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Church, how we doing? Good. All right. Hey. I may have sung a little too loud, preached a little too hard, and maybe got a little too worked up over the Florida Tennessee basketball game, but I've got some tea right here, so my voice should make it, but we'll be good. All right. We good? All right, here we go. Hey. We have been in sermon series on the book of first Timothy, and it's called a Field Guide for the Family of God. And it picks up that family of God language from Timothy, chapter three, where Paul talks about being a household of God and what Paul is doing. Paul is a senior more veteran pastor, planter, church planter. And he's writing to Timothy, who's kind of his young protege. And what he's writing to Timothy in this letter is, hey, Timothy, as you step into this new church in Ephesus and begin to pastor this new church, here's what it means to be a pastor. But more than that, what he's doing is he's saying, here's what a church is like. Here's what a church is to be. And it's not just that Paul is writing to Timothy or even writing to that church, but that God is speaking to us and God is telling us what it means to be a church and what it means for each of us individually to be a part of the church. And so here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna jump in to 1 Timothy, chapter 2. So if you got a Bible, go to 1 Timothy, chapter 2, or I think it's page 18 in your journal. And Paul writes this. He says, first of all, then. So we just have to stop right there for a second because you have to ask, well, then, what's the then, therefore, what's it pointing back to? And the thing that it's pointing back to, Paul's pointing back at is the Gospel. In chapter one, he explains the difference between the law and the gospel, that we're not saved by works, but were saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And so he unpacks that, and we looked at it a few weeks ago. And so he writes, okay, enlight them. Because of the gospel, let me tell you, first of all the things I could tell you. Now think about that for a minute. In light of the greatest news in the world in history, what would you say is the first thing we'd say? Okay, now that you've heard the gospel, here's first of all, the things I could tell you. Listen to what Paul says first of all, then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. Of all the things Paul could have talked about in light of the Gospel, as far as, first of all, the things he says, prayer, supplications, that's praying for things that you need or want. Prayer is just talking to God. Intercession's going to God on behalf of somebody else. Thanksgiving's just saying, God, I'm so grateful for what you've done in my life. And it's no surprise, should be no surprise to us that Paul would say this because he's echoing when Jesus said in Matthew 21, My house will be a house of prayer. So if it's not just another thing on a list of things to do or to be about as a church or to be about as a Christian, then why is it at times I just don't feel like it's a first order importance in my life? I mean, have you ever been there? Come on, raise your hand. Have you ever felt less than motivated to pray? Anybody? Me too. At least some of you are my people. I mean, have you ever wanted prayer to be your first response, not your last resort? But it just doesn't seem to be that way all the time. Anybody or you really want it. Like you want to want to pray, but for some reason you just don't want to want to want to pray Anybody. Yeah. And so the question I want to ask today is, so then what is the motivation to pray? Like, what is the true power, the true source, the true center, the sustaining thing for a life of prayer where prayer is of first order importance. Like, where does that come from? Now I'll tell you where it doesn't come from. It doesn't come from being really, really, really desperate. Like, I'm not saying don't pray if you're desperate, but if you get a diagnosis you don't like or news you didn't want, absolutely go to God in prayer. And that may drive you to pray in a moment and it may drive you to pray for a season. But it is not the power that the center of a life of praying that's of first order importance. Just the same way as really good news won't do it for you. Like if you got the good news you wanted, you got the promotion, she said yes, whatever it is, you may go, God, thank you so much. I'm so grateful. You may say it In a moment. You may say it for a while, but it is not the center of a life of praying. Neither are tips, tricks, techniques like I love. I use the little acrostic acts sometimes to pray. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. It's great. Just helps me kind of stay focused on my praying. I've got an app on my phone that's called PrayerMate. It's where I just keep all the things I'm praying for. That's wonderful. It's great. Put a reminder on your calendar to pray. All those things are really good things, but they're not the source of power. They're not the center of where power comes from. For a life of praying that's of first order importance. And neither is willpower or religious obligation or duty. Like if you think I should or I ought to pray, that will not sustain. That will not power a life of prayer. And neither will like getting all worked up, getting whipped into a frenzy over a message. It'll get you for a minute. So what does motivate, like where is the center power, the true source of real power for praying come from that'll sustain a life of praying? Now, I want to show you in this passage, because I believe Paul, by the way, he argues this and the content is both showing us and telling us where the center of prayer is. So look, if you look at the beginning, he's going to talk about making these prayers and supplications and intercession and thanksgiving. And then way down here in the bottom in verse eight, he's going to say, okay, men, pray. Raise your hands, pray. These are not two separate thoughts. This is one whole thought. And what he's going to say is in the middle of it, right here in the center is where the source of the power for a life of praying that is of first order importance comes from. And so look at verse three. This is good. He's talking about praying. This is good and pleasing in the sight of God our Savior. You should circle God our Savior. I've told this story before, but when I was about 12 years old, maybe a little bit younger, we were living in Tennessee and it was a summer evening and my friends and I decided we were going to have a dirt bike race down the hill in our neighborhood. We all went to the top of the hill. Parents were all kind of out hanging out for the evening. We get at the top of the hill, we're going to race down this hill, around our yard and down to the bottom. Whoever wins is king of the summer. So we get up there, on your mark, get set, go. We take off. Everybody goes down the hill, and as everybody gets to our yard and they all start to turn left, I paid attention in school, and I thought, you know what? You know, what's faster than going around the straight line? So I go through my yard. The only problem is I didn't calculate for the curb at the edge of my yard, and I hit it on my dirt bike, and I just launch into the air. I mean, I'm flying, and it's fun for a second. And then the bike just drops out from under me, and I'm supermanning, which is awesome for a second. But what goes up has to come down. And I came down, and I came down like that, and pop, pop. And the bones came out. Oh, it was right. So my mom does what every good mom should do in the South. She runs inside, gets a Southern Living magazine, duct tape and a cookie sheet, and she splints my arm using a Southern Living magazine, duct tape and a cookie sheet. We run to the hospital. We go into the hospital, and I haven't told you this part of the story. We show up, the orthopedic surgeon looks at it and goes, that's bad. You need surgery now. So I go in, they put me under. At some point during the surgery, I have a reaction, and I stop breathing, and my heart stops. I died on the table. I know some of you are like, that explains so many things. Now, here's what I couldn't do in that moment. I couldn't go, all right, get up, Adam. I'm dead. I couldn't will myself. I couldn't make myself. I couldn't save myself. I couldn't heal myself. What I needed in that moment is for somebody else to intervene and do what I couldn't do and save my life. And listen, God is our savior. God is not primarily a good moral example. He's not primarily a teacher. He's not primarily this guru of tips and tricks, because you and I aren't mistakers in need of some good tips and tricks for life. We're not just bad versions of a good us that with a little help and a little motivation and a little pick me up and rah rah, we can get on with life. See, the good news is that you and I were created in the image of God, male and female. He created us. That's what Genesis 1 says. And God ordered the world in such a way that we could live in perfect relationship with him. And as you and I, humanity lived with God, it only took a very short amount of time before we looked at God and said, okay, God, I get it. You created me, you created this world, you set it up, you know how it's supposed to work. But hey, God, thanks. I think I can run your created order better than you can. I think I can run my life that you knit together better than you can. And we stiff armed God. And that's not just Genesis 3. That's been happening to every single one of us for all of time. We all do it in different ways. But here's the thing. God is a God of justice. And as a God of justice, he cannot let sin go unjudged. Think about it. He wouldn't be God if He did, right? If you were in a courtroom and there was a murder and the judge looked at the murderer and just went, I know, I know he did it, but we're just gonna let this one slide. You go, no, no, you can't. You're not a good judge. You're not qualified to be judge. And so God is a God of justice. And we want justice enacted, don't we? You see atrocities happening to children and people all over the world and you go, justice, we want justice. The only problem is we don't want justice when it comes to us. And not only is God a God of justice, but God is a God of holiness. God's perfect, sinless, righteous. And he cannot tolerate unrighteousness and sinfulness in his presence. And that's a real problem for you and for me. But God is also not just a judge of justice. He's not only holy and perfect and righteous, but he is also a God of love and mercy. Now how do you reconcile those things? Like he's not a little bit justice and a little bit holiness and a little bit of love and mercy and all of that kind of totals up to 100% of who he is. He's 100% just, he's 100% holy and he's 100% loving. So how do you reconcile those things? How do you get that the only place that happens is in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. That's the only place where you see God's justice satisfied perfectly, his holiness upheld perfectly and his love poured out fully. And so God is our Savior. But look, it goes on even more. What kind of Savior is God? God Our Savior, verse 4, who desires all people, like all kinds of people, to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. Now when we read verse four, a lot of Times people want to get into, what does all mean here? And does God desire this and can he make that happen? But for a minute, I just want you to look at the word desire. God is a savior who deeply, deeply, deeply desires that every kind of sinner be saved. As in, there's nobody that can fall outside the bounds of God's desires. You're not too far gone, you've not done too much, you've not run away too long. God is the type of savior who desires that. The question is, do you know him as your Savior? Because he says it's God, our Savior. So is he your Savior? Do you know God is yours? Like if you rested the weight of your life and eternity, God who saves? Because God as Savior. God is our Savior. That's power in praying. That's a source of power to fuel a life of first order praying. Like, think about it. If you know God is your Savior, then when you sin, what you won't do is run from God. What you'll do is you'll run to him. You'll run to him because you know he's a God who desires saving. Martin Luther was a pastor. He lived in Germany in the mid-1500s. He kind of kicked off the whole Protestant Reformation. And when he kicked it off, he wrote these 95 theses, these 95 statements about the faith. And he nailed him to a church in Wittenberg, Germany. And the first one he writes is, all of the Christian life is one of repentance. It isn't just that we repent once of our sin. It's that because God is our Savior, we can repent over and over and over. We can confess over and over and over. John writes in First John 1:9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God is faithful and just as the Savior. And he promises that those who know God as Savior can run to him and confess and he's faithful to forgive us. Now I get it. If you sort of looked at God as another way, then you think, okay, well, I don't even know how to go God and confess and repent. And I would say if you don't, if you don't know how to do it, you should go. Look at Psalm 51. We won't go there now, but you should at some point if you don't know how to confess and repent. It's a beautiful picture. David wrote it. King David wrote it after he had gone and stolen Uriah's wife, Bathsheba, and had an affair with her. The prophet Nathan comes to him and he says, what you did, nobody should ever do that. And in that moment, not because David was perfect, but because he knew God as his Savior, he pins Psalm 51, and he pours his heart out to God in repentance and confession. And he pleads God as his savior. So verse 5. There's one God, for there is one God and there is one mediator. You should circle that one mediator between God and men. The man Christ Jesus. You know what a mediator is? It's a go between. It's like an intermediary. Somebody negotiates on your behalf. When I was in fourth grade, there was a girl in my class. Her name was Julie. I had a big crush on Julie. Big crush on Julie. She was having a birthday party, and the entire class was coming to the birthday party, and she was having a birthday party at the roller rink. Anybody remember roller rink birthday parties? God, they were eye the tiger, playing those brown skates with the big orange knob on the front, right? Somebody that could roller skate backwards. It was awesome. But the thing that also happened at the roller rink was that there was always couples skate. And I was like, this is my chance with Julie. And I had bought Julie a birthday present. I bought her a puka shell necklace. Like your boy at one point had game. One point. The problem is I didn't know if I went and asked Julie, hey, wanna do couples skate together? Everybody out. And I go out there, and then I'm just standing by myself. But I was too scared. I couldn't talk to her. So I go to my best friend, Jimmy Wilson, and I go, hey, Jimmy, go talk to Julie. So Jimmy goes and he writes the note. You know the note, right? Adam likes you. Do you like him? Check yes or no. I. Jimmy was my mediator. I'm not gonna tell you the outcome, but I'm not married to a girl named Julie. Now, all joking aside, Jesus is our mediator. The one, the only mediator between us and God. And he is our mediator in two senses. He's our mediator in one sense because he stands between a sinful us and a Holy God. Hebrews 9:15 says, He, Jesus is the mediator. New covenant, a better covenant. A covenant of grace in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance. The reason Jesus can be our mediator is because he's both God, fully God, and fully man. So he can stand in between fully God and fully man. He's. He's also our mediator in the sense that when God looks at you, if you have faith in him, God looks at you, he sees the perfect righteousness of Jesus. It's as if he's looking through Jesus at you. And what he sees through Jesus, righteousness gets laid on top of you and he sees his Son. But he's a mediator in another way, the one and only Mediator in another way in that he is constantly interceding for us to the Father. Romans 8:34 says this. Who's to condemn Christ? Jesus is the one who died. More than that, who is raised, who is. Look at, this is present tense. Who is at the right hand of the Father, who indeed certainly, surely is currently interceding for us. Hebrews 7:25 says He, Jesus always lives intercession for them. Do you ever read something in the Bible and you know, you can read a bunch of things and kind of move on day to day from them, but every once in a while you read something and you just get stuck on it and you just can't get it out of your mind. This happened to me when I read this Hebrews chapter 7, verse 25 a couple years ago. I got stuck on it and I have not been able to get over it that currently right now, Jesus is seated at the right hand of God the Father, and he is always living to make intercession for me. Like what he lives for always is to go to God on my behalf, the Father, on my behalf, and take my feeble fumbling prayers and deliver them perfectly to God the Father. If that's true, and it is, then listen, you don't need a priest to go to God for you. You have Jesus, the perfect high priest, and you don't need a patron saint of this or that. If you probably asked the patron saints, they probably would have gone, don't ask me to go like, who am I? You don't need a perfect quote, unquote patron saint, because you have a perfect Savior, Jesus, who is ever pleading your cause perfectly to the Father. And you don't need to be in some special place like Mecca, because wherever you and I are, Jesus is always at the right hand of the Father, always interceding for us. And so what's the motivation and the power that sustains a life of first order praying? It's knowing that Jesus is our mediator. That's power. That's power. And if Jesus is our mediator, then you and I can go boldly to the Throne of God. I mean bust into the throne room of God because we have one that ushers us in and mediates us in in prayer. This guy named Bunyan, not the lumberjack Paul Bunyan, but a 17th century Puritan. And he wrote this book. Well he wrote a couple books. One of them was called Pilgrim's Progress. If you've never read it, you should read it. It's a fantastic book. Amen. Another book he wrote was Christ a Complete Savior. And he wrote this in that book he said let this doctrine, he's talking about Jesus as our mediator in prayer. Let this doctrine give thee boldness to come to God. Shall Jesus Christ be interceding in heaven? O then be thou a praying man on earth. Yea, take courage to pray. Think thus with thyself. I go to God, to God, who, before whose throne the Lord Jesus is ready to hand my petition to him. Yea, he ever lives to make intercession for me. This is the great encouragement to come to God by prayers and supplications for ourselves and intercession for our families and our neighbors and our enemies. And if Jesus is our mediator, then you don't have to pretend and perform. You don't have to pretend and perform with fancy words, long drawn out prayers, oh so eloquent. And you don't have to hide from God. Cause you just don't know what to say. Because if Jesus, if God hears our praying through him or perfect mediator Jesus, then what we can do is we can just pray. And he delivers our prayer perfectly to our heavenly Father. John Calvin wrote this in a book called Prayer, the chief end of Faith. He said our prayers, which otherwise would be polluted. Listen, I don't know about you, my prayers, even my best praying is a little selfish, right? I mean I go, God, would you do this in my kids life? Would you do this in my parents life? Would you do this in my friends lives? Whatever it is. And I really in my best, I go, I mean it for them. But there's a little bit in there that just goes if you'd make their life better, my life would be better. And this is what Calvin's talking about. He's saying our prayers which otherwise would be polluted, are sanctified, made perfect by the intercession of Christ. So praying doesn't rest on the fervency or the eloquence or the perfection of my words, but on Jesus perfection in the fact that he is before the Father. Perfectly presenting my prayers to the Father. There's A hymn. It's called before the Throne of God. It was written 1860 something, and in it it says, before the throne of God above I have a strong, a perfect plea, a great high priest whose name is love. Whoever lives and pleads for me. Listen, when you and I pray, and we end our praying by saying, in Jesus name, Amen. That's not just like tacking on a religious formula. What we're doing in one sense is saying, God, would you align what I just said up with the character and nature of Jesus in his name? The other thing we're saying is in his name is Jesus. Would you take my otherwise polluted prayers, my fumbling, poorly worded, probably selfish, and would you present them in your name by your perfection? And so if Jesus is our mediator, you don't have to plead your praying to the Father based on the merit of your prayer, like the need or the cause or how good you spoke. You can plead your cause to the Father on the merit of Jesus, and he hears it every time. So he says, for there is one God and there's one mediator between God and men. The man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. Circle that word, ransom. There are different ways to kind of think about sin and salvation. One way is to think like, in our sin, we've incurred a debt to God, and Jesus pays the debt, pays in full forgives it. Another way to think about it is we break a relationship with God and Jesus breaks down the wall of hostility between us and God. Or the wages of sin is death. And what God gives us is life in Jesus Christ. That's why the resurrection matters. Or sin is a crime like trespass or treason against God. And what Jesus is, is Jesus is the perfect substitute in the courtroom of God on our behalf, taking the punishment and the verdict that we deserve. And he doesn't. But here Paul uses the language of ransom like we talk today in ransom, like kidnapping, and we pay for a ransom to get a kidnapped person back. Historically, people would have talked about ransom in terms of like a pow. And we paid a price, negotiated the freedom of a pow. What Paul is talking about biblically would be more like a person who racks up such an enormous debt to somebody that they could never pay it off in a million lifetimes. And so what they do is they give themselves into indentured servitude. They are enslaved to their debt, they are captive to their debt. And no matter how hard they work, no matter what they do, they can never get out of it. There have Been two separate instances where I've been overseas preaching and teaching where I've been held at gunpoint. Sorry, Mom. You didn't raise safe kids. You raised faithful kids. And in those times, both instances, the people I was with said, how much money do you have? I barely carry American money, let alone foreign money. I opened my wallet, I have like $27 one time. I think I had a couple hundred dollars another time. And they both go, here's what you need to do. You need to open it up, show them all the money and give them all the money. I showed it. I gave them all the money. They go, all right, thanks. And they walk off. They weren't really interested. I could buy myself out of the situation, but in our sin, we cannot buy ourselves out of our situation. We are captive to our sin. We're captive to the death, the wages of our sin, and we can't fix it ourselves. But Jesus, Jesus in his perfection, completely, totally, utterly free, gives his freedom for our bondage. Jesus, in Mark, chapter 10, verse 45, he says this for the Son of Man. He's talking about himself. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. If you were to ask Jesus, Jesus, what's the whole point of your life? What's your mission statement? What's your life's purpose? And he would go, my life's purpose is to be a ransom. It's to buy back people in captivity that could never get themselves out. Paul says in First Corinthians 6, verse 20, you were bought with a price. Listen, if you're a follower of Jesus, the price paid for your life was not the price of the value of your life or my life. The price paid for our life was the infinite worth of perfect Jesus. That was the price paid for our lives. Jesus said in John 8:36, if the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed. Guaranteed. Take it to the bank, push all the chips. You will be free. This world would love to tell you, if you come to Jesus, you're giving up all your freedoms. You'll be captive to all sorts of religious things, and you'll lose all of your freedoms. And. But Jesus says, no, the exact opposite is true. If you come to me, I will show you a freedom that you could have never hoped or dreamed or imagined could ever be possibly true. And in Galatians 5:1, Paul says, it's for freedom, total, complete freedom from our captivity to the wages of our sin. It's for freedom that Christ has Set us free. So if you are in Jesus, you are freed from the penalty of your sin. If you are in Jesus, you are being freed from the power of your sin. And if you are in Jesus, one day you will live in the new heaven and the new earth, completely freed from the presence of sin. Jesus is our ransom. And that is the power of a praying life. That is of first order importance. And if Jesus is our ransom, then listen, we don't go to God as imprisoned criminals. We go to God as sons and daughters of the King. You get to know the King of the universe as your Father. And if Jesus is our ransom, and we are totally free, not only are you free from pretending and performing for God or hiding from God, you are free from pretending and performing and hiding for everybody else in prayer. Think about this. In a minute, I'm gonna say, come pray. Come down here and pray. And here's what I know is gonna happen. You're gonna think, I need to go pray. I need to, like, fall on my knees before God, and I need to plead the perfect mediation of Jesus. But you're gonna think, what will everybody think of me if that's you? You're free. You're totally free from what anybody thinks of you. Cause Jesus is your ransom. Or have you ever been in a group, like in a disciple group, Bible study, and everybody kind of shares their prayer requests and they go, okay, we're gonna pray. The group leader goes, okay, we're gonna pray. So here's what you do. Going to start. You guys all pray. When we're done, I'll say amen. All right, let's pray. It gets real quiet. For real. I love it. Because I'll just sit in awkward quietness for a long time. And the reason everybody kind of hesitates to go is because you're thinking, what if? What if I don't pray as well as Nancy? Tom is so eloquent. He just rolls, so poetic. It just rolls off his tongue. And here I am just fumbling over my pathetic vocabulary. But if Jesus is your ransom, then you're free. You're free from that. You can just go, hey, I also know Jesus is mighty mediator, therefore it doesn't matter how I pray. He'll take it and perfect it. And because it's my ransom, I'm free to just fumble my way through this. Have you ever done this? You're in the grocery store, walking through the produce aisle. Somebody walks up, hey, how you doing? I'm great. How are you? Well, man, you could be praying for and then they tell you something, you know what you're free to do in that moment? Not go, you know what? I'll pray about that. What you mean is, when I get somewhere else, private, maybe what you're free to do is grab that person's hand and go, all right, let's go. Let's pray right now. Here we go. And people are picking out lemons and apples all around you. And you get to go to God in prayer because he's your ransom and you're free. Verse 7. 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 question I have for you today is, do you have faith? Do you believe? Not just believe about, but believe on, like rest, the full weight of your life on God as your Savior. Do you believe that Jesus is your mediator? Do you believe that Jesus perfectly ransomed your life and you are free indeed? In a minute, I'm gonna pray. I'm gonna give you the chance. If you never have received the gift of believing in Jesus, you can do that. Today we're also gonna respond in faith, because praying is a first of all thing. And so we're gonna pray together. We're gonna sing. And when we sing, singing is an act of praying altogether. We're just saying one big prayer to God. And then for some of you, you need to come down here and get rid of all the pretending and all the performing and all the hiding and be free to come to your heavenly Father in prayer. Let's pray together. If you've never received Jesus as your Savior, as your mediator, as your perfect ransom to set you free, but today you place your faith in Jesus, would you raise your hand up high? Because you're free. You don't have to hide your faith in Jesus. You're free. Heavenly Father, thank you for Jesus. Thank you for who he is, what he has done. And Lord, we come to you right now in this praying receiving of faith and singing songs to you. And falling on our face before you is an expression that you are the center and everything holds together in you. And so God hear our prayers. We love you. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen. Let's stand, let's sing our prayers to God. Let's fall on our face in praying before God and let's respond to the gospel.