Prayer in the Age of Global Hate
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Well, we live in an age of hate.
00:00:06.000 | One political party hates the other.
00:00:08.000 | One nation hates another.
00:00:11.000 | But the polarity of our national and international struggles of 2022
00:00:15.000 | are nothing new, as you can imagine.
00:00:18.000 | They're as old as sin.
00:00:21.000 | Forty years ago, Pastor John said in a sermon, quote,
00:00:23.000 | "The 1980s are quickly becoming the decade of hate,
00:00:28.000 | and oh, how easy it is for Christians to be sucked into one group
00:00:31.000 | and start hating the other group," end quote.
00:00:34.000 | That's the same today.
00:00:36.000 | We're tempted to fall in line with the world and hate our human opponents,
00:00:39.000 | but oh, what a very different calling God gives to His church.
00:00:44.000 | And to understand God's countercultural calling for us today in 2022,
00:00:48.000 | we rewind 41 years to hear a clip from a John Piper sermon
00:00:52.000 | he was preaching on 1 Timothy 2, verses 1 to 4.
00:00:54.000 | It's one of my favorite sermons,
00:00:56.000 | especially when we face geopolitical chaos in the world.
00:00:59.000 | It's an early sermon preached on January 20, 1981.
00:01:03.000 | We heard another clip from the same sermon last Wednesday.
00:01:06.000 | There I mentioned that this sermon was preached two days before
00:01:09.000 | the Iran hostage crisis came to an end,
00:01:13.000 | and the same day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated
00:01:16.000 | as the new president of the United States.
00:01:18.000 | So there was a lot of national and international news in the air
00:01:21.000 | when Piper preached on 1 Timothy 2, verses 1 to 4.
00:01:25.000 | The Apostle Paul's words were very relevant.
00:01:28.000 | Paul was eager for Christians to hold to the faith with a good conscience,
00:01:32.000 | according to 1 Timothy 1.19.
00:01:35.000 | That includes, as Paul explains, that Christians take a global worldview
00:01:38.000 | to offer supplications and prayers and intercessions
00:01:41.000 | and thanksgivings be made for all people,
00:01:44.000 | for kings and for all who are in high positions,
00:01:47.000 | that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life,
00:01:50.000 | godly and dignified in every way.
00:01:53.000 | For this is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior
00:01:56.000 | who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
00:02:01.000 | That's 1 Timothy 2, verses 1 to 4.
00:02:04.000 | Piper took up this plea from Paul and preached on
00:02:07.000 | what it meant to pray for others in the age of global hate.
00:02:13.000 | Here's Pastor John.
00:02:15.000 | It's a great blessing to have our daily bread.
00:02:19.000 | It's a great blessing to have our trespasses forgiven.
00:02:24.000 | It's a great blessing not to be led into temptation,
00:02:28.000 | but to be delivered from evil.
00:02:30.000 | But we don't pray. Jesus didn't teach us to pray.
00:02:33.000 | Lord bless us. Amen.
00:02:35.000 | He taught us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread.
00:02:39.000 | Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
00:02:44.000 | Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
00:02:49.000 | We have not been taught to pray in broad sweeping generalities.
00:02:52.000 | We have been taught to pray for particular kinds of problems.
00:02:57.000 | And when Paul wanted help for himself,
00:02:59.000 | he asked the churches, "Pray for me in particular.
00:03:02.000 | Don't just pray for the missionary cause, for example."
00:03:06.000 | Therefore, I do not think that we will satisfy the demand of 1 Timothy 2, 1
00:03:12.000 | if we say something like, "God bless all men everywhere. Amen."
00:03:18.000 | What does it mean? How can we satisfy it?
00:03:21.000 | If we give Paul a sympathetic reading here,
00:03:24.000 | that's what you always should try to give anything you read.
00:03:27.000 | Give it a sympathetic reading.
00:03:29.000 | Try to put yourself in the shoes of the writer.
00:03:31.000 | I think what he's going to say is something like this.
00:03:34.000 | "Timothy, push out the boundaries of your concern.
00:03:40.000 | Don't let your prayers be limited to any group or any kind of people.
00:03:47.000 | Enlarge the circumference of your love, Timothy.
00:03:52.000 | Don't be provincial or sectarian or elitist or nationalistic or racist in your prayers, Timothy.
00:04:01.000 | Let your prayers embrace all kinds of people,
00:04:06.000 | high and low, white and black, Democrats and Republicans,
00:04:12.000 | Soviet premiers and Iranian ayatollahs.
00:04:16.000 | Enlarge the heart of your prayers, Timothy.
00:04:20.000 | Go to school at Calvary and learn to hate the bigotry and the racism
00:04:26.000 | of the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis,
00:04:28.000 | but to pray with earnest yearning for those men and women."
00:04:35.000 | Isn't Paul's point the same as Jesus?
00:04:38.000 | You have heard that it was said,
00:04:42.000 | "Love your neighbor, but hate your enemy."
00:04:45.000 | But I say to you, love your enemy and do what?
00:04:50.000 | Pray for those who persecute you so that you may become sons of your father who in heaven.
00:04:59.000 | Or to put it another way, Timothy, there is no category of people of whom it can be said,
00:05:07.000 | "You ought not to pray for those."
00:05:09.000 | There is none.
00:05:11.000 | And here's a message for our day, isn't it?
00:05:13.000 | The 1980s are becoming the decade of hate.
00:05:19.000 | And oh, how easy it is for Christians to be sucked into one group
00:05:25.000 | and start hating the other group.
00:05:28.000 | Jesus warned us in Matthew 24 11,
00:05:31.000 | "Many false prophets will arise and lead many astray,
00:05:35.000 | and because wickedness is multiplied, the love of many will grow cold."
00:05:43.000 | May it not be said of Bethlehem Baptist Church
00:05:46.000 | that we've made any contribution to the destruction of the world through icy hate,
00:05:52.000 | but let it be said of the Christians at Bethlehem,
00:05:54.000 | and oh, of all Christians, behold how they love one another.
00:06:00.000 | Look how they do good to those who hate them.
00:06:03.000 | Look how they bless those who curse them.
00:06:06.000 | Look how they pray for those who abuse them.
00:06:09.000 | Look at the parameters of their prayer.
00:06:12.000 | Why, there's no boundary.
00:06:15.000 | Isn't that the point of 1 Timothy 2 1?
00:06:20.000 | And if we pray like that and act like that, won't people begin to say,
00:06:25.000 | "There must be a God of grace in the heavens,
00:06:27.000 | and he's got a peculiar people on earth and in Minneapolis at this corner,
00:06:32.000 | people who are not conformed to this age or to this decade."
00:06:37.000 | And now, after he stressed the wideness of the circumference,
00:06:41.000 | for some reason, Paul focuses in on kings and all in high positions.
00:06:48.000 | Pray for kings and all in high positions.
00:06:53.000 | Why?
00:06:55.000 | Why did he narrow in here?
00:06:58.000 | It's clear from verses 4 through 7 that Paul wants to emphasize
00:07:05.000 | that nobody be excluded from our goodwill,
00:07:10.000 | for nobody is beyond the grace of God.
00:07:13.000 | Why then do kings and people in high positions come in for special mention?
00:07:19.000 | I think there are at least two reasons, perhaps more, but I'll just mention two.
00:07:25.000 | The first is this.
00:07:26.000 | There are characteristics, aren't there, about leaders that make it hard to pray for them,
00:07:32.000 | at least hard for those early Christians to pray for them,
00:07:36.000 | and I think still for us in many ways.
00:07:39.000 | One, for example, of those characteristics is that they are so distant and so remote,
00:07:45.000 | if not visually or in miles, then in accessibility anyway.
00:07:53.000 | They're so remote, and it's hard to pray for somebody earnestly,
00:07:57.000 | with heart yearning that you don't even know or don't ever see.
00:08:01.000 | And yet Paul says that difficulty must be overcome.
00:08:05.000 | We must pray for the Emperor Nero.
00:08:09.000 | We must pray for the governor, Galio.
00:08:13.000 | We must pray for proconsuls, and we must pray for Pilate and Herod and the like.
00:08:20.000 | Those people must be prayed for if you don't ever see them.
00:08:25.000 | They may seem remote to you.
00:08:27.000 | They are not remote to God,
00:08:30.000 | and you can get as close to them through prayer as any of their closest advisors.
00:08:35.000 | Here's another example of a characteristic that makes them hard to pray for.
00:08:41.000 | They are often godless people, insensitive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
00:08:48.000 | That was almost universally true in Paul's day.
00:08:51.000 | And I think in our day, if you take all the countries of the world,
00:08:55.000 | and let's not just limit this command to America,
00:08:59.000 | it's probably still true today.
00:09:01.000 | It doesn't matter where or when we have lived.
00:09:07.000 | If we're going to pray for those who are kings and all in high positions,
00:09:14.000 | we are going to wind up praying mostly for people who are hostile to or indifferent to our faith,
00:09:21.000 | and that seems to be a stumbling block for many people.
00:09:24.000 | What do I pray for them?
00:09:27.000 | Well, Paul says, "Don't hesitate to pray."
00:09:30.000 | First of all, God can save, God can change kings and those in high positions.
00:09:36.000 | And second, he uses unbelievers in high positions to accomplish his purposes anyway,
00:09:44.000 | whether they believe or not.
00:09:46.000 | A couple of examples.
00:09:48.000 | In Isaiah 10 in the Old Testament, God takes the wicked king of Assyria
00:09:52.000 | and turns him into a rod of his wrath when he wants to punish his people Israel.
00:09:56.000 | And then he casts him aside because of his arrogance when he's through with him.
00:10:01.000 | Once Nebuchadnezzar, the great proud king of Babylon, said this,
00:10:07.000 | "Is not this great Babylon which I have built by my mighty power
00:10:12.000 | as a royal residence for the glory of my majesty?"
00:10:16.000 | You know what God did?
00:10:18.000 | Took away his reason and made him eat grass like an ox.
00:10:22.000 | Until he learned this lesson, Daniel 4, verse 34.
00:10:27.000 | Nebuchadnezzar says, "The dominion of the Most High is an everlasting dominion,
00:10:32.000 | and his kingdom endures from generation to generation.
00:10:36.000 | All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
00:10:39.000 | and he does according to his will in the host of heaven
00:10:43.000 | and among the inhabitants of the earth,
00:10:45.000 | and none can stay his hand or say to him, 'What doest thou?'"
00:10:50.000 | No king, no president, no Soviet premier or Iranian ayatollah
00:10:56.000 | can stay his hand when he has purpose to do a thing.
00:11:01.000 | "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hands of the Lord.
00:11:04.000 | He turns it wherever he will," the wise man said.
00:11:08.000 | "Many are the plans of a man and a king,
00:11:12.000 | but the purposes of the Lord will be established."
00:11:16.000 | Proverbs 19, 21.
00:11:19.000 | Therefore, we have strong encouragement to pray
00:11:23.000 | because God rules over men whether they believe him or not.
00:11:30.000 | God reigns and none can stay his hand.
00:11:34.000 | Now, one implication of that is that our prayers for these kings
00:11:39.000 | and these people in high positions will not only be for their conversion
00:11:45.000 | or even their sanctification.
00:11:47.000 | That we must pray for or we disobey our Lord Jesus,
00:11:52.000 | but we will go beyond that and we will pray
00:11:55.000 | that God's good saving purposes be accomplished through them anyway,
00:12:02.000 | even if they are impenitent.
00:12:04.000 | And that's the second reason why I think Paul mentions
00:12:08.000 | the need to pray for kings and those in high positions,
00:12:11.000 | because God is able to do so much good in the world
00:12:15.000 | through people in high positions.
00:12:20.000 | Even a bad king, Paul thinks, is better than anarchy.
00:12:25.000 | Paul is in a Roman prison or is under house arrest in Rome
00:12:29.000 | when he writes 1 Timothy.
00:12:31.000 | The emperor is Nero.
00:12:32.000 | In a couple of years, he's going to put Paul to death.
00:12:36.000 | Probably he died in the lion's arena.
00:12:39.000 | Now, Paul is saying what he says under those conditions.
00:12:43.000 | Therefore, he is not naive when he says,
00:12:46.000 | "Make thanksgivings for all men, for kings and all in high positions."
00:12:52.000 | Thank God for Nero.
00:12:55.000 | Why? How can he say that?
00:12:57.000 | At least for this reason.
00:12:59.000 | Paul's perspective on the world is so good.
00:13:02.000 | It's so big.
00:13:03.000 | It goes above and beyond his own little life
00:13:06.000 | or even his own little great ministry.
00:13:11.000 | The emperor who puts Paul to death in Rome
00:13:16.000 | keeps peace in the provinces where the gospel is spreading like wildfire.
00:13:22.000 | And for that, Paul is very thankful.
00:13:26.000 | So our prayers for kings and for leaders and for all men
00:13:31.000 | should be seasoned with thanksgiving.
00:13:34.000 | But the main thing Paul says to pray for is this,
00:13:38.000 | that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life
00:13:43.000 | in all godliness and respectfulness.
00:13:48.000 | Now, taken by itself, that might seem to fly right in the face of everything I've said.
00:13:52.000 | Is it really the case that in the last analysis,
00:13:57.000 | the only reason we pray for leaders is so that we might have the good life?
00:14:03.000 | So that we might have peace and tranquility and build our estates?
00:14:09.000 | How many professing Christians seem to think so?
00:14:13.000 | But that would be a terrible misunderstanding of this text, wouldn't it?
00:14:17.000 | Because verses 3 and 4 sharpen the focus of what Paul is really after.
00:14:24.000 | "Why," he answers, "why pray that we have peace and tranquility?"
00:14:33.000 | Answer, this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior
00:14:37.000 | who desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
00:14:42.000 | God approves of peace and tranquility because he approves of the advance of the gospel.
00:14:49.000 | Peace is not the main thing.
00:14:51.000 | Salvation is the main thing.
00:14:54.000 | Tranquility is not the main goal.
00:14:58.000 | The knowledge of the gospel of truth is the main goal.
00:15:02.000 | May we never forget it, brothers and sisters in Christ,
00:15:07.000 | that we are exiles here in America.
00:15:12.000 | And I would say the same thing if I were talking to the Russians, the Iranians, the Mexicans, the Brazilians.
00:15:18.000 | We are exiles here in this land.
00:15:22.000 | We are not at home in America, Russia, Iran, Egypt, Israel, or anywhere on this earth.
00:15:32.000 | Our commonwealth is in heaven.
00:15:34.000 | We do not pray, I do not pray, simply for the prosperity of any land.
00:15:42.000 | I pray for the magnificent spread of the saving purposes of God in every land
00:15:49.000 | and for whatever conditions it takes to achieve that.
00:15:54.000 | Powerful, especially given the historical setting of the sermon.
00:15:57.000 | The sermon is titled "Pray for Kings and All in High Positions," preached on January 18, 1981,
00:16:03.000 | two days before the Iran hostage crisis ended
00:16:06.000 | and Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the new president of the United States.
00:16:09.000 | The entire sermon is online at DesiringGod.org.
00:16:13.000 | If you have a sermon clip to share, email me.
00:16:16.000 | Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title, the time stamp of where the clip happens in the audio,
00:16:20.000 | and make a note of what stands out to you.
00:16:22.000 | Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:16:27.000 | That's our email address, AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:16:31.000 | Well, if you've read and studied the Gospels, you notice that in the life of Christ,
00:16:36.000 | there's not a lot of detail about temple practices, in particular, animal sacrifices.
00:16:42.000 | We know that Jesus as a small child was presented at the temple
00:16:46.000 | along with an offering of turtle doves or pigeons.
00:16:49.000 | We see that in Luke 2, but that's rare.
00:16:52.000 | In fact, in his ministry later, Jesus forgives sin himself
00:16:56.000 | and seems to bypass the whole sacrificial system altogether.
00:17:00.000 | Why?
00:17:01.000 | I'm your host Tony Reinke. We're rejoined in studio with Pastor John for that on Friday.
00:17:05.000 | It's a really good Bible question, and we will see you on Friday for that.
00:17:08.000 | Thanks for listening.
00:17:09.000 | Bye.
00:17:10.000 | [Silence]
00:17:17.000 | you