1 Timothy chapter 2 will be our text today. I invite you to open your Bibles there.
The Boy Scouts, Rotary, the Lions Club, the League of Women Voters, the Minnesota Historical
Society, PTA, the Democratic and Republican Parties, the Lodge, the VFW, the Supreme Court,
and the United Nations. What do all of those things have in common? The answer is that
they are human institutions. I want to talk this morning about an institution that is
not human, but divine, and that is the Church of Jesus Christ. Its reality transcends time,
space, government, and generations. For the Church is of heavenly origin. It involves
a heavenly calling and anticipates a heavenly destiny. Therefore, it submits to one authority,
a heavenly one. That authority is Jesus Christ, the Church's Head and Risen Lord. Christ
speaks to His Church through His Word. He tells us in the Bible how we are to conduct
ourselves. He lays down orders that He expects for us to follow. He lays down principles
that we must learn to apply. He tells us what He wants done. In 1 Timothy chapter 2, He
establishes three priorities for us to follow. It was Gertha who said, Things which matter
most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. The things that matter
most are those things that Jesus Christ has established as priorities for us.
The first priority is that of prayer. Prayer is not a time filler. It is not an option
for us. It is an absolute necessity and priority. The second priority is found in our text today,
beginning in verse 5. It is the priority of mission. He has left work for us to accomplish.
For there is one God and one Mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony born at the proper time. For this
I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. I am telling the truth. I am not lying. As
a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Stephen Covey wrote a book a year or so ago
called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It is not a Christian book. In fact
his Mormon theology seeps through here and there. A lot of the principles that he lays
down in the book can be found in the Bible. I quote from his chapter entitled, Putting
First Things First. He says, I am going to teach you how to do it. I am going to teach
you how to do it. Effective management, writes Covey, is putting first things first. While
leadership decides what first things are, it is management that puts them first, day
by day, moment by moment. Management is discipline, carrying it out. One of my favorite essays
is The Common Denominator of Success, written by E.M. Gray. He spent his life searching
for the one denominator that all successful people share. He found it was not hard work,
good luck, or astute human relations, though those were all important. The one factor that
seemed to transcend all the rest embodies the essence of Habit Three, putting first
things first. As Covey said, and others have said as well, the main thing is to keep the
main thing the main thing. For us who are a part of the Church of Jesus Christ, the
main thing is priority of mission. Understanding and committing ourselves to the Lord's
Church is the priority of life. The mission that He has given us is making known the one
and only true God, and then calling people to be reconciled to Him. The mission is to
make people know that He is the one and only true God. The mission is to make people know
that He is the one and only true God, and then calling people to be reconciled to Him.
The exclusiveness of this message was an affront to the polytheism of ancient Rome with its
Greek religious roots. For the people in the New Testament day worshiped many gods, and
for any religion to claim to have the one true God was offensive. Many Christians paid
for that with their lives. We are living in a day when it is also offensive to claim to
have the truth about the one true God. We live in a day of multiculturalism. We live
in a society that is controlled by the notion of relativism. The idea is today in our world
that everything is truth. The fallacy of that is that if everything is truth, then nothing
is truth. In a day like ours it is offensive to have the message that there is one God
in the world. He is not one God called by many different names and different religions.
He is the one God who has revealed Himself to us in the Bible, His holy Word.
Thank you.
Our mission remains. It is this that we must make known the one true God. That mission,
ladies and gentlemen, is worthy of our commitment. We are not alone, however, with a mission
from God. In the text we see that God had a mission for Christ Jesus. His mission was
to reveal God to mankind and then to make reconciliation for the sins of man. The language
here identifies for us the situation that we were all in, all of the human race. The
situation is that mankind was estranged from God by sin. We might summarize that idea in
one word, and that is the word death. Death entered the human race because of man's sin.
Turn back with me to the book of Isaiah for a moment and notice these words to ancient
Israel that echo so strongly in a world like ours today. Isaiah 59 verse 1,
Behold, the Lord's hand is not so short that it cannot save, neither is His ear so
dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your
God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. For your hands
are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken falsehood.
Your tongue mutters wickedness. And this was 2700 years before political advertisements.
No one sues righteously and no one pleads honestly. They trust in confusion and speak
lies. They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity. They hatch adder's eggs and weave
the spider's web. He who eats of their eggs dies. And from that which is crushed a snake
breaks forth. Their webs will not become clothing, nor will they cover themselves with their
works. Their works are works of iniquity, and an act of violence is in their hands.
Their feet run to evil, and they hasten to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts
of iniquity. Devastation and destruction are in their highways. They do not know the way
of peace. And there is no justice in their tracks. They have made their paths crooked.
Whoever treads on them does not know peace. Are there any words in all of scripture that
more describe today's world than that? That more adequately portray the condition of the
human race as being in death and estranged from God? All of these wicked things that
he points out fall from that truth that says your sins have separated you from God. Mankind
was not only estranged from God, mankind was enslaved to sin. We might summarize that in
the one word depravity. If we are going to talk about the human race, we can summarize
it in these two words, death and depravity. Depravity is a word used to describe the effect
of sin upon us, that every part of us is affected by it. And there is nothing in us therefore
to commend us to God. This is not a message that preaches well in today's world. But a
man of God a couple of centuries ago got it well when he prayed this way, Oh God, may
thy spirit speak in me that I may speak to thee. I have no merit. Let the merit of Jesus
stand for me. I am undeserving, but I look to thy tender mercy. I am full of iniquities
once and sin. Thou art full of grace. I confess my sin, my frequent sin, my willful sin. All
my powers of body and soul are defiled. A fountain of pollution is deep within my nature.
There are chambers of foul images within my being. I have gone from one Ode to another
walked in a no man's land of dangerous imaginations, pried into the secrets of my fallen nature.
I am utterly ashamed that I am what I am in myself. There is a man who understands depravity.
The Bible says that we are all under sin. We are all under sin. We are all under sin.
That is the situation. Therefore, God sent his Son on a mission. The mission was to bring
salvation to the world. To do that, Jesus Christ came to be the mediator. The cry of
Job was, if only there were no sins, no sins, no sins, no sins, no sins, no sins, no sins,
no sins, no sins, no sins, no sins, no sins, no sins, no sins, no sins. The cry of Job
was, if only there were someone to arbitrate between me and God to lay his hand upon us
both. Is that not the cry of the depraved human race? Or at least it needs to be? If
someone to mediate between me and God. The good news is that there is. God sent His Son
to do that. In order to do it, however, He had to be qualified. He had to be acceptable
to man as well as to God. Jesus Christ is the man. Christ Jesus. Do you notice He says
that in 1 Timothy? He is the man, Christ Jesus. He is fully man. There is nothing about our
humanity that is not found in Jesus Christ save our sinfulness. Fully man, at the same
time He is Christ Jesus. He is God. Therefore, He is uniquely positioned to put His hand
on humanity and His hand on God and mediate between the two because He is the man, Christ
Jesus. He came to be the mediator, but He also came to pay the ransom. This word ransom
is found only here in all of the New Testament. It means that which is given in exchange for
another as the price of His freedom. Jesus Christ gave Himself His life's blood as the
ransom price that we might be freed. He did this on behalf of all at God's appointed time.
Jesus Christ understood His mission and He was faithful to it. It was the priority of
His life and even in the Garden of Gethsemane as that mission was about to be achieved.
He said, not my will, but yours be done. He was committed to His mission. So we see in
the text that Jesus Christ had a mission from God, but so did the Apostle Paul. Paul's mission
was to reveal God to the Gentiles and to call people, Gentile and Jew, to be reconciled
to God. God gave to Paul a particular role. He was a preacher. The word means a herald,
someone who proclaims the news. If we were to bring this into our understanding today,
we would say He was a newscaster. He is someone who tells the story without interjecting His
own opinions. Without elaborating upon it, He simply passes on to us what has been given
to Him. Paul says, I am a preacher, a proclaimer. I am an Apostle. He means that in a technical
sense, but the idea in an Apostle is a missionary. He says, I am a missionary and I am a teacher.
So God gave to Paul these roles and He gave him a special relationship. God said, Paul,
I want you to open the door of faith to the Gentiles so that he became the Apostle to
the Gentiles. Non-Jewish ethnic groups heard the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ from Paul.
That was his target audience. God gave him some results. His work of preaching and teaching
resulted in people coming into the realm of faith and truth through the gospel that he
proclaimed. God had a mission for the Lord Jesus Christ. God had a mission for the Apostle
Paul. And God has a mission today for the Church, and that includes you, if you are
a believer in Jesus Christ. That mission for us is to continue the mission of making God
known in our generation. That is our mission. In doing so, we have a role. Like Paul, we
too are heralds. We are missionaries. We are teachers of the truth about God. God gives
us all that we need to carry out what He wants us to do. We aren't all alike in this Church,
but by working together, using the gifts that He's given us, we together forge forward
in accomplishing the mission. And we have a relationship. We are who we are, and we
are where we are by God's sovereign appointment. We have a realm of influence that God has
given to us. My point is that we too have a mission. Isn't it neat to think that God
has chosen you to be His missionary in the world? Isn't it humbling, and yet at the
same time encouraging to know that even though you may feel like you're a nobody, that God
counts you as somebody? And that God has uniquely fitted you personally to be a part of the
Church in accomplishing the mission. God doesn't waste anything or anyone. There's no one who
is superfluous to what He wants to do in the world. God has a mission for the Church. The
prayer of my heart and the prayer of your heart should be this. God, show me what you
are doing in the world and where I fit into that. You know if we'll make that our prayer
every day, it'll make a difference in our lives. I'm trying to pray that every day.
God always says exactly the same words, but every day those thoughts. Lord, show me today
what you're doing in the world and how I fit into it. You know what? It just takes the
pressure off of you. It allows you to enter the day seeing each day as an adventure with
God. And you don't have to push and coerce and try hard. You simply let God show you
what He's doing and wait for His voice to say, now there's something I want you to do.
Here's someone I want you to speak to. This person needs to know this which you know.
And you simply respond to God. That's how we accomplish the mission. By saying, God,
what are you doing and where do I fit in? The main thing is to keep the main thing the
main thing. In his book, Covey suggests an exercise for a particular purpose that can
be utilized biblically. He says, in your mind's eye, see yourself going to the funeral of
a loved one. Picture yourself driving up to the chapel and parking your car, getting out
and going in. As you walk inside the building, you see the flowers that are gathered around.
You hear the soft organ music. You look at those gathered there and you see faces of
your friends and family as you pass along. And you feel the sense of sorrow that is there.
You feel the sense of joy of having known that person who's been lost. And as you walk
down the aisle of the room, you come to the casket and you look inside and suddenly you
come face to face with yourself. For this is your funeral three years from today. And
all of these people who are gathered there have come to honor you, to express their feelings
of love and appreciation for your life. At this funeral there are four speakers. One
is from your family, from the immediate family and also representing the extended family
of brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces and aunts and uncles and so on. Another one
is one of your friends who can give a sense of what you were as a person. The third speaker
is from your office, from your profession. And the final speaker is from your church
where you've been involved. Now Colby says, think deeply about this. What would you like
each one of those speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of a husband, a wife,
a father, a mother, what kind of a daughter, a cousin or a son were you? What kind of a
friend is going to be described? How will you be described as a working associate by
that one from your office? What is the character that you would like them to see in you? What
contributions or achievements would you want them to remember at your memorial service?
Look at the faces of those around you and ask yourself the question, what difference
would you like to make in their lives? You know it is good for us to think in those terms
that it's not macabre to do that I think. It is good for us to go to the end and look
backward and say when I get to that point here's what I want people to remember. Because
if we do that we will begin making the important things the priorities in our lives now. The
main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. And I want to say to you that the main
thing for the believer who is a part of the church of Jesus Christ is the mission that
he has given us. To proclaim and tell the truth of Jesus that men might know God and
be reconciled to him through the work of the cross. May that be our goal tomorrow as we
get up to say Lord what are you doing in the world and where do I fit in so that at my
funeral three years or thirty years from now my life will have made a difference to somebody.
Let's pray. Father my prayer in the name of Jesus is that all of us will reflect soberly
on our reason for being in the world. We are not here to live a carefree life of ease.
We are not here to become rich and to retire early. We are not here just to make friends
and be a people pleaser. We are here for a purpose that you have given us. And my prayer
is that every day we will ask that question of you in our morning prayer. And we know
Father that as we do that you are going to be pleased to show us and answer that prayer
to help us to know where we fit in and where our lives will make a difference. Amen.