Ira Baptist Church
May 24

      • Psalms 23.1-3ESV

      • Psalms 23.4-5ESV

      • Psalms 23.6ESV

  • Blessed Assurance
  • By Faith

      • Hebrews 4.14-15ESV

      • Hebrews 4.16ESV

  • Amazing Love/Word of God Speak
  • Timothy, if you’re willing to stay in Ephesus and work toward a healthy church there, how should you go about your work there?
    What kind of spiritual disciplines should you work toward seeing in the lives of the people?
    How should people behave themselves, especially as gathered worshipers?
    What kinds of leaders, teachers, pastors, servants, are to be in place?
    What should your personal priorities be, Timothy?
    What are the specific challenges that you will have to face there?
    Chapter 2:1-6:2 cover these questions.
    Before that, Paul gives Timothy one final warning
    There will not only be those who are swerving into the weeds, there are those who have tragically shipwrecked and are now enemies of the Gospel and the Church.
    vs. 18-20
    Encouragement to Timothy
    Those who noticed his gifting and affirmed his calling (4:14)
    Paul himself, present in that prophetic expression of Timothy’s unique calling (2 Tim 1:6)
    Because of that, fight the battle well
    The Battle
    Holding faith and a sincere conscience
    You can’t do this if you don’t actually believe what your preach
    You won’t stay steady if you don’t have a sincere and implicit trust in Christ
    Those who didn’t
    By Name, Hymenaus and Alexander
    have rejected a sincere faith. Have come to have no trust in Christ
    Described as “shipwreck” - a genuine tragedy when someone who professed to believe is found to not believe
    Even for enemies, a goal of restoration
    cf. 1 Cor 5. handed over to Satan, seemingly, as an instrument of God’s discipline.
    To experience the end of their wandering for a season, in hopes that they may come back.
    Therefore, first of all, prayer...

    Our Savior, Jesus Christ, is the Mediator between God and men - therefore, His church should be a praying church.

    Paul is urging, in the positive sense, this priority in the church.

    1. All Kinds of Prayer - vs. 1

    Four overlapping prayers
    supplications
    urgent requests for God to grant something
    an earnest plea
    Romans 10:1 ESV
    Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.
    prayers
    the most general term
    the most common expression of one’s relationship to God
    Noted, when Jesus taught on prayer it was “when you pray.”
    Hebrews 4:16 ESV
    Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
    in the simplest sense, it is, to speak to God!
    intercessions
    often connotates going to God as King.
    thanksgivings
    expressing gratitude in prayer
    Philippians 4:6 ESV
    do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
    It is not here that we are given a menu to choose from, or that we have to perfectly categorize our prayer.
    Actually, the fourfold description of prayer comes across in this way
    First of all, pray - in every kind of way, it is paramount that you pray.
    And the senses of the words for prayer give this undertone, that this is not liturgical but heartfelt acts of devotion.
    Remember Paul’s stress to Timothy, that he would hold faith and sincerity.
    It is not surprising, then, that his first admonition from that is to these kinds of sincere, heartfelt prayers.
    What were the underlying senses?
    urgency
    relationship
    need/desire
    thanksgiving
    faith
    Prayer, seen here by Paul, is not so much something that we should or must do, but something that within the gathering of a church, we cannot help but do.
    And if there is not a sense of its importance, that is where the teaching of urgency comes from.
    Prayer, at its simplest form, bows to the power and authority of God in time of need or in acknowledgment of provision.

    2. All Kinds of People - vs. 2-4

    End of verse 1, all people.
    Paul urges that these sincere, heartfelt prayers to God should be made on behalf of all people without distinction.
    1 Timothy 2:2 ESV
    for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.
    It would be natural, here, for Paul to list then categories of every kind of person. Jew, Greek, Slave, free, rich, poor, male, female. Those kinds of lists are available in other parts of scripture.
    But the fact is that as an example of prayer being made for all kinds of people, he lists Kings and those in authority.
    Note, that the “King” at this time in the Roman empire was Nero, who first famously began to persecute Christians by blaming them for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD.
    Not limited to: being thrown to wild animals in the arenas
    Being spectacles of public crucifixion
    Being coated in wax and burned as candles in Nero’s gardens
    The stress here, then, seems to be that prayer for all kinds of people not only includes, but especially includes, our enemies.
    Note, Paul’s view of opponents and enemies has already been laid out in the first chapter.
    With the dangerous teachers, the aim was to charge them to repent with a heart of love.
    For his enemies, Hymenaeus and Alexander, his goal was for them to learn the treachery of their ways and repent also - restoration.
    Paul doesn’t specifically give the content of what our prayer should be, but I think it becomes evident by his goals for prayer, and the reasoning behind the prayer.
    Goals
    Quiet and Peaceable life
    Godly and dignified in every way
    Reasoning
    Prayer for all people pleases God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved.
    And there, the connection to “all people” comes back again.
    If the connotation of prayer for all without distinction is “even your enemies,” then the connotation behind Paul’s use of “salvation for all people” also would include “even your enemies.”
    The content of the prayer then, seems to be “salvation and coming to the knowledge of your truth.”
    That is what, ultimately, would produce quiet and peaceable lives for the church, and enable them to live godly and dignified in every way.
    This reflects the Lord’s prayer, where we are taught to pray “thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.”
    I think we can learn here, how to pray for people, especially our enemies and our governmental leaders.
    Matthew 5:43–45 ESV
    “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
    Applying “all people” in our day to day lives.
    Government - disagree? Hate? Can we honestly say that we would have a desire for them to become followers of Jesus?
    False religions - does your heart reflect God our Savior’s in that he saves people from every nation, tribe, and language? Or is there a sense of “exclusivity” in your view of the world?
    Neighbors - sometimes we become so used to our neighbors not being believers that we lose the sense of possibility that God may save them, too, and that in his will it is very possible that we may be a means - both by prayer and witness - for them to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth?
    We must have both a strong sense of God’s sovereignty in salvation - were it not for Grace, nobody would come to know him - but also a biblical sense of urgency in our prayer and desire for people to come to know him.

    3. One Means of Help and Salvation - vs. 5-7

    The urgency of prayer for all people is made very clear by this fact. There is one God, and only one way to God.
    For the content of our prayer, that is, we are praying that people will come to know the one True God through His Son, Jesus Christ.
    For the reasoning behind our prayer, we are encouraged by this - that Jesus Christ is the Mediator.
    One go-between for all kinds of people.
    There are not many roads to God
    There are not many religions that boil down to one big idea
    There is one, Jesus Christ, who makes it possible to come to the one God.
    There is no true knowledge of God apart from Christ’s work as Mediator.
    John 14:6 ESV
    Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
    Matthew 11:27 ESV
    All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
    The Man
    1 Peter 3:18 ESV
    For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,
    Who can bring us to God? Jesus
    We will pick up this theme next week with verse 6.

      • Romans 10:1ESV

      • Hebrews 4:16ESV

      • Philippians 4:6ESV

      • 1 Timothy 2:2ESV

      • Matthew 5:43–45ESV

      • John 14:6ESV

      • Matthew 11:27ESV

      • 1 Peter 3:18ESV

  • Nearer My God

      • 1 Thessalonians 5.13ESV

Ira Baptist Church
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