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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.
God's Plan for our Prayers
Series 1 Timothy
We must understand God's perspective on prayer.
Including testimony from Micah Wilder.
| Sermon ID | 810141325497 |
| Duration | 58:43 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | 1 Timothy 2:5-8 |
| Language | English |
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