We are blessed to be here today. 1 Timothy, where we're going to
be looking. Chapter 2. And we trust that we will receive
that rhema which Brother Thomas spoke about there a moment ago.
that word which is a spoken word. Now, rhema is that which the
Lord is pleased to speak through men. But if that's all that he's
pleased to do, then we'll be of all men most miserable. Because
we desire that the Spirit of God be that one that speaks that
word to us. And if he speaks it to us, we'll
hear it. And hearing it, we'll believe it. And believing it,
we'll walk according to it. And that's the glorious thing,
how the Lord does work in his people as he sees fit. And you know, there's nothing that men
can do that is of any value if it's not performed by the Lord. And I thought there as Brother
Thomas was speaking about the matter of making apologies and
expressing remorse, that sort of thing. You can try with all
your heart, all that's within you to be remorseful about something,
but you can't do it. I mean, unless the Lord breaks
your heart and gives you true remorse, you will never be remorseful. You know, a man can say I'm sorry
and not really mean it. But when the Spirit of God is
in it, it's an unfeigned thing. May the Lord give us such a mind
and heart. I'm gonna read, I'm gonna go
back, we read some of these verses last week, but I'm gonna go back
and read down through verse eight. It
says, I exhort therefore that first of all supplications, prayers,
intercessions, giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings,
for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and
peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good
and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who will have
all men to be saved and to come into 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. Where unto I am ordained a preacher
and an apostle, I speak the truth in Christ and lie not, a teacher
of the Gentiles in faith and verity. I will therefore that
men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and
doubting. Now, he says, as we looked at this
before, concerning the matter of praying, He said, I exhort,
therefore, that first of all, supplications be made for all
men. Now, how are those supplications
gonna be made? Except through prayer. But prayer
is not supplication. Supplication may accompany prayer,
but prayer, and we can't emphasize this enough, prayer is worship. A man can't pray without a spirit
of worship. Now he can call out to God and
try, Lord help me, and all of that sort of thing, but that's
not necessarily worship. You know, I mean, men is the
man that has cried out in times of need to the Lord without any
true regard to who the person of God is. But see, when a man
goes into the place of prayer, he must go there with that mindset. That's why the Lord said in his
model prayer, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy
name. First thing that a man's got
to understand is that God is not his buddy. God's not his
pet dog. You know, a lot of people think
of God just about like they think about their dog. I mean, he's
always there. We'll just call him when we need
him. I mean, if we don't, we'll shut him up outside or we won't
have any thought towards him. But he's not like that. God is
separate from sinners. He is holy. He's set apart. He's inapproachable. You know,
a lot of people think that, well, you know, if God's everywhere,
I can just go to him anytime I get ready. No, you can't approach
him at all. You have no room. You have no, like when a king
in times past, the king had a scepter. And if he didn't, if you wanted
to come into his presence, if he didn't hold out the scepter
to you, you wouldn't come in. Well, the scepter is Jesus Christ. And apart from being in Him,
received in Him, you can't come into the presence of Almighty
God. You know, that's a, if you think
about that enough, and you think about the fact that it is the
work of God to save His people, that gives them the right to
call upon His name. Because a man outside of Christ
cannot call upon the name of the Lord. See, a man must be
in Christ. Well, when did he get in Christ?
Scripture says, from before the foundation of the world. The
Lord knows them that are His. And He calls them in His own
time, and they call upon His name. Now, who's sufficient for
that? I mean, who can plumb the depths
of such a thing as that? I can't. I mean, I, you know,
men won't argue about it and they won't castigate one another
whether they believe that or they don't believe it or those
that believe it's counted to be some bunch of kooks that,
you know, think God is some kind of an ogre or something like
that, they say. No, God's God, and He'll do according
to His will an army of heaven and among the inhabitants of
the earth. And it is incumbent upon men to recognize that they
cannot approach unto God apart from His mercy to receive them. They need Him, we need Him. He
doesn't need us. Now, you know, you listen to
enough of these preachers on TV and you get to thinking God
needed you. Because, I mean, you know, we're
gonna have to shut down our work here if y'all don't send us some
money. Well, God doesn't need anybody's money. You know, there's
not a work on the face of the earth that men perform that God
needs. Not one thing. It doesn't make
a difference who it is or what they think about themselves.
God needs no one. He is pleased often to use men.
But don't ever get the notion that somehow or other God's depending
on something you're going to do or I'm going to do because
He's able to raise up stones to praise Him. May the Lord be
praised. But He does say here that we
are to make supplication for all men. As you, if you look
at the context of this, it's pretty clear unless you don't
want to see it. Now there are those that don't
want to see this because they've got an idea of what they want
these scriptures to be saying and woe be to you if you go contrary
to what they say these scriptures mean. But it's pretty plain that he's
speaking about all types of men, all men. The Lord is not a respecter
of persons. A man doesn't have to be rich. A man doesn't have to be poor.
A man doesn't have to have great power or a man doesn't have to
be without power. The Lord is pleased to receive
men of all types according to his good pleasure. I can't pick
them out. I don't know who they are. Neither
do you. You know, we spend a lot of time
sometimes trying to figure out if somebody, you know, belongs
to the Lord. I don't know if they belong to
the Lord or not. I know this in time as what he
says here about the all for whom he gave ransom. He identifies
them right down here in verse 6. Who gave himself a ransom
for all. Now you'll hear that preached
oft times and that's just far as they go with it. gave himself
a ransom for all. Sounds good, doesn't it? I mean,
that lends right into the idea, as they tell us, that Jesus paid
the price for sin for all men. Says right there in the scripture,
gave himself a ransom for all. But they leave out the qualifying
passage here that says, to be testified in due time. See, those
for whom the Lord gave Himself a ransom are those who will be
testified in due time. That is, they will be brought
out of darkness and into the light. They are those that believe,
for whosoever believeth in Him. God so loved the world that whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. It's
not whosoever. It's whosoever believeth. See,
there's a big difference. Of course, you know, as it is
with men, men think, well, you can believe anytime you get ready.
No, you can't. Because face the gift of God.
And a man's not gonna believe unless God gives him grace to
do so. But you know, thankfully, he
does give men grace to believe. And they're the same ones for
whom he gave himself a ransom. and they will be testified in
due time. And it says here in verse four,
who would have all men to be saved and to come into a knowledge
of the truth? They're given. Who is that all? It's the same ones. See, the
Lord will have all types of men to be saved. You know, I can't
look out over a congregation of people and say, well, you
can be saved and you can't. But I can say this, that if you
believe, you shall be saved. I mean, that's as plain as anything
that's written in the scripture. But it does, it is, that's how
men are testified. That's how they're manifested,
is by that work that God performs in them and causes them to believe. For there is one God and one
mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. He is the
scepter. He's that avenue through which
men go. Now I made a mention a moment
ago about correcting that song where it says streets of gold.
Now we often hear that, just like we often hear people speak
about the book of Revelation as the book of Revelations. But
it's not a book of revelations. It is a book of the revelation. If you don't believe me, go look
at it. I mean, it says this is the revelation
that God gave, the revelation of Jesus Christ that God gave
to John. It is a revelation, and it is
a street of gold. Just like he says here, there's
one mediator between God and men. And that is Jesus Christ. Now why is that important about
the streets? Well, because you think about
streets, you'd think about there's this street going down Main Street
and then you got all these other little side streets. There's
no side streets in heaven. Now there's an abundance of side
streets here in the world. Is there not? I mean, we've been
reading about them some in our study through Pilgrim's Progress.
There's many bypass that men go down, many side streets. We read about it here a few weeks
ago about those that having swerved. What'd they do? They went down
a side street. They missed the road. They got
off of the road. There's only one road. And it
is that same golden street that's found in heaven. It leads to
the throne of God. And it is through our mediator,
Jesus Christ. Now a mediator between God and
men. Men need a mediator because we
don't have any ability to come into the presence of God. We
don't have any ability to come into the presence of God if we
had never sinned. see some people think that by
not sinning they can earn an entrance into the presence of
god it wouldn't make any difference if you were born without sin
and you never sinned you could never come into the
presence of god apart from his mercy to let you come in see
i mean he uh... remember when uh... Isaiah saw
him high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. What
did he do? He says, oh, woe is me. I mean, that's too high for
me. He said that day and night, without
ceasing, those creatures surround the throne of God, saying, holy,
holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is to come. Now, what is it that separates
between God and men? Well, I believe it's the eternal
nature of God. He's immortal. He dwells in the
light to which no man can approach. What is that light? It is the
light of existence. See, He is, He is. Now, somebody, you know, men
try to explain God and they try to think of God. He just is. And how much in contrast is that
with us? I mean, we can't say we are,
can we? No, we're very finite creatures.
We don't really have any control over much of anything. People
think they do. You know, you might have chose
the socks you put on this morning. But, you know, that was by the
mercy of God. Because he gave you eyes to see.
See, you don't really control anything. We are at the mercy
of Almighty God. Now that can be a terrifying
thing or it can be a wonderful thing. And as the Lord is pleased
to give a man trust in Him, it's a wonderful thing. I'm glad that
I'm not the one that's guiding my ship. Because my ship has
already got too many holes, it won't sail. If the Lord doesn't
give me an ability to float, I'm gonna sink. Peter found that
out, did he not? See, Peter got out of the boat,
Peter couldn't walk on water. In his mind, he might have thought
he could. He thought he could a few times, did he not? He said,
Lord, though all men depart from you, I won't. But the Lord was
constantly teaching Peter, Peter, no, you can't do that. Peter
couldn't walk on water. We have no power except that
which is given to us by Almighty God. We are those creatures that
need him. Now, the glorious thing about the
gospel is that it comes to those that are convinced of that. See,
the Lord said, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. Now, old men are not heavy laden
and laboring, are they? I mean, if you went out into
the world today and you said, all y'all that are bowed down
and under the load of your sin, come here. You wouldn't get many
takers, because there's not many out there. But there are some. And the Lord, in his mercy, he's
the one that causes them to be in such a state as that. And
when he does, the gospel is that which comes to bring life and
immortality to light. See, the Spirit of God is working
in his people because the Lord knows who they are. And sometimes
he begins a work before they even have any real cognizant
thought. We heard a lady telling us yesterday
in a meeting we were at that when the cleaning, the lady that
was doing the cleaning there at the building, they have a
graveyard there, and a little boy came up about nine years
old on a bicycle. And She saw him out in the graveyard,
and she went out there and asked him, did he need anything? He
said, no, he'd just come there to pray. Now, why would a nine-year-old
boy go down to the graveyard of that
church meeting place to pray? I tell you, he wouldn't. Most
nine-year-old boys wouldn't have any thought towards that, would
they? But by the grace of God, you see, he calls his own to
himself. Now, I don't know anything about
that little boy and don't know, you know, what his motives were
or anything else, but I can imagine that in some fashion, the Lord impressed
upon his heart the need to do that. Because that's not a usual
thing, is it? See, coming to the Lord's not
a usual thing. Now, I know in our day of man-made
religion and perpetuated religion, we kind of teach people, well,
you know, you need to come and you need to do this and you need
to join up so we can keep this going. We want to keep this organization
going, and so we need the young people to come and all this.
Well, that might not necessarily be a bad thing in itself, but
the only way that men will come to the Lord in spirit and truth
is when the Lord is pleased to draw them. The Lord said so,
did he not? He said, no man can come unto
my Father except, or can come unto me except the Father which
hath sent me draw him. Now he didn't say no man will. He could have said that, and
I believe that's included in that, but what did he say? He
said no man can come. Now what is it that keeps men
away? Yes, you remember, I don't know why this came into my mind,
but you know, you've all seen the cartoons of Three Stooges
used to do this stuff. A lot of y'all don't know about
what the Three Stooges are, but anyway, one of them would be
trying to hit the other one, and one of them would put his
hand on his head, and he'd hold him off, and the guy was doing
like that, and he was, you know, he couldn't hit him. He wanted
to hit him, but he couldn't. And some people think that, you
know, when we say that no man can come to the Lord, we're saying
that God is like that, that here's a man trying to come to him and
he's keeping him away. No, that's not what it means.
The Lord just saying no man can come, the reason that we can't
come is not because the Lord's preventing us from coming, It's
because we won't come. That's what he said to the Pharisees,
didn't he? He said, ye will not come to me that ye might have
life. But all that the Father giveth
me shall come to me. And him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out. Now that's a glorious thing,
is it not? See, the Lord's not keeping anybody away from Him
that wants to come to Him. He's not preventing men from
coming to Him. He's calling in the gospel to
those who are weary, those who need Him, those who know themselves
to be sinners, those that know themselves to have no righteousness
of their own. I mean, what is it that you could
bring to the Lord? Do you honestly think there's
anything that you could bring to the Lord and say, Lord, did
you see me do this or that or the other? And he would probably say, I
mean, I'm just, this is just kind of making up something here,
but if you were to come there, he'd say, yes, I saw you do that.
But he said, keep in mind, I also saw you all the other times,
too. See, you often hear men say,
as the Lord, the scripture says, the Lord looketh on the heart.
And men, some men think that's a good thing. They say, well,
I'm in good shape because the Lord knows my heart. Oh, brother,
the problem is you don't know your own heart. Because if you
knew your own heart, you'd know that that's a bad thing. when
God looketh on the heart. Because He sees what you are
by nature. He sees where you would go apart
from His restraining grace. He knows you. He would have all men to be saved.
See, He's calling. He's calling today to sinners. Paul said, I am ordained a preacher
and an apostle. I speak the truth in Christ and
lie not, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Imagine that, a Pharisee, a Jewish rabbi, a Jewish teacher,
one who was, from the time of his youth, imbibed
with all of the traditions of the Jewish faith. And they despised
the Gentiles. They looked down their nose at
the Gentiles. On top of that, they were oppressed by the Gentiles,
by the Romans. And they hated them. And yet here's Paul, he said,
I've been made a teacher of the Gentiles. How could that have
happened? Who can imagine? Apart from the
grace of God. A teacher of the Gentiles in
faith and truth. I will therefore that men pray
everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. Now
I believe what he is, he's instructing Timothy in the gathering of the
saints. and the fellowship of the saints,
the coming together of the saints. And when he's speaking about,
I will that men pray everywhere, he's talking about in all places
where God's people gather together, where prayers want to be made.
He says, I want people to come together and pray, lifting up
holy hands without wrath and doubting. Now, what does it mean
to lift up holy hands? Now, is it doing this? Could be. Could be. I mean, the scripture speaks
about lifting up the hands. But we would be far removed from
what the scripture is instructing us here to do if we said, well,
what y'all need to do is lift up your hands, and this is what
we meant. Now, you may do that. Sometimes you ought to do that.
It makes you feel good. This was a common gesture among
the Jews as they would lift up their hands in praise to the
Lord. It was an activity. You see many
things in the Old Testament that were activities. that are not
necessarily prescribed in the New Testament. See, when we read
the New Testament, we don't have a lot of prescriptions in there,
do we? I mean, the Spirit of God, where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. And so certainly a man
has the freedom if he is of a mind and of heart to lift his hands
in praise unto God. There's certainly nothing in
the scripture that would prevent him from doing it. But at the
same time, there's nothing that would enhance his worship of
God by doing that. A lot of times men think, well,
if I'll do this, I'll do that. I mean, some people think that
you need to get down on your knees to pray. And that's fine. I've got down on my knees many
a time to pray. But praying on your knees, it's
like Brother Charles Spurgeon told a fellow one time that he
said, you know, that he had read through the Bible five times
on his knees. Spurgeon said, well, you'd have
probably got more out of it if you'd have sat in a chair. You
know, I mean, I'm not against praying on your knees. I think
it's a good thing, you know, but that's not what defines praying. I mean, when we were little,
we were taught, you know, when we prayed, we were supposed to
put our hands together like this and bow our head. Well, that's
a good thing. There's nothing wrong with that
per se, but that doesn't make somebody pray. Bowing your head
doesn't make you pray. And neither does lifting hands.
So what's he meaning here? Lifting up holy hands. Well, how do hands, are these
holy hands? I mean, can you say I've got
holy hands, I'm gonna lift them up to the Lord? No, I want to
hide mine. No, what's holy hands? The only
holy hands that I know of that we can lift up to the Lord in
prayer would be the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I
don't know that he's specifically meaning that. What he's getting
at here is that prayer, and speaking here to Timothy as a Jew and
with the concept and teaching in the background of the lifting
up of hands in prayer, he's saying, I would that men pray. Lifting
up holy hands, that is those who are set apart unto God, not
just going through some motion. But though, see, when something's
holy, it means it's set apart. Now most people think of it as
being something that's purified. And it is purified. But it's
purified, anything that has to do with us and our purification
before the Lord is found in Jesus Christ. He's the only one that
makes us holy. But what does he do when he makes
us holy? I mean, The holiness with which God's people are to
be walking is to be walking in Jesus Christ. He is our holiness. He sets us apart. We're sanctified
in Christ. There's nothing I can do to sanctify
myself. I could go through all kinds
of motions and do all sorts of things, but I can't do a thing
about it. Christ alone can sanctify me, and he has sanctified his
people according to the good pleasure of his will. He said, I will that men pray
everywhere, lifting up holy hands. That is in fervency, in being
set apart unto God. That this is not just something
we do. Now, when I was a kid, and I've shared this with you
a bunch of times, and growing up in the church, and you know,
they would call on somebody to pray, and they would get up and
they would pray. And I don't know what was in
their heart. I have no way of knowing it. But it sounded to
me like, just as a kid, that they always said the exact same
thing, and everybody pretty much had some little phrases that
they all said. And I'm thinking to myself, well,
is that praying? I mean, I don't know. But then
there was some, a few that prayed, I believe they did. I didn't
want to hear them pray, because they took too long. You know,
when I was a kid, I liked them that just prayed them little
Ken prayers. But there was some. One old gentleman
that I can remember in particular, it took him two or three minutes
to address the Lord and give glory to God. And he lifted up holy hands.
Now he didn't pick his hands up. But he was lifting up holy
hands. Because he was in the activity
of what he was doing. See when we pray we're not just
saying some words. But we're calling on the name
of the living God. And that's how our mind and heart
must be put, or that the grace of God might surround us and
cause us to be people that pray, lifting up holy hands. And he
says, without wrath and doubting, without controversy. We're not
called to be contentious with one another. Listen, we, I've
had enough contention in my life to last me forever. And I doubt
I'm free from it. I'm sure I'll be contentious
tomorrow, might be today, probably will. But he says don't be contentious. He's speaking about when we come
together as brethren, we're not to be contentious with one another.
And if somebody says something that we don't think is necessarily
right or shouldn't be said like that or whatever, there's nothing
wrong with speaking to someone about the word of God if we think
something's wrong, but not in a contentious manner, not to
call them out. You know, I was thinking how
many doctrines there are that over the years men have fell
out with brethren that they loved or appeared to love, but they
ultimately fell out with them because of some doctrinal difference. Well, what do we know? Now, I
didn't say we need to embrace the error that somebody may speak
or what we think's error, but that, you know, we need to understand
that we can all be wrong. I mean, I've been wrong many,
how could you ever learn anything if you wasn't wrong at some point
in time? You couldn't ever come to a,
well, so were you an outcast until you came to the place where
you learned something? No. God's able to give me an
understanding according to the good pleasure of His will. And
He will. I think He will. And we're to
be without contention, without wrath. When we pray, do we pray,
Lord, help our brethren? I mean, we're wanting the brethren
to be encouraged and strengthened. I mean, if I'm up here preaching
something and it might not be encouraging to you, I'm not trying
to be discouraging. Sometimes the things we think
that are discouraging are just the Lord getting our attention. Sometimes somebody says something
we don't like is because the Lord's teaching us something. There's been many times I say,
well, that couldn't be true. And later on I said, well, you
know, that is true. May the Lord give us a mind and
heart to be those that pray without wrath and doubting, with making
supplication for all men. I mean, I keep picking Jews. You know, we desire for the mercy
of God to be visited upon our nation, do we not? I mean, let's
make supplication to that end, but do it in a matter of prayer,
set apart unto God.