1 Timothy 2:1-6 - First of All: Pray - July 24, 2022

In my Bible, the heading for this section of 1 Timothy is Instructions about Worship. If you were to write a list of instructions regarding Christian worship, what would be at the top of your list? That the setting, the building, the chairs all be clean and comfortable? That the music is pleasant and the sermon is captivating? That Jesus be at the center of everything? That the service lasts no longer than 60 minutes so you can get on with your day? Paul says: First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people. Now, I’ll admit that when I was younger, I didn’t really understand why we spent so much of the service in prayer. It seemed like an awful lot of standing and listening, and very quickly my mind began to wander to thoughts of what was for lunch and my eyes to the people around me. But wandering thoughts and eyes are not at all what Paul has in mind when he urges us to pray when we gather for worship. Paul considers prayer an absolutely essential part of Christian worship. He says, first of all, pray.

Why? Why is prayer so essential to our worship services? Because prayer is a reflection of reality; it’s a reflection of the reality that we are powerless, that we have little or no control over anything, that we are all beggars coming to God with empty hands pleading with him to give us what we need. Paul uses four words to bring out the wide-ranging nature of Christian prayer: petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings. We are to bring to God our petitions – that is, we come to God like a child comes to his father to ask for whatever we need both physically and spiritually. Prayers is a very general term indicating any kind of devotion or praise to God – it can be as simple as praising God for his glory, for his works, for his gifts. When we make intercession to God, we are boldly asking God to guide and protect and bless others. For example, when our children go off to school or get their driver’s license or start dating – we parents tend to flood God’s throne with intercessions (but don’t worry, Jon and Breanna, with two big brothers, I’m sure you won’t have to worry about Addison). When we see others suffering or in pain, we ask God to intervene on their behalf. Finally, Paul says, we offer thanksgiving: this brings our prayer full circle, so that the blessings we have already received from God return to him again in the form of appreciation.

Paul is primarily talking about prayer in public worship – but his guidance for what we do here on Sundays is also helpful for our personal prayer lives. Sometimes we get into a rut that is anything but model prayer. We treat prayer like a right rather than a privilege. We pray for ourselves but forget to pray for others. We ask God for earthly blessings but neglect the spiritual ones or fail to thank him for the family, house, car, job he has already given us. Our prayers can begin to sound like a child’s Christmas list: God, I want this and this and that. (Or as we noted last week, like Martha we can be tempted to arrogantly tell God what to do, rather than humbly ask according to his perfect will.) One easy way to remember the basics of God-pleasing prayer is to follow what is called the A-C-T-S model. Adoration. Confession. Thanksgiving. Supplication. Following this simple outline helps us to keep our focus and serves as a reminder to first bow in humility and praise before our holy God, then confess our sins, and offer thanksgiving before we present whatever requests we may have.

When we pray, our leading thought is: “what should I pray for?” Paul’s answer is not what but who: for all people. That’s kind of overwhelming – how can we possibly know what almost 8 billion people need, how would we ever have time to intercede on behalf of every one of them? But the fact is, that this prayer is fairly straight-forward. We pray that God would carry out his will for all people, a will which Paul spells out: God our Savior…wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Whether you know it or not, you’ve already been doing this, you’ve already been praying for all people. Whenever you pray the Lord’s Prayer you are praying that God’s name, kingdom and will would come to everyone on earth. At the same time, if you are aware of certain people who continue to stumble in the darkness of unbelief – and you can and should name them in your prayers. In either case, our prayer is that God would bring everyone to a knowledge of the truth. What truth? The two-fold truth that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:23-24).

Praying for everyone obviously means that we exclude no one. But Paul encourages Christians to specifically pray for kings and all those in authority. I don’t think I’m alone in confessing that government officials haven’t always been at the top of my prayer list. And yet, Paul tells us to make the conscious effort to pray for the leaders God has appointed (Romans 13:1). This was certainly no easy task for those early Christians. Those Christians saw their friends and family dragged into coliseums throughout the Roman Empire where they were tortured and sacrificed as entertainment for pagan Roman crowds. Those Christians found themselves targeted for persecution by the Roman government which falsely blamed them for all kinds of problems in society. Given the situation, you’d think that Paul would tell Timothy to call down hell-fire on the governing authorities, or at the very least urge civil disobedience. But Paul encourages Timothy to do just the opposite: he urges those Christians to pray for the very leaders who hunted them down and tortured them for their Christian faith. 

Even though the governing authorities in America are not hunting us down or banning Christianity…at least not yet…it’s still not always natural or easy to pray for our national, state and local leaders, is it? It doesn’t seem right to us to ask God to bless leaders who create and enforce laws that contradict God’s will – who not only condone but praise violence and sexual immorality and the murder of the unborn. It’s hard to pray for politicians who are revealed to be corrupt and immoral in their public and personal lives. But Paul supplies a very good reason for us to pray for all those in authority – even for the unbelieving and immoral ones: so that we might live a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and dignity. History teaches that it is far easier for Christians to lead quiet, God-pleasing lives when there is peace than when there is strife and war. Examples abound: think about how Jeremiah encouraged the Israelites exiled in Babylon to pray for their city of exile – rather than rise up against it – because then they too would have peace and prosperity (Jeremiah 29:7)); remember how Peter folded under the pressure when mob-rule overtook the rule of law (Luke 22:54-62); think of how hard it would have been to live for God during the Revolutionary or Civil Wars. Consider our Christian brothers and sisters who are enduring unspeakable horrors in Ukraine this very moment. Wars and rebellions and anarchy and unrest – even those undertaken with seemingly righteous motives – can lead Christians to do some terrible, evil things – to live anything but godly and dignified lives. Worst of all, times of war and unrest can lead us to doubt God’s love and care. We pray for the leaders God has placed over us so that we might live peaceful and Godly lives, and at the same time, we pray that God would shine the light of his Gospel into their hearts so that they too might know Christ as their Savior. Why? Because this is good and pleasing in the sight of God our Savior. There are many good reasons to pray – but the most important one of all is that God wants us to. It pleases God when we bring all our thoughts and concerns and praise and thanks to his throne.

But, as important as it is to understand how to pray and whom to pray for, it’s even more important for us to understand that the power of prayer isn’t the how or the who. Prayer is not powerful because our prayers are so frequent and eloquent and proper – because quite often, they’re not. No, prayer is powerful because of the One we pray to. Paul says that there is only one God. We don’t pray to some unidentified, mysterious being. When we pray, we pray to the omnipotent Creator of the heavens and the earth. We pray to the God who orders the sun the shine and the rain to fall and numbers the very hairs of our heads. We pray to the God who raises and crushes leaders and nations like pawns on the chessboard of history. Practically speaking: we are praying to the One who can and will watch over little children like Addison, even when you can’t, even when you’re sleeping; the One who can provide food and fuel and shelter even when the bank account says you can’t; to the one who has the power to control inflation and disease and conflict – when the smartest and most powerful people in the world seem powerless. When we pray, we bring our petitions before the throne of the king of Heaven and the Judge of all the earth (Genesis 18:25).

But…sometimes we forget that, don’t we? We forget that when we pray, we aren’t shooting the breeze with a friend or posting our stream of consciousness to social media – we are addressing the one, true, holy God. We sometimes forget that when we come into church – we are daring to walk into God’s presence. We’re not walking into a movie or a concert – we’re walking into a courtroom where we know that the verdict ought to be guilty as charged. When we come here we stand before God, and the only thing we bring to the table is our sins, and the first thing we do is openly and honestly confess how sinful, how unworthy we are to be here. It is an awesome and awful thing to come before the one, holy God. Throughout Bible history, people were shaken to the core when they witnessed the glory of God. The people of Israel shook with fear when God descended on Sinai with flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder (Exodus 19:16). Isaiah recognized that he deserved to be ruined because he was a man of unclean lips (Isaiah 6:5). Peter, James, and John fell on their faces when Jesus was transfigured before them (Matthew 17:6). Even the mob in the Garden of Gethsemane fell on their knees when Jesus told them who he was (John 18:6). When we come here to stand before God and then dare to call on him by name, it should be with all humility and sorrow, because we know our sins and how they have ruined our relationship with Him. May we never forget that on our own, we cannot pray to God or expect that he will hear us; we cannot even stand in his presence dressed as we are in the tattered rags of our own sinfulness (Isaiah 59:2).

That’s what makes the last verse of our text so important. Paul writes: there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. We cannot come to God on our own, and – the good news is – we don’t have to. We come in Jesus’ name; at his invitation and with the guarantee of his mediation. We come dressed in the robes of holiness that Jesus earned for us by his perfect prayer life as our substitute. God answers when we knock because Jesus reestablished our line of communication with his Father by his death which served as the ransom price to free us from our sins – symbolized by the tearing of the curtain in the temple the moment he gave his last breath (Matthew 27:50-51). God hears our prayers because our risen and ascended Savior still stands before him as our mediator – pleading our case and pleading for mercy. Knowing that, knowing what it cost our Savior to give us access to God, will remove any reluctance or selfishness or arrogance or presumption from our prayer life. It will instill in us a sense of awe when we come before God and will cause us to overflow with praise and thanks for all that he has done.

So, what should be the priority when we gather for worship? The building, the music, the pastor, the length? Paul says: prayer. We should offer petitions and prayers and intercessions and thanksgiving for all people – because it is God’s will that all people be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. Pray for our nation’s leaders and government that they might either be converted or that their evil intentions may be thwarted so that we may live peaceful and Godly lives. Pray at all times and in all places to our Almighty God in heaven, confident that he has the power to do whatever you ask. Pray, because Jesus lived, died and rose to give you that privilege. It’s in his holy name we pray today and every day. Amen.