Text: 1 Timothy 2:1–7
Date: July 24, 2022
Event: Proper 12, Year C
1 Timothy 2:1–7 (EHV)
First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, 2for kings and all those who are in authority, in order that we might live a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and dignity. 3This is good and pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4who wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, 6who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. 7For this testimony, I was appointed a herald and an apostle—I speak the truth; I am not lying—a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
Prayer Accomplishes God’s Purposes
When approaching a problem, it’s often less useful to ask, “What are we going to do?” and more useful to ask, “Why are we going to do it?” For instance, when considering repairing a vehicle, for two different families the what’s may be exactly the same. Let’s say it’s something huge, like replacing a whole engine. Before doing something like that, if you don’t consider the why, you might do something foolish. What if the engine is damaged because the rest of the car is mostly destroyed and replacing the engine won’t make a drivable vehicle? What if this is the only vehicle you own and while you could find a way to pay for engine replacement, a new or different used vehicle is beyond your financial ability? What if this is a rarely-used vehicle and serves no purpose? In each of those situations, the answer to the “why” question is much, much more useful than the answer to the “what” question.
The last few Sunday have seen Jesus focusing his disciples and us along with them on the Christian life. Like so many other things in our lives, when it comes to doing the things God wants us to do, the “why” is often much more important than the “what.” And our special focus this morning is on prayer. In our Gospel, we heard Jesus teach his disciples about the principles of prayer by giving them that most famous model prayer we’ve come to name the Lord’s Prayer, because the Lord Jesus taught it to his disciples. In our Second Reading, which will serve as our focus this morning, the apostle Paul reminds us of the spirit of our prayer life. Our prayers are not to be seeking our will, but God’s. And when we remember that, then truly our prayers accomplish God’s purposes, which are for our eternal good.
Paul is writing to young Pastor Timothy. This first letter is written as encouragement and direction for Timothy as he tackles the work of serving God’s people. And so Paul’s words are partially direction for the pastor and partially direction for the members of the congregation he serves.
And our section from the beginning of chapter 2 is a bit in both categories. It is a reminder for Timothy and it’s a reminder for those in the flock of what our focus ought to be when it comes to our prayers. And that point is made through a bit of inductive reasoning as Paul gives us a specific example that we can then broaden out to other applications.
Paul starts with the attitude and action for those in authority, both locally and more broadly. Where Paul talks about kings and all those who are in authority we might rightly apply to leaders at a national level all the way down the local level in the government. What does he say we ought to do? First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all those who are in authority, in order that we might live a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and dignity. We don’t know the exact, exact date of when Paul wrote this letter, but a good guess would be right around 65 AD. It is written during the reign of Emperor Nero, a wildly temperamental and erratic leader.
If 65 AD is correct, that means that Paul is writing to Timothy about a year after a great fire burned in Rome. It was devastating and the loss of property and life was gigantic. It burned for six days, burning 10 of the city’s 14 districts and leaving hundreds of people dead. Rather than taking responsibility, Nero did what any spineless leader does and shifted blame to the “others” around him, on to minorities or others who could not defend themselves well in the court of popular opinion. In this particular case, Nero seems to have planted the blame firmly on Christians in the empire. And so, the worst persecutions of Christians en masse up to that time began, a persecution that just a few years later likely took the lives of both Paul and Peter.
Can you imagine believers in Timothy’s congregation not feeling too kind toward their emperor? Can you imagine that they might be angry or flustered with or even hate their ruler? And Paul doesn’t say, “That feeling is justified! These leaders are sinning!” though of course that would be true statement. Nor does Paul say, “Pray for their downfall! Pray that God take them out!” No, Paul directs Timothy and those with him to offer these petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for all people, and especially for those who are in authority.
Why? Because Paul recognized that peace and stability in government would be a blessing to the spread of the gospel. Not necessarily that the gospel message would be condoned or endorsed by the government (in fact, Paul is making a pretty clear church and state division here). But Paul shows that good government leading to times of peace physically for people would bring greater opportunities for the gospel to be shared.
And there’s the rub—there’s the why. He’s not telling them to pray that these leaders do what the people want them to do. And he’s not really telling them to pray for the leaders so that these Christians can have relaxing lives free from stress or worry from wars, etc. Rather, he’s saying that these prayers should be brought forward with God’s goals and purposes in mind. He says that these prayers for the leaders should be offered, to bring about peaceful and quiet lives because this is good and pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. It’s not just good and pleasing to God for us to have a quiet, calm life, but a quiet, calm life can be fertile ground to bring people to the knowledge of the truth of God’s love and forgiveness.
I don’t know about you, but for me this shines a whole lot of shame on my prayer life. So often my prayers and requests to God are self-serving. “God, make this better.” “God, take this bad thing away.” “God, do this thing that will make life easier for me.” It’s so easy to lose that crucial step and thought that Jesus taught in his prayer and demonstrated in his own prayer life, “God, your will be done.”
Praying for God’s will to be done really is the answer to the “why” question, right? My prayers may be filled with answers to the “what” question. “Please do thing thing to solve this problem.” “Please take this hardship in my life away.” But praying that the Lord’s will be done recognizes that he just might have other purposes for us. He might have a plan for that suffering or hardship.
So what is our take away from this? Remember that from God’s perspective, everything is in service of eternity. Whether good things are happening or bad, whether he’s clearly working through the leaders over us or in spite of them, whether we are content or feel lacking, God promises to use all of these things for our eternal good. And our prayers should reflect a confident trust in that promise.
He encourages, even commands us, to pray. Jesus in our Gospel said we should keep asking, keeping seeking, keep knocking (Luke 11:9)—for ourselves, for friends and family, for our leaders, for literally all people, that his will may done among them and among us. God’s will is that all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth by learning the love of the one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. The reality and joy of God’s love and forgiveness in Jesus and a will that all people know that and we be strengthened in that should guide our prayers as well. Our goal in this life and in our prayers is not just our own, temporary, earthly good, but the eternal good of all people. When that is our driving motivator, then our prayers are guided by God’s will, then we’re praying with his eternal perspective as our guide, then our prayers are accomplishing God’s purposes.
And for the times that when our prayers seek our will not God’s, or for those times that we simply cut God out of the equation and don’t pray at all, we know that for that there is forgiveness. Jesus’ model prayer reminds us that there is forgiveness for our sins, our debts owed to God. And for that we weekly, daily, hourly come to God in prayer as well, “Lord, please forgive us.” And we know that of all prayers, that prayer is according to God’s will because of that forgiveness Jesus won for us is the one and only way to eternal life with him. Above all else, God longs to forgive those sins. And we have that one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. We pray that prayer for forgiveness in complete confidence because of Jesus’ life lived in our place and his death died for us. My brothers and sisters, we truly have forgiveness for all of those failings.
Forgiven for all sins, we can rejoice to pray today more directed toward God’s will. We understand that God is not a vending machine that we put in our prayer quarter and get out the candy bar we wanted. Rather, God is the all-powerful Creator and Sustainer of all things who knows exactly what is best for us. So bring him your problems. Bring him your fears, worries, and heartaches. Even bring him your possible solutions. But in all things, seek his will. Be ready to accept it if the answer is not what you would want to hear, but rejoice that if God’s answer is different than what you were hoping for, he knows what is best for you and for all people, and that he will work eternal good from it.
So pray, pray boldly, pray confidently to your loving God. And let your persistent prayers be led by God’s will trusting his promises to do what is best for you. And as you do so, ask the question: how might what I’m praying for be in service of people being strengthened in God’s truth or even learning it for the first time? There, truly, God’s will is being done. Amen.
