We shall now turn to 1 Timothy chapter 2 and our text for this evening is verse 5. 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 5. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Tonight I would like to speak to you about the Mediator. And he's clearly set before us here. We're told there's only one God. One God who is from eternity to eternity, the infinite, the eternal, the unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. One God. One creator of heaven and earth. The one who rules over this world. And that God is going to judge this world. But then we're told that there's one mediator. One mediator between God and men. The man Christ Jesus. One God. Not a God of the Jews and another God of the Gentiles. Not a God of the Muslims and another God of the Hindus. No, there's only one God. Whatever country we come from, whatever our background, whatever our religion, there's only the one God. And then there's the mediator. The middle man, as it were. the one who brings God and man together. And we're told Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due season. He is the Saviour. He's the only Redeemer. He's the one through whom our sins are pardoned and heaven becomes ours. Now in this chapter Paul is requesting that prayers be made for all men. Verse 1, I exhort therefore that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions and the giving of thanks be made for all men. We're to pray for all. And we're to pray for kings and for those in authority that we may lead quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty. Prayers should be made for all because all need God and they need to be saved. And it's the revealed will of God that all men and women should be saved. Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. But we're to pray particularly for kings and for those in authority, prime ministers and presidents, so that we might have a quiet life, that we might have freedom to worship, peace to practice our Christian faith. We're to pray for all, and our prayers are to be all-encompassing. And as we pray for all, then blessing comes to ourselves. But looking then today at the mediator, I would like us to ask six questions with regard to the mediator. First of all, why do we need a mediator? Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden didn't need a mediator, because they weren't sinners. God spoke to them and revealed himself to them in the garden. The angels in heaven, they don't need a mediator, and they have no mediator. But because of the fall, sin came into the world. And when sin has come into the world, it creates a barrier between God and men. And because of sin, God's wrath is constantly against mankind. And therefore we need a middle one. A deisman, as we find him called in the book of Job. who brings, as it were, both together. Sin entered the world, and because of sin, God is angry. The wrath of God rests upon men and women. And God must punish sin, because he is a holy God, a just God. A God who rules this world according to his laws. And those who break these laws must be punished for it. God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. So how can God tolerate sin? How can God look upon sinners? If he's angry with sinners every day, how can sinners like you and me get to heaven? How can we have peace with God? We need a mediator. because God's wrath is against us and God's power is infinite, he has prepared a place of punishment, a place prepared for the devil and his angels. Satan and those who followed him, the angels that followed him and rebelled against God in heaven, they were cast out of heaven and God prepared a hell for them. And God said to our first parents, in the day that thou eatest of it, thou shalt surely die with regard to the forbidden fruit. And then we know that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and so they needed the mediator. And we're told that the mediator came into the garden. Adam heard footsteps in the garden. The footsteps of a man. God taking on the form of a man. Mediators. We have mediators in different situations. For example, the war in Ukraine. There's various people who've tried to be mediators and bring about peace. President Xi of China, President Erdogan of Turkey have tried to act as mediators. So far they've failed. Similarly with the war in Gaza, there have been those like the Egyptians and the Qataris who have tried to be mediators to bring about peace. So the mediator is one who brings about peace. Our situation, of course, is far more serious than that of the people of Ukraine or the people of Gaza. Far more serious because we are sinners against Almighty God. And the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth and unrighteousness. And God must punish sin. So God, God provides us with a Mediator. We need a Mediator. And do you have a Mediator? Can you claim Christ as your Mediator? So that's the first reason then. Why do we need a Mediator? It's because we're sinners and God is angry with us because of our sin. But then secondly, the second question is, who can be this Mediator? There are three persons in the Godhead. Could one of the persons of the Godhead be the mediator? But he cannot, because there's only one God, and there's only one divine will. God can't pray to God. God the Son can't pray to God the Father. God the Holy Spirit can't pray to God the Father. There's only one will in God, one divine essence, one divine being in three persons. And no human could be a mediator because human beings are too small, too insignificant. God is infinite. God is so great, so mighty, so powerful, so glorious. And man is so tiny. Man is just a little creature. So man cannot act as a mediator. And of course, every man is a sinner anyway. We've all sinned in Adam and fallen in Adam, so every man needs a mediator, every man and woman. We all need a mediator, so a mere man cannot be a mediator. But then God finds a mediator for us. God sends his Son into this world, and the Son of God comes willingly and takes to himself a human nature. and unites that human nature with his person. So that as a man, he can pray. As a man, he can suffer. As a man, he can take our sins. As a man, he can atone for our sins. He can pay the ransom price. As a man, he can stand for us before God, but he's not a mere man. Because he's God, that gives value to him, and it gives power to him. As God, he has, as it were, one hand on God's head, and one hand on our head, bringing us together, God and man. There is one mediator between God and men. the man, Christ Jesus. He took, the Son of God took to himself a true human nature, a body and soul just like we have, united to him so that he now has two natures, two natures forever, and having two natures there are two wills in Christ. There's the divine will and the human will. And you remember how he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane when he was struggling with this great suffering, this cup of curses that he had to drink in order for our salvation. And he said to his father, Father, all things are possible with thee. If it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. And you see how there's a difference there between my will and thy will. Thy will is the will of God, and the will of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But my will there is the will of the man Christ Jesus. not my will but thine be done. And of course there was no other way by which he could fulfil the role of mediator and be the saviour and the redeemer apart from drinking the cup of curses. So eventually you remember how he got up as it were from his knees where he was praying and he said the cup that the Father hath given me Shall I not drink it? Of course I shall. I will drink it. Yes, I will. I will go through with it. And God the Father will be glorified and my people will be saved. Who could be the mediator? There's only one person in heaven and on earth who could be the mediator. And that is the man Christ Jesus. He can pray for us. And what a man of prayer he was. Praying early in the morning, praying late at night. He would get up before others, get up in the morning and go out to find a quiet place to pray. When others went to bed at night, he would go out and he would pray. And through the day he would be praying. He was always praying. praying without ceasing, always living in an attitude of prayer to God. And now in heaven, what is he doing there? He's praying for us. If any man sin, we have an advocate with a Father. We have one who's praying for us in heaven. The man, Christ Jesus, he prays constantly for us. Well, that leads then to a third question. When did he become the mediator? When did he become the mediator? Well, he couldn't be the mediator as God, so he could only become the mediator when he became a man. Before he became a man, He was God, divine nature, alone, one divine person within the Trinity in heaven. And yet, although he became mediator 2,000 years ago when he was born in Bethlehem, yet in another sense, his mediatorial office stretches back into the Old Testament. It reaches right back, just as the saving work from the cross reaches back into the Old Testament too. We find these strange words in Revelation 13 verse 8. A lamb slain from the foundations of the world. Slain before the world was founded. Christ, the Son of God, the Mediator, was slain before the foundations of the world. How? In the purpose and plan of God, of course. And in the purpose and plan of God, He was the Mediator from the beginning. But there's also another sense in which He was a Mediator in the Old Testament. You see, We tend to think of God as almost very old, with a past, a present and a future. But God's not subject to time. God is eternal. And the eternity of God means that he's above time. He's not subject to a progression of moments. He's not subject to any development of thought, or ideas, or practices, or purposes. He is, as it were, above the universe of time. And so, for God, who is above the universe of time, is not subject to time in that way. And therefore, in the eyes of God, Christ is the mediator. Christ is slain from before the foundations of the world. And so we find in the Garden of Eden, the mediator coming in. The Son of God taking to himself human form. And the Son of God saying to Adam, yes, cursing Adam, thus thou art and to the dust thou shalt return, and cursing Eve, in pain thou shalt bring forth children, but also cursing the serpent, and in that curse giving hope to men and women. I will put enmity between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. It, there, the seed of the woman, was himself the mediator in the Garden of Eden. There he's saying, I will bruise your head, Satan. You've succeeded in getting men to fall. But it's all part of the purpose of God. From the beginning it's determined. And I will crush your head. Yes, it will be painful for me, because taking to my nature, my heel will be crushed. I will suffer death, and it's through death that I will destroy you. who have the power of death, and who brought death into human experience, who through death destroyed him that had the power of death. He brings life and immortality to light through the Gospel. So Christ is the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world, and he's the mediator from the beginning of human experience on earth. God reveals His wrath and His curse against our first parents and against the human race, but He also reveals mercy from the very beginning. There's a Gospel there from Genesis 3 and verse 15. The Gospel continues right down through the Old Testament. Enoch and Elijah went straight to heaven, not just in their souls, but took their bodies with them to heaven too. Why? because of the lamb slain from the foundations of the world. The saints in the Old Testament weren't potentially saved, as some people strangely say. No, they were truly saved, and fully saved, and fully, in their souls, went to heaven. And Enoch and Elijah and their bodies went to heaven too, fully saved, and fully saved by the Lamb that would die on Calvary's cross. And they too had a mediator. Yes, the mediator was there in the Old Testament as well. There were types and symbols, and through these types, the prophets, the priests, the kings, yes, there were pictures of the mediator, but the mediator himself was acting. And as they prayed, they could only pray through the mediator, because no prayer is acceptable to God but the prayer which comes through Jesus Christ. And so the mediatorial work of Christ was there, way back in the Old Testament. When did he become the mediator? In one sense, when he was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, but in another very real sense, when man fell at the beginning. A fourth question. How does the man, Christ Jesus, fulfil the office of mediator? He does that by fulfilling the offices of prophet, priest, and king. As the prophet, Christ is God's man to us. God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in times past unto our fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath ordained appointed heir of all things, the Son of God. He's the great prophet. In the Old Testament, God sometimes spoke through dreams and visions, sometimes through theophanies. But who were these theophanies? They were the mediator. They were the angel of the Lord, who is the second person of the Trinity. And these dreams and visions, they were coming through the Word of God, the Logos. And that's the second person of the Trinity, who's the great prophet. And the prophets who spoke in Old Testament times, they spoke because the Spirit of the Lord led them. The Spirit of the Lord spoke through them. Christ is the great prophet. He reveals God to us. No man knows the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal him. God spoke through these prophets, but it was as they were carried along by the Spirit of Christ. And God speaks to us today through the Bible, which is the Word of Christ. revealed by His Spirit, written by the authors who were carried along by the Spirit of Christ, and illuminated for us. The page of Scripture becomes real and authoritative to us as the Spirit applies it to our hearts, opening our minds so that we understand what is written in the Scriptures. Christ, the Mediator, reveals to us what we are to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. But the mediator is not just the prophet, he's also the priest. And if the prophet is God's man to mankind, the priest is man's man to God. He's our representative to God. He approaches God on our behalf. And as our priest, he offers the sacrifice. And we have that in verse 6, who gave himself a ransom for all. He gave himself a ransom for us. We are redeemed not with corruptible things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. As of a lamb without blemish and without spot, the Lamb of God, He is. our Redeemer, the One who buys us out of slavery. We were slaves to sin, to Satan. Christ paid the price for us. Not to the devil. The ransom is paid not to Satan. He's a usurper. But paid to divine justice. Paid to his Father. He paid the price for us. He offered himself as a sacrifice on our behalf. He took our sins and he atoned for them. Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. All we are sinners, but Christ took our sin, took our place, and we are saved through the Lamb, through the sacrifice, through the shed blood of Calvary. So that's His great work on the cross, offering the sacrifice, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. But that's not all that he does. There's also the second part of his priestly work, which is to intercede for us, to plead with the Father on our behalf, to take his own blood, As the priest took the blood on the day of atonement, the blood of the sacrifice and went into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled it that one day in the year upon the mercy seat and toward the mercy seat. And so our Lord Jesus took his own blood and ascended up to heaven and sprinkled it upon the throne of God in heaven. So that that throne of judgment and of wrath becomes a throne of grace and a throne of mercy. The throne of God. God so loved the world. It's not that God hated us and Christ had to turn to love us. Oh no, God loved his own elect from all eternity. But Christ had to atone for us. He loved us, God loved us, but divine wrath was against us because of our sin. And Christ's blood sprinkled on the mercy seat, on the throne of God, brings about forgiveness. If any man sin, we have an advocate with a father. And when we pray, We come in the name of Christ. We pray for Jesus' sake. And it must always be for Jesus' sake. For the Redeemer's sake. For the Lord's sake. We must never come in any other name. And we must never think that we're going to be accepted for any other reason than for Christ's sake alone. And he takes our prayers. and he mingles them with his own blood, and he presents them as sweet-smelling incense before the throne of God in heaven. If any man sin, we have an advocate, we have a lawyer, we have a King's counsel who stands for us, and he never lost a case. What a wonderful mediator we have. Christ is our mediator, offering a sacrifice on our behalf to atone for our sins, and then interceding for us forevermore, presenting our prayers before the God of all earth, God of heaven and earth. But then, he's also our mediator as king. as our King, the Kingly Mediator, the Kingly Messiah. Remember the tremendous emphasis there is in the Old Testament upon the Son of David, the One who is coming, the Lord's Anointed, the King. They were looking for, longing for the King. Where is He that was born? King of Judea. King of the Jews, because we have seen a star in the East and are come to worship him, the Great King. And we need a King, we need a King to subdue us to himself, because we're born rebels, and we continue rebels until he subdues us. But the King, by his Spirit working in us, breaks down our rebellion. convicts us of our sin, makes us willing in a day of his power, so that we are subdued. Subdues us to himself, so that we come crying for mercy, and he receives us, and he rules over us. And He guides and directs us. And we seek direction from the King. And He guides us by His Spirit through the Word, enlightening our minds. And He defends us from our enemies, and particularly from Satan. If we were left to ourselves, none of us could endure the temptations of Satan. He's far more powerful, far cleverer than we are. we would be destroyed. But he is as a wall of fire around us, so he allows Satan only to come so far, and then he stops him. He allows him to tempt us in certain situations for our good, to humble us, and to make us more and more dependent upon him, so that we would be praying constantly, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Deliver us, Lord, when we sin. Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us. Forgive our debts. as we forgive those who are indebted to us. So He rules and defends us. He restrains and conquers all His and our enemies. And He's head over all things. And He's King of this world for our benefit and for the benefit of the Church. King of the world, but particularly mediatorial King of His people. He's our King. And one day we're going to be united to our King. We're going to be married to him in a sense, so united to him that it's described as a marriage, joined with him forever. And the Lamb will lead us to living fountains of water. And God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. the Lamb shall be our leader and king forever. And he will say, behold I and the children whom God hath given me. So he fulfills the role of mediator as prophet, priest, and king. Fifthly, what should be our response then to the mediator? We notice here Verse 4, God our Saviour who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. How are people saved? As they come to know the truth. How are they saved? As they put their faith in the Christ that is revealed to them. There's a Saviour, a Saviour who says, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. I am the door. If you want to get to God, to heaven, you have to go through the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall go in and out and find pasture. Yes, Christ is the way and the only way to God. He is the door. He is the gate. What should be our response to Christ the mediator? Come to Him. Trust in Him. Accept Him. Believe Him. Receive Him. Embrace Him. Ask Him to be our Saviour. Ask Him to be our Mediator. Repent and believe. Turn to Him. Turn from idols to the living and true God. We need a Mediator. Don't look to any other Mediator. Don't look to any priest to save you. Look to Christ alone. He's the only priest that will do. And without Christ the mediator, we will end up in hell. We need an advocate. There's a serious case to which we're all heading. We're going to stand before the judge. How can you stand before the judge if you don't have a good lawyer? How can you as a sinner, a criminal, survive the judgment day? Unless you have this advocate, this lawyer, and he never loses a case, take him, ask him, plead with him to be your lawyer. Ask him to come into your heart and your life. Trust him. And then a final question. What is our duty then as those who know the Mediator, and who have this, advocate with the Father? We have that brought before us in verse 6. Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. For unto I am ordained a preacher and an apostle. Yes, there are the preachers and apostles. but especially to be testified in due time. You know, we have that fascinating passage at the beginning of Acts chapter 8. In Acts chapter 7, we're told about Stephen, stoned to death. What a great and godly man he was. How terrible that they killed him. And after they had killed Stephen, Something terrible happened. But something wonderful! The Christians were scattered. Scattered everywhere. They had to flee from Jerusalem. But oh, that was the purpose of God. They were scattered. And they went everywhere, preaching the Word. And that word, preaching, is not talking about standing on a street corner and preaching, or preaching in a church. It's euangelizo. It's evangelizing. It's gossiping the Gospel. It's communicating the way of salvation. And that's what's needed today. Oh, what we need. What we need Christians to be communicating the Gospel. You know, there's so few who come to church. In a sense, there's plenty of preachers preaching in churches. But there's so few who come. And you go out into the streets, as the church here does, and preach us, but there's so very, very few who listen. But every one of us are in a situation where we are in contact with lots of people, and we are to be preaching the Word. And if we did that, how effective our evangelism would be. The most effective evangelism is speaking to friends, talking to those you know, getting that Word across, making friends with people and telling them about the wonderful Saviour that you've come to know and inviting them to church to hear the Word too. Yes, in Acts chapter 8, we're told about the Christians scattered, going everywhere, preaching the Word. And then we're told about Philip, that he went down to Antioch, and he preached the Word there. And it's a different Greek word that's used there, the word kerugma. He trumpeted, he heralded forth the Gospel. You see, there's the place for the preachers, just as we have here, Paul speaks of himself as a preacher and an apostle. But the preaching and the apostle needs also every Christian to be talking, talking to others about Christ, telling them, testifying of this wonderful lawyer. We've got a lawyer and he's won our case and he's reconciled us to God and we've got peace with God. God is angry with sinners every day and God's wrath is against you but you need peace with God and you know what? There's somebody who can make peace with God for you. You've got to trust in Jesus. He's the great Advocate. He's offered Himself as a ransom on your behalf. And if you trust in Him, He will take up your case with His Father. And those who trust in Him will never perish. None perish that whom trust. Trust in Christ. and commend this advocate to others. Let us pray.