So here we are, chapter two of First
Timothy, and in our previous study, we looked
at verses one through eight, and we concentrated
primarily on, you know, just looking at the
whole issue of kings and those who are
in authority over us.
And we considered that in in some detail
how we are to to function as Christians
in the sense of being citizens as well.
And so we talked about prayer and we
talked about just politics and things of that
nature because the text does lend itself to
it.
But I want to go back and look
at some of those same verses again tonight,
but I want to take it in a
different direction.
So let's read together verses one through six
this evening.
And Paul says, therefore, I exhort, first of
all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of
thanks be made for all men, for kings
and all who are in authority, that we
may lead a quiet and peaceable life in
all godliness and reverence, for this is good
and acceptable in the sight of God, our
Savior, who desires all men to be saved
and to come to the knowledge of the
truth.
For there is one God and one mediator
between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus,
who gave himself a ransom for all to
be testified in due time.
So Paul's instruction here, remember Paul's writing to
Timothy, Timothy is Paul's protege.
He's his colleague in ministry.
And Paul has left Timothy in the city
of Ephesus in order to make sure things
run smoothly in the churches and make sure
that everything stays on track, basically.
And so throughout this epistle, Paul is basically
giving Timothy instruction so that Timothy might in
turn instruct the church.
He says at one point he says, I've
written these things that you might know how
to conduct yourself in the house of God,
which is the church of the living God,
the pillar and the ground of the truth.
So here now Paul tells us that the
church is to be a place of prayer.
And we talked about that in the previous
study.
But he says that prayer is to be
made for all men.
Because God desires all men to be saved
and to come to the knowledge of the
truth, God wants people to be saved.
That's what God is all about.
You know, today people say, hey, well, you
know, I'm all about this or I'm all
about that.
Well, God's all about people getting saved.
That's what he's into.
That's what he longs for.
That's what he desires to see happen.
He desires that people come to him.
He desires that all men be saved.
Now, of course, this isn't a reference just
to men, it's generic, it's humanity, it's mankind,
ladies included, obviously.
But this is God's desire.
He wants people to be saved, not just
a few people, not just a handful here
and there.
God wants all people to be saved.
Now.
The fact is, though, not all people are
going to be saved, it's not because God
doesn't want people to be saved.
It's simply because God has chosen to save
those who choose to be saved.
And so that's where the limit comes in.
God is not going to force anyone to
be saved.
He wants all people to be saved, but
he doesn't.
He doesn't force them to receive his grace.
It's up to us individually to make that
decision.
But that's a decision that God longs for
us to make.
Jesus said, I have come to seek and
to save that which was lost.
That's why he came to seek and to
save that which was lost.
He said on another occasion, for God did
not send his son into the world to
condemn the world, but that the world through
him might be saved.
So many people have the wrong idea about
God.
They think that God wants to condemn everybody.
And honestly, sometimes Christians are guilty of giving
that impression.
But that's not the case.
Jesus did not come into the world to
condemn it, but that the world through him
might be saved.
Peter said God is not willing that any
should perish, but that all should come to
repentance.
And so salvation, of course, is the main
theme of the Bible.
That's what the Bible is.
It's the book of salvation.
It's the book that gives us the history
of salvation, the history of redemption.
Sometimes people ask the question, you know, how
come the Bible doesn't tell us about, you
know, the different civilizations and empires and things
like that, as though the Bible were to
be sort of a world history.
But you see, that's not the the intention
of the Bible.
The Bible is not meant to be a
world history.
The Bible is the history of salvation.
It's the history of redemption.
And so it only deals with those things
that are pertinent to the subject of salvation.
But of course, that's the most important subject
in all the world.
This is the most important book in all
the world.
No question about it, because it tells us
how we can be saved.
Now, the term saved is a term that
is packed full of implication.
Of course, it implies that we're lost.
It implies that we're in trouble.
It implies that we need to be rescued,
delivered and so forth.
And that's exactly the case.
And so when the Bible talks about people
who are saved, it's talking about people who
have been delivered, people who have been rescued
from a certain danger.
When you look at the subject of salvation,
when you look at the just the actual
idea of salvation.
Salvation has sort of a threefold application.
You see, we've been saved from.
Our sin, of course, we know that, but
we've been saved from all the implications of
that as well.
We've been saved, first of all, from the
power of sin.
Sin has a tremendous power.
It has a power that's greater than any
power apart from God.
It has the power to bind a person
up and to completely bring them into captivity
so that that person, although they they don't
even want to do the destructive things they're
doing, they can't seem to stop doing it.
That's the power of sin.
But when a person becomes saved, the power
of sin is broken in their life.
And suddenly they're they're liberated, they're no longer
in bondage, the captivity is over and now
they're free.
So we're saved from the power of sin,
but we're also saved from the punishment of
sin.
You see, sin has a punishment that.
Will be meted out against it, and the
punishment for sin is eternal punishment, it's eternal
damnation, it's eternally being separated from God, that's
the punishment of sin.
It's severe, it's frightening, it's horrific, but it's
real.
And that's why Jesus came, because God loved
the world so much he didn't want anybody
to have to suffer for their sin.
He didn't want them to have to bear
the penalty of their sin.
But because God is a just and holy
God, the price had to be paid.
And that's what Jesus did.
He paid the price so we are saved
now from the punishment of sin.
I don't have to dread, I don't have
to fear, I don't have to worry about.
Going to hell.
That's all been dealt with, Christ took the
punishment for my sin when he died upon
the cross and as I believe in him
and I'm saved, punishment is no longer part
of my future, but it is a reality
for those who are still in their sin.
But thirdly, we're saved not only from the
power of sin, the punishment of sin, but
ultimately will be saved from the presence of
sin.
You see, even though we're saved from the
power of sin, sin no longer has that
binding control over my life.
I still sin, sin is still a problem
to some extent, not nearly what it was
previously, but it's still an issue.
I'm not perfect, in other words, and there's
still sin present in my life.
And because there's sin present in my life,
I don't always act the way I ought
to act.
I don't always think the way I should
think or speak the way I should speak
because sin is present in the world.
We have suffering, we have problems that are
directly related to sin, because sin is actually
part of my constitution.
I suffer sickness and things of that nature.
That's all ultimately due to sin.
You can trace it back to sin because
none of those things existed before sin came
into the world.
But a person who is saved is a
person who one day is going to be
completely freed from the presence of sin.
There's going to be no more sin, and
that's what we're told in the book of
Revelation, that in that future world that God
is going to bring into existence, there will
be no more death, there will be no
more sorrow, there will be no more crying,
there will be no more pain for the
former things have passed away.
The former things all related to sin, but
they pass away.
And so that's what we're talking about when
we're talking about a person being saved, that
person is saved from the power, the punishment
and the presence of sin.
To not be saved is to be lost.
To be lost presently.
To be lost to the love of God.
The love of God is there, but yet
you're lost to it in a sense, you're
not able to experience it.
Because you're not saved.
Somebody came to me the other day and
they said, you know, can you rightfully say
that God loves the sinner?
Is that correct?
Can you tell a sinner that God actually
loves them?
And I said to him, yes, you can
tell them that, but you can tell them
that.
Although God loves them, they're not able to
experience God's love because they're in their sin,
they need to come out of their sin
and then they can actually experience the God,
the love that God has for them.
You see, the Bible tells us that while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
He didn't wait till we cleaned up our
act to die for us.
He died for us while we were sinners
demonstrating his love for us.
God demonstrated his love toward us in that
while we were sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans five, eight.
But although God loved us and demonstrated his
love in that sense, we're not able to
experience it.
We're lost to it.
We're outside of it because we're in our
sin.
If I'm not saved, I'm lost to the
purpose of God.
You see, God has a purpose.
Life is not meaningless.
It's not purposeless.
There are those who say that it is.
See, life is is.
It's meaningless, it has no purpose, you just
you know, whatever you make of it is
what you make of it and you're here
for a while and then you're gone and
that's all there is to it.
And life, your life doesn't really mean anything
at all.
Everything in your person cries out against that.
There's nobody that really believes that, that they're
there without significance completely, that life is utterly
purposeless.
Nobody really believes that.
Even the people who promote the idea, they
don't really believe that they're usually standing in
classrooms and universities.
And they think that it's very significant what
they're doing and saying to people.
So they don't even really believe what they're
saying.
The reality is life is.
Purposeful, God has a purpose, but you see,
if I'm not saved, I'm outside of the
purpose of God.
And being outside of the purpose of God,
I don't really know why I'm here.
I don't really know what I'm doing.
And I'm just sort of meandering through life,
wondering, you know, what is this all about?
Is there any rhyme or reason to it?
And I think of people who live their
entire life and then come to the end
and just, you know, just sort of wondering
what was this about?
What was the purpose of it?
Why was I here?
I hope no one here comes to a
place like that.
You don't have to, because God has a
plan.
He has a purpose.
But if we're not saved, we're lost to
that purpose presently and then we will be
lost eternally.
We will be lost to God eternally.
You see, everything that we know, we know
because we were created by God and he
put us in the midst of all that
that he did create.
So people say things stupidly like, hey, I
don't believe in God, I don't care about
God, you know, hey, you know, if God
wants to cast me in hell, no big
deal.
I'll be there with my friends anyway, we'll
be partying, it'll be great.
Not so.
Every good thing, any anything pleasant or remotely
enjoyable, anything that you've ever experienced like that
is because of God.
And hell is being cast out of the
presence of God to the extent that you
no longer experience anything that's of God.
The Bible describes it as outer darkness where
there's wailing and gnashing of teeth.
So that's what happens to a person who's
not saved.
But God, remember, he desires all men to
be saved and to come to the knowledge
of the truth.
God wants people to be saved, but each
and every person has to make the decision
themselves.
I can't make it for somebody else.
They can't make it for me.
My parents can't do it for me.
My kids can't do it for me.
My wife or my husband can't do it
for me.
I've got to do it for myself.
I have to come to the recognition that
I'm lost and I need a savior.
And then what do I do?
I simply call out to that savior.
The Bible has made it so simple.
Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved.
It's as simple as that.
But you see, before you call upon him,
you've got to realize you're lost.
You need somebody to deliver you.
You need somebody to rescue you.
And of course, that is what the Holy
Spirit does in our lives, brings us to
that place of understanding that that is our
condition.
Now, God is all about saving people.
God uses prayer as a means of bringing
people to salvation.
And this is really what I want to
concentrate on tonight.
Everything I have said thus far is sort
of preliminary, but we want to talk about
prayer as an instrument that God uses in
bringing people to himself, because that's really what
Paul is talking about here.
He says, I exhort, first of all, that
prayer, all kinds of prayers, supplication, intercession, giving
of things, all of this be made for
all men, for this is good and acceptable
in the sight of God, our Savior, who
desires all men to be saved.
So Paul makes the connection with people being
saved and prayer.
This is a means that God works through
to bring people to salvation.
It's often the case that someone had been
praying for those who come to Christ.
People find that out quite often.
They come to the Lord.
And then they find out that their grandmother.
Had prayed for them many years ago, they
find out that their aunt had, you know,
known the Lord and had been praying for
him from the time that they were a
little child or or maybe somebody down the
street, a family friend who was a believer.
And they just had begun to pray and
they prayed for that person.
They find these things out quite often after
the fact, they didn't even know that anybody
was praying for them.
And then they come to know the Lord
and suddenly they find out, wow, somebody was
praying for me quite often.
God uses prayer to bring people to salvation.
Now, prayer.
Does several things, prayer, number one, loosens the
grip of the devil on a person's life,
the devil has a grip on the lives
of those who aren't saved.
As a matter of fact, John tells us
in 1 John chapter five, what is it?
Verse 17, I think, or verse 18.
John says the whole world lies in the
grip of the wicked one.
The whole world lies in the grasp of
the devil.
You wonder why the world is the way
that it is.
Well, that's the explanation for it right there.
The world lies in the grasp of the
devil.
And that's why our world is so insane.
That's why it's full of all of the
misery and the suffering and the sin.
But prayer loosens the grip of the devil
on a person's life.
When Paul, the apostle, was commissioned by Jesus
Christ.
To preach the gospel, he tells King Agrippa
when he's standing before King Agrippa, giving his
testimony, he says that Christ sent him to
turn people from darkness to light and from
the power of Satan to the power of
God.
That's what Paul was commissioned to do, to
turn people from darkness to light and from
the power of Satan to the power of
God.
In 2 Corinthians chapter four, verse four.
Paul speaks of those who are blinded to
the truth of the gospel.
And he says to whom our gospel is
veiled, it is veiled to those who do
not believe.
Whose minds the God of this age has
blinded.
He says Satan has actually blinded the minds
of people who don't believe.
And then in writing to Timothy in the
second epistle, chapter two, verse 26, he spoke
of people coming to their senses and then
being delivered from the captivity of the devil.
But he talks about this, this darkness that's
upon people, this, this, this control that Satan
has over the lives of people.
And we see that in people's lives.
You know, there is absolutely no rational explanation
for the hostility that people have toward Jesus
Christ.
There isn't any rational explanation for it.
You read the gospels, you read the story
of Jesus.
My goodness, he was the most wonderful man
that ever lived.
He went around doing good.
He went around blessing people.
He went around healing people.
He went around feeding poor people, taking care
of them.
He was just the most wonderful person that
ever lived.
And yet they hated him.
Some of them, they took him and they
murdered him.
And even today, you find that among people
there is an irrational hostility toward Jesus Christ.
There's just something in them that when you
mention the name Jesus, they just sort of,
you know, there's just something about that.
But you can talk about anything else.
You can talk about any other religion.
You can talk about any religious leader.
You can talk about the most whacked out
loony kinds of religious things you want and
nobody cares.
But boy, you mentioned Jesus and sparks begin
to fly.
It's an irrational hostility toward Jesus Christ.
And I think the best explanation for it
is what we're talking about here.
The devil influences people.
He blinds their minds.
He deludes them.
He deceives them.
And so they have this bias against Christ.
They couldn't even explain why, if you asked
them, it's because of the influence of the
devil.
So prayer loosens the grip of the devil
on a person's life.
And so God desires people to be saved.
What do we do?
Well, one thing that we need to do
is pray for people.
We need to pray.
That God will open the eyes.
That have been blinded, that God will soften
the heart that's been hardened, that God will
deliver the mind that's been deluded.
And so people can come to an understanding
of the truth.
Now, not only does Satan have a grip
over individual lives, the Bible indicates that he
also.
Has.
A grasp on certain geographical locations in a
significant way, when Paul is referring to the
spiritual battle that we as Christians are in
in Ephesians chapter six.
You remember how he describes Satan and his
forces?
He uses the term principality.
He said, we wrestle not against flesh and
blood, but against principalities and powers.
The word principality literally means a prince over
a geographical region.
That's the meaning of the word.
So what Paul is telling us is that
there are invisible demonic powers that rule over
geographical regions.
And the reason why there's a revival of
neo-paganism in Norwich, John, is because there
are principalities.
There are powers.
There are the rulers of the darkness of
this world.
They come in and they take people captive,
of course, willingly.
People go along with it.
They rebel against God and in rebelling against
God, they submit to these forces.
But how do we see that grip broken?
How can we help in paving the way
for the gospel to come into a place
like that?
Of course, the gospel is what ultimately breaks
the enemy's power.
But we can pave the way, so to
speak, through praying.
That's why we need to pray.
That's why we need to pray, not just
for these guys who are going out to
the mission field.
We need to pray for them, but we
need to pray for the specific place as
well.
You know, I was thinking about this today
and I was trying to think of a
verse that, you know, specifically says that.
Through prayer, we can we can break the
influence of the devil in people's lives and
in, you know, geographical locations.
And you know what?
I can't think of a single verse that
actually says it, but the overall picture that's
given to us in scripture certainly supports that
as the truth.
That's the picture that we get in scripture.
And in a sense, probably the best verse
for it is the one that we're looking
at right here.
Paul says to pray for all men because
God desires all men to be saved.
And so we're praying for their salvation, but
sometimes we've got to pray that that power
will be broken in individual lives and also
in regions so that when the gospel comes
in, it might have.
A reception, a warm reception, prayer, thirdly.
Sends forth laborers into the harvest.
You see, because it's prayer alone is not
going to do all that needs to be
done because primarily salvation comes from God through
people to other people.
In other words, it's highly unlikely that we
could just all sit here at home and
pray for some part of the world and
never actually go there and do something.
It's highly unlikely that people are going to
get saved unless we take that next step.
But we need to, as I said, we
need to to pave the way through prayer.
But God uses people.
And so as we pray, we realize that
it's through prayer that laborers are sent forth
into the harvest.
Jesus is the one who told us to
pray the Lord of the harvest, that he
would send forth laborers.
So we pray for laborers.
We pray that God would raise up people.
We pray that God would send people.
And, you know, I have to say, I
am I'm blessed that John's here tonight and
that he shared with us what he shared,
because I've been praying for England for a
long time.
And that's the prayer that I pray constantly.
Lord, send forth laborers.
We need more workers.
And I see it as an answer to
prayer.
God's doing that very thing.
And so prayer sends forth laborers into the
harvest, the harvest of individuals as well as
nations.
How many here have family members that they
love, they want to see come to Christ,
but they don't know the Lord?
You have that.
I have that, too.
Now, for many of us, and maybe this
is the case with you.
It is the case with me.
I don't have a whole lot of connection
with those family members that we live at,
you know, long distances from one another.
We don't have a whole lot of personal
contact.
I don't have much of an opportunity to
give the input into their lives that I
would like to if I was around them
all the time.
But, you know, this is what I can
do and this is what I do.
Lord, send forth a laborer into that harvest
field.
Lord, bring somebody into the life of that
person that I love, that person that I
care about.
And, you know, sometimes with your family members,
it's actually probably more likely that it's going
to be somebody from the outside that's going
to have an impact on them rather than
you.
I don't know if you've sensed that or
not, but, you know, it does seem to
be the case.
And so we pray, Lord, send a laborer,
send a person, somebody that they can have
a relationship with, somebody that will engage them
in conversation about Christ, somebody that will be
bold and speak out to them and somebody
that they'll listen to, maybe, you know, somebody
that they'll respect.
And I think that that's something that we
need to do as believers for our loved
ones, for friends of ours, for people that
we're not closely connected with geographically or not
able to have that kind of relationship with.
So he sends forth laborers into the harvest
on an individual level, but he also sends
forth laborers into nations because, as I said,
prayer is a vital part, but there's also
another component.
God uses people to touch other people's lives,
Paul tells us in Romans, chapter 10, verse
14, he asked the question, he said, How
shall they believe in him of whom they
have not heard?
And how shall they hear unless someone preached
to them?
And how shall they preach unless they are
sent?
And so there is that faith comes by
hearing and hearing by the word of God,
so we're praying.
A couple of things, we're praying that God
will pave the way, we're praying that God
will remove the blindness, that he'll soften the
heart, that he'll deliver the mind so that
when the gospel does come through the laborer
that God sends into that harvest field, that
there's a receptive heart rather than a hardened
heart.
That there's an open mind rather than a
closed mind, that there is an ability to
see the truth rather than a blindness that's
upon that person.
So this is what Paul is talking about
here.
Now, he goes on and he says.
For there is one God.
And one mediator between.
God and men.
The man, Christ Jesus, you see what Paul
wants to remind us of is that there's
really just one God.
Now, of course, there are many so-called
gods.
But there's actually only one true God.
And all of the people in the world,
sometimes we forget this, I think, but, you
know, everybody in the world was created by
God.
Every human being that lives on the Earth
today, everyone that's ever lived, all six billion
and whatever the rest of the number is
presently.
Everyone was created by God.
Everyone is loved by God in the sense
that Christ died for everyone.
Everyone's a candidate for salvation.
There is just one God.
He's the God of the East.
He's the God of the West.
He's the God of the North.
He's the God of the South.
There's not a different God and a different
way of salvation for people that come from
the Eastern world.
You know, sometimes you hear.
People say, well, Christianity is the religion of
the West, Christianity is good for people in
the West, but of course, the people in
the East, they have Hinduism and they have
Buddhism and they have Islam in the Middle
East and so forth.
That's not reality.
They do have those religions, of course, but.
According to the scriptures, they're false religions, somebody
ignorantly says, hey, all religions teach the same
thing, don't you know that, man?
No, they don't.
Hindus believe in literally millions of gods.
Muslims believe in one God.
You try to tell me that Hinduism and
Islam teach the same thing, they don't teach
anything remotely close.
Buddhism doesn't even teach that there's a God,
Buddhism is really, in a sense, an atheistic
religion.
So we have to.
We have to remember, we've got to keep
these things in our minds because there's constantly
voices, you know, that are saying, you know,
we don't need to bother with that and
they've got their own way and, you know,
don't bother them, don't rock the boat.
Some Christians have foolishly suggested that there are
other ways to be saved apart from Jesus
Christ.
When my wife was attending college.
Twenty five years ago or so.
She was going to.
A quote unquote evangelical college up in.
Montecito, California, and there at Westmont College, I'll
go ahead and just tell you which college
it was because they haven't changed any, they've
gotten worse, so don't send your kids there.
They were teaching back then.
That you don't try to convert a Buddhist
to Christianity.
You just.
Try to make them a better Buddhist.
You don't want to convert Hindus to Christ,
you just help them along in their Hinduism
and the same with Islam and all the
way down the line.
And this was a quote unquote evangelical college.
That's that's basically what they were teaching the
kids back in those days.
Now, that flies right in the face of
what the Bible says right here, there's one
God and there's one mediator.
Now, that was 25 years ago, as I
said, it's only gone from bad to worse
since then.
And even recently we hear outcry from certain
so-called Christian leaders upset over the fact
that Christians are out trying to evangelize Jews
and convert them.
God forbid, and Christians are out there telling
Muslims that they need to come to know
Jesus, and, you know, there are people in
the Christian community so-called that will stand
up against that and say, that's wrong.
We shouldn't be doing that.
You need to respect the fact that, you
know, they've got their own way to God.
Where do they come up with this stuff?
Well, this is the influence of of humanism.
This is the influence of secularism.
This isn't what you find in the Bible.
The Bible's crystal clear, there's one God.
And not only is there just one God,
there's one mediator between God and men.
In other words, there aren't many roads, there
aren't many mediators.
You take your pick, whichever one suits your
fancy.
It's not the way it works.
You see, God's in charge of salvation, not
man.
Now, I know that's hard for people to
believe because man wants to be in control
of everything, although he's ultimately in control of
nothing.
But that's just the way we are as
human beings.
I don't like somebody else calling the shots.
Well, guess what?
God's calling the shots on this issue and
it's never going to change.
And he says simply, there's one mediator between
God and men.
There's only one.
And that is the man, Christ Jesus.
He's the mediator.
You see, Jesus is the only one that
qualifies to be the mediator.
He's the only one that could possibly do
it.
You see, the idea that you could actually
just come to God on your own.
People say I've talked to Jewish people.
They've told me, you know, hey, don't talk
to me.
I don't need Jesus.
I go directly to God.
They're fooling themselves, they don't even know their
own religion.
A Jew who says I don't need a
mediator, I go directly to God, does not
know their own religion because there wasn't a
single Jew before the time of Jesus that
thought I don't need a mediator.
I just go straight to God.
Their whole history is full of mediators.
That's what the priesthood was all about.
That's what the sacrificial system was all about.
As a matter of fact, when they had
an encounter with God on Mount Sinai and
God came down in all of his awesomeness,
the people were so frightened they they were
exceedingly afraid.
They said to Moses, they said, Moses, Moses,
don't let God speak to us.
Moses, we're afraid, Moses, you talk to us,
but don't let God talk to us, Moses.
And God said to Moses, he said, you
know what the people told you there?
He said, they're right.
But.
They can't approach me, you will be the
mediator, you will be my representative, and then
God establishes a system, he sets up a
priesthood and Aaron, he becomes the high priest
and there's a tabernacle that's made and there's
a sacrificial system that's established and God's presence
is visible.
Presence in the sense of his glory resides
in this place called the Holy of Holies.
And there above the mercy seat on the
Ark of the Covenant, the glory of God
resided.
And that holy of holies was sectioned off
by a curtain that was thick.
And there was absolutely no access into that
place, and any person that would try to
pass into the holy holies would be struck
dead immediately, only the high priest could go
there and he could only go once a
year and he could only enter in with
the blood of the sacrificial animal.
What was that all about?
That was all about the need for a
mediator.
You see, man can't approach God directly.
Job understood that when Job was going through
all of his struggles and all the difficulty,
all the suffering, he said, I wish I
could get before God, I wish I could
talk to him, but I can't.
God's too awesome, he's so far beyond my
ability to even comprehend or conceive, he said,
I can't even get near him.
Job said, oh, if I only had a
mediator.
If there was someone who could be a
go between.
Now, who could be a go between who
who could meet the criteria, who in the
world could lay a hand on God and
then lay a hand on me and connect
us together, there's only one person that could
do it.
That's the person who was both God and
man.
That's Jesus Christ.
You see, that's why Jesus is the only
possible mediator, because Jesus is the only person
who is not only a man, he's God.
He's God, the son, as we know, and
therefore, he's able to lay a hand on
God because he is God, he's got the
son and then he's able to lay a
hand on me because he's a man and
he's able to bridge.
The gap, he's able to bridge the chasm
between me and God, he's able to bring
us together, but he and he alone is
able to do it.
There's one God and one mediator, and so
those who discount the idea of the necessity
of a mediator, they simply don't know who
God is.
As I said, the Jews forget their own
history, they don't understand their own religion, Muslims
have a similar sort of an idea, they
don't really need a mediator, they can go
directly to all of it, yet they can't
really go directly to all of there's no
Muslim that thinks you can go into the
presence of all and actually have a meaningful
conversation with him.
All it is by his very nature, disconnected,
separate completely from this sinful world.
But you see, only through Christ do we
have the ability to access God because he
is the one mediator between God and men.
And so what do we do?
God wants people to be saved, we pray.
We pray that God will open their eyes,
soften their hearts, deliver their minds.
We pray for individuals that God will do
that.
We pray for regions that God will move
and pour out his spirit.
And, you know, it's interesting that that is
indeed how God has worked many times historically.
God will often do something and he will
do it in a location, a geographical region,
and many tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of
thousands of people will all come to know
Christ within a couple of year period of
time.
It's an amazing thing that happens.
And, you know, it seems that God sort
of historically, he sort of.
I don't want to sound disrespectful, but he
sort of visits, shows up at the same
places quite often over and over again in
history, sometimes there's a 10 year gap, sometimes
there's a 50 year gap, sometimes there's a
200 year gap.
But God seems to visit these same areas
and as he comes and he pours out
his spirit and he does a great work
and then from those places, it's interesting to
the location, it seems that he tends to
visit places where the gospel could go out
from that place into the whole world, certain
sort of strategic locations, if you will, geographically.
The British Isles is a great example.
God has visited that place many times in
history in extraordinary ways and through the visitation
there.
The gospel has spread just like everything else
has spread from there, the gospel is spread.
And so.
In these days.
God is wanting to save people and we
need to pray for the lost, not just
the lost over in some other part of
the world, we need to do that, too,
but we need to pray for the lost
right around the corner from us, right down
the street.
Right in the next cubicle over in my
office or, you know, wherever else we find
the lost there plenty around not to look
far.
But God wants to save people just like
he saved you, just like he saved me,
he's not done, he hasn't given up on
that idea.
Oh, people are too stubborn.
I just quit.
You know, God doesn't do that.
He keeps working and he's working in these
days, and I just think that we need
to pray for each other as well, that
God will that God will use us.
That he will empower us to reach out
to people, to speak to people, you know,
sometimes I don't know if you experience this
or not, but sometimes, you know, it's just
getting the first sentence out is the biggest
struggle.
If you can just get past the hurdle
of that first sentence.
Then it's sort of smooth sailing from there,
but man, up until that point, you're just
sweating, you're like, oh, I don't know what
to say, you know, and then.
Maybe you just decide I'm not going to
say anything and then they leave and you
walk away and you feel condemned, you feel
miserable, oh, I can't believe it.
I didn't say anything, but, you know, we
need to just ask the Lord to help
us pray for one another, that God will
bring opportunities our way and then give us
the boldness and the wisdom and all the
things that we need to speak into people's
lives, but also be praying that God will
soften people's hearts and create a curiosity in
the lives of people and an openness and
a and a desire to engage in conversation
about spiritual things.
So we need to pray for the lost.
We need to pray for the nations.
We need to pray for laborers.
We need to pray that God will send
out people.
And I believe that in these days we
need a fresh move of the spirit and
a fresh vision among Christians for evangelism.
You know what that is.
Evangelism is telling other people about Christ, leading
people to the Lord.
Realizing that I'm I'm not, you know, in
this all by myself, God wants to save
other people, too, and you never know who
he might want to save.
Sometimes we look at a person, we think,
oh, God would never want to save that
person.
No way.
I'm not talking to them.
That could be the very person that God
wants to save.
I remember years ago, one of our high
school ministry teams from here took a trip
up into Scotland.
And two or three of the young guys
on the trip, they were out they were
out in the city square and there was
a guy out there that was the scariest
guy they'd ever seen in their life.
And they had this sinking feeling that God
was telling them to go talk to this
guy.
And they were just like, there is no
way we're going to talk to this guy.
And by the way, he got saved.
Ultimately, his nickname is Big John.
So he's a big, scary Scott.
And and I remember them telling me the
story because I didn't know I knew John
later.
I knew him after he'd become a Christian.
I didn't know anything about his conversion.
And then these three young guys that I
had actually known for a long time, they
ended up telling me the story.
We led him to Christ.
So you're kidding.
What happened?
How did it happen?
Then they told me the whole story, but
they were petrified.
The last thing they wanted to do was
talk to the guy.
And finally, they got up enough courage to
just walk up and just ask him if
he knew the Lord.
And they ended up sharing with him.
And it didn't take long before he broke
down and receive the Lord.
And he ended up being a real key
guy in the fellowship up in Scotland for
years.
So, you know, we just never know.
And so we pray, we pray for the
lost, we pray for the nations, we pray
for laborers.
And here's the final word on it, guys
and girls.
When you pray for laborers, watch out because
you're going to probably be praying for yourself.
You know, I'll never forget, I'll never forget
praying that God would send somebody to England
to do this great church plant that I
had an idea for.
And I was praying for everybody.
I knew that God would send them.
And one night as I was praying my
heart out for God to send that person,
all of a sudden I had the haunting
sensation.
I was praying for myself and I said,
wait a second, that's not part of the
program.
That that's no, Lord.
That's but it was that that's what God
was planning.
That's what he was intending.
So pray the Lord of the harvest to
send forth laborers and be available, make yourself
available.
Because God wants to save people, he desires
that all men be saved, he's not willing
that any should perish.
That's his heart.
And he works together with us, he works
together with people to bring other people to
himself.
And so let's make ourselves available to that.
And tonight, as we close, if you're here,
we talked about salvation initially tonight.
If you're not saved, if you don't know
Jesus Christ personally, if you haven't had your
sins forgiven and had him come into your
life, you don't know what you're missing.
You're missing the greatest thing in all the
universe and you're heading down a road that
you don't even want to imagine.
But God wants you to be saved and
it's up to you, he's done everything.
That's needed, he's paid the price for your
sin, you simply must receive the gift, you
must say, Lord, I am a sinner and
I need you to save me, call upon
him and he will save you.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you that you have saved
us and Lord, that you desire to save
more and more and more people.
And Lord, we pray tonight for any that
are among us.
That perhaps have joined us tonight and they
themselves aren't saved.
Maybe they hadn't really thought much about it,
but tonight you've spoken to their hearts, Lord,
we just pray that you would draw them
to yourself, help them, Lord, to yield to
you, that they might receive this wonderful thing
called salvation.