnesses, stresses, hurts, pains, and the failures we encountered living in a broken, sinful world.

Lord, you chose us to be your children and it’s in this hope we rejoice, reveling with absolute joy to be in your presence. Give us a fresh encounter with you and all us to experience your goodness. We pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen.

A few weeks ago we started this series in 1 Timothy where we started to explore why, in a hyper individualistic where FOBO (Fear of Better Options) rules, we bother with church. Two weeks ago, we examined what the church is. Last week, we talked about the values held by the church. Today, we’re going to talk about what the church does when it is gathered together. Let’s jump into chapter 2.

Let’s read 1 Timothy 2:1-7 together.

¹First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, ² for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. ³ This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, ⁴ who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. ⁵ For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ⁶ who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. ⁷ For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

(1 Timothy 2:1-7 ESV)

The work of the church then, is

Big Idea: When we gather, we pray

More precisely, the work of the church is to pray for all people, including those in power, for the gospel to advance and the work of Jesus Christ be proclaimed and received by all of God’s creation. Simple, right? You get together with people who believe and you pray that others who have not yet had the opportunity to receive the gospel or have not accepted the gospel would be moved to receive the gospel or receive an opportunity to hear the gospel.

But how many of us really believe that our prayers for people would compel them to place their faith in Jesus? I don’t mean in principle or in general terms because that’s the answer our life group leaders gave us. I mean like, you believe it so you practice it and you practice it regularly?

Don’t raise your hands because nobody likes a show off.

But if you’re not praying like your prayers impact the eternities of people who are far from God, then today, feel convicted and then start praying like it’s your job because nothing else we do in faith matters as much as our prayers.

Let me tell you the story of Monica.

• Monica was a devout Christian.
  • She was married to an atheistic, functional alcoholic, with lewd and violent tendencies.  
  • She had three kids: two sons and a daughter.
  • She tried raising them Christian.
• One of her sons was real smart, like genius level talent.
  • He was so smart that he went a boarding school for gifted kids.
  • The problem was that his friends were bad influences and mom and dad weren’t there to actually correct his behavior
  • Eventually he took after his dad, loving to party, get drunk, and prostitutes.
• Like a good Christian mother, whenever she had the opportunity she would share the gospel with her son, but he would shut her down.
• Despite that, Monica continued to pray for her son to receive Jesus as his savior.
  • She prayed everyday for 17 years that God would intervene in his life. That her son would repent from his sin, and receive Jesus as his savior.
  • She watched her son live his life: even having fathered a son with a prostitute and living with her.
• Then 6,210 days of prayer later, at the age of 31, he received the gospel and accepted Jesus as his savior. He didn’t accept it because Monica’s work of evangelism. Though, I imagine it played a part. He accepted the gospel because of the God who heard her prayers.
• He experienced something randomly in life, probably hungover one morning that prompted him to read the Romans 13:13-14. Here’s what Romans 13:13-14 says – Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Isn’t that amazing?

Monica’s son, his name was Augustine. Augustine, if you don’t know, was an early church father. He lived around in the 4^th and 5^th century and shaped western theology, philosophy, rhetoric, pedagogy, and ethics. Even preaching. But Augustine would not have done any of that if his mother didn’t pray for him and it definitely wouldn’t have happened if she stopped praying for him after she watched her son basically make a mess of his life.

• If you are sitting here and you’ve been praying for a wayward family member, don’t give up. Keep going. Keep praying. You are being heard.
• If there are promises or bondages in your life that haven’t been answered, don’t give up, keep praying. God hears you.
• If you’re not praying even though you know you should, then start praying because the power of God is waiting for you. Just open your mouth to prayer instead of complaining and doubting.

God is listening to our prayers because he loves us. He loves us because we received God’s one and only son and by his blood, we were cleansed and adopted into the household of God. So as our heavenly father, who loves his children, he listens to our prayers. If you don’t believe me, look at what Jesus teaches his disciples about God listening to the prayers of his people:

• (Matthew 7:11 ESV) – If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
• (Mark 11:24 ESV) – Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
• (Luke 11:9-10 ESV) – And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
• (John 14:13-14 ESV) – Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

Some of you are still doubting whether your prayers change anything. Afterall, you’re wife is always telling you that she don’t understand what you’re saying. Your kids definitely don’t know what slang you’re using. But let me assure you, God understands. This is what Jesus says from Matthew 6.

⁷ “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. ⁸ Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Jesus teaches us simply to be real and say what you can when you speak with God in prayer. Just get it out. He says, talk however you can. God understands you.

Jesus doesn’t end his teaching on prayer there. He gives us an example with words and thoughts that we can use as our prayers. He says in Matthew 6, verses 9-10:

⁹ Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
¹⁰ Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

Yes, prayer might sound like whatever words we can get out of our mouths, but it’s not without power or gravity.

When we think deeply about what Jesus is teaching us about prayer, especially a prayer like this: “let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We have to understand that prayer is not vague or empty.

• Prayer, is asking God to change the very fabric of our known world and to transform it into a reality that only exists where God is the ruler.
• Prayer is active and specific, and most of all, this is dangerous! It upends what you know so what can be becomes reality.

When we think about our own prayers, I don’t mean the prayers that ask God to give you the winning lottery numbers; what is the basic premise? It’s, “God change something, do something in my life or in somebody else’s life that changes reality!”

Church, this is our opportunity. We can lament and complain about how messed our society and culture is and try to hide and shelter ourselves in comfortable Christian circles or we can pray to God, asking him to alter the very fabric of our lives because he is listening to his children pray: his kingdom come and his will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. And we can ask in Jesus name, so that he can do it and glorify the father.

Walter Wink, a theologian who studied the intersection of political movements and the church, coined the phrase, “history belongs to the intercessors.” He coined that phrase because in his research he found that every time the status quo of society moved or was transformed, there was behind that movement, God’s people praying, interceding on behalf of society, asking God to unleash his will on earth. His conclusion was that it wasn’t necessarily a move of political guile and organizing, but a move of prayer being bound together and lifted to heaven that resulted in us having public schools, public hospitals, orphanages, abolition, and civil rights, etc.

That brings us to our passage today. The Apostle Paul writing to Timothy understood that when God’s people gathered together as the church, and when they held fast to the gospel, they would be compelled and actively participate in praying God’s will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. He knew what would happen – people and society would change!

Let’s read verses 1-4 together one more time. This time, I want us to see how we can specifically pray God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1-4 ESV)

God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven when we:

1. Pray for all people. (v. 1)

2. Pray for government leaders. (vv. 2-4)

Because when we pray for them, all people can be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

Four words I want to define for us: supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgiving. I want to define them because when I read verse 1, it almost sounds as if he’s just repeating himself to make a point. But the more I studied this passage, I realized that these four words describe four different kinds of praying. Paul was telling Timothy that our prayers for all people, our government leaders, shouldn’t be one dimensionally, but multivariately.

Let me define these kinds of praying so you can employ them in your practice:

• Supplications – is a type of praying that begs, or implores God for needs to be met.
  • A lot of us pray this way. We’re good at this type of prayer. We use it all the time. God give us you fill in the blank because we need it. Or a sickness be healed.
  • But we’re being taught, that these prayers must stop being about us and about all people.
  • We must supplicate for needs of all people.
  • Here’s the real problem, we can’t supplicate for the needs of people if you don’t know people with needs.
  • When’s the last time you actually supplicated for the needs of somebody else? If you can’t actually remember because the people in your circles don’t actually have needs that need supplication. Then after this service, go meet somebody in the lobby and get to know their needs so you can start praying in supplication for them.
  • Let me help you with the icebreaker question: what needs can I be praying be met for you? Don’t beat around the bush, nobody really likes that as tactful or as clever as you think it is.

• Prayers – When Paul is talking about prayers, he is talking about lifting up others to a level of importance equal to your own.
  • Offering prayers for all people is not an afterthought. It is giving them thought and time to bring them up to God.
  • This type of prayer requires us to die to ourselves by placing them before our own selves before God, out of love for them.
  • You know you actually love others when they become important enough to rise to the top where you lift them up to God as a priority.
  • Besides your immediate family, are there people you love that much? To lift them up in prayer before God?

• Intercessions – is intervening on behalf of another person because your heart breaks for them.
  • Praying in intercession for all people, all leaders, he is telling us that we need to allow our hearts to break for people so much so that we ask God to bring heaven on earth so that their lives change.
  • We need to be doing more of this. We have to allow ourselves to be hurt and broken over people so we can pray this way.
  • God’s heart breaks for all people who are far from him. It breaks for people who have not received his son. Does your heart break like God’s heart for people?  

• Thanksgiving – the prayer of thanks. In particular, your prayers of thanks for other people
  • It’s easier to complain about people, in fact, it’s probably our worst habit. Here’s the truth about complaining: it doesn’t change anything.
  • Instead, pray thanks over them and supplicate change over person you’re complaining about. Trust me, you’ll be thankful to God you did.
  • Prayers of thanksgiving allows us to see people in a way that isn’t colored by our sinfulness.
  • Praying thanks changes our own neural pathways and allows us to view the world with a different perspective, a perspective that God created us with.

However we can, we need to be praying for people in different ways: supplicating for their needs, lifting them up, interceding on their behalf, giving thanks for them.

Let me give you an example: It’s not enough to say thank you for God giving you a boss you hate because you’re boss just made you work unpaid overtime for the 4^th straight day. So you need to supplicate for your boss, asking God to provide for a need that can’t be met by you. Then you need to intercede on your boss’ behalf because if heaven doesn’t change him or her, then something bad is going to happen. Then there are other times you just need to lift him or her up in prayer to God because as much as you are at your wits end with your boss, he or she is important to you.

And if that boss I described is your progeny, you know just praying over them one way isn’t going to cut it. They need prayer, a lot of it, so you must pray every different way you can.

Verse 5.

⁵ For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ⁶ who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. 

We pray for all people, so that the gospel would advance in their lives. That’s the third point. When we gather as the church and do what we’re called to do, which is pray for all people and people in high positions. We’re:

Point 3. Praying that the gospel advances.

• This is what Monica prayed for her son.
• This is what some of you are praying for your sons or daughters.

This is why all of us are here, because somebody prayed and interceded, and supplicated on our behalf before God and the gospel advanced in our lives. You were chosen in the prayers of others.

So how can we watch other people live in futility without praying that the gospel advances in them? We just can’t. Our hearts should break for them the same way God’s breaks for them.

God’s heart was so broken for his creation that he sent his one and only begotten son to be the sacrifice that needed to be paid so that we could be reconciled before a holy God.

Jesus Christ, the son of God, lowered himself into the form of man and chose to die for our sins. He didn’t die naturally, he was crucified, he died a slow death, writhing in pain. The pain we were meant to experience, the death we were supposed to have, he took upon himself.

We could never have come before God without him.

But the penalty of sin in death could not hold our savior. He was resurrected on the third day, giving us security and hope for an eternity with the God who loves us. We are not only cleansed from our sins, but we have adoption into the family of God. We are his heirs. What great news we have!

If you’re here right now and have found yourself looking for God. He is here, waiting for you. Place your trust in Jesus Christ. There is nothing you have to earn. All you have to do is believe in Jesus Christ. Tell God that you believe Jesus has come to rescue you from your sins and gives you his love and his everlasting life. Jesus will wipe away all your regrets, all your hurts, all your sin. Receive him in your heart today.

When we received this great news, we become God’s chosen. People who were in his family prayed for us and because of their prayers, the gospel advanced in our lives. So we are called to do so similarly. Verse 7.

⁷ For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

So we pray for all the people that we can. We name them. We lift them up specifically in supplication, prayer, intercession, and thanks. We know God appointed us to them by putting them in our lives so that we can pray.

Church, it’s time to pray like Jesus teaches his disciples: to intercede for those we love; for those who hate us; for those who persecute us.

Then and only then will we witness God’s kingdom come and his will be done here on earth as it is in heaven.

Who will you pray for that the gospel will advance in their lives?

• Is it your son or daughter or brother or sister, name them before God.
• Is it a co-worker, or a spouse, or parent, name them.
• Is it a neighbor or a customer, or cousin, or grandparent, name them.
• Is it a boss, a community leader, a bully, or enemy, name them.

God has given you and me the power to change the course of our society through prayer. Don’t squander that opportunity. Offer supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving for all people so the gospel can advance.

You should have all received this card and a pencil when you came in, if not, you can use a bulletin. If you’re joining us online, you can use prayer button on your Bible App or hit the Notes function on the Woodside App.

We’re going to do an exercise together. You’re not allowed to leave here today without doing this:

1. Write your name and cell phone number and today’s date across the bottom of the card. It’s January 22, 2023. Lift up your cards when your done.

Wait 30 seconds

• Write down the names of three people that you will be praying for this year that the gospel will advance in their lives. First and last names. This is a minimum of three names.
  • Do that on the top three lines.
  • If you have more than three, that’s great! Write their names down too.

Wait 1 minute

• Then in the next few lines under that, write down specifically, as specifically as possible how you want God’s Spirit to advance the good news in the lives of the people you just listed.
  • If that’s just by not being antagonistic toward things of faith, then write it.
  • If that’s they will receive the gospel when you share it, then write it.
  • If that’s they will be reconciled with you, so you can share the gospel, then write it.
  • Be specific!

Wait 2 minutes

• Now, on the back, I want you to write down two more things:
  • First, how frequently you’re going to pray for these people in any given week.
    • You going to do this every morning, every evening, morning and evening, every other day, once a week, etc

Wait 30 seconds

• Secondly, what your schedule is going to engage these people to check to see if God’s Spirit advanced the good news into their lives.
  • You’re going to have coffee or a meal with them once a week, once a month, once every other week or month

Wait 30 seconds

I’m going to invite the band up, but none of us are going to leave yet. Don’t worry about your kids in our Kids Min environments. I know you’re hungry, but brunch can wait. We’re not done yet.

Here’s what I want to do now. Show your card to the person next to you. Everybody should be looking at somebody else’s card now.

• Write this person’s name and phone number if you don’t know the person you’re sitting next to.
  • You’re going to call or text this person this Thursday at 8am and ask how their prayers are going.

With 3 or 4 people around you, we’re going to sing this song together and then we’re going to pray for one name each on your papers, one by one. No fancy words. Just you, being real, praying for somebody you know with a brother or sister in faith. If you get through one name each, then keep going in another round until I close us out in prayer.

Let’s sing together.

[Wait 4:30]

Father in heaven, we’re gathered and praying that in your name all these things be done in the lives of the people we just prayed for. Do what you do best and make your name great. We want you to do something so mighty and great in their lives. Leave us in awe of how awesome you truly are. Let us testify to the work that you have done and are doing in the lives of the people we’re praying for and give you thanks and glory for it.

Lord we were justified by faith and received news so great, that our eternity has been secured as your child. Lord, thank you for allowing us to inherit your eternal kingdom.

Lord, we need the energy, forbearance, and endurance to pray without ceasing for the people you called to live around us. No longer do we want to stand back and watch idly as they miss your love for them. Lord, in fact, I ask that we can be the instruments you use to implement your glory. Fill us with your Spirit so we can have courage to approach your throne but also to confront these named individuals with your gospel.

Let your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. We pray all this in Jesus precious name. Amen.

Let’s glorify our savior in singing.