Prayers for Peace and Purpose: A Journey Through 1 Timothy

We're going to read from 1 Timothy chapter 2 verses 1 to 8.

1 Timothy 2:1–8

I urge then, first of all, that petitions, prayers,

intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings and all those

in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.

This is good, and pleases God our Saviour, who wants all people to be saved

and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ,

who gave himself as a ransom for all people.

This has now been witnessed to at a proper time.

And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle.

I am telling the truth, I am not lying and a true and faithful teacher of the Gentiles.

Therefore, I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing.

If the boys and girls would like to go out to junior church now,

because Chris is not here today, the youth will be staying in the service.

Morning, everyone. Morning. Maybe we need another coffee out there or something.

I had a great day yesterday. Well, if you can consider sitting at a quarterly

business meeting for the whole day, a great day. But it was a great day.

There's probably, I don't know how many people would be there,

maybe a few hundred or probably 500, 600 people.

I can imagine something like that, where all the pastors get together and all

the delegates get together from church to talk about the assembly,

which is basically the annual meeting for the Baptist Association.

Association, and it was a great start that they had because Kirsten and Jamie

Long, who Jamie is now the pastor of Eppingbaps, they came up and gave the opening

message, the preached in the message, and it was great.

They did this tag team thing where Jamie would get up and talk,

and then Kirsten would get up and talk. Yeah.

It was incredibly presented in the way that the message went from two kings

and it talked about how the I'll know moments that we have in life where it's,

I'll know what's going to happen.

And quite often what happens is that our brain goes to all different places

about, I'll know, what are we going to do?

And we were reminded, Kirsten and Jamie reminded us that God already has that

in plant and And he already has turned up in the oh no moment of our life where we go, oh no,

it's normally because we can't see beyond ourselves and beyond our situation.

But God's already there and he will reveal himself and what he's doing in our life in that time.

Isn't it amazing that God is already there working at work, doing the things that we're doing?

So in some ways, as we come to God in prayer, it's not enlightening him about

the circumstances of our life.

It might even be in some ways saying the oh no moment aloud to him.

And he turns around in prayer and says, I'm already there.

Open up your eyes. I'll open up your eyes for you. and you can see the armies

of angels that are before you and the things that are doing are around.

And so that was encouraging for me. As I pray and as I look at the oh no moments,

well, then I sit there and think, well, God's already there. He's already at work.

And I have the privilege of being part of that work and have my eyes opened

up so that I might see him at work and what he's doing in this world.

I don't know what would have happened in the old moments of some of the aspects in the Bible.

So, for example, today, if Noah went to build an ark, can you imagine the dilemma

that he would have to build it?

God would come down and say, look, I'm going to cause a flood to happen,

which could have been like in our area right now in the last few months,

a flood to happen, and it's going to rain for 40 days and 40 nights,

and you need to build an ark. and he comes back down.

He says, I'm going to give you a bit of time to do that. Comes back down and there's no arc there.

Noah could turn around easily and just go, well, I tried to build an arc, but I needed a permit.

I've been arguing with the inspector about the need for a sprinkler system,

but there's no need for a sprinkler system.

Then my neighbours complained that I violated the residential zoning laws and

I was building an arc in my backyard where it's not a commercial commercial place.

And then the RTA would get out there and electricity commission would get out

there and say, when are you going to take the arc to the sea?

We're going to have to close all the roads down. We're going to have to change

all the electricity poles just so you can get there.

I argued that the sea would be coming to us.

But he wasn't in it. Getting the wood would be a problem, wouldn't it?

There's a ban on cutting local trees because of the spotted owl that was there.

And I tried to convince the environmentalists that I needed the wood to save

the spotted owl, but that didn't happen.

You imagine Noah turning around and speaking to God saying, you know,

I gathered all the animals, but then the animal rights group came in and complained

about the confined quarters that they'd be in.

The environmental Australia decided that I could not build an arc without filling

out an environmental impact statement of your flood that you're going to bring along.

And I'm still trying to resolve the complaint about the fair work Australia,

about the minorities that would come and work on the arc and building the crew.

And the trade union said, I can only use trade union people.

To make it worse, the Australian Customs and Immigration and Taxation seized

all my assets, said it was claiming I was trying to leave the country with endangered species.

So forgive me, Lord, Noah would say, because it's going to be at least 10 years

before I can build the ark.

And all of a sudden, the skies would open up and the rainbows would start.

And Noah would look up and say, you mean you're not going to destroy the world?

And he would turn around and say, the government's already done it for us.

As we look at our world and we look at the situation we find ourselves in.

Paul starts off with this text that says he's urging us to pray.

He's urging us to be into intercession. Now, Peter spoke about that a couple

of weeks ago, and I urge you to go on to our podcast and listen to that message.

Great message where he opened up and talked about the intercessory prayer that

we have. I'm just going to skim over a few points because that's where we're at in 1 Timothy.

Paul in our passage gives a rationale why we have to pray.

And here's the reason why we have to pray is because prayers are offered for everyone. Why?

Because God would have everyone to be saved. He wants all people to be saved. So why?

It's because Jesus Christ is the only mediator that comes between us and God.

He's the one that paid the ransom for our sin.

There's salvation only in him. So therefore, by implication,

we stand in intercession for those who are not saved and God.

And we're to teach people how they are to be saved, where they're to go to.

And I think that's what 1 Timothy 2 is all about.

Paul uses four words to describe prayer. And I think Thanksgiving is fairly

clear to us. But the other ones kind of merge together. They're much the same. name.

Requests seem to refer to specific needs and intercession and appealing bodily

on other people's behalves.

And we do that, don't we? We appeal like we did for Jocelyn in her eye as she

goes on Monday and gets a whole lot of stuff happening with her that God would be there for her,

that God would heal her as we do for other people and intercession of people's

needs and wherever they find themselves in in life.

However, it is clear in our passage that our time together should involve prayer.

And quite often our time together is,

We tack on prayer or we get to the end of a time together and say,

can we just close in prayer?

Where I think what Paul is encouraging is that very much at the heart and the

centre of what we do is intercession for others in prayer.

And that should be a large part of what we do. I don't know what we do in connect groups.

In our connect group, we try to start with prayer because quite often what happens

is we can get talking about a passage.

Tony can go off, Margie can go off, and they can start talking about

stuff and next thing you know we're we've gone to nine

o'clock and we go well we just have to close and break because we all got to

get home well we don't want that to happen so we start in prayer and then at

the end of it we we keep on going to 9 30 but that that's another thing that

happens but our prayer should involve a whole lot of things and one thing that we should pray for.

Includes praying for governments i don't know whether you pray for governments

whether you you pray for our political leaders, whether you pray for our world

and the political aspects of our world. It's not easy.

From God's perspective, there is definitely a relationship between church and

government, but in our country, we try to separate church and government, church and state.

It's the duty of the government to keep peace and protect citizens and punish evil and promote good.

That's their duty under God. They may not realize that, but it is.

So the church may be free to worship and obey God and spread the gospel, but,

So conversely, it's the duty of the church to pray that the government and their

leaders would administer justice and pursue peace so that we can do that in

peace. We can spread the gospel.

We can promote good and promote justice in our world.

We need to remember when Paul wrote that their world was far from a Christian world.

Nero tried to eliminate Christianity off the face of this earth.

Now, I'm not saying that our government's trying to do that,

but it definitely wasn't peace for the Christian world then.

It wasn't peace. They had to do everything that they possibly could not to stir

up trouble in the environment that they had to make sure that when people looked

at the church and the gathering of the church, it was in order.

It was consistent with the cultural conventions of the day.

It was not going to hamper the promotion of the gospel, promotion of the truth in any type of way.

Now, obviously, what I said before was a bit of a joke and that would never happen.

But let's have a think about it. In Canberra and nearly all of Melbourne,

scripture in school is out.

Well, it's not necessarily out, but there's no necessity for principals to ever put that into school.

Queensland, New South Wales, and other states have an opt-in now where it's

not compulsory anymore for everybody to go to Scripture, but it is an opt-in

situation where if you want a child to go to it.

But here's the thing is that they have to provide an opportunity during school

time, during class time, to have Scripture or religious education.

Now, if we think that's in trouble...

You're right. There was a paper that came out just a week ago from Monash University

where one of the professors there is promoting a bill to get put forward to

the Australian government to eliminate religious education in schools

and to provide it in a different way, but not in a way that segregates faith.

That's major. It's a major thing that's happening. That's right before us right

now. And the reason why is because we live in a post-truth world.

If you don't know what that is, you need to look it up on the net.

Basically, it means that we no longer believe some of the truthful things,

but we make up our own mind what we think is truth.

Any religious group who tries to hold a worship service now has to apply for

special permissions and pay a fee because worship services are generally not allowed.

And the gathering is seen to be inciting a riot type of thing.

Evangelism in school is totally out. I all the time have pieces of information,

emails that come backward and forward from youth works and different other places,

which informs me not to evangelize in my scripture classes, but simply teach scripture.

The church who speaks up out against obvious sin can be often seen to be close-minded and judgmental.

And we're a Christian nation, so to speak. So it's time for prayer.

It's time for godliness and holiness in our churches.

And it's time that we uphold people who are out there,

churches that are out there in prayer and governments would allow the avenues

so that the gospel message can get out and people can be saved because that's God's desire,

remember, that all people will be saved.

And that people will live in peace.

Now, peace doesn't mean we can all sit down and watch State of Origin without something happening.

It means that we can have a peaceful environment as we go about the work of God.

So prayer for our nation and around our world might produce and maintain laws

so that Christians are without restriction and are able to follow God and present

his good news and salvation and promote godly living.

For Christians in our world, in the political world, our 21st century,

like in 1 Timothy 2, is probably one of the most controversial passages that there is out there.

In fact, I would say it is the controversial passage of the church,

not only to those outside the church, but certainly those within the church.

And it's really strange because when you think about it, Paul,

right throughout the letter at at the beginning of Letter of 1 Timothy,

is trying not to stir up trouble and not to produce controversy,

but he's trying to produce harmony and harmony within the culture, within that local area.

I believe 1 Timothy is all about false teachers coming to the church of Ephesus

and Paul trying to maintain the gospel being presented and the church gathering as not true.

Bringing the church or the gospel into disrepute. That's what I believe.

Not to start controversy, but Timothy was to show us how to handle those creating

controversy or distilling or distorting the truth.

And it was the gospel that he is trying to maintain so it's not brought into

disrepute, especially here in chapter 2.

So Paul writes not to stir up trouble, but with a great desire to to unite people around the truth.

And yet this passage, outside and within, is called controversy full on.

So as Christians in 1 Timothy 2, we're called first of all, not as a matter

of order, but first as a matter of priority, to do two things.

We must show godliness in what we pray.

One of the hardest things I find is to pray for my enemies.

And I don't know whether you have got to that point in your life where you pray for an enemy.

Now, I'm not talking about military enemies because we don't necessarily have that,

but a person who's at work or at school who seems to know everything about Christianity

and proceeds to make a joke of everything that Christians ever would believe

or that person who seems to go out of their way just to let you know what they think,

suggesting a variety of ways that you could curb your thinking.

If you don't know what the world thinks, well, then they're about to tell you

exactly what the world thinks about Christian issues that's out there.

And yet we're with verses that says, bless those who hate you,

bless those who persecute you, and pray for those around you that seem to be

paying out on you so that you're unable to live that peaceful life and promote the gospel.

But you have to go with what they're thinking. It's hard, isn't it, to pray for our enemies?

Do you pray for your enemies? Do you pray for those people?

Not that they would leave you alone, but they might know the truth of the gospel.

When it comes to other religions and other beliefs, it's easy to depersonalize religion, isn't it?

Where we can call people Christians, or we can call Christians,

and we can have Islamics, and we can have Buddhists, and we can have Hindus, and we have Muslims.

But under the religious label do we realise there's millions of people,

where we might go to, like Susan and I in a few months' time are going to go

to a country that is absolutely saturated with peoples from other faiths.

And it's not just we're walking into a black country, a Hindu or a Muslim country,

we're walking into a country with millions upon millions of people who need to know Jesus.

So my prayer is that the governments of those lands, wherever that might be.

Would open up the doorways so that the truth could be told.

That should be my desire. My prayer is for people because that's what God's like.

His prayer is for all people to be saved and come into a knowledge of truth.

And that's God's great desire here today, in our workplace, in our school,

in our football, soccer team, in your family, everyone.

That is the reason why Jesus died on the cross.

Is so that people might be saved and our prayer, our godly prayers will reflect that concern.

Not that we would live a peaceful, quiet life, is that we would actually be

stirred up by the world in which we live in and the doors might be open so that

we can share that great news,

that awesome news with our world and the people in it.

Do you want people around you to you'd be saved.

Do you want that person who is absolutely going at you,

that neighbor that knows that you're a Christian person and constantly calls

you into account for the way you live or the way you cut your lawns or the way

you do your hedges or whatever it might be,

and they say, you call yourself a Christian.

Are you praying for them? Not that they would realize who you are,

but they might realize who Christ is.

It will be the greatest test of everything we do at the Heights because 1 Timothy

was written for the church and it's the litmus test of what we do that pleases

God and we need to ask ourselves as individuals and we need to ask ourselves as a church,

are we on about presenting the gospel to all people,

to our community, to any person that we can possibly be about?

Are we on about as a church to equip you to go into your world to present that gospel. Do you know it?

Can you present it? Do we provide opportunities for you to come and bring people

in so they might hear the truth, they might hear the gospel?

I think that's the key to understanding this chapter too.

Why pray for kings and rulers of authority? We don't pray that they will escape

the scrutiny of their travel allowances or that the leaked memos won't get out

there and ruin their political career.

We don't even pray really that our brand of politician might come into and win a certain election.

We pray so that we can live peaceful and quiet, godly lives in holiness.

Now, this might seem like a bit of a social middle-class prayer.

Lord, please give us a quiet neighborhood, our house in a quiet cul-de-sac,

or no barking dogs, please.

I was awake all last night because some possum was running outside, side.

And I'm sure all our neighbours thought the same thing. All noisy teenagers, please.

No noisy teenagers. All the teenagers that are in here.

When I had the privilege of going around and teaching the church about youth

ministry, I went up to one senior minister and said, I'd love to talk to you

about youth ministry. And I said, we don't want any youth in our church.

And I said, why not? He said, well, they ruin everything. And I said, well, I'll pray for you.

At which point I had the head of the denomination call me up to his office down

in the centre of Sydney and said, Mark, you can't probably say that to the senior minister.

And I said, well, I did. And in my own way.

Maybe we pray for a peaceful neighbourhood, like we're not under a flight path,

a new flight path or something like that. I'm not sure.

It's not that at all, really, and you know that. Paul urges us to pray for peace

so that we can get on with being holy and godly, that we might pray that no

obstacles for the gospel would be ahead.

As an Australian, I need to be reminded about how good I have it here.

And while I don't need to believe and pray for every person in the whole of

the world and every government in the whole of the world, but never pray for

Australia and think, well, because I have it so good here that the gospel's

open to everybody. That's not true.

And you know that's not true. And it's increasingly becoming more like that.

But there are some places in the world where it's illegal, not just the doors

are closed, it's actually illegal for you to witness to somebody. body.

Like Malaysia, for example, there's a Malaysian person that spoke out and said,

in Malaysia, if you're a Malay and you become a Christian, it is an abomination.

Those who get saved are under a very underground, and it's not wise to give

your testimony in public.

When I first wanted to go to church, I had to disguise myself to blend in because they couldn't do it.

It is illegal in some countries for you to move away from the national faith.

We need to be in prayer for those countries, that somehow or other God would

work in the political world so that people could follow whatever they want and

that Christians would go in and would be able to present the truth and God would

work in their hearts so that they could do it,

that they were able to worship God, able to go to church.

We need to pray for peace in that that Malaysian local churches,

that they can get on with doing the job of saving people, not that they themselves

save people, get on the job with evangelism into their world.

God's desire is for everyone in the world, no matter whether it's a closed country or not.

We need to pray for our country. We need to pray for our governments.

And we need to not think that our world is like we live here in Australia.

So hard to do, isn't it? I have really no concept of what it's like to live

in a country that's so closed to the truth that I believe, to my Lord. We need to pray for that.

Not just that we let people alone and do whatever they want,

but that God's truth of his salvation would go in and infiltrate their world

so that people might come to know him.

Why? Our passage, because there's only one mediator between us and God,

and that is Jesus Christ.

Humanity can and does construct many ways and organize beliefs to deal with the problem of sin.

Now, you know that. that you've seen that some of the funny things around the

world was this guy who dealt with the

problem of sin in his life and it was called simon the

pole sitter and if you've studied church history you'll

you read about simon the pulse simon stylus is his name and that if you're going

to write a thing that's the guy simon simon the pole sitter sat on a pole to

remove himself from the sin of of of this world and he did he removed himself

from the sin of this world he sat on top top of a pole. People passed up food to him.

And then he kind of finally realized, well, the sin was still sitting on the pole.

And so that was a problem. Although he removed himself from the world,

he didn't remove sin from him.

Then there's other people who have all sorts of different approaches,

you know, where there's kind of a debt versus income kind of approach of good

works and bad works approach of different things.

And then there's other people who just go totally nuts about how to remove themselves

from sin and how they're going to deal with the problem of sin in their life.

Like Hosea, you have people who worship fruitcake.

Now, who worships? It's called the sacred raisin cakes.

Who worships fruitcake in this world? No one eats it.

It's like going to Macca's. We're going to worship Macca's, but instead of salvation,

all that happens is you eat something that's going to kill you anyway. Right?

People do all sorts of things. So we need to show in a very much way and pray

for that the door will be open so that people will recognize the truth of God's word.

The second thing is we must pray and show our godliness in how we pray,

not only in what we pray, but how we pray.

So in verse 8, Paul turns from things that we should pray for to things about how we should pray.

And it might seem a little weird that Paul's getting this great concern about

raising hands and doing things with our hands.

One of the greatest hangups sometimes in the church, and I've been in churches

that have a great hangup about this, is how people raise their hands and what

they do with their hands.

Is it more spiritual to raise your hands? Is it more worshipful to raise your hands?

We had in certain church that I was at where we had three separate spots and

the left-hand side all raised their hands, the middle kind of did a half Baptist

thing, and then at the other side were all hands in pockets.

And you kind of go, which one's spiritual? which one's not.

It's got nothing much to do in these verses about whether you're raising your

hands or lowering your hands.

It's got nothing at all to do with that. It's more to do with the biblical illustration

of your hands and what's in your hand and what you're presenting to your world through your hands.

The way that you live is what's important.

Leaders keep their hands safely, firm, glued beside themselves,

and that might become a norm within some circumstances.

But if it doesn't matter whether they're lowered or lifted, it means whether

their hands are holy or not.

And in this chapter, we talk about this unusual group, and we don't really know

what it's all about, that has bloodshed and violence on their hands.

And it's like Psalm 7 talks about that.

It says, with our hands, we can reach out in friendship, in forgiveness, and to embrace.

With our hands, we can express tenderness or we can strike and hurt and inflict pain.

But it has a broader meaning other than violence that happens through your hands.

Your hands has an overarching meaning that talks about the relationships,

the works of your hands, the good things that you present from your hands,

that people must be set apart and honor God in holiness in what you do and how you act.

In other words, hands are presented to be how you're working out your prayer

life with people. It's one thing to pray for somebody.

It's the other things that your hands and the church might be seen as the hands

and work of God God in holiness, the

life that we live, the life in right relationship before God in prayer.

And we have to ask ourselves, do we show anger or love? Do we repay evil for evil?

Do we love our neighbor? We might pray for our neighbor. We might pray for those who persecute us.

We might pray for your enemy, but do you love them?

There's a story about a pastor, and it's a true story because I know the pastor,

a person come in and said, I don't love my wife anymore and I want to divorce her.

And he turned around and said, well, you're told to love your enemies,

love those who persecute you, love those who hate you, love your neighbor,

love everybody. You tell me how you're going to love her.

And what does it mean for that to happen? We need to love our neighbor.

Even if our neighbor lets their dog loose,

and they defecate in your front yard, even if

your neighbor plays all night and parties all

night even if your neighbor snores so

loud then you're that you have to change bedrooms from their side of

the house that's i don't know what your neighbor is whatever your neighbor does

whatever your enemy does whatever your neighbor does at work whatever the business

right next door to you in the same business as you and your your what they do

in practice we need to love people we need to be on about peace and humility humility.

I think that's what the prayer verses are talking about. So to wrap up,

we need to pray for our situation in Australia, in Sydney.

We need to live lives worthy of our calling as a Christian, that in absolute

integrity, what we're praying for needs to be worked out in our life.

So if we're praying for people and we're praying for certain circumstances,

maybe we're the ones that are going to work out that prayer and God is going

to use us, our hands, to work out that prayer.

It's one thing to pray for the needs of our community, but are you working out

with your hands to provide for the needs of the community because that's what

God is saying and that's what Paul is saying,

that the church of Ephesus needs to walk in integrity.

So what they're praying for and how they're living out the gospel brings integrity

to the gospel that they're preaching and doesn't bring it into disrepute.

We need to pray and have a global view as Christians,

that we and people in other countries might have the same opportunities that

we do here to share the gospel and to promote the truth of God's word,

that doors would be open and that governments will not restrict the message going out.

And we need to pray that we make the most of our comfortable environment that

we have by sharing the good news of salvation to people and to living out the

message that we preach here.

Rather than me closing prayer, I'm going to ask you where you sit,

not with another person, but just where you sit, to pray for something about Australia.

Maybe pray for that SRE in schools. Maybe pray for the events that are going

on and Christians put on.

Maybe pray for for the integrity of the church, that our church and the church.

That what they preach will be practiced in holiness and godliness.

And pray for yourself about the opportunities and the comfortable environment that you live in.

How are you promoting the gospel and how are you advancing the gospel and how

you're living out the truth of God's word in your life?

And I pray, Lord, that as a church here at the Heights,

that you would make us aware of any message that cuts through that so that we

might stay on track and that we might bring you glory.