Public Prayer: Its Importance and Scope (Part 1 of 2)

When was the last time you found yourself criticizing those in authority? You know the Bible has clear and often uncomfortable commands concerning our response to leadership. Today Alistair Begg explores those commands as we look at the Apostle Paul's advice to a young pastor named Timothy. Can I encourage you to take your Bibles and turn to 1 Timothy chapter 2 where we continue our studies? And we're going to read the first eight verses.

Paul is writing to Timothy as a young pastor, facing the potential confusion and controversy of some within his church who are raising their ugly heads and causing trouble. I urge then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for everyone, for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men the testimony given in its proper time. And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle.

I'm telling the truth, I'm not lying, and a teacher of the true faith to the Gentiles. I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer without anger or disputing. Father, before we turn to the Word of the Lord, we turn to you, the Lord of the Word, and acknowledge that without your help we can do nothing as we ought. And so we pray that you would help in speaking and hearing, in understanding and in obeying. For Jesus' sake. Amen.

I have just two main headings this morning with three subpoints under each, but I want, first of all, to fly across the passage, as it were, at 35,000 feet and tell you what's here, so that if you get stumbled along the journey in some of the detail, you might be able to remember the overview. So, with your eyes on the first eight verses—and you might want just to follow down—let me summarize what's being said by Paul. Paul is urging prayer for all kinds of individuals, and specifically those in authority, with a view to civil peace in which godly living may flourish. The grounds for such prayer is that it is good and acceptable to God, and particularly so as we contemplate him as the Savior who desires all sorts of people to be saved. That God would have all sorts of people to be saved is a necessary corollary to the truth of monotheism and of the provision of only one mediator, the man Christ Jesus, and of the extent of the provision of the mediator's ransom, which is for all sorts of people. Paul's own career in proclaiming the gospel to the Gentiles, not just to the Jews, bears out that they all—which you find in verse 1, verse 4, and verse 6—encompasses all sorts of people. And since all these things are true, people in every place should pray with a godliness in accord with the gospel. Now, that's it.

That's the whole thing right there. So we could have the benediction and go, but I can tell that that wasn't particularly impressive to many of you, and so there's probably good reason for me to pause for a moment or two and see if I can work it out a little better than that. Remember that Paul's concern is with these people who are confusing the believers in Ephesus as they introduce controversy of various kinds. Timothy must be clear, according to verse 15 of chapter 3, how people conduct themselves within God's household. And there are several issues to which Paul is now about to give his attention concerning the organization of the church to which Timothy needs to pay the most careful attention—for example, the issue of women and the order of leadership in the church, who the deacons are, and so on. All of these pressing and practical matters are to be, for Timothy, a concern that stirs both his heart and his mind.

Now, the two words under which I want to gather my thoughts this morning are these. First of all, exhortation, and then explanation. Exhortation.

Paul exhorts Timothy. And the phrase that gives the key to that is the opening phrase there in verse 1, I urge then. You will notice that it's the same phrase as he used in verse 3 of chapter 1, and there is a rightful sense in which we might say that he is picking up the emphasis with which he has begun the letter, because he was urging him, as he had urged him while he was there in Macedonia, to engage in this certain activity.

He then gets onto the issue of the law, then from there onto the matter of the gospel, and now he comes back. He says, Now let me urge you in relationship to all that I have been saying. So this is his exhortation. It's a strong word, parakaleo, the same word that is used, for example, in Romans 12, where Paul says, I beseech you or I entreat you to present your body as a living sacrifice to God.

That is the word that he is using here. And so we note, first, under this word exhortation, we note the priority. The priority. Why do we know it's a priority?

Well, because it says so. It says, first of all. And when a mother says, Now there are a number of things I want you to do, and the first one is these, the child knows this is a priority.

Not necessarily sequentially but in terms of emphasis. And it's probably not a reference to time here, but it is to the primacy of the importance of praying in this particular way. He uses four words that are virtually synonymous with one another, but they're important. Requests, he says. The cries of those who recognize their need and the needs of others. Prayers, which is a generic word for any humble entreaty by which a man or a woman would approach God with their needs. Intercession—the kind of prayer that emerges from a sense of identification with these very needs of others. And then thanksgiving, which, interestingly, is the one aspect of prayer which we will still engage in when we get to heaven. When we get to heaven, there will be no more need for prayers and requests and intercession, because we will see and be known, even as we are seen and known, but there still will be plenty of scope for eucharistos, for thanksgiving. Now, it says, Paul, I want you to make sure, I urge you, that as a primary emphasis in your ministry as a priority, that this kind of prayer will be being made. Now, that's so far so good, till you come to the final two words in verse 1.

This would be the staggering dimension that would hit not only Timothy but also the other readers. For whom are the believers to pray in this way? Answer, for everyone.

For everyone. Now, again, remember that the background to this is that there are certain men—to whom he refers in verse 3 of chapter 1—who have tied themselves in genealogical knots, and they have sought to tie other people up with them in the same intricacies. They have concerns about the law, which are misguided. They are in error in relationship to the approach that they bring to bear upon this issue of the gospel, and more than anything else, they are insisting upon the exclusiveness of the gospel. And therefore, they would have been prepared to say, Yes, we must issue requests and prayers and intercessions and thanksgiving, but we only do it for our inner circle. We're only going to pray for the people that we think it's right to pray for.

And we know who they are because of our particular genealogical charts, etc. Therefore, our prayers are focused in this exclusive way. So Paul writes, and he says, Timothy, it is a matter of primary importance that you understand and teach that we are to pray for all people, not simply those who belong to our domain, but that the heart of God is way beyond that, and if we are to have the heart of God for his creatures, then we must go beyond our own particularities. And he illustrates what he's saying. He says, Let me give you a couple of groups, for example.

Thanksgiving and prayer should be made for everyone. For example, he says, for kings and for those in authority. It's interesting why he would mention kings and those in authority, is it not?

If you think about it for a moment or two, perhaps you would conclude, as did I, that it is for these people. These are the kind of people that we are most tempted to despise, to reject, to dismiss, and to abandon—those who are in authority. Certainly I'm not going around with my eyes closed or my ears closed, but it is staggering to me to listen to American Christians despise, reject, criticize, abuse, and abandon the president, the vice president, and those in authority. Where did we get the idea that we can pray for who we like, and for the people we don't like, we just don't pray for them?

That was what was going on in Ephesus. You don't like the king? Don't pray for him.

You don't like the queen, the emperor? You don't need to pray for them. Paul says, You better understand something.

You ought to pray for the whole lot of them. Now, you see, this is in direct accord with the ministry to which Paul himself had been called. If you go back to Acts 9 at your leisure, you will discover that when Paul was set apart to the ministry of the gospel, he was told that he would bear the name of Christ before kings and before the Gentiles, which is a most unlikely thing for this little Jewish man to do. You may anticipate that he would go to the Jews because he liked Jews, but he hated these Gentiles, and he particularly hated the ones who named the name of Christ.

Now he's being arrested by the risen Christ, and he's given a job, and he says, This is who I want you to go to. I want you to go to the Gentiles. The Gentiles! I don't like Gentiles. They're not in my ballpark.

They've never been. They wear different uniforms. They look different.

They don't have the right kind of facial structure. I don't like those people. God says, You're my man, Paul. Now, Paul says, Listen, let me tell you, don't draw your circle too tight.

Pray for these people. Now, I don't have time to work this out this morning in terms of the Christian relationship to the state. And you know me well enough to know that I think that we have got this, by and large, in evangelical America, completely by the wrong end of the stick. And everybody everywhere I go has me bend over so they can kick the seat in my pants for ever saying so. But that's okay.

I'm well used to it now. But listen here. Romans 13 verse 1, Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. I don't think we've thought this out. I don't think we have come close to thinking it out.

Every time I get an interview on the radio and someone calls me up, they ask me just this week, Thursday, from Sacramento, Well, how do you explain the fact that this man did this and infected all these people with AIDS, and this happened, and that happened, and the next thing happened? I said, Because we are under the judgment of God. Romans chapter 1. We're bringing judgment on ourselves, and the very thing that we're being told is the answer to reversing the drift may be the very dimension which makes the judgment all the deeper. Because instead of doing what 1 Timothy 2 says to do—namely, to pray for these people—we just think we can criticize them, malign them, slander them, tell jokes about them, listen to our particular little radio stations which pull the carpet out from underneath them.

I'm not pointing the finger at anybody except myself. It was a priority in the context of Ephesus. I suggest to you, loved ones, it is a priority in the context of Cleveland.

So I am called onto the carpet by the Word of God, and I have a funny feeling that if I look around, there may be some others standing beside me. So the exhortation is to face the priority. The purpose, which is the second subpoint—there's the priority and the purpose.

What is the purpose of doing this? Well, we're told at the end of verse 2—you don't have to be brilliant to work this out, you just need to understand the English language—that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. Paul says, there is a benefit that attaches to the common life of God's people when we live in peace and quiet, when we live with a proper sense of God and of our responsibility to him for what he wants to do with our lives. And these are distinct benefits that peace may be established and that piety may flourish.

Piety is not a word that is popular in our day, but godliness and holiness is simply an extrapolation of the old-fashioned notion of piety. So instead of believers taking it as a mandate from somewhere that we exist in order to create a disturbance, that we exist to make a general nuisance of ourselves, that we exist to be disobedient, civilly disobedient, with a passionate commitment instead of that, look at what it says. I actually want you, he says, to be involved in praying so that as a result of praying—and of course, we've never seen the result of our praying, because we've never really done this—so that as a result of praying, there may be the experience of peace, and in that arena of peace there may flourish the establishment of godliness and holiness and the practical expressions of the same.

Now, where are we in relationship to this? Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3, we live in the world. He says we don't wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

What is this? It is prayer and the preaching of the Word of God. That's why he urges Timothy in the way that he does. That's why he's gonna say in his second letter, preach the Word of God in season and out of season. People say, Oh, you don't think that preaching the Word of God makes a difference, do you? You don't think that somewhere away in a back room in the corner of some building that people crying to God in prayer for the president and for kings and for authorities is going to make a difference? Absolutely we do.

Why? Because God's Word says it does. And the Berlin Wall came down as a result of Ronald Reagan's ingenuity. The Berlin Wall came down as a result of the prayers of the people of God crying out to him.

He may have used Reagan, Thatcher, and some of the others. God sets them up, God brings them down, and in answer to prayer. You see, we're pointing over here, this is the reason we're in chaos, this is the reason we're in confusion, this is the reason for this and those bad people and this bad and everything else, and we're staring the Bible straight in the face as I urge you as a priority to get down on your knees and pray for these people. I am so much up on my feet talking about them that I don't have time to get down on my knees and pray for them. We have yet to see what genuine, believing prayer will do. And I'm not talking about the world day of prayer where you go down on public square and one guy chants to an Indian god and another guy chants to a Buddhist god and somebody else chants to something else. Forget that nonsense. We'll come to that later on. There is only one way to pray, there is only one God to whom we can pray, and there is only one way of access to that one God.

We're about to see that. So you can't say that prayer is whatever you want it to be, speaking to whoever you want to talk to and getting whatever your little mind desires. And to speak like that, of course, people say, Oh, you're just as bad as that lady in the plain dealer said you were. Persecution. Read your Bibles and check and see.

You're sensible people. Persecution should be the result of righteous living, not the result of civil disobedience. When a church is persecuted, it is because it did the right thing, not because it did the wrong thing. You're not supposed to be persecuted for shooting people in abortion clinics.

You're not supposed to be persecuted for gumming up the traffic as a result of sitting in the road. You're supposed to be persecuted because you uphold a standard of righteousness and that the people cannot find anything to say about your behavior because you put to silence the foolish talk of men who hate you because of the quality of your life. And what they hate is purity. What they hate is obedience. What they hate is clarity. What they hate is loving your wife passionately, that kind of thing. The reason many people hate us is because we're hateful. The reason they don't want to talk to us is because I don't want to talk to half of these people. Why would you ever talk to that person? Ugly-looking, angry, cantankerous rascal standing there with a big sign to explain the compassionate love of God for those who don't feel the same way that they feel?

It doesn't work. You can't have a gun on the one hand, a Bible on the other hand. It's total hypocrisy. So the exhortation has a priority. Pray for these people.

The priority has a purpose so that you might be able to live in peace and in the experience of peace so that piety may flourish. And who are the personnel that are to lead this charge? Allow your eye to go forward to verse 8. Men are given the responsibility of leading the prayers. Now, this would be no surprise to the folks who had come from the synagogue.

They understood it perfectly. But some of them and others would have wondered whether Paul's emancipation—that is, his spiritual emancipation of women—might have implied some kind of change in their position in public worship. I'm referring to Galatians 3.28, that is, neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. In other words, says Paul, a man or a woman comes to faith in the Lord Jesus in the exact same way. It is the same grace that is poured out on one as is poured out on the other.

It is the same welcome that is given to the one as to the other. The son becomes a son of God, the man becomes a son, the lady becomes a daughter. There is equal standing, there is equal access, there is equal privilege, there is no inferiority within the framework of the experience of salvation. Okay, so the people say, well, in light of that, does that mean that anybody can do anything in the church?

No, says Paul, I'm glad you asked. Because in the same way that equality of standing in grace before God does not invert the role relationships within the family and remove the husband's position of leadership or remove the woman's position in submission, in the same way within the church. So the men, he says, are to take the lead. The presence of women is assumed.

He's gonna address it in verse 9 and following. But in terms of the expression of public worship, probably the key illustration—and this will not be liked by all—is that of Hannah, who in 1 Samuel 1.13, it says of her, She spoke in her heart, only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Now, throughout the summer, I've been gone from here, I've gone to all different churches. With frequency, I've sat down in the church, the first person on the feet is a lady. Nice lady. She's now the leader, she's telling what's going on, next person's up, does the prayers, is a lady. The offering is a lady.

The preacher is a lady. Nice ladies. Shouldn't be there. Who says? God's Word says.

If we want simply to capitulate to the spirit of the age, then anything goes. You're listening to Truth for Life. That is Alistair Begg with a message titled, Public Prayer, Its Importance and Scope. We'll hear more from Alistair tomorrow. If you are enjoying our current study of the Apostle Paul's godly advice to his young protege, Timothy, you might want to listen to Alistair's teaching through both of the letters Paul wrote to Timothy. The complete series is titled, A Study in First and Second Timothy. You can watch or listen to the entire series for free online at truthforlife.org or through the Truth for Life app. And if you'd prefer to listen using your USB player, you can purchase Alistair's studies in both First and Second Timothy on USB for just $5 when you visit truthforlife.org slash store. Now, today is the last day we're offering the book, The Air We Breathe. This is a book that will open your eyes to many surprising ways that Christianity has had an impact on our world. You can request your copy of The Air We Breathe today when you give a donation to the ministry at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. And keep in mind if you request the book, The Air We Breathe with your donation and would like to purchase additional copies for your church or to share with others, you'll find them along with many other helpful books in our online store. The books are available for purchase for just $7 while supplies last. Visit truthforlife.org slash store today. I'm Bob Lapeen. Thanks for starting your week with us. The Bible teaches that not everyone will turn to Jesus and be saved, but does that affect who we pray for or who we share the gospel with? We'll hear the answer tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.