Don't Get Sidetracked

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

All right, let's pray for Pastor Luke as he comes up and delivers the message for this warning. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for the gift of this family here. We thank you, Lord, that it is the power of your spirit through our faith in Jesus Christ that unites us with one another. Lord, bridging the gap out of any way that the world would seek to divide and separate us, to create tension or division in our lives or between one another. Lord, that the power of your spirit has united us with one another by faith in Jesus Christ. Lord, I pray that you would magnify the power of the spirit in our lives and relationships this morning. That you would draw us close to one another as we draw close to you. Lord, that you would give us increased capacity to love you and increase capacity to love one another. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Luke. We have been studying the book of 1 Timothy. We've been slowly walking through it. We still have a number of scripture journals that have the whole text of 1 Timothy, along with 2 Timothy and Titus in the back.

It's a great little booklet with just a copy of the Bible on one side and space for notes on the other. And I know many of you are using those to take notes. So we have some of those. Please pick those up if that would be a useful gift or tool for you. And as we've been kind of talking through the 1 Timothy, last week I introduced sort of an outline for the book, sort of a place for us to kind of keep our minds clear on what are we talking about, what's going on. So I think I have an outline up there. No, I did not put it in my slides today. So it is not the tech people's fault. That is my fault. But the basic outline of the book of 1 Timothy is that it starts in chapter one with an introduction where Paul is just kind of setting the stage. He's introducing himself, saying hi to Timothy, and he's encouraging Timothy. Timothy, this is what you ought to do. You need to focus on this. And then there's two sort of middle parts of 1 Timothy, and both of those are kind of instructions.

They're places where Paul's giving direct instruction to Timothy, saying, lead the church like this. And he gives some very direct instruction. And then at the end, towards the latter half of the last chapter, he finishes where he started, giving instructions to Timothy, saying, you ought to do this. You ought to do that. And he charges him and encourages him. And each section is kind of broken up by sort of a poem of sorts, where Paul sort of expresses some doctrine or some theology in a poetic format. Now, at the heart of 1 Timothy, I know that we sometimes when we pick up this book, the Bible, we think of it as kind of one big unified story, and it absolutely is. But when 1 Timothy was first written, it was a letter. It was a letter between Timothy and Paul. Paul was writing to Timothy, who was a young leader in the Church of Ephesus. Paul had left him there in Ephesus and said, Timothy, you're in charge. Don't let the sheep go crazy. And then the sheep went crazy, and Paul had to write to him.

And so this is, in a sense, this is a letter of encouragement to Timothy. And we kind of get to read this. And honestly, that is what my primary heart is for today. I'm not starting with some sort of fancy, crazy illustration or thing like that. I just simply today, I just want to kind of take the heart posture and just say, we're going to read this letter that was written to be an encouragement and instruction to the Church in Ephesus. And I just want us to say, how could Paul's words be an instruction and encouragement to us here in this time and place? What does it have for my life? What does it have for your life? And I think we will walk away with some good words of encouragement. Now, Paul's opening concern in this first part is, I think, still mainly important. And he introduces it in verses 3 through 5 of the first chapter. So 1 Timothy 3 says this, "As I urged you, " he's talking to Timothy. "As I urged you, when I was going to Macedonia, remain in Ephesus, so that you may charge certain persons to not teach any different doctrine,

Nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations, rather than the stewardship from God, which is by faith. The aim of our charge is love, that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." This is Paul's primary concern up front. He's just like, "Timothy, there are some people, " you know who, Timothy, "who you are supposed to not let them teach false doctrine." He's supposed to keep them quiet. And he goes on the name 2 in particular at the end of the chapter, Hymenaeus and Alexander, I think. And so he's saying they're getting distracted. They're talking about myths and genealogies. Now, we don't know exactly what that means, but we can maybe imagine that maybe they're looking in the Old Testament and they're looking at the genealogies and saying, "Oh, well, if you can prove that you're a descendant of so-and-so, then you're special in creating kind of distinctions and guessing." And essentially, it ends up in this place of speculation, a place of speculations, and it's distracting. And he's saying, he said, "Rather than focusing on the stewardship which is from God or God's work, the thing that God has given the church to do, they're over here talking about these things that do not matter

Or uncertain or unclear, these myths, these speculations." And I think that it's still true that the same temptation happens and is available to us in the church today. I think we can still be distracted by things that end up being speculation, that end up being secondary, that do not produce love. Because what's Paul saying? Paul's saying, "Don't be over here talking about genealogies and myths and all these things that lead to speculation or unsound doctrine. That's not helpful. What should we actually be doing? We should be doing God's work, the thing that He's given us to do. And what does that do? That produces love. It produces love for our neighbor. It produces love for God. He's referring back to this idea that Jesus had in His own words, Jesus was teaching and a teacher of the law came up and said, "Jesus, what's the most important of the Ten Commandments?" That's how He talked, I'm sure. And Jesus just says, "Love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." So these two commandments on which the whole law is fulfilled and hangs.

And so here Paul is saying, "Are we doing the work of God? Are we holding on to the gospel in such a way that is producing love?" Now these same temptations, I think, are still here for us. And what we could name tons and tons of them. But the first one that came to my mind this week was something that was said to have happened or rather it didn't happen this past week was, I don't know if you've heard about some of the speculations or the predictions about the rapture that was supposed to have happened Tuesday. Let me miss this. We did. We did miss it. So maybe you heard of it, maybe you had not heard of it, but there was a lot of internet talk and speculation. I will be as bold to call him a false teacher and correct. False teacher in Africa who made the prediction that Jesus was coming back and the rapture was happening this past Tuesday, Wednesday-ish, depending on the time zones or whatever, because Jesus really cares about that. But anyways, so there was a lot of people who got really stirred up by that and it caused a lot of confusion.

A lot of people were very excited and made some big life decisions that maybe have some big consequences now because the rapture didn't happen. Now, if by chance you kind of got wrapped up into some of that, you were maybe a little anxious or maybe you were a little scared or you'd heard about this. It's not a bad thing to look forward to the coming of Jesus. That's not a bad thing. We're encouraged to be looking forward to it, to be praying for Jesus to come. That's all biblical. But what we need to do is keep a heart where we put it in a place of saying, "Lord, Jesus, come soon, but we will trust you with when you come." And I'm not going to worry about it until then. I am going to be faithful with what you've charged me to do. That's the very simple condensed version of what the Bible teaches on that. And the thing is, is that running around and looking at the signs and the stars and the blood moons and all the different things that you could possibly find

That are predicting that it's going to happen at such and such time is meaningless speculation. It does not produce love. It is not the work that Christ gave the church. Jesus did not say, "I'm leaving. Until then, you should speculate about when I'm coming back." He said, "No." He said, "Go out into the world. Make disciples, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you and baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I will be with you till the end of the age whenever that happens." That's the teaching that we've been given. Let us not get distracted. Now, maybe you hadn't heard about that, and this was the first time, because it wasn't everywhere. But if you hadn't heard about this supposed rapture prediction and all the things concerning that, you probably heard something else. I don't know what, but you probably heard other things, other things that were saying, "This is the most important thing. This is the most important thing. Look over here. Pay attention to this." Paul here is writing to the Church of Ephesus, and he's naming a handful of people who were being distracting, who were false teachers, who were focusing over on this,

That were getting distracted from the Word of God from the teaching of the gospel. And we live in a day and age where you have thousands of people who are trying to feed you ideas, information, persuasions in your pocket, right? Every day when we turn on our phone, when we turn on our television, our radio, we have people who are saying tons of things. Some of those things are helpful. Some of them are not. And all of them are the most important thing at any given moment. And I think that we can still run into this place where we get distracted from what is it that we're supposed to be focused on? What is the stewardship? What is the work that God has given the Church? And what are we to be always lifting up and pointing to? And Paul here is saying that's the gospel. That's Jesus Christ. That is the love and the commandments that He's given us. This idea, this kind of train of thought led me to think about, at least a somewhat famous painting. I don't know if a lot of people consider Renaissance paintings famous.

But there is this famous painting of Martin Luther. Martin Luther was a reformer. He was the guy who put the 99 theses on the door. And he started the Protestant Revolution. He really initiated a kind of a rediscovery of the gospel as we kind of know it. And in large part is responsible for the fact that we're not all Catholic. And Luther had some convictions about what preaching was. And there was this famous painting I'm going to have up here on the screen for you, of Luther preaching. And it'll be here soon. There it is. So here in this painting, you've got Martin Luther over on the right. That's a pulpit in a medieval church. I think they did pulpits really cool back then. But, you know, people still preach out of things like that. So there's the pulpit and then there's the congregation on the far left. And then right in the center is Jesus Christ on the cross. And what you see is you see that Luther's got the Bible open in front of him. And he's got his left hand in the text.

And then he's got in his right hand, you can't quite see it because it's a little small, but in his right hand, he's pointing to Jesus. And then if you were able to see the eyes and trace the eye lines of the congregation, they're not looking at Luther, they're looking at the cross. And I love this painting because it is a reminder to us, it is a teaching of what is preaching supposed to be. What are we supposed to be doing in this time? We're supposed to be opening the text and beholding Christ. That's the point. That's what I intend to do today, that's what we hope and pray to do every Sunday, is not look at me, look at my ideas, look at how good of a show we put on. No, let's open the Bible together. Let's open God's word and let's look at Jesus Christ together. And that's what preaching ought to be. And that's what we ought to be striving to do as a church, is to always look at Jesus Christ, to not get distracted, to not get lost. This is kind of Paul's kind of, I think, really Paul's opening theme here.

And the reason I'm going through all of this is because I think it remains true through his opening statements in chapter two. I think the opening part of chapter two only makes sense if you understand that Paul is telling the church, he's telling Timothy, he's telling Ephesus, he's saying don't get distracted. Don't lose sight of the cross. Don't lose sight of the gospel, of who Jesus is, who God is and who you've been called to be. This is what Paul is encouraging and he's saying do not lose sight. There are a thousand things in this world that we could talk about this morning, but none of them are as important as talking about Jesus Christ our Savior. That's what we ought to do. So with that firmly established as kind of his emphasis and opening statement for this book, we'll turn to chapter two and I want us to see how he continues to echo this, how he continues to make this front and center in his first verses here, because it might to us at first seem, what is he talking about? How's that flow from what he was just talking about?

It makes sense if we know that he is telling us to keep focused. So chapter two verse one says this, first of all that I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people. So right there, he's got this list, I'm urging you. This is the first importance that supplications, petitions, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people. Those are sort of four different words there for saying prayer. He's being kind of, he's not necessarily making a list of exhaustively of, these are all the different types of prayers there are. That's not necessarily what he's trying to do. What he's trying to say is like all kinds of prayers. He's trying to get this very clear. We're talking about all kinds of prayers. We ought to pray all of them. We ought to be a praying people. And then the question is, is okay, praying for what or for who? Paul says, all people. Pray all kinds of prayers for all kinds of people without discrimination. He's saying, pray all kinds of prayers. Don't just pray the fun prayers. Don't just pray the easy prayers.

Pray all kinds of prayers for everybody without any sort of like, well, I only pray for my friends. I'm going to forget who this theologian was and I should have put it in my notes. But there was this theologian and he was reflecting went to this small church. And this church, somebody was in the congregation was sick and there was something else going on. And the prayers of the church prayed for those particular people. But he was stunned at how the fact that the prayers stopped there. There was no concern about the prayer for those who weren't inside the church. No prayer for the world. No prayer for others than the ones that they knew in this room. And he was like, is that the type of praying the church ought to be doing? I was thinking about ice cream and cake. I don't have a good segue into my illustrations, matter of minutes. We're just rolling with it today, guys. So I was thinking about like when I was a kid, we had I have four younger brothers. So there was five boys, my parents.

So, yeah, oh, goodness. And that meant seven different birthdays over the course of a year. Right. That's quite a few, which meant a lot of cake in the house. It's great. Now, after we had had a birthday and there was leftover cake because you never ate all of it at once for the next couple of nights or however long it would last, a routine evening snack for us would be cake and ice cream. Take a bowl of ice cream and put some cake on there. If you were my dad, you also pulled pulled poured some milk over top of that. Oh, yeah. If you're lactose intolerant, you can't. But anyways, it's great if you haven't tried that. So I remember as a kid, I would get my cake and my ice cream. And I was so thankful. And I got this like very reasonable portion. I was like, yes, this is so good. I'm getting to have some sugar before bed because who thinks that's a great idea? Whatever. And then we would sit down, I'd be eating and my dad would sit down with his bowl and I would look over there and I would say, you held out on me, right?

Because here I am very reasonable, you know, two kind of half scoops of ice cream and a reasonable piece of cake. And there's my dad, bigger bowl, bigger spoon, bigger scoops of ice cream and cake. And I was like, you're being stingy. Why am I not getting that? You know, for obvious reasons. But the thing is, is that, you know, being stingy with cake and ice cream is one thing, but being stingy with our prayer is something else entirely. Why would we withhold? Why would we be stingy? Why would we not seek to pray all kinds of prayers for all kinds of people? Are we not supposed to be the people of God? Are we not supposed to be extending an invitation, praying the gospel and wanting all people to come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ? I'm getting ahead of myself here. But this was Paul's main thing at the beginning here. He's like giving this general command, "Pray all kinds of prayers for all kinds of people." And now he goes from the general and he goes into a specific example. So let's read verse 1 and 2 and see how he moves his thought forward.

Verse 1, he says, "First of all, I urge that supplication, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all kinds of people. Pray all kinds of prayers for all kinds of people." Verse 2, here's his example. "For kings and all who are in high positions that they may lead, that we may lead a peaceful, quiet, godly and dignified life in every way." So Paul goes from the general to the specific and he says, "You should pray for all of your rulers." Now, depending on who you are, this either is familiar and you're like, "Yeah!" Or you're uncomfortable. And the thing about this passage that I think is really, really keen for us to remember is that this verse was in the Bible four years ago and it will be in the Bible four years from now and another four years from then. The Bible, Paul makes no distinction here of pray for the people who belong to your political persuasion. He does not say, "Pray for the people that you like." He says, "Pray for the rulers." Now, there's more to say about this and the first thing that kind of began to ask,

That began to sit with me was, "Well, who was the ruler of Rome when Paul wrote this?" So Rome at the time that this was written was the world superpower, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. It was in the Western world, I should say, or Western Europe, however you want to talk about it. Rome was the superpower. It had conquered most of Europe, it had conquered a lot of North Africa and the Middle East. It was the superpower, untouchables, massive, how big Rome was. And the emperor of Rome was thought to be venerated as a sort of God. They were all powerful. And depending on when we think first Timothy was written, whether we give it an early date or we give it a little bit later date, the emperor of Rome at that time was possibly or very likely to have been Emperor Nero. Now, Nero had either was the emperor when this was written or he had been the emperor recently. Emperor Nero, if you do not know, was quite the character. He was known for a lot of things. He was very controversial.

He often fought in, he would do things, he would write in chariot races and spectacles and was about all of these different things. He planned and executed the assassination of his mother. He had, I think his wife killed, he was very all over the place, not a very trustworthy guy. He was also, he was also the emperor of Rome when Rome burned to the ground. So Rome caught fire, I believe, for nine days and I think about three quarters of it was burned. So Rome was absolutely burned. Some historians and some people speculate that Nero may have even started the fire or benefited from the fire starting because he wanted to build a bigger palace. And when Rome had burned and the ashes had cleared and the smoke had cleared, as it were, they needed a scapegoat, someone to blame the burning of Rome on. And Nero's like, oh, I know those Christians. Nero is probably most well known in Christian circles as being one of the most prolific and infamous persecutors of Christians. I remember reading about him throwing these extravagant parties and in order to light his party, he would have Christians hanging on stakes and light them on fire.

So this is who was possibly in power when Paul said, pray for your rulers. He had either recently been in power, was in power. It's not clear if he had started persecuting them yet or if he was about to. But regardless, whether it was Nero or not, Christians did not enjoy much favor in the Roman government, particularly in the early years. And this is who Paul's talking about. Now, he doesn't say specifically. He's saying here, he says, for kings or for rulers, depending on which translation you're reading out of. And that's kind of a general term, meaning all kinds of rulers, all kinds of leaders. You ought to be praying for them. Now, what should we be praying for them? Well, he gives a list of type of prayers, supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings. I think it's fair to say that we can absolutely be praying for the salvation of our leaders. Praying for our leaders to be wise, praying for our leaders to make good moral decisions. Those are absolutely prayers that I think Paul had in mind here. What he seems to maybe be saying is we don't know because we don't know what the letter that Timothy sent Paul said.

But it's possible that at the beginning or during the worship time the church was getting together, people were maybe getting up there and praying antagonistic prayers. Or maybe they were just praying prayers that neglected to pray for the leaders. So we don't know exactly what's going on here, but Paul seems to be saying, pray these prayers. And the question that we might be sitting with is like, well, why would Paul say that? Why would Paul tell us to pray for leaders, particularly leaders who persecute Christians? And why would we do that? Well, he says in the next couple of verses, or actually he says in the second half of verse two, says pray for kings and all who are in high positions. Second half of verse two, why? That we may lead a peaceful, quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. Verse three, this is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all people to be saved, to come to the knowledge of the truth. Why does Paul want us to pray for all people? Why would God have us pray for all people?

For the sake of the gospel. Remember where we started? Focus on Christ, focus on the gospel, focus on the law of love. Paul's saying we ought to pray for our rulers so that we can lead a life in which we get to proclaim the gospel more. He's saying this is why we ought to pray. God wants all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of truth. That's not a big point. That's verse four. I didn't write that. It's here in your text. You should just underline it. God wants all people, all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth of who Jesus Christ is. Paul here is saying the best way for that to happen is for us to not be persecuted, for us to be able to live, not necessarily. Some people have made an accusation of this passage and said Christians just want a comfy life. No. We want a life that doesn't keep us from preaching the gospel. We want to be able to use our freedom of speech. We want to be able to have a good reputation amongst people.

The only thing that should offend people about Christians is the fact that we proclaim Christ. Christ ought to be the offensive part of who we are. Paul here is saying don't get distracted. The point of even praying for the rulers is not so that we would have power. It's so that we can preach the gospel. It's so that we can proclaim Christ. It remains anchored there. It's saying don't worry about what's going on over here. We could spend all of our attention. There are more than enough things that if I wanted to on a Sunday morning, we could get up here and we could talk about so many current events. But is that what we're supposed to do? Or are we supposed to lift up Christ? Are we supposed to fix our eyes on the gospel? Is that what we are here to do? And Paul here is saying don't get distracted by whether Nero is persecuting you or not. Pray for him so that you can continue to preach the gospel. That's the emphasis that Paul has. That's the instructions he has for emphasis and I think that remains true for us.

Because why did Jesus come? It's kind of a trick question because it's in verse 15 of chapter one. Paul says this is a trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Why did Jesus come? To save sinners. Why is the church here to save sinners? What are we to be doing? Preaching the gospel, elevating Christ so that sinners might be saved. So that all people might be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. This is the mission of the church. This is our focus. I don't know if you're like me. I'm one of those people who's like, oh, it's Saturday. I'm going to get tons of projects done. I'm going to get this one project on my house done. I've been meaning to do this. All right. So I've watched seven YouTube videos about how to do it. I'm going to get my tools. I go get my tools. My tools are so disorganized. You know, I really could use a tool organizer I saw at Home Depot. I'm going to go get this like tool bag thing. I go there. I'm walking. Oh, you know what? I could use this. I could use this.

You know, this reminds me. I've been meaning to fix this thing. I grabbed those things. And by the end of the day, I've started seven different tasks. And none of them complete and none of them, the one I meant to do it first. Right. That's just my personal life. But I think we can be 10. I think we can as the church have the same distractiveness. There are a thousand good things that the church could do. And we should do some of those things prayerfully. But there is one thing. There is one thing that we ought to be doing. It makes me think of the story of Mary and Martha. Jesus is teaching. He's in Mary and Martha's home. Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus. She's just listening to what Jesus is saying. Martha's running around and she's trying to make sure the place settings are all right. And the food is prepped and she's running around. She's feeling a little frantic. And she says, Jesus, tell Mary to get up off the floor and come help me. What does Jesus say? She says, Martha, she has chosen the better thing and it will not be taken away from her.

And I think too often we have a sense of panic, of FOMO, of urgency that we start running around, focusing on things that aren't bad. They're good things. But have we neglected? Have we forgotten to sit at the feet of Jesus, to fix our eyes on Him, to know who He is regardless of what's happening today? That is the most important thing. And I think that's where we're called, is we're called to keep the main thing front and center. Now, I don't know if you know this, but every Sunday morning at nine o'clock, some of us gather here at the church. We sit right there in kind of the back of the pews and we pray. We pray for service. We pray for all of you who are getting ready to come to church. We pray for you who are here today, who've never been to church before. We pray for you who are getting a cup of coffee because we think it's important and we hope that you experience the love of Christ through that. We pray for our children. We pray for all of the kids that are right now worshiping Jesus and for all of those people serving them.

And we pray for all the other churches in our area. Now, we're not perfect in this. I think we've got room to grow in our fervor and prayer there, in the scope of our prayer. Absolutely. But it's an attempt to continue to be faithful to what Paul has called the church to do here, what God has for His church to do. And that is to pray. That is to put Him first. It is to be a praying people. And I think this is important. There's this scope. There's a scope of the gospel here that Paul is bringing out that is highlighting. Read with me what it says in verses five through seven. He says, for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. For this, I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. I'm telling the truth. I am not lying a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. The gospel is for everyone. There is one mediator. There is one savior. There is one place through which we are saved.

The gospel is both incredibly inclusive and exclusive. It's inclusive in that anyone of any background can come to Jesus and be saved. It's exclusive in that you must come to Jesus. There is no other way. He is the way, the truth and the life no one comes to the Father except through me. So here, Paul's talking in an ancient world where there were tons of deities, tons of false gods to be worshipped all over the place. And which false god you worshipped was largely dependent on where you lived. This little town over here has this god and this region has this god and you probably worship this god. And because you live in the Roman Empire, you're supposed to kind of have some level of worship towards the emperor because, you know, he conquered the world. All of these things. And the idea was, it was like, well, why would I worship a god that's not in the city that I live in? It would have been just such a crazy idea that I would worship a god that belonged to a different culture than mine.

We don't think about that as much as we do now, but that's the way that they would have thought. And also too, so much of, and this is why so much of what Paul writes in the New Testament is aimed to, she's always saying these words, Jews and Gentiles. If you're reading the New Testament and you're like, what is a Jew? I know what a Jew is, but what's a Gentile and why is Paul always talking about them? Because he goes on and he says, I'm a preacher to the Gentiles here. Why? Well, it's because the Jews were the people of God. They were the descendants of Abraham, God's chosen people, the Israelites. And who from the family tree that, that Jesus came and saved the whole world and they thought they were God's special people. And Jesus is like, no, I'm salvation for everyone, including those who are not Jews, the Gentiles. And this caused so much turmoil, caused so much conflict because the Jews wanted to say, well, Gentiles, if you're going to worship our God, you have to look like us. You have to dress like us. You have to act like us. You have to eat the food that we eat.

And Paul and Jesus is saying, no, no, they just have to worship me. That's the one thing. And I think even though that we live in a world that has gotten smaller, technology now has gotten everything so small, we can fly across the world in a day. It's absolutely astounding. Even though the world has gotten smaller, I think we sometimes still forget that Christianity is a global religion. Christianity is not ours. Christianity, Jesus and the disciples had browner skin than mine. They were Middle Eastern. This is an ancient Middle Eastern religion. Even now, I look this up, is that most surveys agree that right now, the majority of Christians do not speak English. Christianity is a global religion. When we end up in heaven, there will be every tribe, every nation, every people group, every type of person will be there. Every nationality because they worshipped Christ, because he is the one mediator, the one saver for all people, all time. That is a historic truth that has been true for over 2000 years and will continue to be true until Jesus Christ comes. This is the truth is that we need to keep in fact that the gospel is for everyone.

It is always the temptation of every church and every age to fuse their culture to the gospel. It's a temptation. It's a temptation that's as old as the church is to fuse the gospel to say, well, it's the gospel plus my culture. It's the gospel plus the way I dress, the way I look, the way our churches are designed, the color of the carpet, the way we do communion. It is these things plus the gospel. And Paul is radically, nope, nope, don't put Jesus in the gospel and add a plus sign because anything you add there is not going to be it. It's Jesus. Jesus plus nothing equals everything. That's the gospel. That's what we're being called towards. I think Paul wants us as a church. I think God wants us as a church to not lose focus, not to be swayed, not to become distracted. Want to have kind of to kind of reflect on two big ideas here. The first is just that we ought to be a church that prays. Paul here at the beginning, we're at the beginning of his instructions to the church.

He's like, all right, I've spoken to you, Timothy, I've encouraged you, I've exhorted you. Now I'm going to give some practical instructions to the church. What's the first thing he says? Pray. Prayer is not the thing that we do just because we're supposed to. Prayer is not the thing that we do before we start doing the work. Prayer is the work of the church. It is the work of the believer. We've started this, our theme for the year. We've said it a thousand times. I'll say it a thousand times more. We're seeking the face of God through prayer and Sabbath. That's been our focus, that's what we've tried to come back to. At any moment we've had the opportunity to, we've said, let's talk about prayer. Any moment we've had the opportunity to, we've talked about Sabbath. Because we want to seek the face of God. What do we mean when we say the face of God? We don't mean the blessings of God. I mean, we want to seek God himself. We want to seek his presence. Not what he does with us or for us, but so that he might be with us.

That prayer that Moses prayed at the end of Exodus that we just talked about a few weeks ago. Lord, if you don't go with us, we will not move from this place. That's the heart. That's the heartbeat that we've been after. And how do we do that? We do it through prayer. Prayer is the language of relationship with God. Prayer is the language of relationship with God. How do we build a relationship? How do we build any relationship? When I met my wife online and we were living states away at that point, how did we build a relationship? Through communicating, through talking. How does my relationship with my wife continue to grow? Through communicating, through talking. If I wanted my relationship to begin to slip, to slide, to grow unhealthy, I don't have to say anything. Actually, that's what I would do, is I would stop saying anything. I'd be quiet. Because the absence of communication will eventually lead to a breakdown in relationship. Prayer is communication with God. It's this back and forth. It is the language of relationship with God. That's how we build a relationship with God.

I think we get into this place where, and it's totally understandable. I think particularly if you've grown up in the church like I have, or we just kind of hear any sort of prayer. The most common type of prayer that we hear is what? Petition. Prayer is where we say, "Dear Lord, please do this. Please give me this. Please provide this." We're petitioning. We're asking something from God. And that is 100% biblical. 110% biblical. Jesus teaches about it. Ask the Lord. You have not because you do not ask. We absolutely should ask for what we want and need. But is that even the primary thing in prayer? Is prayer really about just getting what we want out of God? I don't think so. I don't think that's what the Bible teaches. It's not what is even in this place. It's, I think, that prayer more often than not shapes our own hearts to a line of God's heart and God's will more than it is about trying to get God to conform to our will. When we are praying a prayer for rulers, rulers who we may not always agree with, rulers we may really dislike or rulers we really like,

Is it about them or is it about praying for the heart of God and the advancement of the gospel? It's about that. When we pray for our rulers, it's not so that we like them. It's so that God's kingdom advances. Jesus, when he was standing before Pilate, who held Jesus' life in his hands, Pilate's like, "These people are saying, 'Jesus, you're the king.'" Jesus says, "My kingdom is not of this world." I think we need to remember that as a church. Our king is not of this world. Things may come, things may go. Things may go in our favor, things may not go in our favor. Regardless, our king sits on the throne. Regardless, we remain the church. We've been bought with the blood of Christ. Regardless, this morning across the whole world, there are millions of people seeking the one savior of the world, Jesus Christ. I have a kind of a personal challenge here. Have you prayed about something before you've complained about it? This is just a personal, simple application. I think we live in a world where we love to complain.

We've got our--can you call? Because I just need to vent. We've got our people. I get it. We need our support. But what would begin to shift and change in our hearts if we took some time and we prayed to God before we started complaining to other people about it? What if we took time to--if it's so important that it's consuming our minds and our thoughts and our emotions, that is a sign that we ought to pray to God about it. If I'm worked up about something, that's a sign I ought to pray to God about it. That's an indicator. Have we prayed to God about the things that we complain to others about? The last thing that I have for us today--and you're like, "Finally." But no, literal last thing I have for us is I want to read a sort of modern parable. This is a parable. It's not 100% clear who wrote this parable. It's been kind of passed around. And it's a parable of what's a life-saving station. I had to look this up because a life-saving station is what kind of predated the Coast Guard.

These were stations that would generally volunteer, volunteer search and rescue operations for the ocean and for bays and for people who were in boats and ran aground in storms. So this is a sort of a modern-ish parable of a life-saving station. So on a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occurred stood a life-saving station. The building was just a hut and there was only one boat, but a few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many of those who were rescued and also others from the surrounding area wished to become a sociator of the station and to give their time, energy, money and effort for the support of its works. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The life-saving station grew. In time, some of the crew became concerned that the station was so crude and so poorly equipped that they felt that more commodious space should be provided. As the first refuge for those who were snatched from the sea, the emergency cots were replaced with beds.

Better furniture was purchased for it for the enlarged building. The station became a popular gathering place for its members and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely. Fewer members were now interested in leaving the plush station to go to the sea on the life-saving missions. So they hired surrogates to do that work. However, they retained the life-saving motif in the club's decorations and a ceremonial lifeboat lay in the room where the club initiations were held. One dark stormy night, a large ship was wrecked off the coast and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, half-drowned people. They were dirty, sick and obviously from distant shores. The station was in chaos, the event was so traumatic that the people contracted for outbuildings to be constructed so that future shipwrecks could be processed with less disruption. Eventually, a rift developed in the station and most of the members wanted to discontinue the station's life-saving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to their normal social life. Some insisted, however, that rescue was still the primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saving station.

But the latter were ignored and told that if they wanted to keep life-saving as their primary purpose, they could begin their own station down the coast. Which they did. Over time, those individuals fell prey to the same temptations of the first group coming to care more about comforting one another than rescuing the perishing. After a while, a few remembering their real purpose split off to establish yet another life-saving station and on and on it went. Today, if you visit that seacoast, you will find a number of impressive life-saving stations along the shore. Sadly, shipwrecks still occur in those waters, but most people are lost. Now that parable is a call to the church to remember what are we supposed to be doing? What's our mission? Are we holding up Christ and preaching the gospel? Are we proclaiming Christ to a world? Why did Christ come to save sinners? He didn't come so that we could feel good about ourselves. He came to save sinners. What was the mission he gave the church? To save sinners, to make disciples. What are we to be doing as a church?

We're to be praying for the world to know Jesus Christ. Let's enter into prayer with that posture. Heavenly Father, as we live in this world where there is chaos, Lord, there are plenty of reasons for us to be afraid. Lord, there are plenty of reasons for us to be angry. Lord, I pray that you would fix our eyes on you. Lord, it is my prayer that this church would keep our eyes fixed on you. That we would remember what is the work that we are called to do as a church. Lord, we pause to pray what you have called us to pray. And that is for the salvation of the world. That is the salvation of our neighbors, of our co-workers, of our family members who do not know you. Lord, I pray that the gospel would break down walls. I pray that the love of Jesus Christ would be an invitation that people cannot say no to. Lord, I pray that you would help us to be active in that mission. And Lord, we pray for our rulers. We pray for our local government.

We pray for our president. Lord, we ask that you would give them wisdom. Lord, that you would call their hearts to you. Lord, we pray that they would make decisions that allow us to continue your mission. Lord, we ask that we might be a light in this world. That we would be the salt of the earth. Lord, I pray that you would continue to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. Lord, as we move into worship, Lord, fill our hearts with praise. Open our mouths to sing about your glory. Lord, strengthen our hands for the work you've called us to. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Conduit, as you go from this place, my prayer is that Jesus Christ crucified would be before you. That you would behold his love for you and that he would know that he is with you in all things. Conduit, you are loved. Go in peace.