Persevering Prayer for the Lost

0:31First of all, then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings, and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. For this, I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. I'm telling the truth, I'm not lying. A teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. This is God's Word. You may be seated.

1:27I drove to Houston last week to speak. Some time with some of my friends who are in pastoral ministry and just to encourage them and pray with them. The devastation in that area is catastrophic. And I heard story after story of loss. Some of my friends lost their homes. Many of their church members lost their homes. Many people in the area lost their homes and much more. A home can be replaced, but memories, photo albums, those were the greatest losses of all. One of my friends told how his church had been praying for an opportunity to reach their neighborhood with the good news of the gospel.

2:09And he recounted a particular story for me of this Chinese man who lives in California but had bought a house in North Houston three weeks ago. He was engaged to a woman and they were going to be married and then move into this house and she broke off their engagement a week and a half ago. And so he drove to Houston to prepare his house to get ready to sell and he arrived to find four feet of water in it. He knew no one.

2:36He had no flood insurance. He had no idea what he was going to do. And then my friend and his church showed up and they began to get the water out. They began to tear out all of the flooring, the drywall, to serve him meals, to bring him clothes. And the entire time, he was just bewildered. He could not understand why it was that this group of people were doing these things. Kept offering money and other forms of compensation, and they would turn it down again and again. And so finally, he sat down with my friend Patrick and he said, Why are you doing this?

3:10And so Patrick got to share with him that they had been praying for opportunities to minister to people just like him and that they had been hoping to share the gospel, the good news of Jesus. And after my friend Patrick got done talking with him over multiple hours, the man said, If you are Christians, and this is what Christians believe, then I want to believe that too. And that was just one of dozens of stories that I heard during my time in Houston of the church stepping up. My friends told me that in multiple instances, they went to a house to do relief work, and two or three other churches had shown up as well. And so the church really stepped up, and they stepped up because they saw this as the perfect opportunity to live out the implications of the gospel, to show that Christians are more than just talk, that we really do love God and want to love other people.

4:08As Christians, our desires change over time to match God's desires. And friends, what we're going to see in the scripture today in 1 Timothy 2 is that God desires all people to be saved. And because God desires all people to be saved, we must persevere in prayer as we proclaim the gospel. So let's look there at the first verse together in chapter 2, verse 1. Paul says, First of all, first of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people.

4:45Paul tells Timothy here to keep first things first. For him to be a faithful steward of the gospel message, for him to wage the good warfare, prayer was going to have to be the top priority. Now, most Christians, probably you and me, would agree that prayer is the top priority. We would probably say that in the Christian life, there's not anything more important that we could devote our time and our energy to than prayer. But at the same time, most of us would admit that our prayer lives are inconsistent at best. Most of us would say, my prayer life is not what I want it to be or what it should be. Now, why is that?

5:27Most of us know what the Bible teaches about prayer. We know that God commands us to pray. So it's not that we lack knowledge. We understand that God commands us to pray. So maybe it's that we lack faith. Maybe the problem isn't knowledge, but belief that God actually hears us, and when he hears us, he will actually answer our prayers. Look at what Don Whitney says in his book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. Often we do not pray because we doubt that anything will actually happen if we pray.

6:00Of course, we don't admit this publicly, but if we felt certain of visible results within 60 seconds of every prayer, there would be holes in the knees of every pair of Christian-owned pants in the world. If you and I had a guarantee that every single time we knelt in prayer, we would be heard and answered, don't you think we would pray? But friends, that's exactly what the Bible teaches: is that every single time we pray, we are heard and answered. Not always in the way that we want, not always in the time frame that we want, but we are promised that God hears every single prayer and that he answers them. So maybe it's not knowledge, and maybe it's not faith for some of us. Maybe it's that we don't know how to pray.

6:46I think it's true for me and for a lot of us. We know how to petition God, we know how to ask him for things. And so when we actually conjure up the discipline to pray, what happens a lot of the time is we work our way through the prayer list. You know, we've got these certain things we want to ask God for, and we know other people in our life who have asked us to pray for them. And so we work through that list. But we come to the end of that list pretty quickly, and we're like, okay, I guess I'm done.

7:10I don't know what else to pray for. But friends, thankfully, the Bible gives us both instructions and examples of prayer. And we see that right here in this first verse. Paul urges us to pray using four different terms. First, he says supplications. That word could also be translated. Petitions. So the word has the sense of asking for something based on a sense of urgent need. I really need this. And there's many examples of supplications or petitions in the Bible. I think about Luke chapter 1. Zechariah is this godly man. He's a priest, and he is serving in the temple of the Lord, and he's married to a godly woman named Elizabeth.

7:53But they're barren. They don't have any children. And so Zachariah, day after day, petitions the Lord, and God says to him, I have heard your supplications. I have heard your petitions. You're going to have a child. And so we're commanded to make supplications. We're commanded just to pray. This second word is the word that is used most frequently throughout the New Testament. It just means to speak to or make requests of God. Third, it says we should make intercessions.

8:25To intercede is to speak to someone on behalf of someone else. It's to put in a word for them. And I love the example again in the Gospel of Luke. You have this centurion. He's a wealthy, influential soldier that's over a hundred soldiers. And his servant is sick. And so he leaves his post and he travels a distance and comes to Jesus and he intercedes for his servant on his behalf. He asks Jesus to heal his servant. He intercedes for him. Most of us are familiar with. That type of prayer as well. We've interceded many times on behalf of others.

9:05And then, fourth and finally, he says, thanksgivings. Simply to express gratitude for benefits or blessings. And many times in the scripture, this is how Paul opens each one of his letters by thanking God for his work in the life of the church that he's writing to. Thanking God for his work in his life or Timothy's life, as we saw at the beginning of this letter. Paul was thankful to God. Now, Paul's point is not necessarily to differentiate strongly between all these different types of prayer.

9:37He's not saying, like, here are the only ways that you can pray. There are many other ways that Scripture talks about that we can pray. But Paul's point, rather, is that we should pray in all ways, at all times, for all people. That's Paul's point. When we pray, we should thank God for his work in their lives. When we pray, we should petition the Lord. We should intercede for others. We should communicate regularly with God for all of these reasons and more, but we should pray in all ways, at all times, for all people. And so, this is one of the reasons that we have a prayer meeting as a church. We started our prayer meeting a couple of years back, and I've been so encouraged to see it growing. It's Tuesday morning at 6:30, so it's not convenient. I mean, if you work a full-time job or you go to class all day, I guess it's the most convenient thing we could offer, but it's not convenient in terms of it being at a fun time to wake up. In the morning. But what I've seen is that we as a church together are learning how to pray. We haven't arrived. No person has arrived. We haven't arrived as a church, but I'm encouraged to see the direction that we're going. And one of the things that we do at prayer meeting is we simply pray through the scriptures.

10:49So just like every Sunday morning when we stand up here to preach, we go verse by verse through books of the Bible. When we gather for our prayer meeting, we go verse by verse and we pray God's word back to Him. Friends, our prayers will become inexhaustible when we learn to pray God's word back to Him, when we learn to open up the Bible and not just simply let our eyes pass over the words of a passage, but then at the end of that time of personal devotion or that time together in life group or whatever else, we keep that same Bible open, that same passage open, and we pray those words back to God.

11:27Worshiping Him for what He's done and thanking Him, petitioning Him for the things that we need in our own lives, interceding on behalf of others. Our prayers become inexhaustible when we learn to pray God's Word back to Him. And so we are called to pray in all ways, and we are called to pray for all people. And look at how Paul spells this out: He says, Pray for kings and all those who are in high positions.

11:56So the command is not just to pray for ourselves, the command is not just to pray. For family members or church members, the command is to pray for everybody, including government officials. Now, let me say this: if you find it hard to pray for President Trump, if you found it hard to pray for President Obama, then let me just remind you that he is talking about Emperor Nero. President Obama, by many accounts, is a good man, good father, a good husband. Donald Trump, I'm sure, has redeeming qualities.

12:36Emperor Nero was a wicked, wicked man who systematically persecuted the church, tortured Christians, killed Christians, systematically persecuted the church. And Paul says, I want you to pray for kings and all those in authority. This is the man that he has in mind. This is the man that he has in mind. So he's not saying pray for Christian leaders. He's not saying pray for leaders that you like or agree with. He's saying pray even for those government officials that you completely disagree with or that are persecuting you. Now, friends, many Americans take good government for granted. We don't think anything about it. We just take it for granted that we live in a free country. We have free speech, freedom of religion. We take all that stuff for granted. And I think it shows when you look at the polling results from this last election.

13:28Roughly half of all eligible voters. Cast a vote in this past election. Half. So, to put that another way, when given the opportunity to have a say in who was going to be the most influential leader in the world, one out of two Americans shrugged that off. I don't think that most people, certainly not most Christians, in many other countries around the world, would take good government for granted. They live in countries, they live under dictatorships and regimes that can put you in prison for any reason, that can have you killed for any reason. They don't take good government for granted. And the Apostle Paul did not take good government for granted, I assure you, because he was on the receiving end of both bad government and good government. In the city of Philippi, some men came to the officials and they said, These guys are disturbing the peace. Right then and there, they beat them with rods and then threw them into prison.

14:37They were uncondemned Roman citizens, and they were beaten and jailed on the spot with no trial. Not long after that, Paul was in Ephesus, the very city that Timothy lives in. And a riot was forming because Paul was preaching the gospel. And they brought this huge crowd together, and they wanted to. Bring out Paul. They want to bring out all the men and beat them, kill them, imprison them, whatever. And the town clerk got up in front of everybody and said, listen, this whole thing is unlawful. These men have broken no laws. You need to go home right now. That's good government. That governing official was ensuring that peace was preserved, that order was preserved, that rule of law was preserved. And that meant that Paul and his companions were able to go free, to continue worshiping and preaching the gospel. Friends, we pray for kings and all those who are in high positions in the government because good government promotes peace for everybody, including followers of Jesus. Good government means that all people are able to worship freely and that we are able to evangelize freely, to tell others the good news of Jesus without fear of repercussion.

15:55So, Paul urges Timothy to pray for everybody, including government officials. Why? Look what he says. That we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. Peaceful and quiet. Not because that gives us the best opportunity to just mind our own business and keep to ourselves, but rather because a peaceful and quiet environment is one where there is no persecution for any religious beliefs. Just Christian religious beliefs, but any religious beliefs, so that worship and evangelism can continue no matter who is in control of the government. People say sometimes, I wish we had a Christian government in the United States. No, you don't. Because if there can be a Christian government, then there can be a Muslim government, or a Hindu government, or any other kind of government. We don't want that. We want the freedom of religion to be preserved in our country so that everyone is free to worship and we are free to evangelize. We are free to share our faith. So he says, peaceful and quiet lives, but then he also says, so that we can lead godly and dignified lives.

17:12See, in a society free of persecution, we're free to live our lives worshiping and evangelizing. And the hope is that our lives will be lived in such a way that they command respect from people around us and that they commend the gospel so that people would say, I want what you have, just like that man said to my friend Patrick, I want what you have. And so John Stott says this in summary. Thus church and state have reciprocal duties. The church to pray for the state and be its conscience. The state to protect the church so that it may be free to perform its duties. Each should acknowledge that the other also has a divine origin and purpose. Each should help the other to fulfill. Its God-given role.

18:05So, friends, so far we've seen that we're commanded to pray for all people in all ways. And now, in verse 3, Paul is going to elaborate on why this is so important. Look there with me. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. So, according to these verses, the reason we pray for governing officials ultimately is because God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now, you remember back in chapter 1, false teachers had infiltrated the church at Ephesus and they were causing division in the church. And from the letter that Paul writes to the Ephesians, it seems very clear that these people were Jewish or at least Judaizers, they were proselytes maybe, that were teaching that Gentiles were either second-class citizens in God's kingdom, or that Gentiles, non-Jewish people, couldn't be in the kingdom of God at all.

19:15So, they had this teaching that was causing division that was either ethnocentric or racist in nature, and saying God does not want certain people to be saved. And so, he counters that very strongly. Both in the letter to the Ephesians and right here, by saying God does not only want Jews to be saved, God wants all people to be saved. That is his desire. And that truth is found all over the Bible. We read Ezekiel 33 earlier. Look at what he says in Ezekiel 18. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?

19:59Some of you are familiar with 2 Peter 3:9. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. There are many more specific verses that we could point to, but when you consider the whole storyline of Scripture, this is the message from Genesis to Revelation. We studied Genesis last year and we saw that God chose a man named Abraham and promised to make a great nation out of him. But what was his ultimate aim, his ultimate purpose in doing that? It's so that Abraham and his descendants would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. Jesus himself, when he gives us the great commission after his resurrection from the dead, says very clearly that we are to make disciples of all nations, making disciples of every tribe, every tongue. God's heart is clearly that all be saved.

21:02So, the obvious question at this point is: if God desires all people to be saved, why doesn't he save everyone? Universalism is the idea that all people are going to be saved no matter how they respond to the person and work of Jesus Christ. Universalism is not taught in the Old Testament, it is not taught in the New Testament, it is not taught by Jesus, so it is taught nowhere. It is simply not a biblical idea.

21:36But if God desires all people to be saved, why doesn't He save everyone? It's not because He can't, it's not because He's unable. God is all-powerful, He can do all that He pleases, nothing is hindering Him. Further, it's not that His grace is insufficient. The Lord has an infinite measure of every single one of His attributes. So, He is infinitely gracious. He doesn't run out of grace, He doesn't have a limited amount of it. His grace is sufficient. So, friends, the reason that God does not save everyone, even though He could, is because God desires something more than saving all people.

22:22He desires something more. That follows logically. We all do whatever it is that we most desire. So, one of my favorite illustrations. Illustrations is from R. C. Sproll in a book that we have in the bookstall, chosen by God. He says, if I want to go on a diet and somebody presents me with a tub of ice cream, we'll say bluebell since it's Texas, I am going to choose in that moment whatever I want the most. If I most want to lose weight, I'm going to push the tub away. But if I most want the ice cream, I'm going to eat the ice cream. That's the sad reality about Christians and sin, is that we've been set free from sin, but we always choose what we most want. So do we most want to honor God in that moment? If so, we will not choose sin. But the sad reality is that sometimes we most want sin, and that's why we choose it instead of God. So this is a logical premise that follows no matter we're talking about ourselves or we're talking about God. So everyone is not saved. Why is that? It's because obviously God desires something more. Well, what does he desire more? Friends, many people will say that God desired to preserve human free will more than he desired to save everyone. In other words, God could have saved everyone, but then he would have had to violate human free will in order to do that, and God wants people to freely choose him. Have you heard that before?

23:47There is a huge problem with that explanation. There's a huge problem with that explanation. And the problem is that it assumes human beings are a blank slate. That we are born with absolute free will, that our free will is not constrained in any way, that we are able to objectively choose between two alternatives: faith in Christ on the one hand and unbelief on the other hand. But if you've studied the scripture for any length of time, you know very well that the Bible does not teach that we are a blank slate. The Bible does not teach that we are born with absolute free will, not having our free will constrained in any way. The Bible does not teach that. To have absolute free will, our free will cannot be constrained in every way. Do you see where this is going? We are born with our will constrained. We are born with sinful hearts.

24:50So we aren't absolutely free to evaluate faith or not faith objectively. We're born with sinful hearts that lead us time and time again to choose sin rather than God, to choose to continue on in our disobedience and rebellion rather than repentance and faith. We are born not with absolute free will, but with free will that is constrained by a sinful heart. Do you see why the answer cannot be that God desires to preserve human free will? That's why he doesn't save everyone.

25:24All human beings have free will. There's no debate about that in Scripture. There's no debate here this morning about that. Have free will, but our sinful hearts constrain that free will, and that is why we need to be born again. Nicodemus, who is this great teacher of Israel, comes to Jesus in the middle of the night because he's scared he's going to be seen by somebody. And he comes and he starts to ask Jesus questions about salvation and what he came to do.

25:52And you notice that Jesus doesn't just tell Nicodemus, well, you just need to make a different choice. You're making the wrong choice, you and a lot of people in this nation. He says, no, you must be born again. In other words, you've been born dead in sin. You need to be regenerated. You need to be made alive. You need to be given a new heart with new desires. Because when God makes us alive in Christ, when he regenerates us, when he gives us that new heart with new desires, we are then free to exercise that free will, to repent and believe.

26:32That's why Jesus says you must be born again. It is all God when we talk about salvation. It is His grace from start to finish. And so we return to the question once again: if God desires everyone to be saved, why doesn't He save everyone? I don't know. And I don't know because the Bible doesn't tell us. God has revealed everything that we need to know for faith and practice, but he has not revealed absolutely everything to us. And in Scripture, he has not told us why he does not choose to save everyone. But here is what the Bible does teach us very clearly. First, God desires all people to be saved. That should be abundantly clear, not just from this chapter, but from the other verses that we looked at. Second, no one deserves to be saved.

27:30So no one can charge God with unfairness. No one can say it's not fair that all people are not saved. No, fair would be that we are all judged according to our sin. Fair would be that we are all punished for our rebellion and disobedience toward God. No one deserves to be saved. Third, the Bible affirms that God is perfectly just, so no sin will go unpunished. Every person will either pay for every sin they've ever committed in hell, or God will punish Jesus in our place. He is perfectly just and does not overlook a single sin. It will either be paid for eternally by us, or it will be paid for by Christ on the cross. He is perfectly just. But fourth and finally, God is perfectly gracious and he receives every single person that comes to him in faith.

28:30There is no greater summary of what we find in Scripture than Jesus' own words in John chapter 6. Look on the screen. All that the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. I want you to meditate on those two phrases. The first, all that the Father gives me will come to me. God has been working from eternity past to call his people to himself. He has been working to call his people to himself. And we see that with Noah, and we see that with Abraham as we studied last year. We see that with Isaac and Jacob, his descendants. We see that with David. We see that in the Old Testament prophets, God calling his people out to himself. We see Jesus traveling, preaching repentance because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. God is calling his people to himself. And so Jesus says, all that the father gives me will come to me.

29:34But look at the second half of this verse. Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. This is an open invitation to every single person who has ever lived. Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. And so, friends, I'm trying to help you think biblically about. These verses here, but I don't want us to get too lost in the weeds. I want us to focus on the verse itself: God desires all people to be saved. Would you just take a minute and let that sink in? Because all people means you and me.

30:18God desires all people to be saved. What was it that God saw in me or in you if you were a follower of Jesus? What redeeming quality did we have to commend ourselves before Him? There is not one single reason that I can think of that God would say, I choose Alan. And I know if you're a follower of Jesus, you can say the same. There is nothing in ourselves, it is simply that God loves. God is love. And He loved the world so much that He sent His only Son. He desires that everyone be saved. What a gracious and merciful God.

30:57And so we need to ask ourselves some hard questions. Do we desire the same thing that God desires? Do we want to see not just certain people, but all people come to saving knowledge of Jesus? Because I think for a lot of us, there's this certain group of people that we don't necessarily want them to be saved. Maybe it's people who have wronged us and sinned against us. And I don't mean to minimize what you've experienced in any way, but I think for some of us, that's true. There's people that have sinned. Against us, and we say, I don't want them to be saved, if we're honest. For others, you look at a certain ethnic group, a certain portion of the world, and you say, I don't want those people to be saved. You say, they're terrorists.

31:44You look at people that have a certain skin color. And if you were honest, you'd say, I don't want them to be saved. Friends, God desires all people to be saved. All means all. All does not mean some. And so our desires have to match God's desire. And the way that that's going to happen is when we persevere in prayer. When we say, God, I want to want the things that you say I should want. And as we persevere in prayer, God is going to transform our desires so that it morphs into action. Us going out and sharing the good news of Jesus with all kinds of people. People who are like us and people who are very different than us. God desires all people to be saved. So we must persevere in prayer as we proclaim the gospel.

32:35Now look at how Paul wraps this up and kind of explains the importance of this message. Look at verse 5. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a Preacher and an apostle. I am telling the truth. I am not lying. A teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

33:12As we saw, God's desire is that all be saved and that everyone come to a knowledge of the truth. Well, the question is: what is that truth? Well, it's got at least three components that we see in these verses. First, there is only one God, and every person is going to be held accountable to Him. There's only one God. There are many religions out there that teach that there are hundreds, even thousands of gods. But over against that idea, God reveals through His Word that He is the one and only true God.

33:48And there are many out there that would say, Well, all monotheistic religions are the same. They all believe in one God. Well, friends, Islam and Christianity and Judaism are not the same. They make contradictory claims about who God is and how we will be saved. So Islam, Christianity, and Judaism could all be wrong, but they cannot all be right because they say mutually exclusive things. There is only one true God. And he goes on: not only is there only one true God, but what does he say? There is only one mediator between God and men. The man Christ Jesus.

34:33Surely you've heard people say before, yeah, there's only one God, but there are many paths to that God. You've heard that before. One God, many paths. Well, maybe that's true. But that's not what Jesus taught. In theory, there could be one God and many paths, but Jesus said the complete opposite of that. Look on the screen at John chapter 10. Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.

35:20I want you to notice: Jesus does not say, I am a door. I am one of the many doors that you could walk through to get to God. No, he says, I am the door. If you want to get to the Father, you have to enter through me. Look at John 14 on the screen. He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Again, Jesus does not say, I am a way, and a truth, and a life. He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. You cannot come to the Father except through me. The apostles Understood this. Look at Acts chapter 4. Peter is preaching and says, This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

36:23You see, friends, there is only one God and only one mediator. And the reason that Jesus is the one and only mediator is because he is the man, Christ Jesus. He is the man, Christ Jesus. He is fully man and fully God. Jesus had to be fully man in order to mediate for us. And he had to be fully God in order to mediate for us. If you were here this past summer, we preached through the book of Job. And at one point early on in the book, Job is lamenting his position before the Lord. And look at what Job says. There is no arbiter between us, that is between Job and God, who might lay his hand on us both.

37:10Job is saying, what I need right now is I need somebody to step into the gap and lay his hand on God and on me. I need a mediator. And Jesus is that mediator. Because he was fully human, he could be tempted in every way, just as we are. Because he was fully human, he could stand in our place and represent us. But because he was fully God, though he was tempted in every way, he never sinned. Because he was fully God, he was able to rise from the dead, victorious over sin and death. Jesus is the mediator that we need. He's the only one that could stand in the gap.

37:55And then, third and finally, we see that Jesus, the one mediator between God and man, gave himself as a ransom for all. Look on the screen again at John 10. Jesus says, for this reason, the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.

38:30See, Jesus laid down his life willingly. Nobody took it from him. He laid down his life willingly as a ransom for all. And as we talked about a few weeks ago, a ransom is the price paid to set a slave free from captivity. And that's exactly what we were. Born dead in sin, born slaves to sin. We were enslaved to the desires of our hearts, to evil and wickedness in every form. But Jesus gave himself, laid down his life as a ransom to pay the price to set us free from captivity to sin and death. And so Paul says, this is the testimony. There's one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. That is the testimony. No matter what the false teachers claimed, God did appoint him as a preacher, as an apostle to the Gentiles. Because God desires all to be saved, not just the Jews, but all people.

39:40And so, friends, maybe you're here this morning and you've thought to yourself for some time, I don't know why God would want anything to do with me. I have not been a good enough person. I haven't been religious enough. Maybe you've had those thoughts. I hope you see that God desires all people to be saved, and that includes you. That includes you. Jesus did not come for the righteous, but for the unrighteous. He did not come for the healthy, but for the sick. And so, if you find yourself in that place this morning, burdened and weighed down with your sin and your inability to obey God perfectly at all times, then understand Jesus came. For you. He came saying that his yoke was easy and his burden was light. If you repent and turn to him in faith, he will save you.

40:41Because he says, Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. And so I don't want you to delay any longer. If you've been learning about Jesus for a little while now, I don't want you to delay any longer coming to him in repentance and faith. He stands ready to save you today. And if you're already a believer in Jesus, it's vitally important for you to understand God's heart for all people, for every person created in His image and likeness. He desires all people to be saved, and we have to desire that as well. But our desires are only going to be changed as our prayers change, as we begin praying God's word and having our hearts conformed to what He wants, the salvation of all people. So, friends, God desires all people to be saved. So, we must persevere in prayer as we proclaim the gospel. Let's pray, Father, as we bow before you this morning, I pray that you would remind us afresh.

42:00Of our great need for Jesus. The sad reality is that over time we become comfortable with the gospel message. We become overly familiar with the news that you sent your only son. Not to come and gather up all of the good people who were religious enough and good enough, but that you sent your only son, your perfect son, for sinners like us. I pray that we are freshly amazed at the gospel of grace this morning. We ask forgiveness for taking it for granted.

42:48And God, we pray that you would conform our desires to what you desire. And that just as you desire all people to be saved, we would desire the same thing. Forgive us, God. We've allowed busyness to crowd out prayers for the lost. We've allowed bitterness towards those who have sinned against us to crowd out prayers for them and for the lost. We've allowed complacency and apathy to crowd it out. And so, God, we ask that you would show us your heart for the lost.

43:39Show us Jesus who stood over Jerusalem and who said, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. I pray that our hearts would break for the lost, our family members, our friends, those that we go to work with every day, those we go to school with. And that as you transform our hearts, our prayer life and our lives would be transformed. We thank you, God, for your word, and we thank you for your great love for your people.

44:25In Christ's name we pray. Amen.