Take your Bibles with me and turn to 1 Timothy 2. 1 Timothy 2 tonight. We're going to look at eight verses and we're going to talk about praying this evening.
Remember this is a book that was written by the Apostle Paul to Timothy. Paul went on from Ephesus, which is probably the most successful church that Paul started, and he went on to start other churches in Macedonia and he found out that there was heresy being taught by some of the elders in that church in Ephesus. He sends Timothy back to take over this church and to drive out the error and to set things back right as they should be in the church. He writes this letter to them as his instruction manual for Timothy as a pastor and for this church.
Of course this wasn't just a personal letter from Paul to Timothy. It was intended to be read in the church and it was passed around from church to church so much so that it was recognized as God-inspired scripture. So we need to keep the context in mind, Paul writing to Timothy, but we also need to understand this is general good advice given by God for churches.
And what we're going to look at tonight is one of the first specific pieces of advice in this whole book that Paul gives for churches. He's talking about what he thinks a faithful church should do and this is what he starts with.
So let's read verses one through eight.
> [1](#) I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;
> [2](#) For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
> [3](#) For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;
> [4](#) Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
> [5](#) For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
> [6](#) Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
> [7](#) Whereunto 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.
> [8](#) I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.
1 Timothy 2:1-8 (KJV)
Obviously this is a passage about prayer. Verse 1 starts with prayer. Verse 8 ends with prayer so this whole section here is talking about prayer. What we're going to do tonight is we're going to just walk through it and we're going to answer four questions about prayer in the church from this section:
1. Why pray?
2. What do we pray for?
3. What is the ground of our prayers?
4. And how should we pray?
I think it's appropriate for us to kick off a message about prayer by praying so let's go to the Lord in prayer.
Let's start tonight by answering the question from these verses.
# 1. Why Pray?
Paul starts out verse number one with this.
> [1](#) I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;
1 Timothy 2:1 (KJV)
So it starts out by saying: "First of all church, before you do anything else, you need to get this thing in. You need to make sure that you're praying." There's something like eight words for prayer that we find in the Bible and four of them are used in this one verse. We don't need to get into the details about each of these four different things. The idea is that we need to be praying and doing a lot of it because it's important.
It's, first of all, thing.
One of the sad things that happens in a lot of modern churches is that prayer kind of takes a backseat. People don't spend as much time praying as maybe our grandparents did or our great-grandparents did. Many modern churches sort of minimize prayer.
But prayer is the first thing Paul mentions as an instruction for this church. It's important. If we get nothing else in, we should get prayer in. If we do nothing else besides come together and pray, we did at least that. We talked to God.
Another reason why we should pray as a church that we see in this passage is in verse number three.
> [3](#) For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;
1 Timothy 2:3 (KJV)
We pray because it's important and we pray because God loves it. It's good and acceptable in the sight of God for us to pray. He wants us to pray.
I'm thinking about the Old Testament Tabernacle. One of the pictures in the Old Testament Tabernacle was the incense that was burned and that incense was supposed to represent the prayer of God's people. It says over and over again in Exodus and Leviticus that that incense is a sweet savor to the Lord. It's something that God likes. God loves to hear his people pray.
Sometimes I get annoyed as a human father with the requests that my children bring to me. Especially if it's after like 9:30 at night, I just want to go to bed. God doesn't like that. God wants us to talk to Him all the time. God wants those churches to be places of prayer. Jesus said, "My house shall be called a house of prayer."
So we pray because it's important and we pray because God likes it. A third thing we can see in this chapter is we pray because it's commanded.
Paul starts the chapter by saying, "I exhort," verse 8. He says, "I will therefore" or "this is what I want you to do." This isn't Paul's suggestion as a fellow brother in Christ. This is Paul's commandment as an apostle. Churches need to be places that are praying.
So is that clear enough from these verses, the why of prayer? Let's look at the second question about praying in church that these verses answer, which is….
# 2. What do we pray for?
We don't have to guess at this; the passage tells us what we're supposed to be praying for, really who we're supposed to be praying for. We're supposed to be praying for people and in these verses it tells us first we're supposed to be praying for everyone.
Verse one: look at it again.
> [1](#) I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;
1 Timothy 2:1 (KJV)
We're supposed to be praying for all men. All men means all men. It means our enemies and our friends. It means lost people and saved people. It means family members and strangers, countrymen and people from other countries. We should be in prayer all the time for everybody.
Very often our prayers can be kind of self-centered. Maybe we just pray for ourselves. Maybe when we're feeling generous we pray for our friends or our church members but God wants our prayer life to be bigger than us and bigger than just our friends. It should be that we need to be praying for everybody.
Now church, I'm not good at this. I'm a failure on this front. I'd be the first to admit it. I need to do better at this and be a better leader in this area. We need to be praying for everybody.
But then Paul gets specific in verse 2. Not only should we be praying for everybody, we should be praying for our leaders. It says…
> [2](#) For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
1 Timothy 2:2 (KJV)
Now this is just remarkable because the person that was in authority when Paul wrote this was likely Nero, who was literally burning Christians at the stake. They were being hunted down. Paul says, "You need to pray for the king. You need to pray for all those civil authorities. Pray that God would do a work in their life. Pray that they make wise decisions. Pray, pray, pray."
Here's a convicting thought: You know all the time that we spend listening to political podcasts or to talk radio or to Fox News or whatever your flavor is, wringing our hands and feeling bad about who our leaders are. How much time do you pray for them?
Man I even today posted on Twitter a joke about Governor Pritzker taxing the squirt gun battle that Brad Underwood in the Illini had after the Elite Eight victory yesterday. I complain about our rulers, our leaders, all the time. I don't pray for them like I should.
When we pray for our leaders like we're commanded to, it helps us lead a quiet and peaceful life. It helps us keep our heart under control. To the world it gives us a testimony of godliness and honesty. That word honesty means honorableness.
I'm afraid that all that the world ever hears from us about our leaders is criticism. They're going to think that we are just a bunch of rabble-rousers. Instead we need to be praying for them.
Next time somebody at work or somebody at a cookout says something negative about the governor or something political, just stop it and be like, "Okay well let's pray for him. Let's pray that God causes him to make wise decisions."
Again I'm not saying that our leaders are good! Nero most definitely was not a good leader and yet they were told to pray for him. The Roman leaders were corrupt and yet they were told to pray for them. We can't use who our leaders are as an excuse to be disobedient here. We're to pray for all men. We're to pray for our leaders and I think the third thing this passage teaches us where to pray for is the lost.
Verse four says:
> [4](#) Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2:4 (KJV)
Someone said that prayer isn't about getting man's will done in heaven. It's about getting God's will done on earth.
Well what's God's will? This passage tells us what God's will is. God wants people to be saved! God wants people to come to the knowledge of the truth. One of the things that's absolutely appropriate for us to do is to pray for other people to come to Christ, to pray that other people would follow Christ.
So we've talked about why churches should pray and we've talked about what churches should pray for. I love where this text goes next. It answers a question that you might not think to ask but it's an important one.
# 3. What is the ground of our prayer?
In other words what right do we have to pray at all? What right do we have to think that we would get an audience with God? After all we're sinners. We are nothing.
Think of it this way. Do I have the right to think that I can just walk into the Oval Office and ask Trump for whatever I want? How silly would that be? Of course not.
What if I was a criminal? What if I was a felon? Then I doubly wouldn't have that right. So what ground do I, as a sinful normal human being, just one of eight billion on this planet, have to talk and ask anything of the God of the universe?
Let's first answer it. Verse number five, look at it.
> [5](#) For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
1 Timothy 2:5 (KJV)
The first thing I know is I have a mediator between God and man. I have somebody that can bring my request right to the top. That's the Lord Jesus Christ.
You know what a mediator is, right? It's a go-between. About the only time we use the word mediator in modern life is like hiring a mediator between two divorced people that are fighting, right? It's just a go-between, somebody to carry messages back and forth.
Think of it like this: Powerful people are often hard to get to on purpose. Right? If you have a billion dollars, there's a billion people that want that money that are asking for things all the time. You have very little chance of even being heard by one of these people. They are in the business of pushing people away to keep some semblance of life and privacy.
If you know somebody that works in their inner circle, that is your best friend, that owes you something, then you have a go-between. You have a much better chance of that leader or that rich person hearing your request.
Church we have a go-between. We have a mediator and that mediator is the perfect mediator because He is both God and man. He is the man Christ Jesus. He is God's only begotten Son but He also came and lived as a man on this earth. He knows God and He knows us and He has decided to work as our mediator.
He's more than a mediator, though. He's also a redeemer. Look at verse 6:
> [6](#) Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
1 Timothy 2:6 (KJV)
This phrase, "to be testified in due time," means that it is something that God wanted declared and God declared it at just the right time. It's referring to the gospel.
How does the gospel help us in our prayer life? How does it give us ground? Jesus doesn't just represent us for God. Jesus paid the price to ransom us. He paid the price to release us from our shackles.
Think about it like this. Imagine that that we hear about a bunch of children on the other side of the world that are in a very bad situation. They're starving to death. They're hurting. They don't have shelter. They don't have food. Unfortunately there are probably millions of kids like that in the world in that situation today. And from a human standpoint we just don't have the ability to care about all of them.
But imagine that the Lord moved you to give for one of those kids. The Lord moved you to take out several thousand dollars and make sure that that kid had what they needed to have a roof over their house, to have food in their belly, to be able to go to school. Imagine that you ponied up to ransom that kid out of his situation.
Would you be more interested at that point? I think you would. I think you'd care quite a bit about what was happening in that kid's life because you ransomed that kid. You have an interest in what they're doing. You have a stake in their life.
God through Jesus has a stake in our success. He paid a ransom for us. He has an interest in it. He bought us out of the slavery of sin.
So we have three grounds for prayer:
1. We have a mediator in Christ and
2. we have a redeemer in Christ who bought us back from our bad situation.
3. We have a mission in Christ.
Look at verse seven.
> [7](#) Whereunto 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.
1 Timothy 2:7 (KJV)
Paul goes right from talking about Christ as our mediator and our Redeemer to talking about his individual mission. His mission was to be a teacher of the Gentiles. That was his thing.
And I believe all of us have been given a mission by God. That includes the Great Commission. That includes working to see souls get saved. That includes the jobs that God has given us: to be a good father, a good grandfather, a good wife, a good child. God has given each of us a mission, a work to do for Him. When you have been given a job by somebody, you have a right to ask them questions. You have a right to ask for their help.
At work I manage several people and just about every day somebody comes up to me sheepishly and says, "Ryan, can I ask you a question?" In the back of my mind I think, "I hope so." I mean that's kind of my job, to answer your questions and help you get the job done that I've assigned to you. Sure come ask me questions. We have a job, a mission from God, and we should be praying to him, asking for his help, asking for his direction. That's a ground for our prayer life.
So far we've talked about why we should pray, what we should pray for, and the ground of our prayer life. One more thing, one more question I think is answered about praying in church in this passage and that's:
# 4. How should we pray?
Verse 8 answers basically all of this for us so let's look at it.
> [8](#) I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.
1 Timothy 2:8 (KJV)
There are four things that tell us how to pray in that one little verse. The first thing it says is "I will therefore that men" Men should be leading in prayer in the church. Doesn't mean that men are the only people that can pray in church. There are examples in the scripture of women praying in church and there's teaching in the scripture about women praying in church but men should be leading in it.
Unfortunately in many churches it's the opposite. It's the women that are going to the prayer meetings. It's the women that are taking the lead in this area of prayer but that's not the way it should be. Men we should be spiritual leaders and if we can't lead in this area of prayer we can't lead in any area.
Then it says "lifting up holy hands". In Bible times one of the postures that people prayed with was with their hands up like this. Today it's just charismatics that do this but there's lots of postures for prayer in scripture and this is one of them. I think the key isn't the lifting up part. The key is the holy hands part. We should pray with pure hands. We should pray with clean lives I guess you could say.
If you're living like the devil Monday to Saturday, that's going to affect your prayer life on Sunday. We need to keep our hands clean. We need to keep our hands out of this, out of the sin and the filth of the world so that we can pray with holy hands.
The next thing it says is that we should pray without wrath. Not only should we pray with clean hands, we should pray with peaceful hearts. If our heart is full of anger towards others, anger towards our brothers and sisters in Christ, that's going to affect our prayer life.
We need to pray from a place of forgiveness, a place of peace not a place of anger.
So we pray with clean hands, we play with peaceful hearts, and finally we pray with faithful minds. The verse is without wrath and doubting.
Prayers have to be done in faith. Prayers have to be done with minds settled on the truth of God's word and believing the promises of God's word.
James says, "If any man lack wisdom let him ask of God. Just give it to all men liberally and freely and do not be hesitant if not but let him ask in faith Nothing wavering. The wavering person isn't going to receive anything of the Lord.”
So does this passage help you see how we're supposed to pray? I hope so.
So let's bring this all together tonight.
Paul's first piece of advice to a church that was struggling, a church that had problems, a church that needed to get back on track — was to pray. Not to fix their doctrine first. Not to clean up their leadership structure first. Pray first. That's where it starts.
We should be praying for everybody — for our friends, for our enemies, for the lost people in our lives, and yes, for our leaders, even the ones we can't stand.
And we have every right to come to God with those prayers because Jesus Christ has made a way. He's our mediator and He's our redeemer. He bought us. He has a stake in us. And He's given every one of us a mission, and that mission gives us reason to keep coming back to Him and asking for His help.
And when we pray, we come with clean hands, peaceful hearts, and settled minds — not doubting, not angry, just believing that God is who He says He is and that He hears us.
Church, I want to challenge you tonight to just pray more. Not perfectly. Not with some elaborate system. Just more. Talk to God about everybody in your life. Talk to God about this country and its leaders. Talk to God about the lost people you know by name. He wants to hear from you. He loves it when His people pray.
Jesus said His house should be called a house of prayer. Let's be that.
