1. 1 Timothy 2:1-7
I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede
on their behalf, and give thanks for them. 2
Pray this way for kings and all who are
in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and
dignity. 3
This is good and pleases God our Savior, 4
who wants everyone to be
saved and to understand the truth.5
For there is only one God and one Mediator who
can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus. 6
He gave his life to
purchase freedom for everyone. This is the message God gave to the world at just
the right time. 7
And I have been chosen as a preacher and apostle to teach the
Gentiles this message about faith and truth. I’m not exaggerating—just telling the
truth.
Tonight we will go back to 1 Timothy and start in chapter 2 where we left off. In chapter 1, we
went over the greeting of the letter which tells us to whom it was written and by whom. We went into
Paul’s warning about false teachers which we took the concept of checking from. We then moved into
God’s mercy and Paul telling us his story and showing how God gives us His grace and mercy. The first
chapter ends with Timothy’s instructions from Paul. Paul tells him to cling to his faith and do not violate
his conscious.
Now we see that Paul is instructing Timothy on how worship should be conducted. This letter
was written later in Paul’s missionary journeys, so he is seeing that he needs to
give instruction on how the church should run knowing he will soon die. In the portion
we are looking at tonight, we see Paul telling Timothy to keep the leaders of the time in prayer. He
commands him to pray for the leaders of the area and the entire Roman Empire, so that they could go
on in their faith in peace. At this time, Nero was emperor in Rome. Nero was not the best person to a
citizen, or a Christian under. He was known to kill Christians in Gladiator games, or use them as lawn

2. torches at parties. Sickening, I know. But Paul tells the people to pray this way for kings and all
who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by
godliness and dignity.
Here at our church, we are big on prayer. In all my years of attending church and
going to weekly prayer meetings, I have never seen a church get between 10-20%
of their members to come to a weekly prayer meeting regularly. Paul is telling
Timothy here to keep prayer as a priority in his church. The people should regularly
come together and pray for the leaders and for the people. Paul is also saying here
that prayers should be said for all people, and that it should not be only for certain
people that we like. Prayers should go for Republican and Democrat. Rich or poor,
black or white or Asian. We should pray for the people if we like them or not.
The next verses go along with the prior verses. Paul also makes a claim that
God wants all to be saved and to understand the truth. What is the truth? Pause
and listen for Gospel. Right, the Gospel is the truth. As Paul said earlier in the
letter, “Jesus came to save Sinners”. Paul says here that Jesus is the only mediator
between man and God who can reconcile man to God. Paul again gives the Gospel
message here and says that Christ gave his life to buy freedom for everyone. Paul
goes on to say that he (Paul) is the messenger to the Gentiles to tell them about
this good news. One commentator writes these verses like this, “Paul’s argument
can be paraphrased like this: If God is one, and there is only one Mediator with one
way of redemption, and if God has chosen me to save some of the Gentile peoples
in the scope of my apostolic mission, then we can legitimately conclude that God
desires any sort of person to be saved regardless of ethnic origin.” So what does

3. this all mean? Simple, God wants all kinds of people to be saved, regardless of
where they are from.
Just in time means that God had planned that His grace would go beyond
Palestine at this time and be opened to the whole world. Paul calls himself a herald.
Back before we had the internet, these are people who would go out and proclaim
the news in a public place. This is preaching or teaching.
So what? We look at this early model of the church and see that it is still
useful today. Paul wanted Timothy to focus on prayer for all people. He wanted
Timothy to pray for those in leadership in the nation and world. Guys, as a
leadership team, we are working on starting a prayer group of youth. Tiara is
helping to oversee it. Please get involved. Right now, we want to encourage you all
to come out on Wednesdays to Prayer, and the last Wednesday of the month, we
the youth will be running it. We want to get the youth involved with the church in
prayer for the leaders of our nation and all people no matter who they are or where
they’re from. This is not just a corporate setting, but also in your personal times of
prayer, pray for all people. If you do not have a personal prayer time, make one.
Start off small, take ten minutes before bed and just pray for the leaders of the
country, the church, your friends. Prayer is important, and let’s not forget that.