God, Who Desires All Men To Come To A Knowledge Of The Truth

This morning we're going to be going back into 1 Timothy chapter 2. We're going to be studying verses 3 and 4. And we're going to spend most of our time talking about verse 4. And before we read our text, I want to explain how we should come to our text. Because this is a passage that I think is often misunderstood or misinterpreted. And so when we read scripture, there are a couple of ways that we work to make it fit together in our minds. Because if we were to just pull a verse out of its context and read it and say, here's what it says, we may well come away with a very wrong understanding of what we're being taught, what that scripture is about. And so we want to understand scripture when we read it.

in its original context. What was going on before it? What was going on after it? What was the author trying to get at? Once we get outside of the original context, we want to come and look at what other passages of Scripture address this same topic. What does it say? We're trying to develop a theology or an understanding more broadly of what has God said about this thing. And so we interpret Scripture in its original context. We interpret Scripture with other Scripture. And finally, we interpret Scripture... with clearer passages. So if we read Scripture and we find, that doesn't seem right, or I read this other passage and it seemed to say something different, one of the things we need to do is go, okay, which passage is clearer? Which one gives a fuller explanation of the question at hand? And we say, okay, we're going to take that clearer passage and we're going to understand the less clear passage through the boundaries of the clearer passage. And the reason I'm bringing all of this up this morning is our passage...

has the ability to be snatched out of context and completely misunderstood. And one of the things Paul says in his second letter to Timothy in verse 2, verse 15, is he says, be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed. And then he defines what that means. What does it mean to present yourself to God as approved as a good workman who doesn't need to be ashamed? Well, it's tied to your ability to accurately handle the word of truth, to understand what God has said. And that carries with it the reality that not everything God has said just falls off the page and lands in our laps, and we go, oh, I got it, I understand. Some of it takes work to understand. Some of it's not as low, the fruit's not as low-hanging on the tree as some other passages. Our text this morning is one of those. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word now? From 1 Timothy 2, verses 3 and 4. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. This is good.

and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So we're going to divide our study of God's word this morning up into two parts, and the first is going to be to understand what this passage teaches us about God, and the second half was going to be aimed at us sharing God's desire, because this passage talks about God having a desire. And so we're going to unpack... this desire, what it is, why is it written this way, and then we're going to say, okay, well, if God desires this thing in the way that he desires it, we ought to as well. That's the goal. Now, the preceding verses we studied two weeks ago, and they say, and it says this, it says, first of all, I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgiving be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. And so we could sum up these first two verses, the context,

of our text this morning is Paul calling us to pray for all men, especially those who rule and are in authority because our lives hang in the balance of how they rule. We're supposed to seek to live tranquil, quiet lives, and the reality is those who rule over us have a lot to do with our ability to lead a peaceful, quiet life. And so Paul teaches us that this sort of prayer For those who rule over us, and particularly those who don't rule well, who don't rule in accordance with God's words, that we ought to pray for them so that we're able to lead a peaceful, quiet life. This, in verse 3, is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior. And so the context of our passage this morning is prayer, and prayer for all kinds of men, and especially and particularly the most wicked.

And so our main focus this morning is going to be on Paul's description of God. He says, God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. And so to understand this verse, we're going to start with the phrase, all men. Because if we were to read this passage and say, oh, well, God desires that all men would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, there's a low-hanging understanding or interpretation of that verse that I'm convinced is not accurate. When we read this, the simplest... interpretation of it, is that all men means literally everyone. When Paul speaks here, he's speaking of literally one for one, every individual, that God desires every individual person to be saved. Let's suppose that that's what it means for a minute. That Paul says, God our Savior desires all men to be saved. That it means literally every man, every person, every man, woman, and child that has ever been created. He desires them to be saved. The question that immediately rises is, are all men saved?

If God desires this thing, is it true? Is that what happened? God desires all men to be saved, so are all men saved. And of course the answer to that question is no, not all men are saved. Many aren't saved. If we were to believe that God desired all men to be saved, then there would be no place for hell. There would be no context for it. We wouldn't need hell. we'd say all men are going to be saved because God desires that all men would be saved. And if we say, no, no, no, we understand that there are some who aren't saved, but God desires them to be saved, then we have to say, well, how come God has a desire that has gone unmet? Does God desire things he's not able to accomplish? And if we walk further down that trail of God desiring things that he is unable or unwilling to accomplish, all of his promises, And all of his warnings and everything about his character in Scripture gets called into question. If he can't do what he wants to do, if he wants something and he goes, I wish I could, but I can't, then where does that leave us with regard to our salvation? I wish I could, but I can't. And so it's dangerous for us to consider this as Paul saying of God, he wants to do something, he wants this thing.

When we know in reality, from both experience and scripture, that it's not the case that all men are saved. In Matthew 7, at the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his hearers, enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. Why would Jesus give this warning if there wasn't actually any danger of some people taking the wide path, not being saved? And so really what we're dealing with here is a question of election, a question of God's desire. What does he want? What does he want to see happen in this world with regard to men and their salvation? And there's two ways of describing this. One is accurate and right, and one of them is wrong. One way is to say God has two wills, that he has a will that he doesn't accomplish, and then he has a will that he does accomplish. And that's not appropriate. That's not right.

God has one will. He has one desire. But from our perspective, we only see a part of it. We would talk about this in terms of a secret will or a hidden will, his secret counsels or decrees, and his revealed will, the things that we can see and the things that we can know. Deuteronomy 29.29 says the secret things are the Lord's, but the revealed things are for us and for our children. And so Deuteronomy 29.29 teaches us that there are things that God... and reasons why he does those things that are hidden from us. We don't see them. We don't understand them. So when we come into those sorts of circumstances, and this is one of them, what does it mean for God to desire all men to be saved and yet not to do it? Does he want every person to be saved? And I'm watching Daniel, and Daniel's kind of like, yes.

But how do we reconcile that with the fact that he doesn't then save them all? What does it mean about God if he doesn't save those that he wants to save? Is it possible for him not to save those that he wants to save? This is really a question of his sovereignty and whether or not he's able to do all that he wants to do. In Psalm 115, the psalmist compares our God with the God of the nations. And this is what he says about our God. He says, our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. So does it please him to save all men? One for one, everybody. We have to say, no, he doesn't. He's not pleased to do that. Because if he was pleased to do that, then he would do that. So if the phrase, all men, that God desires all men to be saved, if it doesn't mean literally everyone, what does it mean? Well, in verse 1 of this chapter, Paul tells us to pray for all men. Same sort of construction. Pray for all men. Kings and those who rule and those who are in authority. But pray for all men. Same Greek construction.

But in that context, who is he actually telling the people to pray for? Well, he's telling them to pray for the kings and those who rule over them who are wicked. And ultimately, those who they think are opposed to God and don't want to have anything to do with God. Those who are set in their ways to persecute and to oppress God's people. These are the ones that Paul says, pray for them. Now, what should we pray for them? When we pray for someone who rules over us, who's wicked, whether that's a political leader, whether that's someone in our place of employment, or whether that's in our home, or politically, what are we praying for them? What do we want for them? I think oftentimes what we want is we want them to rule better. We want them to make righteous decisions. We want them to do things that benefit us, benefit the people, the people who are under their care. And I say, that's right.

What has to change for them to start ruling that way? They have to fear God. They have to be saved. If we want them to make godly decisions and rule in the fear of God, they have to know God. They have to be saved. And so when we pray for all men, we're praying that they would be saved. And so this passage is giving us the context or the description of how we ought to pray for those who rule over us. We ought to pray for their salvation, not just that they would make better decisions or right decisions. No, bigger than that. Because what happens to them if they make better and right decisions, but they never believe and they're never saved? At the end of the day, they die and they face judgment. And so if we're going to pray for them, we ought to pray for their salvation. And so when Paul says, pray for all men, that God desires that all men would come to a knowledge of the truth, that they would be saved.

He's telling us to pray for all types of men, all classes of men, the unsavable. Now, you have to think about yourself for a minute, and you have to go, are there people in my life that I think are beyond the grace of God? Hopeless, wastes of time. Not in some joking sort of, well, you know, yeah, I think they're sinners, but I mean really, like you think they're just a waste of time. They're just, they're too far gone. Or they've harmed you in such a way that you say, I don't care if they're saved. I don't care. I would just assume that they face the wrath of God. These are the ones that he tells us to pray for. These are the ones that God desires would be saved. It's interesting that Paul would say it this way because he's described himself, one who was in authority, one who used his power to persecute and to oppress Christians. And he says, this is the kind of guy you pray for. And so when he met the Lord, when Jesus revealed himself on the road to Damascus,

Paul says, who are you, Lord? And he says, I'm Jesus whom you're persecuting. And then Paul goes blind, and he goes off to a house, and he fasts and he prays for a few days. And then the Lord in a vision reveals himself to this man Ananias, and he says, I want you to go, and I want you to lay your hands on this man. And what does Ananias say? He says, Lord, don't you know how bad that man is? Don't you know how wicked he is? Don't you know the terrible things he's done to your people? This is the last kind of man Ananias wanted to go pray for, wanted to lift up to the Lord, wanted to be saved. He wanted Paul to die. He didn't want Paul to be saved. And the Lord says, Ananias, go to him. Lay your hands on him. And so Ananias does. He goes and he lays his hands on him. And he presents Paul to the Lord. And so this passage teaches us that there are no men, there are no group, there's no class of people that are beyond the grace of God.

that ought not to be saved, that shouldn't be called to faith in Jesus Christ. And I think part of our trouble is that when we go through our normal lives, we're not as aware as we ought to be of the fact that people have souls. We see people and we say, oh, this is how he is, or this is how she is, or this is what they're like, or this is what their problems are. But we don't think in terms of them having a soul. That the God who made us and who saved us is the same God who's made them. And if they're to be saved, they have to come to a knowledge of the truth of that. Because they have a soul, an eternal soul that's never going to die. And at some point, their body is going to die and they're going to face God in judgment. They have a soul and we want, ought to want, God desires for them that they would be saved. He has a concern for the lost. He has a concern for the far off.

I could ask in here and say, are there any Jews here? Are there any who can say, I'm from the lineage of God's people? And I don't think, knowing you guys, that any of us are Jews could make that claim. Which means that if God didn't desire all men to be saved, we'd be without hope in the world. In Ephesians, when Paul's writing to them, he talks to them, to the Gentiles, and he says, there was a time when you were aliens and strangers to God. You were not... recipients of the promises. You weren't children of God. But I'm here with you, preaching to you, telling you about Jesus so that you would be saved. Because God desires all men to come to a knowledge of the truth. And so as we go through our lives, we ought to look and see that the people around us have souls. They don't just have culture. They don't just have class. They don't just have things that they can give to us or we can learn from them. They have souls. And they're in need of salvation.

When Jesus called the disciples up onto the mountain and he gave them the great commission, the back end, the reasons why he says, go out into all the world and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe, to obey all that I've commanded you, is because of this desire. That the gospel would not be a closed circuit only for certain people, but that it would be made open for all the nations. That that's God's desire, that men to every corner of the earth would hear the good news. And what I want to encourage you with is that you have people around you that you interact with as a Christian who don't know the Lord, who haven't been saved. And it's God's desire that they would be. His desire is that they would hear, that they would come to a knowledge of the truth, and that they would believe. But for us to be able to participate in that work, we first have to see that reality.

That we live amongst people who don't know Jesus. And that God wants them to know Jesus. And that he's put us there with them so that they will come to know. Now, that's a lot of pressure. You could easily take away what I'm saying and go, you have to say it right, you have to do it right, you have to do all of it. It all hinges on you. And the point is not to say it all hinges on you. It can't all hinge on you. You can't change anybody's heart. You can want their heart to change. You can pursue their heart changing, but you can't make them change. How many of you have older kids, have seen your children do things, and you went, I don't want that for you. I don't want that for you. I want these good things for you. And tied to those good things coming to you is you coming to faith, you being saved. Now, it's a difficult thing for us if you consider this as parents, because we can look at our children and we can say, I can't save you. I can't make you believe.

So what is the hope that that parent has that their child can believe, will believe? Their hope has to be in the power of the gospel. That God would use his Holy Spirit to make their words and their testimony and their lives real to that child. That that child would see and that they would come to faith because God's at work in their heart calling them and changing them and revealing himself. They're coming to a knowledge of the truth. So do we know how people will come to a knowledge of the truth? Some. Paul tells us in Romans that how will they believe unless they hear, and how will they hear unless someone preaches, and how will they preach unless somebody's sent? So how do people, how is this desire of God's that all men would be reached with the gospel and saved, having come to a knowledge of the truth, how does that work? Well, that works by you and by me.

First, talking with our unbelieving friends, co-workers, neighbors, family members, and saying, this is who Jesus is. Look at what he's done. Look at who you are. Look at the fruit of your life. It's only going to get worse if you continue in this way, but it doesn't have to. And then we pray. There's only so much talking you can do with someone. At the end of all of the talking and before all of the talking and during all of the talking, we have to be praying that God would take those words and that he would make them alive to them, that he would save them. And here's a difference between us and God. We can look at people and we can say, I wish that they would believe and be saved. And we can work toward that end, but we can't affect that change. So then you might think, well, what's the point? Why do all of this? If I believe that God has already fixed and determined,

every single person who will come to faith. And he knows and has appointed the time and the manner and all of that. Why do I need to do anything? Why should I minister to them? If he's going to save them regardless, what's my obligation to them? And I'd respond and I'd say, okay, how were you saved? Was it because people looked at you and went, I don't know if you're going to turn out. God will do his thing. I'm going to go on about my way. No. Anyone who's in this room who believes has had people love them and care about them and seek their salvation. Minister to them. Tell them the truth. What truth? Whatever truth they needed to hear about their life, about God's ways and about his word and about his son. That truth. Here's another way of thinking about it. Can you be saved without coming to a knowledge of the truth? Do you think someone can be saved without knowledge?

Well, maybe in some miraculous way it's possible. I don't deny that that's possible. But if that was possible, then why do we send missionaries to other countries? Why don't we just pray for them? We send missionaries to other countries because we realize that God uses means and that them growing in their knowledge of the truth is an integral part of them coming to faith. They have to learn something. They have to know something about God. Proverbs 1.7 says, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. And so as we pray for one another, for the lost, we don't simply pray and then say, check, it's done, I prayed for them. We recognize that our responsibility to them is to impart knowledge to them, to say, here's what God has said. And it's a strange thing that the pressures that we face as Christians to not say what God has said, how often it silences us or intimidates us.

or somehow justifies that it's hard work and it's going to be messy and it's going to be difficult. And I don't know that the people are going to listen and hear anyway. Some of you came up in Christian homes and you didn't have the experience of seeing everything the world had to offer and the hollowness and emptiness of it. That all of those lusts and all of those desires were really just made of, they had about as much integrity as cotton candy. And they didn't satisfy. But some of you did come from that. And you do know. You've been into the pursuit of the world up to your elbows, and you've realized it does not satisfy. It doesn't provide you with what you're seeking. Now, wherever you've come from, whether you've come up in the church and been protected from a life of worldliness, or whether you've come from a place of worldliness, Joseph, would you stop? The question to you is, do you desire that all men would be saved?

And you say, yes. And I say, good. That's good. Now, do you realize that they have to come to a knowledge of the truth? That in some way, they've got to see who they are, who God is, why Jesus came and he had to die. And most of the time, the people coming to faith is not something that happens in an instant. It's not one conversation. It's not them having trouble or you having this long, this gospel conversation and all of a sudden they believe. It's often a process. Happens over a period of months or even years that they come and they see and they've heard what you've said and it's stuck with them. They've gone away and they've considered it. Maybe they considered it and they rejected it and six months later or a year later or two years later they come back and they go, you know, I've only made this worse.

If they come and they say, if they come to the realization, this is me, I've made it worse. When I decide what I'm going to do, I take things from bad to worse. Then they say, somebody told me that that's how it worked when I didn't love God. Someone told me that that's how it was going to go. That's a seed planted in them. In my growing up years, I had a couple of people that I look back on and I know were Christians. I know now they were Christians. I didn't know then that they were Christians. I just thought they were nice people. My fifth grade teacher helped us out as a family, personally helped my mom and I out. I still communicate with her. My fifth grade teacher, I don't know how many years ago was that, 25, 27, something. It's a good long while ago. I still talk to her occasionally, you know, online. I used to be in Big Brothers Big Sisters, Christian family. They loved me. They cared about me. And I can look back now and I can see why, you know, the things that they did I didn't understand at the time.

I can only imagine what they thought of me as they were ministering to me as a fifth, sixth grader. And so this desire that God has that all men would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth is something that we're to be engaged in as Christians, and it's something that we're to be engaged in for our whole lives. It's not something we go and do. We don't say, oh, I went and had that conversation with them, and they didn't turn on a dime, and so now it's over. How many times when you've had your kids, or when you were a child, did your parents say to you, The same thing. Son, we've talked about that. Honey, daughter, we've talked about this. Time and time and time again. And eventually it gets in. Eventually they hear and they go, you know, I remember. Somebody, you know, my parents used to always tell me this. They were right. So often parents feel this pressure that when they speak to their children and their children don't immediately turn and change their behavior, they think, well, I must be doing the wrong thing. I must be saying the wrong thing because they're not turning on a dime.

And that's the wrong thought. It's the wrong thought in parenting. It's the wrong thought in evangelism. The instruction to parents is train your children up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, the nurture of the Lord. Train them up in it. And you go, well, it's not working. And I say, do you have a better plan than God's? Do you know better what will produce holiness in them than what God has told you to do? And you say, no. And I say, you're right. So keep on. And add more fervent prayer to it. Put life into your child and make the things you tell them and teach them and pray for them true of them. Same thing is true with salvation for all men. Pray for them. Talk to them. Love on them. Stick around with them. Tell them no when they need to be told no and tell them yes when they need to be told yes. Don't abandon them. We could all understand if a parent just decided, well, I don't care if my child goes to hell, I'm done.

They don't listen. And we think, don't pursue their death. That's you pursuing their death. That's you saying, I don't care if you go to hell. And here God says, Paul says that God desires all men to be saved. And consider the extent he had to go to so that we would be saved. He had to give his only son to come into this world to live and to die. A miserable, awful death so that we would be saved. Because he desires that you would be saved. And so the instruction to us is that we would share this desire. And that we would cultivate this desire within us. And you're going to face opposition to not desire this. People are going to sin against you. They're going to make you angry. They're going to not listen. They're going to be rude. There's going to be all kinds of things. Hurdles to get over with regard to loving people. And seeking their salvation. And there will be a cost to telling them the truth. But in the end, if they're saved, if they believe, who would look back on that and say, it wasn't worth it.

all of the sacrifice and all the hardship and all the burden and all of the toil and all of the difficulty and all the long nights and early mornings. Who would say if someone came to faith, it wasn't worth it. It shouldn't have been that much work. Scripture teaches us that there's joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. That the angels rejoice when one sinner repents. And we as God's people get to be a part of that. But we don't get to determine the terms of it. We don't get to say, I'm going to do this, and then they've got to fulfill. This is not a contract. We're not saved by negotiation. I'm going to tell you the truth, and then you're going to believe, and then we're going to all sign on the dotted line, and it's over. That's just not how it works. Do you think the prodigal son's father disciplined his son? I'm sure he disciplined his son. The older brother stuck with his dad, and yet the father, his desire for his son's salvation and his joy.

at his son's salvation was overwhelming. He never said, enough and no more. I don't care if you go to hell. He rejoiced to see the day when his son broke the horizon and came back to him. Some of you have older kids. They haven't come back over the hill yet. Do you desire their salvation? Help them come to the knowledge of the truth. You got neighbors. You got friends. Do you desire their salvation? Will you stay engaged with them? This is the question to us. Do we share this desire? We can get off on a rabbit trail and say, well, I think it means, does it mean all men everywhere and all of this? And I say, you know, I just don't think that's that helpful of a conversation because scripture is very clear that not all men are saved. So I don't think we should be distracted by that part of the conversation. I think we should come back and say, do we share this desire that men would be saved? And we say, yes. And I say, good. And I say, so are we going to participate in it? How are we going to participate in it? As you have opportunity, what do you say?

This is how we walk out our faith and our desire that they would come to the knowledge of the truth. We live in a world where everybody makes truth claims. They just aren't honest about it. Everybody's got truth, thinks something they think is true. You as a Christian ought to say, God's word is true. That's the truth. It's not my truth. It's the truth. People can reject it, and they do. But that doesn't change the validity or the certainty of God's truth. So why not say, God says. You ought not to be going out and getting drunk. You shouldn't be living with your girlfriend. You shouldn't be stealing. That's what God says. And I find that those are helpful rumble strips in people's lives for you to say, God has said there's a different way, a better way. So you call people to it. And you can do it with a smile on your face. It's not manipulative. It's that you want to see them be saved. Now, for you to do this, you have to believe something. And it's this.

You have to believe that God can save. It's very easy to look at people and to despair over the hold that Satan has on them and just go, it's hopeless with them. It's not worth my time. There's nothing I can say that's going to help. And when you face those temptations, you have to consider, do you believe God can save them? If you do, as you do, you'll be free to speak to them because you'll have hope that God will be merciful to them. In his time, my fifth grade teacher, I mean, it was 10, 12 years later, and I had lost contact with her until I became a Christian, and then I understood who Ms. Wallace was and why she had loved my family the way she had. So being a Christian and sharing this desire is a long-term investment. It's not something you will always see come back to you quickly. It's a seed planted in faith, and you pray God would bring water and keep the birds away from plucking it up.

You're no fool for saying what God has said to people. You're no fool for it. To love them with the truth of the gospel. It's a glorious thing. It's a sweet thing. When you see someone come to faith and believe, there's no greater joy than seeing someone come online for the Lord. So pray for them. Tell them what God says. Pray for them some more. Keep telling them what God says. Live a life in accordance with what you tell them God says. As they see you live and they see you suffer and they see you have joy and they see the blessing of God in your life, it will speak to them. This is what we're here for. This is why we have a building. This is why we have one another. This is why we gather together is to be equipped, to be encouraged, to be strengthened, to go out and to make disciples. And you say, I don't know what to say to people. And I say, I know the feeling. A few weeks ago, I took Luis.

with me. I've been wanting to go visit the daycare families, some of them. And I was intimidated to go by myself. Now here's the funny thing. I know that I'm the one who has to do all the talking. Even if I take Luis with me, who's good at talking to people about the gospel. I know that Luis is going to look to me and expect me to take the lead. And so what did I do? I was having a hard time going by myself. Wasn't doing it. I said, I'm going to go. So I say, Luis, you want to come with me? He says, yeah, yeah, let's go, bro. And so we go.

And it was sweet. And we talked to people, and we invited them to come to the youth thing last Friday night. And you know, none of them came. None of them came. John was expecting. I said, they all said they're going to come, John. And John's like, that's great. We're all set. And all of you who were teaching that, you're like, that's great. And none of them came. Yet. So if you feel like, man, I don't know what to say, and I'm not sure, take somebody with you. Take a brother. Take someone to hold your hand, to stand there beside you, and to give you strength to love other people.

I should be able to do it on my own. Well, maybe in some day you will be able to. But for now, take somebody with you. Take two people with you. Shoot, invite half the church over to your house and then invite that one person to your house and then you don't have to do any of the talking. Do you desire that all men would be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth? If so, work it out in your life. This is the sweetest work you'll do. There are lots of hard things that you have to do in the Christian life. There are many pains and there are many trials.

But loving sinners is not often one of them. You say, what if they're mean to me? And what if they reject the truth? And I say, they will. But for those who don't, you can't imagine a greater joy.