-Transcript-
00:24 Amen. Welcome to the program, welcome to the cafe. Welcome to KJV Cafe.
00:29 What a blessed day it is today, amen. Sun is shining, it’s warm outside. Homeschool today, kids got to play at the playground for a little bit, amen.
00:41 My eldest daughter, she’s six about to turn seven, she was playing with a child. She said to the child, do you know God?
00:50 Just right off the bat. I told her, I said, you know, we need to be friends with someone before we can start maybe, you know, evangelizing.
00:57 She goes, oh no, we were friends. So they were friends, but I just praise God for these days, these wonderful days that we can get outside. I’m one of those people, I like the light, I love the light.
01:09 That’s why I’m looking forward to heaven, because in heaven there’s marvelous light from Jesus Christ himself and the Bible tells us there is no night in heaven. So praise God for that. Welcome to the cafe.
01:21 My name is Pastor Clark Covington, by the way, pastor of Heartland Community Baptist Church here in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, and your host for KJV Cafe.
01:27 Today we are looking, we’re in the second part, and don’t worry if you didn’t hear the first part, because I’ll sum it up for you.
01:35 We’re in the second part of a four-part series on praying for our leaders and how that can result in quiet living.
01:44 And oh, how nice it is to have that peaceful, quiet life. You know, growing up, being young, I loved everything that was active.
01:54 I loved maybe even the conflict and the competition, how about that? I loved competition.
02:00 I loved playing sports, football, and lacrosse, and whatever else I get into. I just loved being active. And as I’ve gotten older and my kids have gotten louder and louder, their focal cords have grown, I mean, I’ve got all the activity that I can handle, amen, and I love peace and quiet.
02:19 I hope you do too, that you, you know, maybe you don’t love peace and quiet, but I hope you can at least appreciate peace and quiet. That idea that it’s just so nice when it’s calm and quiet.
02:32 By the way, isn’t that when the Lord shows up? A lot of preachers I’ve heard talk about, and this is true for me, that kind of three to four a.m. hour, the Lord will just wake you up and it’s quiet, and you can kind of have that time with the Lord where you can kind of hear that still small voice stirring in your soul.
02:49 No, it’s not an audible voice necessarily, but it’s there. He’s there, amen. It’s a he, he being God, and those that are saved having the Holy Spirit, which is a he, living within you.
03:00 And so we look at this idea of having a quiet life, which we all should strive for, a quiet and peaceful life. And we see here in 1 Timothy 2:1-3, I exhort therefore that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and for all that are in authority,
03:23 that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.
03:33 So we see here in 1 Timothy 2, the first three verses are telling us kind of this, you know, almost step-by-step process. First off, look, Paul’s saying to Timothy, we need to go to God in these types of prayers. That’s what we’re gonna talk about here today.
03:48 And then just to give it context, then he says, you know, don’t forget Timothy now. We need to pray for the kings, those that are in authority. Who are kings today?
03:56 That’d be the president, vice president, it’d be Congress, the Senate, that would be our local government, the school board, the governor, the mayor, the county council, all the rest.
04:05 We need to pray for them because when we pray for them, maybe, just maybe, God will get ahold of their hearts and that will allow us to lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and honesty.
04:21 And the verse says that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. That’s what we’re to pray for.
04:28 And Paul is telling Timothy very correctly for then as well as now, that in order to have that peace and quiet and that godliness and honesty in our life, we need leaders that are friendly to the church.
04:41 Now we’re not asking, we’re not asking for laws that require people to do anything. I mean, think about it.
04:51 Les Feldick always talks about the idea that you can’t legislate sin out of the world. And it’s so true.
05:03 You know, I think that the worldview is or the opposing view is or the atheist view is or the God-hater view is that Christians want a government that forces people to be Christian.
05:11 But that couldn’t be further from the truth. God himself gave man free will. God himself is sovereign and you clearly see he was letting man do as he pleases for this season before he comes back in judgment.
05:27 Why on earth would we want to force people to do things? We can’t force them to not sin. The law, no man could keep the law that was shown in the Old Testament as an example of how we cannot force anything. It’s by our own free will that we come to the Lord.
05:37 Now he can tug at our hearts. And I have so many stories about that. I wish I had time.
05:42 I’ll tell you a couple of quick ones. I was in high school, totally out in the world, not saved, not in church, in a broken home at one point living with foster parents.
05:55 And I was arguing for the pro-life cause with some friends who might have been arguing something different.
06:02 I honestly don’t recall their side, but we were going back and forth, so surely their side was different. Why was I doing that? What on earth made me that way that even lost in this world, I was understanding the sanctity of life and thinking about it at a time when I was really just a kid and clueless.
06:16 And then in college, I remember Sunday mornings, again, just by myself, not in church, nothing.
06:23 If I didn’t go to a local service, I felt off. I felt very anxious. And again, it was just an earthly kind of feeling.
06:34 And then going to the service, and I had a friend, Katie Yates, God bless Katie Yates. I had a friend, she’d come with me. We would go to different services because she was a different denomination, I guess.
06:40 I really don’t know what denomination I was at that point, but it was just needed. And I was like, oh, I needed that. And again, I was yet to be saved.
06:49 My wife, before she got saved, talks about going into the dollar store and buying a New Testament because she was just naturally wanted to know what was in there. So again, God can tug at our hearts, and I’ll praise God.
07:04 My wife is saved many years, and I’m saved, praise God, and I thank God for calling me into the ministry.
07:05 But the point I’m making is we don’t need laws that force people to do that. God will work in the hearts of man. He’ll knock.
07:14 All we have to do is open that door. But what we do need is lawmakers to not persecute because if they persecute, then what will happen?
07:22 Then we won’t have that quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty because we’ll have to be like the Chinese underground church. We’ll have to boldface, potentially lie sometimes.
07:33 We’ll have to do things that are against our laws, right? Again, we kind of saw this with COVID a little bit in the lockdowns with churches, but I don’t want to get political. And again, I don’t have a dog in that fight. We’re a small church.
07:44 Amen. We weren’t really worried about it. The Lord had prepared us for that day.
07:49 But the point is, look, you know what? God is saying through Paul to Timothy, his understudy, you need to have an idea of praying for your leadership so that they could then give you the freedoms so that you can have this peaceable life.
08:02 And that is what we have here today, and I won’t go through the last episode. I talked a lot about that.
08:10 I won’t beat the drum anymore other than to say that is what we’re supposed to do. We are to pray, pray, pray for our leaders that we can have a peaceable, quiet life.
08:18 Basically the idea of having religious liberty, having the ability to go worship God, having the ability to share the gospel, having the ability to publicly proclaim our faith, amen.
08:32 Maybe on a billboard, maybe in a museum, maybe at school, wherever. Just having the ability. The example I gave too was like, I gave a lot of examples.
08:41 I think it was on a 30-minute message, which we’ll get to in this section the next time, if that’s not confusing enough, but the next episode we’ll get to this aspect of it.
08:50 But like in school, you know, we’re not saying force kids to take a Bible class. What we’re advocating for, at least at our church, in our ministry, is we’re advocating that kids can electively take a Bible class.
09:02 That means it’s an elective. It’s on their heart. God has burdened them with that heart and that curiosity, and they then choose to take that Bible class.
09:09 Does that make sense? I hope it does here today. But today we’re going to focus just drilling in on prayers. So we see here verse one of 1 Timothy 2, I exhort therefore that first of all, supplications.
09:23 Supplications be made. What are supplications? They’re earnest requests. They’re petitions that are made in humility and awe.
09:30 That is what a supplication is, according to my dictionary. The idea is, I use the example of my teenager. He wanted to drop off a glue stick at his girlfriend’s house, and he said, oh, can I take this over there?
09:42 And she doesn’t live far from us, and I said, okay, just come back and maybe help me clean up when you get back.
09:54 And that was the scope of the conversation. And he is a sweet kid, and he’s a very well-behaved kid. And he doesn’t mind, I guess, that I use him as example here.
10:02 But you know what? He was saying, can I go take this to her, right? Now, that’s a request, but that’s just a basic, straightforward request.
10:11 Supplication would be that earnest request, that humility, oh, great and wonderful person. May I please take this over to her, because you have just done so much here for me, and I appreciate you.
10:24 You see the difference? That’s a supplication. It’s made in humility and awe. It’s putting ourselves in the right place before a holy God, saying, God, you are the Father, Lord.
10:39 You are the potter. We are the clay. It is up to you to mold us, and you are wonderful, and your love is so great and so superior.
10:43 Your knowledge and your ways are so great. And we’re making this request to you in full knowledge of this. Basically, we know what we don’t know, so we’re asking you to meet this prayer.
10:55 But nevertheless, let your will be done, because you have all wisdom. See, that’s a supplication, amen. Requests for our needs and the needs of the world.
11:01 That’s typically what we’re praying for, right? That deals with what we have going on, right? God, help us with X, Y, and Z. Help our family with X, Y, and Z. And then also the needs of those around us, and that’s intercessory prayer or intercessions.
11:13 Paul mentions that. He says supplications, prayers, intercessions. The idea that we are praying on behalf of another.
11:20 We are bearing their burden. Some missionaries came from the Philippines and stayed with us on and off for some months, and it was just such a blessing. And we were praying for them to meet their goals, because they were church planters.
11:33 They had planted two or three churches, and they were looking at four and five, whatever it may be, and they need a van and so forth. And we’re praying, praying for their goals, and saying, Lord, please remember them.
11:43 That’s intercessory prayer, right? You have a relative, and they’re sick, and you pray that they’ll be healed.
11:47 That’s intercessory prayer. And then finally, Paul’s saying, giving of thanks be made for all men. We need to thank God, amen? We need to have that thanksgiving in our prayers.
11:57 We need to look at the Lord’s Prayer as our model, and we need to understand that it’s our responsibility to give thanks to God.
12:07 Let’s look at the Lord’s Prayer, what Jesus outlined there in Matthew 6:9-13. After this manner, therefore, pray ye, our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
12:16 Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
12:28 For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, amen. And we say thine is the kingdom. We’re saying you are powerful.
12:38 You are amazing. You are the one I’m putting my trust and my hope in, and thanksgiving can also reflect back on what we’ve been blessed with. You know, God, you’ve been so good to me today.
12:50 You know, you’ve done this, this, and this. You know, you’ve helped me here, here, and here. You’ve helped my family.
13:00 You’ve blessed another. Oh, I see how you’re moving over here, God. You are so powerful.
13:01 You are so awesome, and I thank you for who you are, and I thank you for what you’ve done. Now, I imagine, again, going back to my example of that kind of just curmudgeoned teenager asking to go do something.
13:10 Is that not the same thing when you say, I guess you can go, that was a weird request, rather than, oh, you’re so great, oh, you’re so wonderful, oh, I appreciate you? Now all of a sudden, I’m much more persuaded.
13:23 I’m like, well, yes, son, of course you can go. You see? I mean, it sounds silly, but it’s true. We all want to receive thanksgiving and praise, and you know what?
13:34 While we people may or may not deserve it, and sometimes I know I’m not deserving of it, God is worthy of all praise, honor, and glory, and so we are to praise him and thank him, and we are to make our supplications known,
13:47 and we are to pray for all men, and this right here is what we are to do as we work to pray for our leadership, that we can live that quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty that Paul is telling Timothy we need to pray for,
14:02 and we can do that wholeheartedly, knowing that God will hear our prayers as we give them to him, as we submit to him, as we live for him, and as we do that, we can thank him in advance for what he’s gonna do,
14:16 or what he has done, and it’s just so great to see what God is doing every single day as we have a strong prayer life in the Lord.
14:25 So tune in next time as we get to the third part in this series. Thank you for listening.
14:28 Take care. God bless, and amen.