This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Drive Time Devotions is a Saddleback Church podcast. We want to
invite you to one of our weekend services. Visit us online at saddleback.

com for locations and service times in your area. Please visit us this weekend.
- Hi, this is Pastor Tom and we are in day two of our look through First Timothy
chapter two.

As we began to look at verses three to seven today, we're going to start in verses
three and four by looking at what does God really want? What does the Bible say
about this? First Timothy two, three and four.

This is good, talking about the prayers that we pray for others. He says this is
good and it pleases God our savior who wants all men to be saved and come to a
knowledge of the truth. That's what God wants.

You might remember yesterday that I was talking about the prayers that we pray
for others being a part of our witness for others. These verses is where you
pick up on that very strongly. He's looking forward in those prayer verses to
this witnessing verse that God wants all men to be saved and have a knowledge of
the truth.

God wants every one of us to have a relationship with him. That desire has been
seen, it's been expressed since before the creation of the world. And that
desire goes against what I would call the popular idea of God sometimes.

The popular idea is that God is anxiously waiting to judge those who do wrong.
Somehow he wants us to mess up. Somehow he wants us to be separated from him.

But the truth is God is waiting to forgive all who will ask. He wants all men
and women to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. And this powerful
truth of what God wants and how it works its way into our lives, he sums up this
powerful truth in verses five to seven.

Incredibly powerful words about God's good news in our lives, and I want to just
walk through these verses, five, six, and seven, one verse at a time. First
verse five, for there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man
Jesus Christ. You just walk through that, the powerful words there, there is one
God.

That echoes all throughout the Old and New Testaments. God is a Trinity, he is
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But he is one God.

There are not three gods, there is one God. And when I talk about one God,
that's very important as you share your faith with other people. It's very
important as you share your faith.

Maybe you have somebody who is a friend who has a Jewish heritage. I had
somebody write me a question a while back and they asked, if you had two minutes
to convince a person of Jewish belief about Jesus being our Lord and Savior,
what would you say? This person has difficulty understanding that Jesus is God's
son.

I answered my friend back about this, focusing on who God really is. And I
shared with him that I had recently been talking with a woman who matched the
description of the person they were talking about. And in the two or three
minutes that we had to talk, I focused not so much on the Trinity as on the fact
that Jesus is God.

I find that I meet a lot of Jewish friends who are struggling with the fact that
somehow we don't really believe as Christians that Jesus is God. Or if we do
believe that he is God, we believe there are actually two gods. They sense that
to follow Jesus would be to somehow miss out on serving the one God.

And explaining that there is one God, that's crucial in the New Testament, is
something very important to explain to your friends who maybe come from a Jewish
heritage. Explaining the fact that Jesus did miracles shows that he is the one
God. He did miracles that only God could do.

Jesus was proclaimed to be God by the prophets and by his own followers. He was
proved to be God by his own resurrection. As you see all the proofs in Jesus'
life that he was who he said he was, you see that he is God in human flesh.

You take a look at scripture on this. We could take weeks to study this, but
just some very brief scriptures. Isaiah 44 says that God is creator.

Colossians 1 says that Jesus is creator. Isaiah 43 says that God is the Savior.
Titus 2 says that Jesus is the Savior.

Exodus 3 says God is the I Am. John 8 58 says Jesus is the I Am. So what's going
on here?

Are there two gods, Jesus and God the Father? No, there is one God, one God. And
that one God in the person of Jesus Christ came to this earth.

Now he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the Trinity does make me scratch my
head a little bit sometimes. I understand I don't know all that God is.

He is greater than my mind can comprehend. But I do know this. There are not
three gods.

There is one God. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And that one God in the
person of Jesus Christ became a man.

There is one God, the man Jesus Christ. And so he became, well what this verse
says, verse five says there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the
man Jesus Christ. The word mediator there, we use it to have the idea of someone
who can help two parties to agree.

But it's even stronger here. It's the idea of someone who brings two people
together. A relationship is broken and it's brought back together.

And these verses remind us that there is not 10 mediators or 20 mediators,
there's only one. There's only one way to be brought back into a relationship
with God and that is through God, through his plan, through his way. I can't
make up my way to get back to God and do a relationship with him because I'm the
one that separated.

I'm the one that walked away. He's the only one that has the power to do that.
And he's used his power by becoming a man.

Jesus Christ, he's used his power by showing us the way. Jesus Christ has always
been God. He became a man so that he could show us the way.

One mediator, there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man
Jesus Christ. Verse six says this about Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for
all men, the testimony given in his proper time. Jesus Christ is a ransom that
is paid for all.

The idea of a ransom is a price that is paid for somebody's freedom. So let me
just ask you, let's just walk through these verses and ask ourselves the tough
questions. If God wants everyone to be saved, we said that at the beginning of
today's study, and if Jesus was given as a ransom for all to be saved, then why
aren't all saved?

I mean, this verse says Jesus was given as a ransom for all. Verse four says God
wants all to be saved, then why aren't all saved? Because our faith in what
Jesus has done plays a part.

Why does it play a part? Because God wants a relationship with us. This is a
relationship that we're talking about, not a transaction.

Yes, Jesus paid the price for our freedom, but it is a relational price that was
paid. He gave himself, he died for us. And God has chosen not to force us to
have a relationship with him.

And so because of that, my choice to say yes plays a part in my salvation.
That's why everyone isn't saved. The door is open for everyone to be saved.

Jesus died for everyone on the cross, it's just that everyone doesn't receive
that gift. God wants everyone to be saved. There's no one that's outside of the
circle of God's desire to be saved.

It's just that some don't receive that gift. Jesus Christ gave himself as a
ransom for you. The testimony given at the proper time, at just the right time,
Jesus came into this world to show the world what God is really like.

And so Paul says, here's my response to that in verse seven. And for this
purpose, I was appointed a herald and an apostle. I am telling the truth, I am
not lying, and a teacher of the true faith to the Gentiles.

Now, before talking about these verses, you might wonder why Paul says, I'm
telling the truth, I'm not lying. As we continue to walk through 1 Timothy,
we're going to find out that there were some false teachers in the church, and so
they were doing things like saying that Paul really wasn't an apostle, saying
that Paul really wasn't authorized by God to do the things that he was doing.
And Paul is simply saying, I'm telling you my life.

I'm telling you the truth of what Jesus has done in my life. Why would I have to
lie about this? And he talks in these verses about a privilege.

He's talked about the good news, one mediator. He's talked about the ransom
that's been paid for all of us, and then he talks about a privilege, the
privilege of letting other people know this good news. And in these verses, in
this verse, verse seven, he talks about three ways that he exercises this
privilege.

He says, I'm a herald, I am, not a herald, not the name, H-E-R-A-L-D, a herald,
I am an apostle, and I am a teacher, those three things. A herald, the person
who would call out in a city to let people know what was happening that day. The
person who would call out in a battle to let people know which direction to go.

The person who would go before to let people know the good news. Paul says, I
have the privilege of doing that. I get to say it out so that other people can
hear it, and then if they accept that good news, they get to begin to live it
out.

I'm a herald, he also says, I'm an apostle. The idea of an apostle, well, we
know that that means the 12 first followers of Jesus Christ, but there's also
the idea of the office of apostle that you read about in Ephesians chapter four.
It's the idea of someone who goes to new places to talk to people who've never
heard before about the good news of Jesus Christ.

The very thing that Jesus was asking his disciples, his apostles, to do when he
left this earth. I want you to go to Jerusalem and Judea, the remotest parts of
the earth, and I want you to let everyone know. And Paul says, I have that
privilege too.

I'm going to places where no one has heard, and I'm making sure that they hear.
And he says, I'm also a teacher. A teacher is someone who sticks around a while,
and they begin to teach you and let it sink in.

Let you begin to see how this good news works into your life and what a
difference it can make. You and I, we have the privilege in some ways of doing
all three of these things. There are times in your life when you get to be a
herald, when you just get to say it out so that someone can hear in that
situation, in that circumstance, that there is good news, the good news of
Jesus' love.

There are some times when you get to be an apostle, you get to go into some
place where no one has gone before. It might be a country that no one's ever
gone to. It might be someone in your office that no one's had the courage to
tell the good news to.

You're an apostle in one sense there. And then you also get to be a teacher. A
teacher, someone who sticks with people and just lets the good news sink in as
you keep talking about it.

You might be a teacher with a good friend. You might be a teacher with your
kids. You might be a teacher with someone in your small group.

You get to be a herald, an apostle, and a teacher of the good news of Christ.
Let's thank him for that right now. Jesus, we do thank you.

And we just ask you, what do I need to say today about the good news? Where do I
need to go today? Who do I need to go to to share the good news?

How do I need to live today to share the good news? Because I know the greatest
teaching of all is not just in what I say, but in also how I live out what I am
saying. Lord, what do I need to say?

Where do I need to go? How do I need to live the good news of Christ today? Show
me, show me.

And then give me the faith to trust you to live out the good news instead of
trusting myself. I ask this, Jesus, in your name, amen. Join us tomorrow.

We're going to look at some words to men and to women about worship.