"God Desires All People to Be Saved" (Sermon on 1 Timothy 2:1-15)

From time to time the Pew Research Center, an organization that tracks religious trends in America, comes out with a new study. This past week they issued their latest report, called “Modeling the Future of Religion in America: How the U.S Religious Landscape Could Change over the Next 50 Years.” Based on findings from recent decades, they are projecting how things could look in the future if current trends continue. The main question in this study is what percentage of Americans will identify as Christians in the future. Going back to the 1970s and even into the early 1990s, 90% of Americans identified as Christians in 1992. That number started to drop in the mid-’90s. By 2002, the percentage had dropped to 78%. Now, in 2022, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians is down to 63%. From 90% to 63% in just thirty years. Meanwhile, the percentage of “religiously unaffiliated,” the so-called “nones,” has risen to approximately 30%.

Now what if these trends continue? In this study, the Pew Research Center says the most likely scenario is that by the year 2050, Christians will lose their majority status in America and be down to only 47% of the population, barely outnumbering the 43% who will have no religious affiliation at all.

So how do we react and respond to these discouraging numbers? More important, what does God think about it? And the good news is that, in the words of our Epistle today, “God our Savior . . . desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” And God has provided the way for that to happen. And so our theme this morning: “God Desires All People to Be Saved.”

God desires all people to be saved. But the problem is, and increasingly so, that people don’t even think they need to be saved, let alone care about how God has provided the way for that to happen. They don’t think they need saving. They don’t think they need to be saved from their sins, because nothing is sin anymore. What used to be universally agreed upon as sin, no longer is. All forms of sexual immorality now are approved: premarital sex, cohabitation, extramarital sex, adultery. “Hey, it’s your thing; do what you want to do.” Unscriptural divorce--divorce for any cause, not just for the legitimate reasons of adultery or desertion--now has become “no-fault divorce,” as though such a thing were possible. Homosexual behavior has gone from being shameful perversion, which it is, to prideful celebration, a view reinforced by media, education, corporations, and government.

Americans don’t think they need saving from their sins. Likewise, increasingly, they don’t think they need saving from death. We have softened the reality of death in our culture. We detach ourselves from death. We distance ourselves. Death happens in nursing homes and hospital rooms. We don’t see it happening. Funerals are no longer “funerals.” Now they are “celebrations of life.” We don’t like to think about what happens to a person after they die. But of course “he was a good person” and “God must have needed another angel.”

So, if people don’t think they need saving from their sins, and they don’t think they need saving from death, they’re not going to think they need a Savior. Thus the decline in self-identifying Christians, because Christianity is all about a Savior from sin and death.

“God our Savior desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” That is the truth: We do need saving from sin and death. And God does desires to save us. God desires, he eagerly wants, to save us. Yes, he does. This is what the Bible teaches. For example, in Ezekiel 18 the Lord says: “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?” Or in Ezekiel 33: “As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” Or 2 Peter 3: “The Lord is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” This is the same teaching as here in 1 Timothy 1: “God our Savior desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

You see, God does not want to condemn you for your sins, however bad they have been. God does not want to cast you into eternal death and hell. No, God wants you to recognize your sins and repent of them. God wants to know the truth, how things really are, not what the world, the devil, and your own sinful flesh will tell you. God’s fervent desire is to save you, to deliver you from death and hell, so that you will not perish eternally. God wants to bring you into his kingdom of light and life, new and eternal life, walking in the light of the truth.

And God has provided the way for that to happen. You know the verse, John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And then verse 17: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” God does not want you to perish, but rather to have eternal life. That’s why he sent his Son into the world, to accomplish just that.

Our text puts it like this: “God our Savior 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.” It is in and through Christ Jesus that God has provided the way for us to be saved. It’s through Christ Jesus, who he is and what he has done for us.

Who is he? He is the eternal Son of God, who, as we confess in the Nicene Creed, “for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven . . . and was made man.” The man Christ Jesus, God in the flesh. He came to deliver us sinners from sin and death. To do that, he had to become man himself, so that there would be one man who would keep God’s law perfectly and attain righteousness. And because as true man he is at the same time also true God, his righteousness has infinite value. As your representative, his righteousness is credited to your account. In Christ, through faith in him, you, a sinner, are counted as righteous before God. What an undeserved blessing!

“There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Notice, there is one mediator, not many. The only one who can save you is Jesus Christ. Mohammed with his made-up “Allah” cannot save you. Buddha cannot save you. Your own “spirituality” and goodness cannot save you. No, only Jesus can. Jesus himself says in John 14: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” St. Peter says in Acts 4: “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.” So there are not many roads to heaven. There are not many ways to get right with God. There is just one, the God-man Savior, Jesus Christ. He is the one whom God has provided, the Savior for all men everywhere. And he is the only one we need.

“There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Jesus is our mediator. He is the man in the middle. He bridges the gap between God and men. We were alienated, separated from God by our sins and rebellion. But Jesus brings us together. God reconciles us back to himself in the person of Christ. Jesus is our mediator. He is the man in the middle. He bridges the gap between heaven and earth. And he does this precisely as he is hanging on the cross, suspended between heaven and earth.

As our text says: “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.” Jesus is our ransom. He paid the price that sets us free. Jesus Christ is our ransom, our redeemer. As we learned in the Catechism: He has redeemed me “from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver but with his holy precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death.”

And to show that he has won the victory over sin and death, this same Jesus Christ rose from the dead and lives forever. What’s more, he shares his everlasting life with you who are baptized into union with him. The Holy Spirit gives you faith to believe in Christ, and he keeps you in that faith through the gospel means of Word and Sacrament.

This is why the church’s ministry is so vital and so needed. For this is how God gets the gifts to you and to all people everywhere. Jesus has promised, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” God our Savior is still doing his thing through his church: He is still saving people all around the world. The church may be wheezing here in America, as more and more of our countrymen think they don’t need a Savior. Same thing in western Europe. But in other parts of the globe, the gospel is spreading and being received, and more and more people are being saved for eternity.

And even here, here in Missouri, here in this stretch from Farmington to Festus, here among your own family and friends, God has lots of people he wants to be saved. We can’t predict which ones will believe and be saved and which ones will refuse and be lost. So we just go ahead and keep on proclaiming the good news, through our church and through your own personal witness, and we pray that God will bless the result. And he will.

1 Timothy 2:1-15 (ESV)

First 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 am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness--with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.

My basic feeling is that love is a fundamental entity, and that God loves us. I believe that love is only truly love when it is given freely and by the free will of the spiritual entity (e.g. human beings/the human soul) that give that love. God is so far beyond what we can imagine, IMHO, such that we can only understand and know God in fundamental ways - such as knowing God’s love and seeing God in every beautiful thing on this wonderful planet God created for us.

That said, I believe God would never force us to do anything, as what we do only matters when we do it by choice. Again, IMHO, God wants us to love God, but won’t force us to do so - as that wouldn’t truly be love. So, God gave us free will and wants us to make the free choice to be as God is and to love, and to give love to God - by free will.

Anyway, whether we call it ‘being saved’, or use a different phrase, it’s about making an individual freedom of will choice to be as God wants us to be, and admitting our limitations, knowing and admitting we need help, and having humility under God.

Again, IMHO.

Put simply, God permits into heaven only those who relinquish their own self-rule and let Him be God. That begins with accepting His solution for sin, Jesus’ substitutionary atonement, in stead of works.

With only such people in heaven, peace there is guaranteed.

Without the Lord and His Father’s care, I’d have died in 1968-9. My grandmother used to walk with me to Sunday school as a little boy. Just before I flew from upstate NY to NYC and on to Travis AFB and RVN, my granny gave me a brass plaque for my wallet. It said -”Go out into the darkness and place your hand in the hand of the Lord that shall be for you better then light and safer then a known way.” I cannot say exactly how many times my life, my NCO’s and my Montagnards were saved based on that. I can recall the tunnel I went through the speed and bright light after Surgery from two GSW’s. The Lord saved me.

As long as there are a bunch of numbers in here, and "God so loved the world", here's a simple observation round-up that transcends theology and statistics. (These make memory connections for me, and inspire more things to think about):

Esther (the "star" of the show, אסתר) = 661, which is the 11th star number

The verb to say, "he said" -- amar [אמר] -- first occurs in Gen 1:3. It's in a different form there, but the root letter string remains intact.

The phrase "love at first sight" is אהבה ממבט ראשון. The first letters of the words spell אמר. The phrase = 661.

Genesis 1:3 And God said, Let there be light*: and there was light.

What God saw. What you see is what you get..

"Twinkle twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are"

Same as the A B C song. The very basics.

light is ohr [אור] = 207 = "Little Star" [כוכב קטן]

“My basic feeling is that love is a fundamental entity, and that God loves us.”

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.

I guess I should have said zip.

I fear I expressed my thoughts clumsily. I was attempting these points:

First, God is accomplishing much behind-the-scenes in our lives, and in heaven I believe He will reveal all He has done, to our astonishment.

Second, we will all be fascinated to hear each others' detailed biographies. When we hear what God has done for each of us, our praise of Him will fill all of heaven.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.