Best I can do is claim to have paid for that. That's it. I can't even play the kazoo. Don't play the radio well, so. What wondrous love is this? What a question. Can we truly fathom the love of God in Christ for us? It's overwhelming. Take your Bibles this morning and turn back with me to 1 Timothy, 1 Timothy chapter 2. We were there last week and as we looked at this passage, we contemplated the civic responsibility of heavenly citizens because of Timothy being drawn by Paul to pray for those in authority over us. But what you'll notice if you look at the passage is that Paul begins and he ends this passage with what I see as being book ends, which is one of the ways that you understand the theme of a passage. He begins with one side calling us to prayer and he ends on the other side in joining us to prayer. And so, I want you to see this morning, I'm going to begin in verse 5, 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 5. Last week, verse one, he called us to prayer, but in the midst of that prayer, he gives us some incredibly significant truth. In fact, truth without which there's no point in praying. And so he says, First Timothy chapter two in verse five, for there is one God. That's quite a statement. to a pluralistic world in his day, and to maybe even a more pluralistic world in our day. That's a definitive statement. For there is one God and one mediator between God and man. Can I tell you that's as definitive a statement? Just one. way, one point of access, one go-between, one representative. For there's one God and one mediator between God and man. And here's the most definitive statement because He tells us who it is. No mystery, not left in the dark, no puzzlement to figure out. The man, that's a definitive statement. Christ Jesus. No wasted words. who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time, 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. I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. The title of my message this morning is God's Plan for Our Prayers. You know how I preach. I'm working through the book of 1 Timothy and actually in working through the Greek, I'm actually almost to the end of the book. And so I try to stay ahead. Be prepared, because I understand that this is a whole argument and these are not isolated pieces, and so I am working ahead and looking at this passage of Scripture and overwhelmed at the incredible theological truth of one God, monotheism, one mediator and the truth of what it means. Why do I need a mediator? There's incredible truth to be understood. And then why just one? And if there's just one, what is the demand that I know this one? Can I come to the one God without the one mediator? And how did he mediate? And then all of a sudden I run headlong into this word ransom. And that ransom was for for me, was it my my debt that he had to rent? This is an overwhelming passage of scripture. In the midst of being prepared and thinking about this message, I got a message on Thursday. It said, hey, Pastor, we're going to be in the Schomburg area on Sunday. Know of any good churches? This morning, I want to begin my message with a testimony. A testimony that so squarely fits into the heart of this passage that only the God of heaven could put it together the way he did this week over thousands of miles and over 10 years of history. So this morning I want to invite Micah Wilder to come this morning and he is going to take some time and share with you a testimony of the grace of God in his life. I'm excited to have him here. Good morning. And just through the songs and through reading through that passage, I'm already overwhelmed. Like pastor said, God's amazing love is mediation through Christ Jesus to offer himself as a ransom for me. That truth alone has changed my life, as it has so many of ours. I was born and raised in the state of Indiana, and I was born and raised into a very strong and faithful Mormon home. I was taught from the time that I was a young child that my good standing before God came through my good works. And that His love and His grace were not offered to me freely, but that they were something that I had to work for and earn and be worthy of by faithfully obeying the laws and ordinances of my religious institution. It was a burden on my life growing up believing that my salvation was on my own shoulders. I was taught, in fact it's a scripture in the Mormon church that says that you are saved by grace after all that you can do. And so imagine that burden of believing that God's grace is not freely given to you but that you have to do your part and do everything that you can do to work for it before it is given to you freely. When I was about 14 years old, I left the state of Indiana. My mom and dad sat me down and said that we were moving to Utah, which was a huge culture shock. The reason why we moved out to Utah was because my mother got a teaching job to be a professor at Brigham Young University. Anybody here familiar with BYU? It's a private Mormon college out in Utah. We picked up, we left the Midwest, moved right to the heart of Mormonism. I lived in a town that was 99% Mormon, and that's no exaggeration. And so I was extremely entrenched in this culture. I was rooted in it, and I believed in it with all my heart. You know, Paul, when he's writing the Romans in Romans chapter 10, He's talking about the Jews, and he says that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, and that they were ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and that they sought to establish their own. But he goes on in verse 4 to say, but Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to all who believe. And I would say that that described me as a young religious man, as I had a zeal for God. In fact, I would basically say that I was kind of like Saul before he became Paul. I was very zealous for the traditions of my fathers. I was advancing in Mormonism beyond many people my own age, and I believe with all my heart that it was through these works that I could somehow justify myself before God. And so it's customary in the Mormon Church that after the young men graduate from high school, they're required to serve a two-year mission trip. Now, I'm sure you guys are familiar with the Mormon missionaries. They've got the white shirts, the ties, the name tags, riding the bicycles. Raise your hand. Don't be shy. Have you guys seen them? I'm sure they're here in Schaumburg. In fact, one of my best friends did his Mormon mission in Chicago. And so, as a 19-year-old Mormon boy, you can see me. That's me with my parents. The day that I left on my two-year mission trip left everything in my life to go serve 12 hours a day, 365 days a year for two years. in order to make converts to my religion, believing that by doing so I was offering them salvation. And you have to understand that what I was taught was that no one could live with God after this life. No one could have eternal life outside of our church, outside of our religion. And so I believe that with all my heart. So at 19, I went on my two-year mission trip. And it's funny because you can get sent anywhere in the world. You have no say in where you go. I had an older brother that went to Moscow, Russia. I had a brother that went to Copenhagen, Denmark. I had friends that went to Thailand, to Chile. And so I thought, well, I'm going to go somewhere exotic and exciting. And I got sent to Orlando, Florida. And so as a 19-year-old young Mormon boy, I end up in the happiest place on earth. And I went to Orlando and you can see me there ready to go into the mission field and convert everybody that I met. Now I was very zealous, very obedient, very letter of the law type of missionary. And I was the type of missionary that if I saw you anywhere within eyesight, you know, I would cross six lanes of deadly traffic to come share this message with you because I was so convinced that it was the way to eternal life. And so I had been doing this in Florida for a few months and I was feeling pretty good about myself. I was getting confident. and my ability to convey the message of Mormonism. And I got a little overzealous, you might say, because I actually attempted to convert a Baptist minister and his entire congregation. Now, you have to understand from my mindset as a Mormon, you know, if anyone needed the gospel the most, it was certainly the Baptists, right? And so, it was a Sunday evening, and this was exactly ten years ago, and we showed up at this little church in Winter Garden, Florida, called Calvary Baptist, and we introduced ourselves to the pastor. And we said, Pastor, we're missionaries from the Mormon Church and we'd like to share a message about the Gospel of Jesus Christ with you. And I remember this pastor just got a big smile on his face and said, I would love to sit down and talk with you guys. And at the time I was a little naive because I thought, man, I think God has prepared this man's heart, you know, to join the Mormon Church. And so the next day we sat down with him in his office, and one thing that I should say about this man is that he showed us the love of Christ. You know, there were too many times as a Mormon missionary where we would knock on someone's door and they would say, I believe in Jesus Christ, you're going to hell, and they'd slam the door in our face. And I know that sounds funny, but that really happened to me countless times. But this man didn't. He opened up his heart, he opened up himself to us, and he invited us in, and he said, okay, gentlemen, share with me the message of Mormonism. And so we did. We talked about the ordinances and the commandments and the works and all the things that we had to do on our part in addition to what Jesus Christ had done on the cross. That it wasn't by grace alone that we were saved, but it was our works in addition to Christ's offering on the cross. And as we were presenting this message, he was very respectful. In fact, he was kind of silent when we were first sharing our message. And I thought, well, maybe he's being silent because he's so convicted by the power of our message and he's speechless. And so I was kind of excited about what his response was going to be, hoping that he would say, well, yes, I want to be baptized in the Mormon Church. Because our game plan was that if we could convert him, then he would help us convert his entire congregation. And then we would be celebrated as heroes amongst the Mormon missionaries. And so as we concluded our message, we basically asked him, we said, Pastor, what do you think about what we've shared with you? And this was basically the start of a turning point in my life and this pastor looked at us and he said gentlemen I can see that you're very sincere and I can see that you believe everything that you've shared with me but I have to tell you that what you just shared is not the gospel of Jesus Christ and that really took me back and I had never once in my life doubted the things that I had been taught through my religious institution. I had never questioned, you know, the things that I had been taught by my parents and my church leaders. And this pastor was now calling to question everything that I had ever believed and taught my entire life. And the amazing thing is that he decided that, you know, since we were able to share a message, that he was going to share his own message. And I think I figured out pretty quickly, I wasn't going to like where this was going. But all he did was he opened up this book. He opened up the word of God and he started to minister to me about a God who loved me. And he started to share with me about the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus and tell me about the sufficiency of the blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse me of my sins. And that he recognized very quickly that I was seeking to justify myself before God through my works. And I remember he shared Romans 3.23, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. And my entire life as a religious Saul was spent trying to prove God that I was good enough to be saved, not recognizing that God had proved His love to me, and that while I was still a sinner, that He sent Jesus Christ to die for me. And it was amazing because he just read scripture after scripture, and he just kind of bombarded me with the message of the gospel as found in the New Testament. I remember Titus chapter 3 verses 4 and 5. It says that when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy. And in the second book of Timothy, Paul writes to Timothy, you know, that God has saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of His own purpose and grace which He gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began. And it was so hard for me as a religious man to understand this amazing love of God that surpasses all knowledge. Because the God that I had believed in my entire life, He loved me conditional upon my goodness, upon my obedience, upon my own works. And yet this God of the Bible loved me unconditionally. And He showed that love, and He manifested that very love in and through His Son, Christ Jesus. that even though I was a sinner and I was dead in my sins and dead in my trespasses, that he would offer his son as the sacrificial offering for my sins, as a ransom for me, to pay a payment that I could never pay. Not to make a down payment for my debt, but to pay it in full, to wipe it clean through his blood. That was the God that I knew. Ephesians 2.8.9, the pastor read this one to me as well. It says, for by grace you have been saved through faith. It is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one could boast. And this is really the first time in my life that someone told me point blank that salvation was a free gift to be received by faith. Unfortunately, I couldn't Accept it. You know I couldn't accept that God loved me so much that he would offer something As salvation as a free gift, and so I started to argue with this pastor We kind of went into a back-and-forth for a while And I got really angry and actually started yelling at him And I basically concluded by telling him if he didn't you know accept the Book of Mormon and join Mormonism He was going to hell That's how frustrated and angry I got. It says in Hebrews 4 verse 12 that the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and that it can divide soul and spirit and that it has the power to discern the thoughts and the intents of the heart. My frustration came from being pierced by the power of the Word of God, really, for the first time in my life. And so I kind of walked out of this pastor's office very frustrated and angry, and he stopped me as I was leaving. And he said, Elder Wilder, I challenge you, go home and read the Bible as a child. and prove me wrong. And he said, I promise you, I can promise you that if you do that, that God is going to change your life and he's going to open your eyes and he's going to reveal to you for the first time in your life what the good news of Jesus really is. That was 10 years ago. And that pastor is sitting right there. And this is the first time I've seen him in 10 years. And almost every day of my life, I've prayed and thanked God for Him having the boldness and the love and the compassion to reach out to me with the gospel message. And so I took his challenge. I decided I was going to read the Word of God, but initially it wasn't because I thought that I had something to learn, it's because I wanted to prove him wrong. I was prideful and I was arrogant and I wanted to solidify my own faith and my religion. by reading the Bible alone. And so that very night, I went back to my missionary apartment, I sat at my desk, and I opened up to Matthew chapter 1, and I started to read. And I didn't know what was going to happen. I wasn't expecting, you know, much of anything other than my faith and my religion was going to be strengthened through reading the Bible. And yet God had other plans. And it's amazing how He works, you know, how I wasn't seeking for God, but He was seeking for me. And I didn't know that I was lost, but I was. And he left the 99, and he walked the mountainside, and he found me. And he put me on his shoulders, and he rejoiced. And so over the remainder of my two-year mission trip, which was probably another 19 or 20 months or so, I religiously read the Bible every single day. I read the New Testament. And I started to read, you know, in my Mormon studies in the morning, I was supposed to be studying Mormonism, and instead I was reading the New Testament. And then I started reading it during my lunch breaks and my dinner breaks and then at night before I went to bed. And the reason why I couldn't put it down, as I'm sure so many of you know, is because of the consuming message of God's love for me. This love... that surpasses all knowledge. Romans 8 says, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? And then Paul goes on and says, I am sure that nothing else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And it wasn't You know one passage and it wasn't one scripture or one book and this didn't happen overnight. I mean this was almost a two-year um process of god working on my heart of him washing me with the water of the word of god and and uh, you know, just like the blind man and john where jesus he spit in the mud and he You know made clay and he put it on the man's eyes and he told him to go wash that mud out Uh, and when he did he could see and and that's very similar to what god did for me through pastor benson you know, mud was put in my eyes and then through the water, you know, the water of the Word of God my eyes were washed clean and when I could finally see. God had changed everything that I ever knew, and He had revealed to me something more amazing than I had ever seen through my religion, and that was His amazing grace. That was the power of His blood to cleanse me of my sin. Ephesians 1-7 says, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace. And then on in chapter 2, It says, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. This was the most amazing revelation that could have ever happened to me as a religious young Saul, was for God to reveal His love and His grace to me, and that's exactly what He did. And so I got to the very end of my two-year mission trip. I only had three weeks to go, and after reading the New Testament for almost two years, I recognized the sufficiency of Christ's offering to cover me of my sin and I became a born-again believer while still on my Mormon mission. All glory and praise and honor be to God for making that change in my life. And as you can imagine I found myself in a bit of a predicament because I'm a Mormon missionary and a born-again Christian and I I had no idea what to do. I was terrified. And so I prayed to God and said, well, God, what do I do now? How do I come forward about this change that you have made in my life? And he did answer my prayer. And so many times when God answers our prayers, it's in the ways that we don't want. See, it's tradition in the Mormon mission system that when you get to be about two or three weeks to the end of your mission that you have this opportunity where you're supposed to share your testimony with your Mormon leaders and your missionary peers. So I had just gotten to this point of being a born-again believer and now I'm supposed to publicly share my testimony. in front of all these missionaries and I got up there and I was standing in a Mormon pulpit and just shaking in fear but the word says that I can do all things through him who strengthens me and God strengthened me in my weakness and I shared my testimony and my testimony was simply that Jesus Christ was all that I needed. that if there wasn't anything else that I knew in my life at that point as a very young believer, it was that His grace was sufficient for me, and that He had cleansed me with His blood, and that for the first time in my life, I knew that I was forgiven, and that was something that my religion could never offer me. And when I shared that testimony, I didn't really know what the repercussions were going to be. Two days later, I received a phone call from my leader in the Mormon church, and he said that he needed to sit down and have a chat with me. And I can smile and laugh about it now, but that was probably the single most terrifying moment of my life. You have to understand that in something like religion, like Mormonism, it's so much more than just the church you go to on Sunday. This was my identity as a human being. I mean, this was my relationships with my parents, my siblings, friends, my girlfriend, down to my own scholarship and education at Brigham Young University, my reputation, my life, my career path. I mean, everything that I was as a person was rooted and grounded in my faithfulness to this religion. And God had called me out of religion and into an amazing relationship with Jesus. That didn't make it, you know, easy. And I remember praying to God saying, I don't think that I can do this because I'm not willing to lose myself. But Jesus says if we want to be his disciple, we have to take up our cross and we have to lose our life so that we can find it. And he says, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his soul? And I recognized that Jesus was offering me something that the world could not. And so I sat down at my desk and I opened up the Bible and I said, God, just give me Give me something, give me strength and grace and help in time of need. And he did. And I ended up in Matthew chapter 19 verse 29. And it's Jesus talking to the Apostle Peter. And he says, And anyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my namesake will receive a hundredfold and shall inherit eternal life. And that was the Word of God that He laid on my heart in the moment that I faced the cost of losing everything in my life. And I quickly realized that losing everything, and losing it for the sake of Christ, that it was worth the cost. And if anyone is ever facing that choice in their life, I can tell you and witness to you that Jesus is always worth it. Because He satisfies in a way that nothing else can. I love that passage in John chapter 4 of Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, and he says, you know, if you drink of this water, you will be thirsty again, but if you drink of the water that I give you, you will never be thirsty forever. And then he goes on in John chapter 6 to say, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in me will never thirst. And I realized that my entire life I was hungry. And I was thirsty. And my religion and my works, my relationships, none of those things could ever satisfy me until I found Jesus. Until I accepted Him by faith, until I acknowledged what He had done for me, recognized that there was nothing that I could do to add what He had done on the cross. You know, Paul writes in Romans 4, he says, Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. But to the one who does not work, but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. And so I went into this meeting with my Mormon leader, and he questioned me for almost three hours about my testimony and my faith, and I told him, that Jesus was all that I needed, that I don't need Mormonism to be saved, and I don't need anyone or anything to stand in between me and God the Father. And in Mormonism, I had a prophet that mediated between me and God, but like we just read, there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who offered himself as a ransom for all, and that was my testimony given at the proper time. And after I shared my witness of Christ, of the sufficiency of his blood offering to cleanse me of my sin, his response to me was that I was filled with the spirit of the devil. He told me that I was an antichrist, they threatened to excommunicate me from Mormonism, and the worst insult he gave is that I sounded like a Baptist. And to this day, I still take most offense by that one. And so, it was at that point that I got kicked off my two-year Mormon mission trip. I got put on a plane, sent back to Salt Lake City, where I had to face the reality of the cost of following Jesus. My girlfriend at the time was a student at BYU, and as God was changing my heart, I was sharing things with her through letters and sharing scriptures with her, and God took her on her own journey. and God drew her into a relationship with Jesus, and she actually left Mormonism and later became my wife, and we now have three kids, and I praise God for that. My family, you know, it was tough to confront them, but I shared a very simple invitation. It was the exact same invitation that Pastor Benson gave me, and that was just read the Bible as a child. And so my brother and my sister were actually the first to do that, and they both came into knowledge of the saving grace of Jesus Christ. They're with us this morning. That's my brother down there in the jacket. Praise God. I don't know where Katie went. But God did a miraculous work in my entire family. My mom and my dad, Mike and Lynn, they had a lot at stake, as you guys can imagine. I mean, this was their entire investment as adults into this religion. My mother was a tenured professor at BYU. This was her financial security, her professional career. For my dad, it was his reputation, his relationships, his clientele. I mean, everything. But we know that when we come to find what Jesus can offer, that everything else pales in comparison. Like Paul says, everything I once counted as gain in my life, I now count that as loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus. And so that seed of the Word of God was planted in my parents' hearts, and there were many people along the way who watered it, but it was God and God alone who did the growth, and to this day both my mom and my dad have left Mormonism, have embraced biblical Christianity, and have now even started their own ministry in our fire for the Lord, and I just praise God for that. It's amazing the power of one seed, you know, and Pastor Benson was telling us this morning about the missionary that planted the seed in his life when he was a young child in Canada, and it started long before that. I just don't know what to say other than I just thank God for His amazing grace. I'm not worthy of it. None of us are. We don't deserve it. That's why it's good news. He loved us. He manifest that love. First John chapter four, it says, in this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that God has loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. And that's the amazing and simple gospel message. See, now I had to start with that. It's been 10 years. He walked in this morning and it's been 10 years. I can't talk, so I think we need to sing. Sing with me, would you? Let's sing Amazing Grace. Just bow your heads and your hearts and think about all that you just heard. And think, no matter who you are, maybe you didn't come from Mormonism, but if you're here this morning and you're going to heaven because of Jesus Christ, the grace is the same. And it's amazing for you. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, If we come to these verses, remember in the background, chapter 1, Paul has shared his own testimony. what God has done in his life, and he used his own testimony as a presentation of grace. Remember, there was a misunderstanding of the law among the errorists that had come into the church at Ephesus, and Paul now is sharing an understanding of grace, and he gets caught up in his own testimony. I love that. I hope we never get over that the sweetest expression of an understanding of grace is that I see it in my own life. So as he comes to this passage of scripture where he's talking about now the responsibilities, if you will, of the church in the messy mundane. Here it is in life. What are we supposed to be doing? What does it look like? And he's going to give instructions for life and for worship. And he starts by saying, you know what? Understand your relationship with God. It's prayer. The sweetest relationship you will ever have with God is not sitting in the middle of a crowd in an auditorium. It's going to be when you alone are there with God and you can come into His very presence and you have access without priest or mediator because of what Jesus has done. So Paul is going to now move from the praying part to the understanding of the prayer. And as he does, I want you to see where he begins. Look what he says in verse 4, who will have all men to be saved and to come under the knowledge of the truth. And I want us to understand before we even jump into this passage, think about the extent of that. all men to be saved. When I walk into a lost world, it doesn't matter if it's somebody who is completely saturated in Mormonism or somebody that looks like they're completely pagan. And I've had the opportunity to be in communist China, and I've had the opportunity to be in the paganism of of the jungles of Africa, God has allowed me to go to all of those places. And you know what? It is with confidence, not in me, not in my presentation, not in my ability, not in my vast theological understanding, but my confidence rests squarely in the effectual working of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That no matter who I meet, no matter who they are, no matter where they come from, that if I share Christ with them, the God of heaven will radically convert their soul. Amen. The one that will come this afternoon and say to you, can I take your order? Gospel can change them, convert them. So I want you to know that we sit at the precipice of opportunity with the gospel so often it's easy for us to look at it the opposite way. The world's getting darker and darker and there's fewer and fewer. But you know what? The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. And for Paul, that meant from pillar to post, from the most religious to the most pagan. It's the gospel. And I want you to see the execution of that, though he says in verse 4, we'll have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. It's not some ethereal, mystical thing that's out there. I will tell you, I did not have the wherewithal 10 years ago, sitting in my office, to get into a detailed refutation of theology of Mormonism. I didn't. In fact, at that point I'd done some teaching on what we called the cults and I'd done some exploration just enough to think, man, I hope I don't ever have to get into that. And you know what? When the Bible tells us that we ought to be ready to give every man an answer, it doesn't say that I have to be able to answer every detail of everything they believe. I am to give them an answer for the hope that lies within me. So Micah didn't know it, but I was sitting when I said, teach me what you guys know. I really was saying, I want to hear that. This is a great opportunity. And I wasn't asking because as they laid it out there, that I was going to give them all kinds of detailed answer. But this I believe, a compassionate witness for Christ endeavors to build a bridge and gain a right to share the most valuable truth in the world. And that's all I was after that day. I didn't come out and say, now you listen to me, now sit down, I listen to you, you're going to sit down and listen to me. I didn't say that. But I thought it. And I will tell you, all I wanted to do was an opportunity to share the knowledge of the truth. I was not under any guys that I was going to talk these guys into Jesus. But I was firmly convinced that the gospel could change their lives. It's amazing to me to stand here 10 years later and know that it has. Folks, what God calls us to do passionately is know the truth, share the truth. What truth? Well, thankfully, that's what Paul does next. And in light of this being a context on prayer, I want you to see that he starts with the person of prayer. And you know what, so often, I'm terrible with PowerPoint, you know that? There's like three or four really cool slides and all kinds of great information and a person of prayer. So often when we start even to think about a relationship with God, where do we start? With me, right? And you know, that's why we so often embrace in our default setting in our flesh, something I can do, something I can accomplish. Even when I feel a sense of my guilt and demerit, where do I start? I start with me. I've got to do this. I got to do that. I got to clean this. I got to fix that. And you know what the Bible says, you can work and clean and fixed. And in the end, you might have a cleaned up mess, but what you've got is still a mess. It's not of works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy. Do you realize what that is? It's an expression of the fact that He is going to do it through something I don't deserve, something I can't earn, something I'll never buy. According to His mercy, He saved us. But you know, so often when we come to prayer, now that I am a believer, we do the same thing. We are guilty in our sanctification of the very same thing that unsaved people do in trying to make their own way to God. And somehow now it's up to me. I have to do the works. I have to carry out the actions. I have to accomplish what is necessary. And so I often fail in my praying because I say, you know what, I haven't been so good. There's no reason for God to listen to me and hear me. You're right. When the psalmist said, what is man that thou are mindful of him and the son of man that thou visitest him? It's a negative rhetorical. The answer is he's nothing. As you sit here today, there's zero reason in you for why God would want anything to do with you, let alone to listen to what you want and give it to you. Nothing. But he does. And He does because of His mercy and because of His grace and because of His great love wherewith He loved us. He looked and realized it is impossible, it is impossible for those dwellers of earth to hack into heaven. Let me use modern illustration, okay? We can work and work and work and work all we want and say, you know what, this is it. We've found it. We're going to intercept the messages of heaven. We're going to weasel our way in. You know what, if we did, we'd probably want to put a worm in there. That's probably, that's what our nature is like. But there's no way I can get in communication with heaven from this side. but God created us in His image to fellowship with Him, that we would be able to communicate with Him. In a sense, God loved to walk in the garden with Adam. When Adam fell, that was broken and lost. And Adam's sin was imputed to our account, as we saw last Sunday night. You know who the person in prayer is? It's not you. Look who it is. 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. And if we're going to understand all of this relationship, one of the things we have to understand is a proper understanding of God. There is one God. There is none like Him. He is immutable, unchangeable. He is invisible, unattainable. He is God that is incomprehensible and he tells us that I'll never have my own understanding come to understand him. He is because of that inaccessible to me. He is a God that is all-powerful, omnipotent. He can do all things all the time the same. He is a God who is omniscient. He is all-knowing. He knows all things all the time the same. This God has never learned anything. This God will never learn anything. He's not made a decision where he changed his mind. He's God, and no, I don't understand that, because I can't help but think sequentially that that's who this one God is. You see, if there is God, there can only be one God, because there's another one that competes with him. One of them is not God, because the name God in and of itself, as we understand him as Yahweh, is self-existent one. There can be no competitors. Are you beginning to feel distant? I do. That's the point of this statement. Who am I praying to? That one God? Ever felt intimidated to walk into somebody's presence? Maybe the last time you felt it was more them walking into your presence, all you did was put your window down. And he presented himself in uniform. Remember that sense? This guy's here and the reason he's here is because something's not right between him and me. You don't typically put the lights on, pull you over, and say, we just wanted to stop you today because you won the blue light special. I know you're busy, but could we have a party? And it's usually not that, right? In a sense, this one God and I being a violator, I being broken, I have no business being in His presence. You have to understand God. Oh, but thankfully He doesn't stop there. Because in this passage, he's wanting us to understand there's a relationship between that God, that's the one I'm praying to, and me, and so we must have a proper understanding of Christ, and I use that word intentionally because he uses it here. Do we understand that word? It's not, that wasn't Jesus' surname. It's a title, it's a messianic title that has been used throughout the whole Old Testament in prophetic means, looking forward to the anointed one. The only one who would be able to accomplish gospel purposes, the Mashiach of God, the Messiah, it's this one. And the fact that we find it here because of our common knowledge with the Bible and we read Jesus Christ and we just read the two together, He is actually saying in name what He is now saying in truth. It is Jesus, the man by human name, ordained in his human name to be the one who would save his people from their sin, who is the Messiah of God, the prophesied Messiah, the one and only, the monogamous. He is God's beloved who can accomplish God's one purpose. Oh, we must understand Christ. And understanding him in that position, we have to understand his reality. He is the man, Christ Jesus. That's oxymoronic. They don't go together, do they? Oh, he is both son of God and son of man. Understand that this one is fully man and he is fully God. That's why it's not just something that we ought to do at Christmas. Let's sing about and heart the herald angels sing and round yon virgin. And we sing that as though those are just the words of our Christmas songs. Hear me, he was born of a virgin. Therefore he was not of the seed of Adam, but he could redeem the seed of Adam. The virgin birth isn't something to be trifled with, for without it, there's no point in us being here today. Jesus had to be fully God in order to fully represent God to man and redeem us by paying our penalty. And He had to be fully man in order to represent man in order to pay the penalty for our sin. He who knew no sin fully God was made to be sin for us fully man that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. We have to understand his reality and then we have to understand his role. Notice what Paul says here. This one, this unique one, this one and only one, verse 6, did something. Who gave himself a ransom. For all. When you hear the word ransom, what do you think of? I think of all those innocent girls captured by terrorists waiting to be slaughtered unless somebody pays. Ransom, right? And in a sense, it's an incredible picture because it is God of heaven looking down at us in our sin enslaved state. Realizing we are held captive. By our sin, by our sinfulness. Shackled. In blindness and in darkness. And God looking at us. had no debt of his own. He paid a debt he didn't owe because I owed a debt I could not pay. And he gave himself a ransom. You hear the terminology of redemption? It's not a pretty picture. It ushers us into the sweaty, smelly, filthy, dirty, unjust marketplace of slavery. To be exchanged as household goods. That's where we were. The slave market of sin. And the glorious son of God looked and he said, I will be as them. That I might bear their sin. That they might be as me. Cleansed and accepted by my father. And he redeemed you. He paid for me, my sin debt. A ransom. But notice it doesn't end there, because he said he did that, and he didn't say, now there, we took care of that, now smarten up! Don't do that again! Because you'll get in trouble again, and that's it, I'm done, I've done my part. You mess up again, it's on you, buddy. No. Dying for us and satisfying the just wrath of God on my demerit, I am declared to be a son. He came to his own, his own received him not, but to as many as received him, to them gave he the authority, the right, the power to be called the sons of God. And so, you know, we see in this passage of scripture, we see then that he is not just a ransom for all to be testified in due time. But we see that he is our mediator. He is the go between the go between and redemption. So that through his crosswork, I might be justified. He is our propitiation, the satisfaction for our sin so that it might be atoned. That doesn't mean to be covered. It means to be expiated, parted as far as the East is from the West. So it never shows up on my record. And as my mediator, he now stands as the representative for me between God and me. He's your mediator. Oh, do you sense the incredible truth that's here for us in our relationship with God? Can you hear the burning passion that he's speaking here with regard to our relationship with him in prayer? Paul moves from the person in prayer to the preacher in prayer, and he talks about himself He says, this is what my life is about. He talks about it being in due time, at just the right time, in just the right way. God did just the right thing in order for us to be redeemed. And therefore, I am a declarer of that. My life is passionately filled with being one. He says, I'm not lying. There's no deception in this. I have no agenda in this. It is that message that I am called to take to the lost of the world, to the Gentile nations. You know, in a sense, what Paul was saying, I can't help it. I know what God did for me, and I know their need. I can't help it. I can't help but tell them what God has done. Can you? And then he brings us to the end of this passage, and I want you to see what he says as I close. I will therefore. Remember, when you see a therefore, always ask, what's that therefore? Typically, the answer comes before it, and he says, because of who Jesus is in light of who God is and because of what Jesus has done in order for me to be redeemed and be reconciled to God, here is my plea. I will, therefore, that men everywhere lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting pray. And he calls us to understand what our relationship with God ought to be, and he communicates a passion for prayer, and He gives these instructions, everyone, everywhere. It's not something reserved for the priest. It's not something reserved for the pastor. It's not something reserved for the special, designated spiritual ones somewhere. God in heaven through redemption has made it possible for each of us to come boldly to the throne of grace and there find grace and mercy to help in time of need. You realize that comes on the heels of him saying we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmity, but was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin. Come, therefore, boldly come with confidence because Jesus does know you and Jesus and knowing you did exactly what you need to be done to be reconciled to God. And so he says this is for everyone, everywhere, passionately, humbly communicate with the God of heaven. Then he gives some instructions, and I think they're profound. The first instruction that he gives us with regard to this praying is lifting up holy hands. By the way, he's not giving us some form, I got to figure out if you're going to get your hands just right. And God will hear you. It's lifting up holy hands. It's actually instruction that is using an anthropomorphism. It's speaking to our life and representing the whole life by the hands. And so it's not even talking about position and raising the hands as much as it's talking about the hands being representative of a holy life. Ever find yourself doing this? Oh, not not me. You realize that what you're doing with your hands, you're talking about you, it's representing you. That's the idea here. He says, in light of what Christ has done for you to be cleansed so that you can come and commune with your God, live with a passion for purity. God, I don't want what this world has to offer. I don't want the filth. I don't want the distraction. I don't want to be marred in the very things that you set me free from. God, I want to be right with you. Help me to live with a fresh understanding of the cleansing power of Christ through the gospel and to become resigned from the things of this life that distract me from you with a passion to be right with you at all times. Lifting holy hands. Purity in life, and then he says one more instruction, and he says purity and motives without wrath and doubting. Why do you want to come? Why do you want to pray? Why do you want the relationship? Is it about you? Is it about your stuff? Is it about your life? You find that most of your communion with God is, God, fix this so I can live better. You know what we say most of the time without ever verbalizing it? Why do I want my problems fixed? Why do I want my needs met? If you run down the rabbit trail of what that looks like, what you'll find is, I live without God. I live without thinking about God. I live without being mindful of God. And, oh, I will pray before my meal and say, thank you for this food and all of that. But I live in the whooping wharf of life without actually being mindful of my God in all things. And then a problem comes. I do my best on my own to rationalize that and I get a little upset. Why did that happen for now? And I turn to fatalism in my expressions. Figures that happened at a time like this, right? And so I talk about the universe being filled with chance and fate. When I can't get beyond my frustration with that and it's not getting fixed and now it begins to worry me, some point I'm like, God, did you see this? God, I could use your help. I could use your help with this. And you realize what we're saying in our praying? God, if you would fix this up, I could quickly get back to living without you. Do you realize that that's what's captured in this kind of an understanding without wrath and doubting? It's really calling us to an understanding of purity and motives. Without wrath means putting it away, and the doubting here is actually the Greek word for the word disputing. Translated in Philippians 2.14, do all things without murmurings and disputing. James says it this way, you lust and have not. You kill and desire to have and cannot obtain. You fight and war, yet you have not because you ask not. You ask and receive not because you ask amiss that you might consume it upon your lust. He says it in pointed form. Fight and wrestle and do all of that, trying to figure it out on your own, and finally in that kind of vein, in a sense of frustration, it's like, God, fix this! And you realize that often what we're doing in prayer is asking the God of heaven to worship us. Do you realize that that is a total misunderstanding of the truth of the gospel? The issues of life call us back to a reminder of our utter dependence on the God of heaven. And that's where we're supposed to live, folks. God, I need you every day in all things for all things. If I'm going to live the way I should live. It's the same amazing grace. I wonder this morning as we close. Are you living? In light of that grace. Are you overwhelmed in your living as a believer with the same grace that saved you? Or are you living independent of this God who did so much that you might have a relationship with him? Paul's calling us, calling Timothy and the church at Ephesus to realize, live every day in light of who Jesus is and what Jesus did. Embracing your relationship with Christ is absolutely essential in all things. Live a gospel-focused life. Are you? Let's pray.