Now, there we go. Those who have been watching
online will just have to read lips for the first part. But we're speaking here, I will
give them a quick introduction, we're speaking here of 1 Timothy
2.4. where it is said that God wants
all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.
And we are looking at what does he mean by all men? And that's
revealed in verse one, when he says that prayers, that requests
prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone. The same
phrase there in the Greek, it's all men, all human beings. And,
but that does not mean As I remember reading early on in my studies
on the grace of God, it does not mean everyone without exception. It means everyone without distinction. Now, he starts by saying in verse
two, for kings. Now this is written during the
time of Nero and Nero had unleashed a horrible persecution on the
church. You can imagine they were not inclined to pray for
him. They were not inclined to think
that God would have any interest, any possibility of an interest
in saving someone like Nero. Nearly everyone in authority
was troublesome to the church. So Paul says, pray for all kinds
of people. The king, oh. the king, and all
those in authority. The church was mostly filled
with the lower classes of society. There were many slaves in the
churches, which was, I guess, the lowest class of society.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, You see, you're calling an
election, brethren, how not many wise, not many noble. And he goes through a list of
these not many. And it's talking about the upper
echelons of society, the upper echelons of the academia and
politics and all that. There are not many of you. But God has chosen the nothings
of the world. But here, Paul says, Pray for all kinds of people. Pray for the ones who are like
you, low, insignificant. Pray for the ones that are at
the top of the pile, who have authority over you, and even
those that use their authority to punish you, and persecute
you, and make your life difficult because you are a believer in
Christ. And while he does not go on to
list other categories, he does in other places say that in Christ
there's neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free, sophisticated or barbarian, and
all that. And what he's talking about is different classes of
people. And so he could have said, pray for kings, Pray for
nobodies. Pray for men. Pray for women.
Pray for Jews. Pray for Gentiles. Because why? God desires all kinds of people
to be saved. He is purposed to save a people
from every kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation. It's his desire to
do so. What are we to pray for these
people? He says, pray for kings and all those in authority that
we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. Now, if the church wants to live
a basically untroubled existence in this world, it's to her advantage
if those who are the rulers of this world are among the people
of God, that God has saved them. It changes their attitude about
things. But it could also be this way. We pray for them that
not only might God save them and thus change their whole view
of things, but if not save them, restrain them. Restrain them
from venting their anger against his people. Why? So that we can
get rich? No, that's not the issue. just
so that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness
and holiness." You know, this may sound, I don't know, mean. It's not mean, but basically
saying we just want to be left alone. We're not troubling anybody. We're preaching a message, but
we aren't calling for any revolts. We aren't calling for the lower
classes to rise up against the upper classes. We're worshiping
God, and we just want to be left alone to do that in peace and
quietness. And to that end, we pray for
all kinds of people. He wants all kinds of people
to save and come to the knowledge of the truth. Now, those who
believe that God, that this verse actually means, verse four actually
means that God wants every individual to be saved, then that presents
us with a very difficult question to answer. Because Paul equates
being saved with coming to a knowledge of the truth. They are one and the same. The
word translated and sometimes means plus, as we normally use
it, this and that. Sometimes it's used as a way
to introduce another definition of the same
thing. We don't speak this much in modern
English, but you could put the word even there. He wants all
men to be saved, even to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Being saved and coming to the knowledge of the truth is the
same thing. Now, if God wants all men to come to the knowledge
of the truth, why isn't he sending the truth to every individual? Paul says a man cannot believe
what he does not know. And he cannot know what he hasn't
heard. Does God not have the power to
make his truth known to every individual? And if he truly wanted
everyone to come to the knowledge of the truth, would he be reluctant
to see to it that everyone actually heard the truth? You can be sure of this. Everyone whom God wants to save
will hear the truth, will come to know it, and will believe
it. And it will be God that worked
to ensure that. And this people whom God desires
to save comes from all classes of society, every distinction
there is to be found within natural men will be represented in the
kingdom of God. People from all races, people
of all levels of intelligence, people of all different kinds
of personality, people of all of differing levels of influence
in this world, they'll all be in there. Why? Because God's desire is that
his church be made up of all kinds of people. So we may say
that there is nothing about a man, nothing about an individual that
would disqualify him from participation in the grace of God. That is, there's nothing about
his natural self. And in the same way, there's nothing about
a person's natural self that qualifies them for the grace
of God. Nothing about our natural selves
has any bearing whatsoever on whether or not the grace of God
is purposed for us, worked for us, and applied for us. from
the most righteous to the most sinful by human standards. And
all the levels in between, God has a people. From all levels
of influence. Now, why would God say, pray
for all kinds of people? Well, look at verse five. For
there's one God. and one mediator between God
and men, the man, Christ Jesus. Now, if there's only one God,
then he is the God of all men, isn't he? The old world, the ancient world,
had many gods, that is, men believed in many different gods, and they
believed that the various gods ruled only over certain sections
of the world. And while the God in which we
believe was often called the God of Israel, The pagans misunderstood
what that meant because they thought that he was God only
in Israel. No, God is God everywhere. Our
God is God over the universe. He's God over every square inch
of this world and he is God over every individual that has ever
come into this world. Therefore, seeing that we pray
to this God, it's completely reasonable that we would pray
for all kinds of people from every part of the world. Whether
it be some geographical area or by world we just mean the
world of humanity and all the differences that exist among
men. There is nothing about the natural
differences in men that makes them to be subject to a different
God. Therefore, we who are the people
of the one God, pray for all kinds of people, knowing that
all people are under this one God. Not only this now says there's
one God, there's one mediator. Now, if people are to be saved,
how are they going to be saved? There's only one mediator. So
it doesn't matter where a person comes from, it doesn't matter
what his status in life is, if he's to be saved, he's going
to be saved through Jesus Christ. It doesn't matter what religion
he may be in at any given moment, if that person's ever to be saved,
he must be saved through Jesus Christ. So we who serve this
God and we who believe this mediator, Jesus Christ, it's incumbent
on us to pray for all kinds of people and not just pray for
those who agree with us about these matters. There's only one
God, there's only One go-between, one mediator between us and God.
Therefore we pray for all kinds of men. Now verse six, speaking of the man Christ Jesus
said, who gave himself as a ransom for all men, the testimony given
in its proper time. Now here where our translation
says all men, actually there's a little bit of difference in
the way it's worded. It just has the word all. And that word all is what creates
the trouble. Because people see that word
all and they say that means all without exception. Really? Well, here it just says all. Did Jesus Christ give himself
a ransom for squirrels? Did he give himself a ransom
for the devil and all his angels? So you see that certainly the
Greeks and the people of this age, they would use the word
all when it didn't mean every last thing without exception. He gave himself as a ransom for
all kinds of men. Now, you and I don't know who
make up God's elect. We assume that our brothers and
sisters that join with us in worship, we assume that they
are among them, but in truth, we don't know for sure. We can
look back in history and see people that gave some kind of
evidence that they're among those whom the Lord ransomed. We don't
know for sure. We don't know these things. God does. But Jesus Christ, and of course
we're going to get to the subject of scriptures that try to set
him forth as doing his work equally for all men, but there's some
overlap here, but Jesus Christ is being set forth as the ransom
for all. And we know that it doesn't mean
all things without exception. Once again, we learn, we define
this word all to mean without distinction. He gave himself as a ransom for
all kinds of people, therefore we should pray for all kinds
of people. And this giving of himself as a ransom for all men
was a testimony given in its proper time. The Lord Jesus Christ
came into this world and he revealed the will and heart of God as
he gave himself as a ransom to deliver a people from every kindred,
tribe, tongue, and nation, from every rank of society, from every
level of morality. They're all included. He did
not give himself a ransom for every individual that came in
the world. But no one needs to say, well,
I'm such and such a kind of person. Therefore, there's no hope for
me because there's no kind of person God won't save. That make sense to you? So this
scripture where it says that God wants
all men to be saved, it doesn't mean every individual person.
When it says he wants all men to come to a knowledge of the
truth, doesn't mean every individual person because God has the power
and ability to make his word known to every individual. And if he wanted every individual
to believe his word, to believe his truth, he would certainly
see to it they came in contact with it. But all of those people of every kind whom God has chosen
and Christ is redeemed, God will send the truth to them. That's
why we pray for all men without distinction. We preach to all
kinds of people without distinction. Okay, we'll just leave off for
there. We're about 30 seconds early for quitting. That's a
little unusual for me.