A Ransom For All

come to a knowledge of the truth. In this desire of God's, we see his kind intention to sinners, that he doesn't abandon them or us to our sins, but rather has sent his Son into this world to establish his kingdom, to redeem a people for himself, and to take those people and commission them to carry on the work that Jesus Christ began, to the ends of the earth. And while it's not true that all men will be saved, we've studied this last week, We, Christians, are God's chosen instrument and the conduits of his grace to a lost and perishing world. There are none in this world who are beyond the call of Jesus Christ. And we, as his people, as the bride of Christ, have been commissioned to build his kingdom in the power and the strength that the Holy Spirit supplies each one of us. Up to this point, we've identified who the gospel's for and God's desire that it would go to them. But now we're going to turn our attention

to the one who sends, the one that we're to bring people to, to God himself. And so in verse 5, Paul teaches us that there is one God, which to us may seem like a simple statement, there's one God, and we go, yeah, I know. The question's not, ultimately, do you know that? The question is, what does it mean that there's one God in your interactions with other people as you pray with them, as you pray for them and for their salvation? What does it mean for them to know that there's one God? Well, one of the things that's or known that was true at this time and is true still in our day is that while there is only one true God, that doesn't mean that there aren't other gods, false gods, lesser gods that people lust after and follow. And so when we pray for those over us, those who are lost, those who are perishing, one of the things that they need to understand is there is just one God. When Jesus Christ said,

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. He's saying this very thing is true. There is one God. There is one way of salvation. There is no other name under heaven and earth by which men can be saved. Now, is this a truth that's known everywhere you go? No, there's not. If you were to think of this in terms of our day, you would hear people say, well, that's fine for you. You believe what you believe. You believe there's one true God, but I don't believe that there's one. I think that people should be free to do what they want and think what they want. And what that is is a denial.

whether in ignorance or not, of this truth that there is just one God. In Acts 17.30 and 31, Paul says this. He's preaching and he says, Now this is a claim of authority. This is also a declaration of accountability for all of the world. Up to this point, there's been one people of God, the Israelites, the nation of Israel, the Jews. And there was all kinds of other nations and all kinds of other people who didn't serve that God. They served the gods of their lands and the gods of their nations. And what Paul says in this sermon is there were times of ignorance. God has overlooked those times of ignorance. And now he's calling all men, not just his people, but all men to repent.

And to believe. Now you can understand that that would have brought with it a good bit of conflict. A good bit of disagreement. Think of it this way. Did the Jews take pride in the fact that they knew the true God and they served the one true God? Did they think they were better than all the rest? And the answer is yes, they did. They absolutely thought that they had a corner on the market, that they were somehow special. Somehow better than the rest of the nations. And in that assumption about themselves, they despise the nations. They look down on them. And so when Jesus Christ comes on the scene, when he comes and he dies, he says, no longer is it only for you, but it's for all men. And so Paul picks up this same theme here and he says, I want you, first of all, brethren, to pray for all men, especially those who are in authority. And as we studied last week, we're to pray for their salvation.

That's God's desire for them, that they would be saved. And if you've been here for these last couple of sermons about this, we looked at those who are in authority and we say, is there a class of people more despised than those who rule over you who are wicked? Is there anyone in your mind that you think is farther from the kingdom and salvation than those who don't know God and who use their wickedness to oppress God's people? Paul says even them, those are the ones especially you ought to pray for. You ought to pray for their salvation. And what are we to pray for them? Well, we're to pray that they come to know the one true God. That they would become even as we are. That they would become our brothers. That the dividing wall and the barriers that exist between the unbeliever and the believer would be torn down and that they would be joined together with us as children of God.

And that can only happen if they come to a knowledge that there is only one God. And whatever God it is that they've been serving, whatever it is that they've been chasing after, whatever it is they have believed has been a lie. And as a lie is to be rejected. When we pray for them, when we minister to them, we call them to faith in the one true God. But to be able to do that, we have to desire their salvation as God desires their salvation. And there's a temptation that exists in all of our hearts. As we look around at other people, we're always making this judgment. There's always this pecking order and we're trying to judge. Am I better than them or worse than them? And if so, why? Jesus addressed this temptation when he spoke about the Tower of Siloam. At one time, he refers back to just, this is old news, right? There was a Tower of Siloam at one point. It fell down. 18 people died.

And the answer, what the people thought was, well, they must have been bad. Those people that the Tower of Siloam fell on who died as a result of that, they must have been really wicked people. And Jesus says, no. Do you think they were worse sinners than you? Do you think that they came to that end because they were different than you? He says, no, but I tell you, unless you repent, you'll perish likewise. And what he's saying to them is, there's no difference between them and you. The only difference that exists between a believer and an unbeliever is the mercy and the grace of God extended to one and not to the other. The work that God has begun and is carrying on in the life of the believer to change them, that is the difference. But those believers weren't chosen because they were less sinful, because they hadn't done as many bad things. They were chosen because God chose to choose them. Because he decided to. And so this idea that God's people would look down,

on the unbelievers was true at Jesus' time, was true before Jesus' time, true at his time. Paul's addressing it here, and it's true for us as well. There's a temptation residing in all of our hearts that we would look down on those who are not like us and think, well, they should know better. So unless we discipline our thoughts and our minds, our pride's going to carry us into the same error that Paul is addressing here, that we would have no love for the lost. That we wouldn't pray for them, that we wouldn't seek them, that we wouldn't speak to them, or that we'd say, you believe what you want. They say to us, you believe what you want and I'll believe what I want. How many of us in our hearts would say the same thing to them? You believe what you want and I'll believe what I want. Our concern ought to be that they would love the one true God, that they would come to know him and serve him. It's only by God's grace that you or I, if you're a Christian, are any different than the people we look at and despise.

The only difference is God's kindness to us. It really, really is. And I don't know how to impress upon you strong enough that you are no less of a sinner than the people you despise. That God wasn't kind to you because you were better than them. That he didn't look at you and go, well, there's one. There's one God who's made us, all of us. And having made all of us, we are all, whether believer or unbeliever, accountable to him. All who've been made by God. We'll stand before him and we'll give an account of their life and their deeds. On the one hand, the Christians will come and they'll give an accounting and their sins and their deeds will be covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. But they won't have less sin or a better standing. They won't have anything more to add to to their account before Jesus Christ than an unbeliever, except Jesus Christ. And so when we pray for all men, we ought to pray that they would be reconciled to this one true God. There's no other thing that will lead to their salvation. It's all that separates us from them. It's God's work in our life, and our desire ought to be that we'd see that same work carried on in their life. That we would be obliged to participate in that work and carry it on. And so there's one true God.

And then Paul goes on and he says, and there's one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ. Now, what is a mediator? This is a question. What is a mediator? Well, a mediator is someone who's supposed to come in and work to resolve conflict. They're not to pass judgment, but they come in and they try to work out a negotiation between two competing parties. Now, one of the things that a mediator is supposed to be is objective. In our world, you don't want a mediator who comes in. If you were in conflict with somebody, you wouldn't want the mediator to come in with the express intent of negotiating on behalf of the other person. You'd say, that's a bad mediator because they're not being objective. They've got their interests already aligned. They're not looking at the facts. They've already decided how they think this thing should go. A mediator ought to be objective. Their goal is to say, what did you say?

You know, if a husband and wife get in a fight, what's a mediator supposed to do? He's supposed to come and he's supposed to say, okay, you said this, you heard that. You said this, you heard that. Okay, let's set that down. What do you think? Because inevitably the married couple would say, I never said that. And they say, yes, you did. And the mediator comes in and he says, hold on. Let's talk it out. I want to help understand. And the mediator doesn't come in and go, the husband's right. Or the wife's right. He comes in and says, we need to see what's going on here. He's objective. So here's a question. Do you want an objective mediator between you and God? Do you want one who comes in and says, what does God require of you as his creature? Okay. Have you fulfilled what God's required of you as his creature? Okay. What can the mediator do at that point? He's got to try to get one of you to come away from

your position. So can you come away from your sinfulness and go, well, actually I didn't sin against God. He just thought I did. Well, that's not going to work. Can the mediator go to God and say, well, he did do something wrong, but I think you ought not to worry about it. I think you ought to just forget about it. He had good intentions. If that was to be said to God, what would he say? Oh, good intentions. Never mind. All of that hell and all of that condemnation and all of the wrath and all of the judgment, all of that stuff, don't worry about it. You meant well. We laugh because we know that God can't do that. He cannot do that because if he did that, he would cease to be God. He's perfectly holy. He's perfectly righteous. He can't have anything to do with sin. And if he were to have a mediator come to him and say, you know what, you need to just not worry about that.

If he accepted those terms, our hope would be gone in this world. Because everything that God has created and all the order that he's established would be tossed over on its head. It's helpful for us to know that God doesn't change. That his standard is set. That it's not negotiable. It's etched in stone. And it'll endure forever. That's a helpful thing to us because it removes from us this lie and this temptation that we can move around what God expects. We cannot do that. Never have people ever been able to move around what God requires of them. They say, well, I don't feel like that's right. Then you're wrong. And I'm sorry because if you continue to think that, it's going to mean worse condemnation for you and worse consequence for you, and I don't want that for you. But the standard cannot change.

And so if we're to have a mediator between us and between God, but God can't change and neither can we, what is a mediator supposed to do? We're at an impasse. In our legal system, they'll call in mediators between the prosecution and the defense. And the mediator's job is to try to get the prosecution and the defense to come to an agreement so that the case doesn't go to trial. Right? Am I generally right? Generally, more or less, says the law student. That's one of their goals, is to say, okay, what's your issue? What's your issue? Can we resolve this without having a trial? What happens if the mediator fails to reach an agreement? Well, then it goes to trial. And so we have to consider what happens to us as a defendant if we go to trial with God. Nothing good.

A righteous judgment against us for our actions done in rebellion and in opposition to God. So do you want a mediator who's objective? No. In this situation, you do not want a mediator who is objective. Because he will do you no good in the arbitration between God and his holiness against you and your sinfulness. The mediator will go, he's going to win and you're going to lose. And so Paul tells us that there's one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Jesus Christ. And so Jesus is not the type of mediator who comes in objectively and says, good, bad, can we work this out? If he came under those terms, we would be without hope in this world. So what we have in Jesus Christ in his mediation is an advocate. Not simply someone who comes in and says, Well, did you do it? And you say, yeah, I did it. And he goes, well, you're going to get what you deserve for doing it then. No. Jesus comes in to plead our case. And so his mediation is different than the sort of mediation that you would have in a court of law or the sort of mediation a pastor or a counselor might offer in a marital dispute. Jesus is a different type of mediator. He comes in knowing that the case, how the, the, the, the,

the landscape of the case. He knows that God is just and he knows that we deserve what we've got coming to us. And his goal is to change that outcome. We have examples in the Old Testament of mediators. Mediation was something that the priests did. They would go and they would stand between God who is holy and between the people who are sinful and they would mediate on the people's behalf. He would make their case to a holy God. And when that was going on in the Old Testament and the people were to be learning and watching and participating in these sacrifices and in this mediation, the people were not allowed to come to God directly. No one was allowed to come into the Holy of Holies in the temple. They weren't allowed to come into the presence of God where the Ark of the Covenant was because of his holiness except the high priest once a year.

And his job when that high priest would come in there, he was to come in having made a sacrifice, having killed animals and taken their blood and brought that blood in and make an offering to God and saying, have mercy on these people who have sinned because of the sacrifice that's been made. And yet that blood at that time was not meant to cover over their sin. It was meant to be a picture or a foreshadowing. It was meant to make the people look forward. It was meant to teach them. You've sinned against God. He's holy and righteous and just. And there has to be a sacrifice. There has to be a compensation for your sins. And then the people would bring from their own flock, they would bring their animals, and then they'd watch their animals be slaughtered. Their life taken from them, their blood drawn from them. They'd watch them be all cut up. And they'd be sitting there thinking, this is what I deserve. As they saw it, and as they heard it, and as they smelled it.

They would have been seeing their sin and going, this is what is going to happen. This is what sin produces. This is its end. And the priest would take the blood and he would take it in and he would offer petition and he would intercede and he would say, he would pray for them on behalf of God that he would have, or on behalf of the people to God, have mercy on them. They've sinned. And yet these priests had to continually do this. The people had to stay far off. And the priest would come and he would offer the blood. And then when Jesus comes on the scene, you have the fulfillment of all of that imagery and all of those practices. Those sacrifices had to keep being offered because they didn't ultimately and finally cover anyone's sins. It was meant to teach them that they needed a mediator to come. They needed someone to come who could satisfy, finally and fully, the judgment against them. And so in the Old Testament, the people were to stay afar off.

They didn't, and here's the thing, you might think, well, that's not very nice. Why did the people want to, why did God tell them they had to stay away from him? And I say, you know what? They were happy with that arrangement. They didn't want to deal directly with God. When they came out of Egypt and they came to Mount Sinai to worship God and to receive his law, he came and he descended and they were terrified and they begged Moses. They said, you talk to us, but don't let God talk to us directly or else we'll die. They feared God. They saw his power and they saw his holiness and they went, we don't want to deal directly with him. We'll bring our animals. Everything you say to do, we will do it. Because they saw God and his holiness and they went, we don't want to be in his presence because we have no hope. We will be consumed. Now all of the work that those priests did in the Old Testament, all of the sacrifices that they offered time and time and time again, scripture tells us can never atone for sins. It can never settle the debt that you and I have.

With God. That there is no sort of penance, whether it's the sacrifices of these animals in the Old Testament or any sort of behavior that you can offer to God. There's nothing you can offer to God that will appease his wrath against you for the sins you've committed. Nothing. You can't make up for it. You have no case to make. Job thought he could make a case. After he was... struck with all of this difficulty and all of this hardship and all of his family and all of his wealth, save his wife, were taken away from him. And then his body was afflicted with boils. And he sat there and he was in pain and he was in agony physically and emotionally and everything else. And his friends come and they say, well, you must have done something to deserve it. And he says, no. And then he despises his life and then he gets bitter and angry and he says, I'll make my case before God. And then the Lord comes on the scene at the end of the book and he goes, will you?

What do you have to say to me? Were you around when I created? Do you take the Leviathan and the beast and walk them on a leash? Who do you think you are that you could come into my presence and have anything to say to me? My judgments against you are just and true and righteous, and I would be well within my rights to destroy you because of the things you've done. And we might think, well, that's a terrible thing, and God's not like that. And I say, this is what Scripture teaches us about the justice of God. His standard for holiness and perfection is not diminished in any way ever for anyone. And so you and I stand as condemned people, awaiting the final judgment, sitting on death row, waiting for the judgment to come to us. This is the condition we've gotten ourselves into, and this is a condition we remain in unless we have a mediator. And so when Paul tells us that there's one man

One God and one mediator between God and man, the person Jesus Christ. Our ears ought to perk up and we ought to get real big eyes and we ought to pay attention because we understand our position with God apart from Christ. And we say, you say there's a mediator. What's he going to do? Well, in the same way that the priests in the Old Testament had to bring an offering as a payment for sin, Jesus has to bring that same offering. This is his mediation. He looks at the case and says God is holy and just and he's going to destroy these people. And he's going to be right to do it. But his desire is that they would not be destroyed. So what has to happen? Well there has to be an offering or a sacrifice, a payment made that satisfies the Lord's wrath against sin and against sinners. And so Jesus comes and he presents himself as that sacrifice.

This is why he came to earth. This is why he died. And this is what he secured for us through his resurrection. His ability to mediate the tension between our sin and God's holiness. And so when he comes in and Paul says, we have a mediator, the man Jesus Christ, what he's saying is, you realize he could have said, we have a mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ, the King Jesus Christ, the creator Jesus Christ. Why does he call him a man? He calls him a man because you're a man. The reason all of those sacrifices in the Old Testament didn't work was because they weren't the right kind of payment. Men had sinned and men's blood had to be given as a sacrifice. And so Jesus Christ comes as a mediator between God and man and he gives his own blood to cover our sins.

And so in this way, he's different than the priests of the Old Testament. If you were to read the book of Hebrews, this is the recurring theme when he's talking about the priests. They perpetually did this work. They were perpetually offering sacrifices, and it didn't finally solve anything. But it was all a foreshadowing of Jesus who was to come, who was our great high priest, who was going to mediate finally and completely a truce and peace between God and us. Now that's one thing Jesus mediated for us. He mediated the tension. and the guilt that was ours because of our behavior. But what he also did was create a path for us directly to God. In the Old Testament, the people had to have a mediator perpetually. Whenever they wanted to speak with God, there was someone between them. It was the priest. What Jesus did was, through his mediation and through his death, and through our salvation, changing us in God's sight, He made a way for us to have access to God directly. We no longer have to come through somebody else. We have direct access to God through Jesus Christ. Now where do you see this idea of coming to God through other people? Well, you see it in the Old Testament with them coming to God through the priests. You see this in the Roman Catholic Church of them coming through the saints when they pray. Here, remember, we're being told to pray for the salvation of all men.

So what do the Roman Catholics teach? They teach that when you pray for the salvation of all men, you would pray for that salvation, you'd pray to the saints that they would do this work, that they would bring your requests to God. Because they're more holy and God is more inclined to hear them. I'm painting with a broad brush here. But generally speaking, this is the gist of their theology regarding this. And I say, okay, so do you have access to God or not? When Jesus bled and when he died and when he was raised from the dead, did he secure for you access to God or not? Do you still have to have a mediator, some man, come and stand between you and God? Is there still tension? You realize what a mediator is supposed to do is resolve tension. And so the question that comes to you is, did Jesus Christ resolve the tension between you and God? If he did, then you have direct access now to God.

not through a mediator. Because there's no longer a conflict between you and God. There's no longer trouble between you and God. So you see this misapplication and this lie being perpetuated by the Roman Catholic Church, but it's not just them. We see this happening amongst ourselves. As a pastor, I have people come to me sometimes and they'll say, well, I need you to pray for me. I say, okay. And it's not usually you guys. It's people out in out and about. They have this idea that they have some sense that they've got some sort of problem or need or request, and what they want is for me to take their requests, whatever they are, and bring them to God. Forever righteous man availeth much, right? I'm going to ask you to pray for me. I'm all for having us pray for one another. But the question is, did Jesus Christ create a path and direct access for his people to God? And if he did, then do you

live as though you have direct access to God? Or do you still live as though you're on the outs with God? What I'm asking you is, when you see Jesus Christ presented as a mediator to resolve the conflict between you and his Father, do you believe that that conflict is resolved? And the danger is for you to say, well, yeah, but I don't feel like it. Now why might you not feel like that conflict's resolved? Well, because you're still a sinner and you still sin. And you say, well, so long as I sin, the conflict's not resolved. And I come back to you and I say, okay, what needs to happen for the conflict to be resolved? I need to stop sinning. And I say, well, you can't. And you haven't. What needs to happen for the conflict to be resolved? And the faithful answer is, Jesus Christ needs to die and be raised.

for the forgiveness of my sins. And I say, you're right. Did that happen? Yes. Okay, so has the conflict been resolved? And you have to say, yes, the conflict has been resolved. Which means that if you love Jesus Christ and you've put your hope and your faith in him, you have no more conflict with God. He doesn't look on you and go, I'm waiting to see how he turns out. That does not mean that you aren't still a sinner and you aren't still working out your salvation. You are. But in God's eyes, if Jesus Christ is to mediate and actually resolve the tension that we have with God, it means it's done. And that when he looks on us, he sees Jesus and his perfection and his righteousness and his holiness. That's what his mediation on our behalf accomplishes.

When he looked on Jesus Christ on the cross and he poured out his wrath on his son Jesus Christ, he didn't see his son Jesus Christ, he saw you. And in his death, Jesus Christ satisfied all of the wrath of God against you for all of your sins. That's what it means for him to mediate between God and man. John writes in 1 John chapter 2, he says, My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. So he's giving instruction. And we all want to stop there and go, yeah, I mean, Christians aren't supposed to sin. And then he says this right after that. I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father. Jesus Christ, the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins. And not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. And so it actually is imperative that we as believers live in the tension of having not...

not being yet what we will be and what we ought to be. We live in that tension, but we live in that tension with the knowledge that when God looks on us and when he sees us and when he cares for us and when he provides for us, he doesn't see us as we are currently. He sees us as perfect in his son. And if you had a perfect son, you who have children, if you have a perfect son, what would you withhold from him? What good thing would you keep from him? And if you were to keep something from him, what would you keep it from him for? You're waiting to see if he's going to be a good steward of it. You're waiting to see if it doesn't corrupt him. You're waiting to see what he's going to do with it. What has our Father God withheld from his Son? He's not withheld anything from him. And as you come to faith in Jesus Christ, and as you work out your salvation with fear and trembling,

You have to stand in the confidence and in the hope that he's mediated the conflict between you and God. That you were lost, you were dead, you were without hope in this world. But Jesus Christ stood in your place, took on the wrath of God on the cross, rose up from the grave, and God no longer looks on you and goes, I wish he'd do better. I'd love him more and give him more if he'd just do a little better. Because this is not the love of God, to behave and treat your children that way. The love of God is abundant and rich and poured out in abundance for all of God's children and his people. This is what Jesus Christ secured for us through his mediation. So, in our lives, you'll have many burdens and many difficulties that will present themselves. You'll have desires that go unmet. You'll have hardships you didn't prepare for. And how are we to process them? Well, as Christians, you're not to process them as though you don't have a mediator.

who's resolved the tension between you and God. Does he discipline his children? Yes, Hebrews teaches us this very thing, that he does discipline us, but he doesn't discipline us because he's exacting revenge and he's exercising his frustration with his children. This is not how he disciplines us. He disciplines us for our good so that we may share his holiness. And so even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, even when life is hard, We cannot be without the sure confidence that God has been merciful to us and that there no longer remains a conflict between him and us because of our sins. If we've loved him and put our hope and our faith in him. He may well discipline us. He is at work growing us and changing us, completing the work in us that he began. And from our perspective, that's often a painful and sometimes sad experience. But this is the love of our Father to us.

He sees us as holy. He sees us as perfect. He sees us as righteous. Now he's making us all of those things. It's very easy to focus on the circumstances of your life and what's going on. And I would not be helpful to you if I would tell you, well, it won't be that way forever, or it's not as bad as you think, or it's going to get better. Because I don't know if that's true. I know that Paul was afflicted in such a way that he describes himself as despairing even of life. But he also described his joy and his hope and his desire to be with the Lord. And that anything good that he could have in this world, any comfort, any peace, anything, he considered it all his loss so that he might know Jesus Christ and him crucified, that he might be a partaker of the grace of God. Paul sets out himself as an example of one who knows the mediation that Jesus Christ accomplished on his behalf and says, bring what may.

into my life, I will love and I will serve and I will praise God all the days of my life. Because he's resolved, in the man Jesus Christ, he's resolved the conflict that was going to send me to hell. And this is the truth that each one of us has to believe and proclaim to ourselves, to one another, and to the lost as we struggle through this world of sin. This is the message of hope, that there's a mediator to resolve the conflict that you have. He may, in his wisdom, choose not to resolve the conflict in your life, but he's promised to resolve the conflict you have with God so that at the end of your life, you're not left with judgment and hell. And so it's a message of hope, this message of mediation. And it's incumbent on us as God's people to desire that others would have their sins mediated by the man Jesus Christ.

that his body and his blood, given as a ransom for all, which is what Paul speaks of coming forward in the passage, would be true of them and not only of us. That we wouldn't take the mercy and the kindness and the grace of God and store it all up for ourselves, but that we would open the doors wide and share it with the rest, those who don't know, those who are dying and those who are perishing. Paul says, for this, this message, this truth, This gospel, as we've just understood it, for this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle, as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Now what they would have understood at this time is the oppression that they were under from wicked men, largely as a result of their faith. And Paul says, what is different between you and them except God's mercy? And what do they need? God has raised me up and appointed me.

to speak this truth to those who don't know. And then he goes on, we'll get into this more next week. He says, therefore, because of all of these things, because God's told you to pray for all men, especially those who rule over you, the wicked ones, that you'd pray that you could lead a peaceful and quiet life, that God desires their salvation, that they would come to the knowledge of the truth. Because there's one mediator, there's one God, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom. And because I was appointed to tell all these things, here's what I want you to do. I want you to pray. And here's how I want you to pray. Without wrath and dissension. Now we're going to come to that more later because that verse I think is connected more to what comes next. Though it is a conclusion of what's been said before. He starts off in verse 1. Therefore I urge you, brethren, that prayers and petitions and thanksgivings and all this stuff be made on behalf of all men. And then he comes and he makes his case. And at the end he says, therefore I want you to pray. Pray for what?

The salvation of all men. I want you to love all men. Those who oppress you and those who persecute you, those who treat you poorly, those who have done you harm, I want you to pray for them. And I want you to pray for their salvation. And I want you to do it without grumbling and without complaining. I want you to love them the way I've loved you. That's what I want. That's the message of this passage to us. That we would love as we have been loved. That we would not look down on those who are different than us, those who are weaker than us, those who are living in life of sin because I can't believe you would do such a thing.

Why can't you believe they would do such a thing? Don't you do such a thing? Didn't you do such a thing? Aren't you still struggling not to do such a thing? While we were yet enemies, Christ died for us. He's loved us. And we ought to love those who are still caught in the throes of sin, administering to them the truth of God's word and telling them that there's hope and there's help and it's only through one God. You don't have a personal truth that's going to save you from hell. There's one God and there's one mediator. God set out the standard. You're suffering because you haven't met the standard or you've been off pursuing some other thing thinking it will give you joy. But in the end, you're going to stand before God and there's going to be this conflict of sin, something that you've done wrong. You know, those things you feel guilty about. Those things you don't want to talk about. Those bad choices. Those things.

You're not the judge of what the consequences of those things. There's one God and he's the one who's made you and he's going to be the judge of it. And his son is the one who can mediate on your behalf. Let's pray.