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1 Tim 2:1-10 By Merv Topp

I did a course, navigators think it was or something like that, and there's two fellows from Tonga I met, about the same build as me but only six inches taller, and I finish up at Bible College Victoria speaking up there for some reason or other, talking about missions or something and I didn't know he'd gone there and he rushed across the ground to see me and the first time in my life I knew what it was to be lifted off the ground he put his arms around me, brother good to see you, picked us up in the air, I'll never get and so I suppose I could say love lifted me too, so there it is, good to be here.
Well, I've been encouraged, it's just good to see your faces again, we need to encourage one another more and more, so much as the Bible says as we see a day approaching, it's so important, let me tell you about Eddie, when I first went up to Gilgandra, we went to Dubbo, I think Peter I think was with us, yeah he was, and others, and Eddie it was a Dubbo and we just said we're going up to see the church to see they're going and of course it gets back to Gilgandra, the mission has come to sort you out and it was when I got to Gilgandra, he had Henry and Auntie sitting there like this and I said I'm here to love you here to love you in the Lord and I can still see Auntie, the second time I was out back
and she looked at me, don't hit me like that, oh she said I feel so ashamed, she said we treated you awful the first time you came, we found out you just wanted to love us in the Lord, you see encouragement does more, one word of encouragement does more to you than a thousand boos, you see we need to look at the great truths of the gospel, I keep pointing to our neighbour anyway, it's up there wherever it is in the book, love lifted us, we need to know the greatness of God's mercy, the greatness of God's grace, the greatness of God's plan of salvation,
we need to be reminded time and time again what God is doing,
the great God of that Psalm 150,
an old translation that I know everything has breath, praise,
that Psalm closes with the highest name of God, it lifts to a crescendo of overflowing
praise to a sovereign holy God, draws us to attention that God is God is on the throne
and he does rule all things well, yes we can go up and down in our lives and we go sideways and
we get often to buy path meadows at times can't we, but every time that happens we need to be
brought back, you know it always sticks in my mind the great story of Pilgrim and Pilgrim's progress,
he either meets Mr. Interpreter, Mr. Evangelist, he's drawn back the great truths
of what it is salvation is and who and what we are in the gospel,
so this morning we continue with Timothy, we started this morning with the gospel to
remind ourselves afresh what the gospel is, he takes us from the gutter to the outermost
to bring us to himself, he takes us who are not a people to bring us sons and daughters of the king,
I think last time I was here I shared from Billy Bray if I remember right,
yeah I did, Billy Bray had an old book there and Billy Bray was converted,
they said his language smelt of the sulfur of hell and when he was lifted and when he come to Christ,
these are the days of old wooden cast, he said I'd shout Hallelujah and praise the Lord
through the bungal, he'd come to know what it was to be the king's son
and you need to know what it is to be the king's son and the king's daughter,
each one of us in this room here today, of course none of us have made it,
some years ago the Paralympics in America, there were six mongoloid people running a race,
they started off the gunfire and they talked down the road hall,
as they usually do, running along doing, one of them fell over,
one fell over and they all stopped, they all went back to their mate,
picked him up and stood him up and broke the wolf and they took off back down the track again,
you know we're all sinners, saved by grace, we have nothing else to boast but in Christ,
by grace you're saved through faith, this lot of yourself is the gift of God,
God in his grace and mercy lifted us from the mire and the clay and set our feet upon the rock,
we need to always remember that we're like,
as opposed to life's saving stations,
down Victoria from Geelong to Portland,
this is one of my fascinations, before the turn of the last century there was over a
thousand sailing ships run aground and wrecked, hundreds were lost, just imagine they get all
the way from England or wherever they come from, get around the bottom there and bingo,
the roaring forties would blow them and lives are lost, there's one particular the Lockhart went down
and the boy on the deck saved one of the women, there's a place down there in the great ocean
rail called Lockhart Gorge, he pulled to a shore, climbed up the great cliffs, in those days
there's not many farms down here either but he got to a station property
and that gorge was named after him, all the ships complement were lost,
friends as we sit here today in this church, we're like a lighthouse,
a coast guard shining out the light of the gospel to all around,
there are ships lost around Smithfield, there are people in need of hearing the good news of Jesus
Christ, so this morning what I've chosen for us to do, to challenge us today particularly,
is praying and living the gospel, you see we need to be neat again, I urge you first of all
that requests, prayers, intercession, thanksgiving be made for everyone,
then he goes on and fills out the list, you see he's talking to you and to me,
he's talking to us here today as to how serious we feel about those that sit in darkness and the
shadow of death, we're the principal lighthouse here, Ephesians, Ephesus was their principal
lighthouse in where it stood and we need to trace the history of Ephesus as the church that's
planted there and remind ourselves to be very careful that we don't move, lose the central
issue why we are here, you see it's so easy to privatise the church, what do you mean?
To have a church for my own comfort,
true, we all like to have a church where we feel encouraged, taught, blessed, strengthened
and we need to remind ourselves
that the church is not, doesn't become a museum,
now I was taken to the church once down the, down that coast region by the way,
it's built there, an Anglican church built out of local rocks from volcanic soil,
amazing sort of a place and he went, great details, tell them about the church and look at it,
I said, how many are coming here?
Almost looked like I insulted him, he said, what do you mean?
How many come to the worship in this building?
You know we are the building of God, we are the church of God, living stones,
you see we need to be alive to the things of God,
you know we need, we need to look over and rescue people from shipwreck,
this passage goes on to warn, you know, men like, elders like Hymenaeus and Alexandra
who had abandoned the faith and good conscience, it's possible, don't tell me it's not,
over the last little while I've sifted through two libraries,
one library has given a young fella and said, what do you think of this?
I looked at it and I went through the thing and
so I'm pretty afraid with books and I looked through the thing and I said, well,
I think you could take it down to Smorgans, he said, oh it's a theological library, yeah,
so I don't know but I think it'd be good at Smorgans, he said, what does Smorgans do?
Make the lot into egg cartons, it's about as good as it all worthwhile,
stuck not worth fetching home, liberal nonsense, not worth having,
I haven't got any time anymore to read nonsense, I haven't got much time left anyhow,
you start your three school years in ten, you see we've got to get on with the reality of what
the gospel is and what God has called us to do, what God has given us to do and you see,
made in authority, why is this prayer to be made, why do we pray in such a way?
We may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness,
see how lives must be ordered and modified by the gospel, how lives must be changed and example the
gospel, you know, we need to be affected by the gospel in such a way and part of that life,
right, peaceful and quiet lives in godliness and holiness, you see,
the gospel works, the gospel changes lives, makes us new creatures in Christ
but it just doesn't leave us out there, it brings us into a place,
and you see, we're warned here in verse 19, we'll look back and see there that
hold the faith in good conscience, you see, this is to affect us in such a way
that we live for Christ, work for Christ, in a good conscience,
you're not just to hold on to a parcel of truth and there you are, I went to,
got a little bit of free time, I went to St Wilfred's, why I pick on St Wilfred's,
my brother's name's Wilfred and I took a photo of the door, the door's there, he uses his second name
there, the church named after Wilfred, I have no idea what Wilfred did but I went along to it,
sat and listened to him for an hour and I still have no idea what Wilfred does,
you know, he got the prayer book out and I said to him, I said,
the green one is Anglican, I said, could I buy that?
Yes, of course, I don't have to be ordained to read it, do I?
Oh no, no, no, no, definitely not.
I can ask you questions, yes, why do I, why have I got to sit here listening to you
read from the prayer book and not the bible and you're ordained and listen to you, why, why, why,
why don't you read the bible? Well friends, that stayed to the point,
you see that they've stuck with the troublemaker who's asking all sorts of all good questions,
aren't they? So why don't you open the bible and preach from that, we've got to stick,
we're sick with the lectern, oh if I thought that's just something you put the books on,
lecturing, there's no fruit,
ordained for what? And I said, what standards do you stand to?
There's another one I got caught on, see, I said, you hold the 39 articles, oh yes,
we hold the 39 articles. Let me rephrase the question again,
do you believe in the teaching of the 39 articles?
Ah, that's an entirely different question.
See, false teaching can so cleverly shift the whole thing sideways,
you can get people to recite the Athanasian Creed, the Apostles Creed, you can have people
put their hand up for the Westminster Confession of Faith, you can have them put up for the 1689
Confession, you can put the hand up for the 1644, you know about the 1644 Confession?
Ah, there's one there we haven't heard about, it's the one that Bunyan used,
and you can be an unbeliever.
See, it's a relationship with Jesus Christ. Do you hold to the great truths of these doctrines?
Are they embedded in your heart? Are they in your life as a good conscience to God?
As we come to the Lord, you know, look,
these teachers were within the church, these failures, these false teachers,
teachers of false doctrine were there, Paul named them, what they're up to.
Oh, they are men of high brow, learning.
Paul gives explicit instructions to Ephesus,
church, to how to pray and live so that their life-saving gospel will continue to go out to
all people. And so it is for you and I here that we live with a good conscience before God,
in the truth that we aim at, that we're growing in, that we haven't yet arrived,
but growing in grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What happens if you leave grace or grow in knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ?
You ever thought about it?
We have a mental scent that's missed by alien inches.
Right? We can nod, yes,
to great doctrines and not change your heart in one bit at all.
Pray and live the gospel. Live that reflects the work of God's grace in your life and mine.
That's the challenge.
There's another illustration I'll give you where a man,
he sent me and said, oh, this bloke's got his whole library available. And I said, oh,
why is he getting rid of it? Oh, he saw it up. He'd been that busy. Academic, why?
He had more degrees on him than a thermometer. And he was still studying,
he was going to be a lawyer. What next? He come home one day
and his wife was gone. Big highbrow church, I tell you. She was gone.
He spent more time in the study and he did in relationships.
And at that point, I think he should have left the ministry.
The Bible tells me that as Christ loved the church and gave his husbands love your wives.
You can't love by remote control.
It only worked for a little while for me to ring up Elizabeth the Unharmed before she came up.
I'm so glad to see her at the airport.
Friends, we need to remember we've got to live the gospel, even in the mini church.
Husbands and wives, you have husbands, you have responsibilities to lead in a way you should lead.
Yes, that lady had taken off.
There's somebody within the very church.
And it shattered the church. Oh, he taught the Westminster Confession of Faith, somebody said.
Did he love his wife? Does Christ love the church?
You see, what am I talking about here? Keeping the faith with a good conscience.
See, I want to encourage you to think about this.
You see, we can't tell people to come and be saved because
if things are not held with a good conscience in our own hearts and lives.
We need to pray and live the gospel.
See, what did Hominius and Alexander go on about? He was turning the Ephesian congregation
to an elitist club, focusing on what? Myths and endless genealogies, preoccupied.
We can get preoccupied with
the Da Vinci Code. What an entire waste of time when you know the whole thing was
a piece of nonsense in the first place. How many books have been written on Da Vinci Code?
Publishers have done well. We might point our fingers at Harry Potter's books and say,
look, she's made a million dollars. Let me point your fingers at another set of books.
They're purely fictitious. The stuff written by Tim LaHaye, end time series stuff.
I tell you what, what's the fellow that makes movies?
Steelburger do a wonderful job with some of those movies, books.
Tim LaHaye, through those 10 volumes for adults, the same amount of volume for children
and for teenagers, has become a multi-millionaire
through those books. And they're all fictitious. But people read them as though they're real.
We've got to sift out the fact from the fiction. Only the gospel is true. Endless myths and
genealogies, endless speculation how, which way and where, when and what date the Lord may come.
I'm going to tell you one thing I'm sure of. He's coming for me and for you. And we don't know the
hour or the time, but the trumpet will sound, time shall cease and as we know it shall be no more.
And we'll be in the presence for the Lord for all eternity. Are we ready for that?
Don't speculate. Are we ready for the coming of the Lord? Is our lives in such a way for
us to come today? What would he find you doing? Oh, prayer and living the gospel.
And so this is what Paul wanted to stress home to Timothy. Hey, he said, hey, listen,
get on with the main game. Instead of living the life of the gospel, this is the first four verses
is all about. This is good to please our God, our Father, who wants all men to be saved and
come to a knowledge of the truth. I want you to see this morning, the mission heart and the Father
heart of God, the purpose of God for the extent of the gospel.
Wants all men to be saved. He wants the gospel of good news to go out.
It's not you and your small corner on high and mine. I get so frustrated now
at times that I can't get out like I used to. So I make talk here my pulpit,
point danger. I sit and wait for somebody to come past with a serve board and say,
could I hang on? He sits down and talks to me. I had one fellow there who's 55 years of age.
He put out of work. I'd been there for 25 or 30 years, lost my job, totally depressed.
I said, look, I'll tell you what I think you need is to come and find life until it's full.
What do you mean? I said, sit down and have a seat with me.
No, it's just one of those tables outside you have your picnic lunch on.
He said, I've never seen a bloke reading a Bible on the seat like I said.
Well, there's always a first, isn't there? I take myself with a bag of thing that I hang on my
shoulders. I got from somewhere with tracks. I gave him one on depression. He said, I've never
seen nothing like this. Then I tell him about the invitation coming to me. All you were weary and
heavy laden and I will give you rest. He's a man, 55 or 56 years of age, tears coming down his face.
I've never heard nothing like this before in my life.
You see, we live in a world that is without hope, the world that is full of fear.
Psalm and bin Laden has been blamed for everything since it happened.
And we're jumping at shadows at times. But what about the gospel? What about the good news it
takes in sharing this? The universal range of the church, Paul gives us this. He commissions us,
he goes off and takes the gospel to the known world. He moves out. No? He wants all men to be
saved and come to knowledge of the truth. He wants that gospel to go out no matter what.
This is a challenge for you and for me.
A challenge that it should go out. What is the message? It goes, verse five. Look at verse five
here. Very important for there is one God. Remember we're living in a pagan world,
post-modern period and we've got everybody at the door set.
People think it's strange to talk about Islam. You know there's a little mosque
at Ma'ari at the start of the Birdsville track. It's been there for almost 100 years.
Of course if you take Gan railway and give its full name it's named in honour of the Afghan
cameliers that come out at the turn of last century to drive camels up and down across the
country. People don't know that. They get out there and here's this little place set up there
facing the right direction. Where Vameka was out there. See we need to start facing
the right direction, friends, in what the gospel is.
To take it out to those that sit in darkness in the shadow of death.
And so we see here, look, the men one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who
gave himself a ransom for all men, testifying and giving in improper time that and for the purpose
I appoint herald and apostle. I am telling truth. I'm not lying. A teacher of the truth faith
to the gentiles. The purpose of this gospel is to go out from the life-saving station of Ephesus.
That's what he drove home. Paul was driving home. You've got to begin with the gospel. You've got
to finish with, I want everywhere. I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer
without anger and disputing. You see what happens now, Paul is saying,
we're going to make the main game, the main game. When last have you spent time in prayer,
laboring in prayer? Now I'm not talking about when I lay me down to sleep, I play my Lord
soul to keep and I pray my soul to take. I'm talking about laboring in prayer,
crying out to God for the lost and loved ones, crying out for those who are sitting,
facing a lost eternity. We don't know who's going to come to Christ. We don't know how God is
working. He holds the key to all unknown and I'm glad, should have never hold the key, I'd be sad.
I'm glad it's not in the hands of any one of us, that it's in his hands. But what we're told to do
is to pray and take the gospel to those that sit in darkness.
I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer.
I want to point out something in the Bible. What do you think about it? It's the only place we're
told to lift up our hands. You get the idea? Then we should be praying, not waving them around the
air. You get it don't you kids, eh? Now you get the idea I'm trying to get across. We get a lot
of people waving hands around, changing light bulbs. Friends, friends, we're called to lift
up holy hands in prayer. God saved my brother. I have a card from my young brother when he was 15
to my brother and my brother in Christ. He spent the last, he's 51 now and all those years he
laughed at me for serving amongst Aboriginal people. Look he said to me one day he'd rather
go black fellas or slope heads, meaning ungracefully anybody that was Asian.
In your house he said they're lined up wall to wall like carpet he said.
Why? Because I was interested in the gospel. I pray for Greg, I pray for him, cry out to Greg
and a couple weeks ago he come to see me at 51 years of age and he's on his third marriage.
He's worked for an Aboriginal airline by the way and his wife is Vietnamese.
Isn't it amazing how God takes him up? Isn't it amazing how God has taken him up?
I have a Buddhist in the family. It's amazing to pray for her.
But what about our neighbours? What about our friends? What about those who sit in darkness?
Lift up holy hands without anger and disputing.
Greg came to me and said have you got a bible?
I said yeah I reckon I can put my hands on at least 100. I said yeah I can get you a bible.
In fact Greg I said I have both my mother and father's bible.
He said I want a Thompson Chain reference but I gave you one of those so I've lost it he said.
I said can I ask why you want it? He said I want to read it again.
The first signs from 15 to 50. I want to read it again.
Oh I cried out to the Lord as I gave him my dad's bible. I said here's your father's bible in a case.
There's a lot of literature got stuck in the back of it by the way, appropriate sort of stuff.
And I take it to the Lord in prayer. I pray for my nieces and nephews.
Ankh one nephew rings up he said he's at university he said I'm studying.
A friend witnessed to him at the university.
He went to a church where another friend of mine was a pastor. I didn't say that at the time.
He's become a Christian. His son go couldn't go to school because of bullying. He got sent off
to Christian school. His son come home on the third end and said Dad I've committed my life to the Lord.
All of a sudden the phone rings. I've been praying. Are you praying for anyone Pacific?
Are you praying for anyone?
There's a lass that I thought might have been here this morning but she's not and I understand why
because she's in right in the middle of town. She wanted to catch up and see me. I'd prayed for her
34 years. She's come home to the mission field. Went to a funeral. She come up to get the funeral.
Uncle Merv she said I want something you want to know. What's that Deb? I've become a Christian.
See friends sometimes we don't ask, we pray and don't ask.
And we like, like everything that's in society today, instant. Instant this and instant that.
So we have a responsibility to lift up our, the largest of God's heart is to pray for men
everywhere. Now I know all about election. I know all about the saving grace and you don't know
who's going to be saved either but we have the responsibility to communicate the gospel to those
who sit in darkness. The universality of the gospel is the fact that it was for everyone.
This was Paul's passion, his burden that the gospel should go to the Philippines,
to wherever. You know over recent years there's been a breakout of the gospel in Mongolia.
Mongolia was forever shut, a heavy Buddhist country. It's opening up.
This place is happening everywhere where God is working
and we need to be busy in prayer that God would work in Smithfield, in this area.
I'm going to say Westfield, I don't know if there's a shop in Sydney. No we're on Smithfield,
right? They work in Westfield if they want to.
Right? We need to get burdened to start, look out, look up. See what happened to Paul, to Job.
We go right through Job arguing backwards and Job's comfort is, oh the great bunch and that
wife or something else. And we get to chapter 42 and about verse 12. And Job prayed for his friends.
What does it tell you? He's looking up to a sovereign holy God who knows the end from
the beginning, who holds the key to all unknown and I'm glad.
He's looked out from his circumstances and prays for his friends. And what does God do?
This is not prosperity my friend, this is God working in sovereign grace and mercy in the life
of Job and restores his family back to him. Friends, let us be serious. Let us be serious,
not that gone out from the Jews. The prayer Paul begins, I urge you, he says,
clearly the scope of Christian prayer is expansive and expanding. Look beyond self, look beyond
Smithfield, look beyond, look out there that God would come down and work a work of grace in the
outback. That God would work a work of grace in the centre of Sydney. You can include Melbourne,
I was going to say Melbourne for a minute, but in the centre of Sydney,
that God would work a work of grace in so many places.
How we start, how short, how often our intercession prayer is hardly last 30 seconds,
doesn't it? I remember Elizabeth sharing with me and dad was very in the last stages before
we put him into full care. At tender moments dad could quote you, some 103.
One day Elizabeth makes a meal for dad and they go and sit out on the porch and
dad's pretty well away from it, you know, and she bows and says grace, thank you Lord for this food,
amen.
Dad's sitting there, he said, my, the Lord's got to put up with a lot of rubbish, hasn't he?
You see, it wasn't quite long enough.
It wasn't quite what he thought it should have been.
And he could say that in his dementia.
All our hearts should be affected to cry out to God and weep over those that sit in darkness
in the shadow of death. Cry out to our loved ones, those who have never come to faith in Christ,
you know. How we need to cry out, I urge you Paul, I urge the church at Smithville to spend
time in prayer for one another when we come up against things. I'll never forget some years
ago with a man that I'd been discipling and I was just stuck teaching the scriptures to him.
I didn't say any of thou shalt leave this or that or be separated from this that or anything like
that. And Barry comes home, he said, Mervy, he said, I'm in the masons, you know. I said,
oh, I could have went over the masons, you can't be an adage, leave that. I didn't.
There's a good reason because when you're threatened
with something you've always believed and held, what do you do? You hang on to it.
Barry come to me one day, he said, Mervy, he said, do you know what the masons teach?
I said, what do they teach, Barry? He said, well, they teach upright and just before God.
They do it with a Bible in the end. Really? What have you learned? He said, you've been
teaching me that we're sinners and need to be saved. You know, it's vastly different.
And then a little bit, time goes by,
he comes to me, he said, he was in business in a business partnership.
Very good business. And the reason he was the salesman for the business,
he used his Freemasonry to get into places where he wouldn't get it otherwise.
But I still kept teaching the scriptures and praying the Lord would take the word of God by
the power of the Holy Spirit to work in his life. Then he comes home one day, he said, Mervy, he
said, what? He said, I've got to get out of this partnership. He said, I've been reading a passage,
which I've learned very well as a young fellow, a brother, be not unequally equipped with unbeliefs.
So really, what do you think it means?
And he said, my partner's not a Christian.
I said, well, Barry, I said, what we think we should do is let's pray about it.
And we did. And about a month later, Barry comes home one day to the Bible study we're having in
his house. All excited. Guess what's happened? The Lord's answered my prayer.
How? He said, the partner wants to buy me out
and keep me employed. And he knows I'm not in Freemasonry anymore.
You see, this is the work of the Spirit of God. If I'd have went and said to him, thou shalt
belong to Freemasonry, though thou shalt not be unequally yoked.
It's like years ago that people were attacking me when I held a certain view of prophecy.
I just bought more books in the same view until at last I decided to study the scriptures for
themselves. And I left that view.
You see, what we need is a faithful teaching and preaching of the Word of God in everything that
we do. Overflowing, flowing over our hearts by the washing of the water of the Word.
Don't do the Holy Spirit's work. Be faithful with the scriptures. This is what Paul was getting to.
He had this aemineus and this Alexander bloke. They went and wobbled on about all sorts of
things. I went to one preacher once and he was a noted preacher in the Brethren.
And I was sitting down the front and this bloke, he's a statistician
with the Atomic Energy Department in England. And he got up at ten past seven. And five to eight,
he'd gone through all the things that were about, the Russians had rockets facing this way and
somebody else had rockets facing that way. And they're all sitting there, rockets facing one
another and there's that many atomic bombs in the world. And end time was just over here after the
25th of December and sitting there. Then he stops and looks down and says, Brethren, why aren't you
rejoicing? And I sat down the front, I'm sitting there with my brother sitting right now. I said,
I got too many rockets pointing at me. It had nothing to do with the gospel,
nothing to do with hope, nothing to do with sending it with Christ.
Endless myths and genealogies. We used to call it the ecclesiastical Mablegating.
I urge you, we need regeneration. The world needs to hear. We need to embrace the world in prayer.
We're told to pray for our enemies. Pray for our enemies.
That's bin Laden. That's all kinds of people.
I'll never forget reading the testimony of a Lebanese man.
He'd actually raved across the cloth, pointed at a Christian across the way to pull the trigger.
And God spoke to him. He left there, went via Spain, eventually finished up in Texas.
Muslim. He met a little old lady that told him he met the love of Jesus.
It's one of the best books on apologetics of the Islamic face I've ever seen. Takes the five keys
because he knew them and expounded them in the light of the gospel.
Friends, be wise how we witness. Be sensitive. Take it to the Lord in prayer.
We need to embrace the world with prayer. I remember reading the life of A.B. Simpson,
Christian missionary alliance. Somebody walked in his study one day and he had a globe in his hand
in tears, crying for the gospel to go out.
I don't think we cry half enough and weep for the gospel. Let us encourage one another so much more.
We need to embrace the world in prayer. We need to also look and live and weep in prayer.
Live along with general exhortation with a wide, wide ranging prayer.
I've got a diary now that's filled up with names I pray for.
I share this not to boast but to share with this that you might too list those to pray for.
Pray that God would touch the lives of men and women. I pray for Torquay. I go down to Point
Danger, that's a nice place to go to, Point Danger. I sit on the shelf there and I look
back at Torquay and ask the Lord to open the hearts of men and women in Torquay.
Then I do a bit of a track distribution off of Christianity Explained. One day somebody will
accept. Rather, he warned Timothy then. Paul never, he encouraged him. He urged prayer
that we might not, he didn't want us to have a quiet middle class life and free from stress
and critics, as some have said. God uses some of these things to grow us.
If we don't grow in grace, we grow in knowledge and knowledge puffs up.
If we grow all in grace, we've got no gospel to communicate. It must be coupled together.
We must grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I bought a book of mine, nearly forgot it. Best value for money, $24.95.
And what they've done, it's forwarded by John Piper, what these men have done is taken three
books of John Owen, three books and brought it up into modern English. Mortification of sin
in the believer. That is putting it to death, the sins. We all got all sin.
The necessity, the nature, the means. They brought it into simple English,
or the current English. The other book they put here with Owen, Temptation, the nature of power,
the danger, et cetera, et cetera, meaning preventing the dangers. It's a really page
of introducing what the book is about on temptation. And then the three books in one.
The indwelling sin in the believer. That is great value for you and I to know why we behave
the way we behave at times.
You need to understand, redeemed and saved, yes,
that sin dwells within you, sticks its head up. So we're called to live holy lives. He warns us,
prayer is here for those in authority. Wide ranging prayer, prayer for those in kingdom
and those in authority. Peaceful, quiet life in godliness and holiness. You see, it's not just
have a quiet life and not be bothered by anything, it's to live out our lives in godliness
and holiness before a watching world. And I want to tell you, again, I'm going to say this,
I thought godliness was wearing a navy blue suit and having a face on me look like it could strike
a match, right? And the Derby Bible neatly tucked up under this arm and I had to learn it was other.
I'm not talking about dressing like a rag bag either but
I think that we need to know what it really is.
Daily life may win respect for outsiders. I worked with a man who was an elder in the church I was in
in a construction company. Now construction is about as rough as you'll get
and they had a truck that rolled over, a crane actually has rolled over
and they said oh George is going to be in charge of it
and the boss come out to the other men that are going to go and they're all going to buy their
titties and go and they said no no no you can't do that if George is going to be in charge there'll
be no grogging the job. Respect him, he's been here for 32 years and he's the elder in our church.
He had the respect of the men and the bosses he worked for.
They knew he practiced the life that he believed in and prayed for.
You know sometimes we're touched by things. I remember reading this about Thomas Huxley,
a great agnostic man and he met a man, an old Christian Huxley had requested him
that he tell him why tell him simply why he believed in Christ.
This old man said well you're a scholar, you're this and everything but you tell me why you
believe and it's recorded that the old agnostic's tears flowed from his eyes when he heard why this
old man just loved the Lord and followed him and knew his sins forgiven. It was one of the few
times that Huxley was touched and impressed by somebody who loved the Lord. So we make slow
progress sometimes with the gospel don't we? We so see nothing happened I think and the reason
is because we're so slow to go to the Lord in prayer. God wants powerful thought in prayer
go forward. We need to be large, a large heart, a large room. Let me give you an illustration
how God works in prayer. You heard of Saint Nicholas's church at Leipzig?
Probably not. It's where the Reformation started in Leipzig in the church.
In 89 something happened in Leipzig in that same church
with the Reformation church, 450 years from the Reformation. Can anybody remember what it was?
When it first went up we had a song. West of the wall, it never fall, west of the wall,
bum bum bum bum, about 1956 that song come out. What happened was that there's a group,
a small group of believers used one of the rooms in this church and they began to pray. Read
sermons the most and pray for peace. The group expanded as they began to pray into a larger room
and it began then to meet in the church's nave, that's the body of the church, which began to fill
up. Alarmed the communist authority sent officials to attend. They threatened the gatherers in
temporary jail, some of them. One primary night they blocked the city's nearest
autobahn ramp completely off. People started to turn up, 2,000 turned up.
Then on October the 9th 1989 some 2,000 crowded for prayer, for peace
and another 10,000 gathered outside and soon the Berlin Wall came down.
That's how the Berlin World War has been there, pulled down through the power of prayer.
And that's how the day is going to be won and anything that happens in this church
there's going to be through the power of prayer. We're going to see the victory in the gospel,
victory in relationships, victory in personal grievances. We work through by the power of prayer.
You know, all powerful God hears the prayers of his people. Could that happen here?
Of course it can. He holds the key to all I know and I'm glad. Should another hold the key
I'll be sad. I'll probably run out of time. God's awesome ground. Paul calls for prayer
verses three and four. That's his desire. God works through prayer, five and six.
Paul's mission is embarked in verse seven. He desires everywhere. We need to get away from
the same problems that William Carey had. God meant those reasons out there to be saved. He'll
find something that's why I've saved him without you going. That is not biblical and he's glad he
didn't stay at that either. And he went out and took a mission and became known as the modern day
father of missions. And so it is for us to hear that we are to go preaching the gospel,
telling them the good news of Jesus Christ, taking the advantage wherever we can,
to know and tell the gospel, to reach out to those who sit in darkness in the shadow
of death. God is a sovereign God. He works everywhere and everything.
God works with unity.
Our faith is an exclusive faith and faith is one God and there's no other way for men to be saved
and we need to take a gospel out to people. God the son is the only mediator. The final element
of the divine workers, the infinite ransom paid by God's son.
This should inspire us to live lives of prayer and mission.
We must be God's people, joyfully declaring Christ's great atoning work.
The awesomeness of that message to the nations around us.
Friends, as we move out from here today, I want you to focus back on prayer for one another.
There's not one situation in this church in your life, in my life,
that cannot be met by the gospel and cannot be overcome in obedience to God's word by the power
of prayer. So that we live godly, fruitful lives for the kingdom of God.
We are to be actual saving stations. We are to live the saving life that's in Christ.
We're to set our compasses on due north as it were, fixed with the purposes of the gospel in
front of us. The burden of the lost around us and on our knees for those that sit in darkness
in the shadow of death.
Thank you.