where we're going to think together about Timothy's command here to pray for one another. In 1 Timothy 2, beginning in verse 1, I want to read with you the first four verses this morning and then we'll focus in particularly on verse 1 together. He says, first of all, then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all those who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God, our savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. Let's pray together and then spend a few minutes in God's word. Father, help us today to have eyes to see and ears to hear from your word. Convict us for our prayerlessness, our failure to love and minister to one another as we ought by this great means of accessing you that we call prayer. We ask Lord for your help today. that you would be near us, in Christ's name, amen. As Dr. Federle said, or Jimmy, as we call him over here on this side of campus, we have been looking at the one and others of scripture together. And something you notice about this passage is that it doesn't explicitly address just the one and others. As a matter of fact, it's somewhat more broad, and in this passage, Paul encourages Christians to pray for all people, And he tells them that they ought to pray for all people, including kings and those who are in positions of authority, that they ought to pray especially for those who are outside of Christ, and they ought to do so because God has expressed that His desire, His will is for unbelievers to come to repentance and a knowledge of the truth. So we would be right to say that this passage is more broad than just the one in others. We would also be right to say that this applies not only to prayer for unbelievers or for kings and those who are in positions of authority, but that this certainly includes prayer for the body of Christ as well, that it includes prayer for one another. My goal this morning is to focus especially on verse one, where he says, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people. And I want to spend some time considering the nuances of what Paul is talking about here when he gives us these exhortation in these series of categories. First of all, what exactly do we have in 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 1? Paul describes prayer in this verse in these distinct terms. I'm reading here and so I'm giving you the translations from the ESV. But the term supplication and prayer. and intercession and thanksgiving. We know he's talking about prayer, but he doesn't just say prayer. He gives it to us in these four different terms. I don't think on the one hand that this is a comprehensive list of the categories of prayer. For instance, he doesn't mention anything about praise or about lament. He doesn't mention anything about imprecations or some of the specific types of prayer that are mentioned in scripture. So I don't think this is an attempt to say here's the whole idea of prayer and it exists in these four categories. Nevertheless, he does give us categories. Our view of scripture is theonoustos, breathed out by God, demands that we seek to understand what Paul is saying here, not just in human wisdom. but as one who is riding under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And if God has given us this revelation of Himself and His mind and His will in these specific categories, then I think it demands our attention. And we should try to think about what these nuances mean in verse 1. What I believe we have in 1 Timothy 2.1 is a series of four categories of communication. Each of them with their own emphasis that help us to think intentionally about how we are to pray for one another. They teach us to pray for one another with urgency, with assurance that God will answer us according to his perfect character, with a view toward the great privilege that we have to stand before the throne of God on behalf of one another and with thankfulness for God's goodness to them and to us through them. First of all, Paul urged believers to make supplications for one another. This is a term that's often used in the New Testament to talk about making a request with a sense of urgency. If there's something that separates this term from the others in the passage, I think it would be this particular focus on urgency. For example, you're familiar with the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth in Luke chapter 1. Zechariah was a priest in Israel a few years prior to Jesus' birth. And one day he's in the temple and he's ministering the priestly duties there. And he comes to the altar of incense and he notices on the right of the altar of incense that there is an angel of the Lord there. And Zechariah being a priest is pretty familiar with what should and shouldn't be in the temple complex. And he's used to seeing the altar of incense there. What he's not used to seeing is an angel there beside it. And so he responds the way that we would expect him to respond. And he falls down on his face in fear. And the angel reaches down and says, no, no, no, Zechariah, get up. He says, don't be afraid for your prayer or supplication. has been heard. Well, what had Zechariah been praying about? He and his wife Elizabeth were faced with a common dilemma in scripture. They were, as the translators eloquently put it, advanced in years. And being advanced in years, they were without child, and this presented a problem. So Elizabeth and Zechariah had been confronted with the reality they would very likely die without children. The angel of the Lord told him, Zechariah, don't be afraid, I have heard your supplications. Now I'm going to come back to Zechariah in just a minute, but let me point you to a couple other instances in Paul's letters to Timothy where this term translated supplications is used. In 1 Timothy chapter 5, Paul writes about the responsibility of the church to care for widows in the church. And he makes a distinction there that to us might feel a little bit off-putting, but I want you to understand the nuance of what he's saying here. He makes a distinction between widows and true widows. So there's a category of widows in the church that Paul is writing to that have children and they have grandchildren that are able to take care of them in their destitution. So a woman loses her husband, but she's not going to be left without a home. She's not going to be left without provision. She's not going to be left without protection and without representation in the community. She's going to have all of those things because she has a son or she has a grandson or other family that's going to take care of her. Paul says there are those kinds of widows But there are also those who are truly widows, meaning their husband has died. They have either no family to care for them or family who has abrogated their duty to care for them. This is something that Paul says is worse than being an unbeliever, a believer who wouldn't take care of their aging parents or grandparents. And he describes these as true widows because they face a dire condition of having nobody to provide for them, nobody to protect them. So not all widows are viewed synonymously by Paul there. And he says of them, she who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. The New English translation captures the sense of this well. She has set her hope on God and continues in her pleas and her prayers day and night. In 2nd Timothy 1.3, Paul communicates the urgency of his prayers for Timothy and says, I remember you constantly in my prayers or supplications night and day. What do you think the prayers of Zechariah and Elizabeth sounded like? Were they timid and cold and distant? Were they praying to God and they said, God, we're getting older. Would be nice to have children. Send some. Or were they begging and pleading with the Lord and saying, Lord, listen to us. Hear us. We grow older. And our hearts long for children of our own. Zechariah's prayer was he wants someone to carry on the family name. And as they get older and they see the horizon of life approaching, they're pleading with the Lord day and night. What do you think the prayer of a first century widow looked like? Was she collected and dressed up and had it together, sitting at her dinner table and praying meekly, God, I have nothing left. If it's no bother, could you meet my needs? Or was she understandably brought to the end of herself, realizing that she had no hope for protection and she had no one to provide for her if God himself didn't do it. Did her prayer look like the prayer of a woman who was satisfied and content or one who was desperate with a sense of urgency, who knew that her only hope was to turn to the Lord? What do you think Paul felt as he prayed for Timothy? His young understudy of a fledgling congregation. Were his prayers for Timothy mild? Did he pray for him only because he had an obligation? You've had that before. You're on the phone with somebody, they're telling you about their blues, and you say, I'm sorry to hear that, I'll pray for you. And then it dawns on you, you've got to pray for him. It dawns on you that it's just an obligation. You've made a commitment, now you've got to uphold it. I hope you at least do that. I hope you at least uphold your commitment there. Paul wasn't praying for Timothy out of a sense of obligation. He was praying for him out of a sense of urgency. His young friend whom he had mentored and worked with was pastoring a congregation that was being attacked by false teaching. that were disrespecting their young elder that was trying to lead them, Paul urgently pleaded for him. When you pray for one another, I believe you should make your request to God with urgency. When we make supplications for one another, we need to approach God and do so with a sense of urgency. Don't just pray for one another, but pray hard for one another. You understand that the success of your prayer doesn't depend on your ability to pray hard or your ability to pray well. I'm not saying that your prayer is going to be answered the way you want it to be answered or it's not going to be answered that way just because of how hard you've exerted yourself in prayer. But it certainly is a good litmus test of your relationship to the body of Christ. Whether you pray urgently for one another. or you pray out of a sense of obligation. I like to think of this, even though there may be some theological cobwebs in here, okay, so don't, you know, go and inscribe this on the walls of a church or something like that. I like to think of it by saying, when you have a friend that's praying for healing, pray like you yourself are sick. Pray like you're the one that's in need of healing. When you have a brother or sister in Christ who's facing death, don't pray for them like they're off in the distance. Pray for them like you yourself are facing death. Empathize with them. Understand what they're experiencing. When you're praying for somebody whose faith is weak, pray as though your faith was weak. Your faith is weaker than you think it is. And pray for them as though you're the one who needs to be reassured that God hears you. When you pray for one another, make your request to God with urgency. The second term used by Paul is a more general term for prayer. In fact, this is the most common term of the four, and it's the most common term translated prayer in the New Testament. It's so common that it often encompasses aspects of all of these other three, and so it's easy to just think of all of these as categories of prayer, which they are. There's one particular aspect of this idea of prayer that I want to draw your attention to. This term and its verbal cognates are used in a variety of contexts throughout the New Testament. So to make prayers for others or to make Thanksgiving prayers or prayers of praise or prayers of lament or encouraging prayer or praying for unbelievers using a variety of contexts. But they're always rooted in this truth that the efficacy of prayer is rooted in the character of the one to whom we pray. That prayer is personal communication with the triune God. In keeping with this theme, which I obviously don't have time to fully develop here this morning. Paul urged Christians to pray for one another, indeed for all people, because of the character of the one to whom they were praying. So the emphasis here is shifting away from you, who is doing the praying, it's away from the one that you're praying for, and it's on the one that you are praying to. And so often in the New Testament, this is the emphasis of prayer. That prayer doesn't depend on the circumstances of the person that you're praying for. And it doesn't depend on your own righteousness or the quality of your faith or your ability to pray or not pray. What prayer depends upon is the character of the one to whom you are making a petition. So when you pray for one another, pray thinking on this fact that you are praying to a God who hears and answers and responds. That's the emphasis of prayer in the New Testament. The act of praying, and I promise I didn't wake up and come here to just ruin your morning today, but the act of praying in and of itself doesn't affect anything. There's no inherent power in closing your eyes, thinking hard about something, and trying to speak it into existence. You can't just pray to be a millionaire and become one. An unbeliever can't pray for God to forgive them without faith and without repentance and expect God to absolve their sin. The efficacy of all prayer is grounded in the loving, charitable, generous character of God. The power of prayer is really in the character of the one who makes it powerful. So what does this mean for us? Well, when we pray for one another, know that God hears and will answer according to his perfect character and will. The third term, intercessions, is a rather intuitive term. To intercede means to speak to someone on behalf of someone else. In a sense, this is what we all think about when we hear the word prayer. We think about intercession. When we say that I will pray for you, intercession is probably what we most naturally mean. We mean that we're going to go to God on behalf of somebody who has expressed a desire or expressed a need, or we've recognized that in their own life, and we say, okay, I'm going to pray for you. But we would also be right to say, I'm going to intercede for you. But unlike the term prayer, the word for intercede here is used only by Paul in the New Testament. As a matter of fact, it's only used in this letter of 1 Timothy. Here he urges believers to intercede for others. That's what he's talking about in this passage that we just read. He's talking about kings. He's talking about authorities. He's talking about unbelievers. This idea to pray for all people certainly includes the body of Christ. And when he says to make intercessions for them, what he's saying is you need to leave and go to God on their behalf. There's an insightful use of this term in first Timothy chapter four in verse five. In that chapter, Paul is arguing that Christians should resist or reject false teachers. And there's a myriad of things that these false teachers do. For instance, they tell them that they're not allowed to marry. But they also insist that Christians must observe Levitical food laws. So you're familiar with the idea of clean and unclean foods. Certain foods were deemed clean for Israel. They would receive them. Others were demarcated as being unclean. But Paul argues that there are no unclean foods for Christians. Controversial, I know. There are no unclean foods because everything is created by God. And everything that God creates is good. And so everything that God has created and has provided to man should be received with thanksgiving. So certain foods which were unclean under the old covenant in the Levitical system are acceptable for Christians because number one, Christians are not under the prescriptions of the Levitical law to begin with. And number two, food received from God is sanctified or set apart by God's word. I'm going to turn this over to Mike Seawald to explain to us what that means here. That food could be sanctified by the word of God. Well, if you have a Bible and you set your dinner plate on the pot, no, that's not what it means. What it means is God has, by his word, created these things, he has declared them good, he has declared them clean, and so by that they are set apart. But they're also set apart, he says, by intercession. God declared his creation good, so what he's provided in his creation is good. But it seems that we should speak to God on behalf of our food in order to sanctify it. And to ask him to bless it for us. So when you go. to Waffle House and order a deluxe Grand Slam with extra hash browns and extra bacon and your hash browns scattered and smothered and covered and double chocolate in the chocolate milk and sugar in the coffee. Remember, you're going to be saying, God, I'm coming to you on behalf of this triple Grand Slam at Waffle House. Would you please set it apart for the goodness of my body? But in a sense, the first amen I've gotten all morning and it was, It was a guy from Georgia and we're talking about Waffle House. Intercession is to go to God on their behalf or someone on someone else's behalf. How amazing is it to have someone approach the living triune God on your behalf? Have you ever been in this position? Surely you have that somebody comes to you and they're talking about usually a job. They're talking about work. And they say, can you put in a good word for me? Or you've gone to somebody and you've said, hey, can you put in a good word for me with so and so? A lot of times, finding a good job or having good employment is as much about connections as anything. And there's a lot of corporations that really will only hire if they have a reference from somebody that's been working there for a long time. If you've ever wanted to work at Conway Corp, if Jim Lawrence doesn't approve of you, they're just not gonna hire you over there. But there's something even better than going to somebody and asking for them to put in a good word for you. It feels good to do that because then you think there's a chance, you think there's hope when you go and you say, hey brother Jeremy, can you put in a good word at so and so so that I can find a job there. That feels good because now there's a chance, at least the dream's alive. It feels even better when somebody comes to you and asks you about that. Hey, can you put in a good word for me? I've been in that position before where somebody would come to me and maybe they were looking to change their career, or they were changing their career, they had lost their job, and can you put in a good word for me with so and so? And it feels good because you think, wow, I have the power to affect change in this person's life. Now, I have no idea whether or not I'm gonna be able to land them the job or not, it's debatable, Or you could make the argument that if I go in there and recommend them, I may have just torpedoed their chances. But I'm going to go in, and I'm going to say, hey, to whoever the person is that can make it happen, hey, if you would help this person out, I can attest to their character. I can tell you they're a hard worker. They're a good person. If you'll hire them, I know they'll do a good job for you. How rewarding would it be then when they call you and they say, man, I'm back on my feet. I got that job. They were able to provide that. That's great. What then does it mean and how should we feel to know that we can go before the living God on behalf of somebody else? It's an honor. It's a real honor to be able to intercede for one another. So take up the charge to pray for one another with eagerness. Not just a sense of urgency and not just thinking on the goodness of God and his character to answer your prayers. Do it with eagerness. Be eager. Be joyful to go into the presence of God and intercede on their behalf when your brother or sister is battling temptation. And they come to you and they're battling this spiritual battle and they ask you to pray for them. You have the opportunity to stand before God and say, this is not only my brother and my sister, but this is your child. And your promise was that you would deliver them from the evil one. Would you deliver them? When they're battling sickness or facing death, you have the opportunity to stand between heaven and earth and say, this is your beloved one. heal them, be close to them, comfort them, turn their eyes to gaze upon you. When your brother or sister is hurting, you can stand before the one and only comforter and say, be near to them. When they are facing uncertainty and need wisdom, you don't have to just say, I'm hoping the best for you, or I hope it works out, or you'll figure it out. But you can go straight to God who holds the future in his hand who holds all wisdom, and say, you give wisdom to all who seek it. And while they make their plans, oh Lord, direct their steps. Finally, Paul encourages Christians to pray with thanksgivings. The idea of a thanksgiving, and I'm indebted to Johannes Lowe and Eugene Nada for this definition. You would think after being in school half my life, I wouldn't have to go and look out a definition of thanksgiving, but I thought I'd be precise. It's to express gratitude for benefits or blessings. Thanksgiving, interestingly, is an integral part of Paul's theology of prayer. He often expresses his thankfulness for the work of God among individuals in the churches among which he is serving. In Philippians 4, 6, he says, do not be anxious about anything, but by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving Make your requests known to God. Notice there that prayer is the antithesis of anxiousness. Implicitly, faith, because faithless prayer is worthless. Implicitly, faith is the antithesis of anxiousness. But explicitly in the text, the opposite of being anxious and worried is being in prayer. And he says, when you go and you pray, you need to pray and make these prayers and these supplications and do it with thanksgiving. When those in Christ become anxious, they are to approach God and they are to do so with their urgent request. So there's this invitation to come when you're anxious and to pray. The means by which they're going to communicate their request to God is prayer and supplication. They're going to think about the goodness of God. They're going to pray to Him. They're going to make their request known. They're going to have a sense of urgency. But notice the manner in which they make these requests. Don't make your requests, your prayers, your supplications with fret, with worry, with doubt, with uncertainty, with conflict, with incertitude, make your prayers, make your requests with thanksgiving. Notice in that passage how thanksgiving is being used. A prepositional phrase that goes back and modifies both of those. Christians are approaching God by praying to him with thanksgiving or with thankfulness for who he is and what he has done for them. And they are not forbidden, but rather are encouraged to pray to him urgently. But never without an eye toward gratitude for the benefits and the blessings that he has bestowed upon them. The point I want to drive home about this is that Paul not only prayed for others by asking God to heal them or to provide for them or to make their ministry fruitful, but he very often prayed for them by giving thanks to God on their behalf. In Colossians 1, which is a passage that I preached on some time ago here, he opens his letter by saying, we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you. In 1 Thessalonians 2, he wrote to the believers at Thessalonica and said, we also thank God constantly for you, for this reason. that you received the Word of God which you heard from us, and you accepted it not as the Word of men, but as what it really is, the Word of God which is at work in you, believers. He's saying my thankfulness to you is because you heard the gospel and you believed it. If you go back to Colossians 1, that's the same thing he's saying here, but it's a long run on sentence and I wasn't sure that I was going to have time to read the whole thing as I was standing up here today. But in Colossians 1, that's what he's saying. We give thanks to God always for you because we've heard of the assuredness of your faith. We've heard of the certainty of your faith, the quality of it, that you've heard the word of God and have not rejected it. He wrote in the opening, of 2nd Timothy, 2nd Timothy 1. I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clean conscience, as I remember you, Timothy, constantly, in my prayers, night and day. I thank God, not just when I'm praying for you, I thank God by praying for you. Timothy. The body of Christ, the church is a truly amazing thing. Often think about, and I've talked about this in our care group, just shared this when we're sharing prayer requests, often think about how improbable, how unlikely it is that we would all be here together. And if God hadn't brought about some great work in our life, certainly we wouldn't be here together. In this body, there are people from all over the world. There are children, and there are some who, like Zechariah and Elizabeth, are advanced in years. There are businessmen, there are businesswomen, there are homemakers, there are families, there are singles, widows and widowers, There are those who have run the race of faith for decades, and there are those who are just learning to walk in Christ. When you pray for one another, dwell on God's goodness to them and to you with a thankful heart.