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Men Whom God Struck Dead

September 20, 2026 • Jesse Johnson • 1 Chronicles 13

A question for you: what is the worst sin a person can commit? I wonder how you would answer that question. There are obviously different levels of sin, just like there are different levels of crime. You hear about a guy getting thrown in jail for 35 years for stealing a pack of gum, and you think, "That's probably an exaggeration. That's not fair." Lots of states passed three-strikes-and-you're-out laws, California being one of them. I was on a jury once with a defendant who, if he got convicted, would have his third felony. He was being charged with selling over a thousand dollars' worth of cigarettes, and he would have been sentenced to life in prison. There was a lot of consternation among the jurors: is that an overreaction? Life in jail for selling cigarettes? I won't tell you the outcome of the case. You recognize that some sins and some crimes are more extreme than others. In light of that, you might ask yourself: what is the most serious crime a person can commit against God? In the U.S. federal system, there are three categories of crimes that carry a capital penalty—three categories you can be put to death for: homicide, of course; treason or espionage; and large-scale drug dealing that verges on terrorism. Those are the three categories our government can put someone to death for, and I think we'd probably agree that those categories deserve it. What about in your relationship with God? I know it's common to say all sins are equal in the eyes of God. In my experience, people usually say that to justify their own sin. There's a sense in which all sins are equal in the eyes of God, because all sins leave us more or less equally far from God. If sin is falling short of God's glory, then I guess all of us can jump equally far toward Africa. If we all ran and tried to jump off the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, we'd all get about equally close to Africa. It doesn't really matter. In that sense, all sin is equal before God. It all leaves us, in some sense, equally far away from Him. But in terms of the punishment fitting the crime, it's not true that all sins are equal. God responds to some sins differently than others. In light of that, it's interesting to think through the Bible: what examples are there of someone whose sin is so extreme that God kills them immediately for it? Not that He lets them live for decades. Not merely that the wages of sin is death, of course. Not that He providentially lets a person's sin work its way through their life until it kills them one day. No—the kind of sin so extreme that God intervenes in history miraculously to put the sinner to death immediately. Not people executed by Israel's government, but people who sin and God Himself strikes them dead on the spot. When you think about what you'd put in that category, you might expect murderers or idolaters or something like that—maybe the violent or the sexually immoral, people guilty of the kinds of sins we would normally put at the very top of our list. But the most well-known examples of that kind of sin in the Bible are strikingly different. The first people you see like that in Scripture are Nadab and Abihu. Do you remember them? They were priests who could minister in the Holy of Holies. They were consecrated and ordained for their role—Aaron's own sons. Instead of approaching God the way they had been taught by both Moses and Aaron, they put on their robes, lit their incense, and offered "strange fire," is the word Scripture uses—fire God had not authorized. They went and did their own thing in front of all the people, is the idea. They wanted the people to see that now they were the ones who could enter the tabernacle. Now they were the ones with access to God. And so they paraded themselves around with fire God Himself had not authorized, and God struck them dead. Of course Aaron was stunned, and Moses tells Aaron, "Among those who are near me I will be sanctified." There's Ananias and Sapphira in the New Testament. Do you remember them? They sold a field and presented the money to the church, but they didn't present all the money—only some of it. They were asked if that was what they got for the land, and they said, "Yes, of course. This is all we got for it." They were in a church where, if you look at the beginning of Acts, it had become common for people to sell what they had and give to the poor. That's not commanded by the Bible, but it was something they were doing. So Ananias and Sapphira presented themselves to the congregation as if they had done that. It would be very easy to imagine a modern-day equivalent. You sell your house and say, "My kids have gone off to college. I don't need my house anymore. I'm selling it and giving it all for the mission work of our Lord—all to Africa New Life in Rwanda." But you really kept half of it for yourself. Which, again, is totally fine. In fact, if you had kept half for yourself and told everybody, "I'm selling my house and giving half of it to Africa New Life," everybody would think, "That's so godly and wonderful. Yay!" But you weren't content with that. You said, "I sold my house, and I'm giving all of it to Africa New Life. Look how godly I am." That's what Ananias and Sapphira did, and the Lord struck them dead. Now, Ananias and Sapphira and Nadab and Abihu didn't commit the same sin in every detail, but they committed the same kind of sin. In both cases, people took something that belongs uniquely to God—His worship, His holiness, His name—and treated it as though it could be handled on human terms. Nadab and Abihu worshiped God in a way He did not command, in front of others, as a performance. Ananias and Sapphira used an act of worship to create a false impression about themselves. And in both cases, God did something shocking: He struck them dead immediately. Which raises the question: what is it about this kind of sin that provokes such an immediate response from God? Apparently there's something God finds especially offensive about using the things He designates for worship to promote yourself. And that's what happens in 1 Chronicles 13. First Chronicles 13 is the story of the people moving the ark. I've put a little hand-drawn image of the ark on the screen so you have in your mind what we're talking about. The ark has the rod of Moses in it, [the rod of Aaron?], the Ten Commandments, and manna. That's what's inside. There are two angels on top whose wings touch each other. It has poles so that it can be carried and positioned. Remember, they had to walk this thing through the wilderness for forty years. That's the idea behind the ark. I don't think the drawing is to scale—I don't know how big it actually is—but that's the idea. In 1 Chronicles 13, we're going to see them moving the ark. And what's amazing about this chapter, as we read it tonight, is that everybody involved was operating with what they would have thought was the right thing. David wanted the ark in Jerusalem as a monument of worship to God. Israel wanted the ark in Jerusalem because David wanted it there. The leaders of Israel agreed: get the ark back to Jerusalem. The people agreed. There's music, there's celebration, there's enthusiasm, there are good intentions everywhere—and then we're going to see somebody die. So what went wrong? The answer is that God is not worshiped rightly simply because He's worshiped by sincere people. He's worshiped rightly when we approach Him as He has commanded. The Bible starts with a story about this, by the way: Cain and Abel. They were commanded to approach God with a blood sacrifice. Cain didn't think that was fair, I guess, because Cain was a farmer. He grew crops. Of course it's easy for Abel to offer a blood sacrifice—Abel is a herdsman. He has animals. Cain doesn't. So Cain thinks that if he's worshiping from a sincere heart and offering what he has, that's acceptable. The Bible begins with this little story showing that God is not approached by whatever you think is acceptable. When Cain brings his grain, God tells him, in effect, "Don't you know what I commanded? Why don't you go do what I told you to do?" He demanded a blood sacrifice. And you remember how Cain responded: "You want a blood sacrifice? I've got your blood sacrifice." And he murders Abel. By the way, Cain was not struck dead immediately by God. He was marked—God said, "Nobody kill him"—and sent out. Tonight's story is very much in that vein, though: somebody approaching God on their own terms rather than His. I'll give you a lesson in archaeology before we get into it: what the ark is. I mentioned the drawing on the screen. They didn't have cameras back then, or I'd give you an actual picture. The ark is eight or nine miles outside of Jerusalem, and it's been there a long time. It's supposed to be in Jerusalem, in the temple. The temple isn't there yet, of course, but there's the tabernacle. During David's life there was no temple yet, remember? When David was king, there was land for the temple, but there was a tabernacle. The tabernacle was the tent—the portable version of the temple. The food-truck version of the temple, you could say. The restaurant hadn't been built yet, but they had the mobile version. And the ark was supposed to be in it. But they lost the ark back in the days of Samuel—actually when Samuel was just a little kid—when it was taken out to war with Israel. It wasn't supposed to be taken to war. It wasn't a good-luck charm. It wasn't the scouts, the two spies who go before them. They took it to war because they were afraid of losing, and this was the Israelites' logic: if the ark is with us in battle, there's no way God would let us lose, because God identifies so closely with the ark that He'll have to fight for us. Notice, they believed in God. They believed God determined who would win the war. And they believed God was represented by the ark. So they put two and two together and thought, "If we have the ark on the front lines, we have to win." Phenomenal logic. Very, very bad logic. It goes off to war, and they lose the ark. The Philistines take it, because God is not a good-luck charm you wear around your neck into battle, my goodness. As I mentioned, the ark has the law inside it, which demonstrates that God is a lawgiver. It has the manna inside it, which demonstrates God's presence. It has the rod inside it, which demonstrates God's forgiveness. It's where the high priest goes on the Day of Atonement, and they spatter the whole thing with blood. Taken together, the ark demonstrates that God is prophet, priest, and king—that God is the lawgiver, the one who forgives sin, and their sovereign. He leads them, He rules them, and He forgives their sin. The ark shows God's presence: the ark is with you. It shows God's forgiveness: it is sprinkled with blood. It shows God's revelation, because it has His Word in it. Other religions have depictions of those they worship. Catholicism or Buddhism or Hinduism might make a shrine with an image that is an object of worship or veneration—whatever word they want to use for it—an item or image you genuflect before and direct your prayers to. The Israelites didn't have anything like that. The ark was not something they were supposed to worship. They weren't supposed to bow down before it. It wasn't an image they directed prayer or praise or veneration toward. That's not what it was. God kept it holy—not them. So that's the idea with the ark. It's been parked out there. Well, first the Philistines took it. Do you remember that? That was a huge fiasco. The Philistines took it from the battle, and they didn't know what to do with it. "Now we have the Israelite ark. We recognize it's important to them. It was odd that it was at the front of their battle lines, but now we have it. Obviously it's an object of worship." If you're a Philistine, what do you do with an Israelite ark you stumble across on the battlefield? They didn't know. So they put it in the temple of Dagon, their fish god. They put it at Dagon's feet. And the imagery wasn't supposed to be subtle: "Look, the Israelite God is bowing down to Dagon. How wonderful." It didn't work out well for Dagon, if you remember. The next morning they came in, and Dagon was lying face down before the ark. It was like he'd fallen down worshiping the ark. And the priests of Dagon were like, "No, that's not what we were going for." When Dagon fell down, his pieces broke—his fin broke off or whatever—so they prop him back up, duct-tape the fin back on, nail him into the ground, and there's the fish standing up with the ark back at his feet. He falls down again, and this time it's a Humpty Dumpty situation all over the place. So they decide, "We've got to get rid of the ark." And it's even funnier: they prop Dagon back up again, tape him together, and say no one can step on the threshold of the door where Dagon fell. They declare the ground where Dagon fell to be sacred ground. That is just a picture of false religion, right? "Dagon won't quit worshiping the Israelite God, so we're going to get rid of the Israelite God and declare the spot where Dagon fell down to worship sacred." Awesome. So they get rid of the ark and shop it around. It goes on a tour, and everybody wants to go look at it. Everybody looks at it, and they die. Thousands of people are dying. I understand the first two people dying, but you'd think by guy number ten or so they'd figure it out: don't look at the ark. But there's a morbid curiosity that drives people, and so they die. So the Philistines decide they have to ship the ark back to Israel. They get two cows for it—I have a picture from satellite imagery of what it looked like. These have horns, so it's not the best picture. These two cows had just had calves. They loaded the ark with gold as an offering—golden mice, of all things. They worship a fish god, so in their minds golden mice were an offering to Yahweh or whatever. So they pack it up to send it back to Israel. But before they do, they think, "Those mice are worth a lot of money. We have to make sure this ark is the real deal." So they find two cows that had just had calves, the calves are lowing for milk, they put the ark on the cart, and they send the cows off. And the cows walk away from the sound of their hungry calves. That's supernatural cows right there. Those cows had more sense than the Israelites did. They chose to obey God rather than their own natural instincts. So the cows wander back into Israel and drop the ark off at the first Israelite village they find. Their work is done there—their lives kind of end right there too, but that's a different story. So what do the Israelites do with the ark? Nobody wants to touch it. So they put it in a barn and leave it there for decades. And now David is king. Look at verse 1: "David consulted with the commanders of thousands and of hundreds, with every leader. And David said to all the assembly of Israel, 'If it seems good to you and from the LORD our God, let us send abroad to our brothers who remain in all the lands of Israel, as well as to the priests and Levites in the cities that have pasturelands, that they may be gathered to us. Then let us bring again the ark of our God to us, for we did not seek it in the days of Saul.' All the assembly agreed to do so, for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people." That's your first indication that this is not going well. When you approach God in worship and the way you begin is, "This is what seems right to all of our friends whom we asked," you are starting off on the wrong foot. We know from the version of the story in 2 Samuel that there's more to it than this. A regular planning committee was established. It was a parade from one village to the other. The street was going to be lined with people—thirty thousand people lining the street to cheer David and the ark as it entered Jerusalem. They decide to let Uzzah drive it—drive the oxen—because it was Uzzah's family that had the ark in their garage. Look at verse 5: "So David assembled all Israel from the Nile of Egypt"—that's far away—"to Lebo-hamath, to bring the ark of God from Kiriath-jearim." That's about eight or nine miles from Jerusalem. "And David and all Israel went up to Baalah, that is, to Kiriath-jearim that belongs to Judah, to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the LORD who sits enthroned above the cherubim. And they carried the ark of God on a new cart, from the house of Abinadab, and Uzzah and Ahio were driving the cart. And David and all Israel were celebrating before God with all their might, with song and lyres and harps and tambourines and cymbals and trumpets." This reads like a presidential inauguration. It's a who's who of contemporary Israelite society. All the important people leading the ark into the city: "Praise God for David's wonderful leadership." That's supposed to be the attitude. The teensy-weensy problem is that the Old Testament describes how the ark is supposed to be moved. Numbers 4 gives you the words for it—I'll put them on the screen: "When the camp is to set out, Aaron and his sons shall go in and take down the veil of the screen and cover the ark of the testimony with it." So it's supposed to be wrapped in a veil. "Then they shall put on it a covering of goatskin," is what the ESV says. Most translations say porpoise skin; some say badger skin. It's a very fine leather. I don't know if it's dolphin skin that they'd have to buy from the Philistines, or badger skin, or who knows what kind of skin. It's a very unusual word, but it's used maybe a dozen times in the Old Testament when they're supposed to be moving the ark. So it gets wrapped in this very fine leather. There's a blue cloth that goes on it—I don't know if the cloth goes between the leather and the ark or on top of the leather, but there's leather and cloth involved. They cover it with that skin, spread the blue cloth on top, and put in its poles. I won't go through the whole text, but it's supposed to be a particular family of the Levites doing this. No Uzzah. No planning committee. A particular family of the Levites. Wrapped in goatskin. Carried by the poles. That's what the Word of God says. When they do it right, it's supposed to look like this. This is the right way. This is the wrong way—unless you're a Philistine. Then this way is okay. So the Philistine way is bad, unless you're a Philistine. Philistines don't have their quiet time in Numbers 4. They don't know any better. So for the Philistines, fine. For the Israelites, this. Now ask yourself, based on what we read in 1 Chronicles 13, which way are they doing it? This way. They look more like the Philistines than like Numbers 4. And that's the problem. The crowds are swelling all around them. What a testimony to David's leadership! Could you imagine Saul caring about the ark? Of course not. The best musicians are out there, ushering in a new, younger generation of leadership and music in the assembly of God. What a wonderful place to be. Rock music, thirty thousand spectators, oxen, a new cart, no Levites—and a lot of looking going on. The thing you're not supposed to do with the ark is look at it, and there's all kinds of looking going on. So when a pagan who doesn't know better does a better job moving the ark than the priests, you have a problem. The problem comes to a head in verse 9: "And when they came to the threshing floor of Chidon, Uzzah put out his hand to take hold of the ark, for the oxen stumbled." So the oxen tripped. They're oxen. This is why, by the way, God said not to move it with oxen: they stumble. They've got four legs going every which way, and there are two of them tied together. What a mess. Go to Mount Vernon and watch the oxen plow the field. They stumble plowing the field at Mount Vernon, and those two oxen do it every day. Those oxen are ninety years old, man. I'm sure they date to George Washington's era. Oxen stumble. You don't use them for the ark. But they do. So what's Uzzah supposed to do? He's the one driving the cart. He's in charge here. Of course he's going to grab the ark. He's not going to let it fall on the ground. Could you imagine what that would do to the parade? "Nice parade. Too bad you dropped the ark." So he grabs it. And something worse than dropping the ark happens when he grabs it, of course. Verse 10: "And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah, and he struck him down because he put out his hand to the ark, and he died there before God." God strikes him dead. He joins Nadab and Abihu and Ananias and Sapphira as people God killed immediately for their sin. David, for his part, is angry, "because the LORD had broken out against Uzzah. And that place is called Perez-uzza to this day." That name, Perez-uzza, is a pun. Perez means to break out or to strike through. Earlier, when we read Exodus 19, I hope you heard that phrase: "break through." It's the phrase God used about approaching the mountain. "Fence off the Israelites. Do not let them break through to see me," God says. "You cannot just wander into my presence willy-nilly. I'm setting up the line. Do not let them break through." And remember, Moses says, "Of course they're not going to break through. I told them once." And God says, "That's not going to work. Tell them again and again and again: do not break through." Remember what God says: if you break through to Me, My anger will break out against you. Well, this is what happens. The oxen stumble, Uzzah grabs the ark, God breaks out against Uzzah and strikes him dead. David is angry because God struck Uzzah, and so he names the place "Breaking Out Against Uzzah," and they call it that to this day, it says. Verse 12: "And David was afraid of God that day, and he said, 'How can I bring the ark of God home to me?'" You'd say David's head is not in the right place, is it? "How can I bring the ark home to me?" That's another little phrase that gives you a window into what's happening here. This is all about the people. "How would I ever know how to move the ark? I don't know. Is there a chapter of the Bible devoted to it?" Check that chapter out. Do what it says. And you're not supposed to move it to yourself, David. Verse 13: "So David did not take the ark home into the city of David, but took it aside to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite. And the ark of God remained with the household of Obed-edom in his house three months. And the LORD blessed the household of Obed-edom and all that he had." This guy didn't sign up for this. Imagine that. In our country we have eminent domain. The county knocks on your door and says, "I'm sorry, we're taking your house because we need to put in a bike lane." And you're like, "What?" Nothing you can do about it. That's what happens here. The priests show up, knock on the door, and say, "I'm sorry, we're moving the ark into your house." Meanwhile, Uzzah's body is still lying in the street over there. Yikes. The Lord, meanwhile, blesses them. The Lord recognizes that they are, in a sense, innocent victims of all this. So let's make sense of this story in our remaining time. I want to give you a lesson in archaeology—Archaeology 101. If you're a university student and your school offers Archaeology 101, don't sign up for it. It's not this. This is a better Archaeology 101. Try to test out of it based on the content tonight and see what happens. This is your crash course. Your first rule in archaeology is that God sees the heart. This is the lesson the Lord taught Samuel back when David was chosen as king. Remember, Samuel lines up all of David's brothers and says, "No, no, no, no, no. There's got to be a king here somewhere." And David's father says, "Well, we have one other kid. He's out in the field. It's definitely not him." Have you seen him? How sad would that be when David hears about it? All the brothers lined up, but not David. His own father basically said, "You wouldn't want him in the lineup." Yikes. And God tells Samuel, "The LORD looks on the heart." He sees motives, and He's not fooled. It's possible to read this story in 1 Chronicles 13 and come away thinking, "This isn't fair. What did Uzzah do? What was he supposed to do? David told him to move the ark, and the oxen stumbled." It can seem like a rash overreaction by God. I've come across people who've said that about this passage. Listen: God doesn't overreact. God knows everybody's motives and everybody's heart, and He always acts justly. God sees the heart of everyone involved. Everybody was sinning by neglecting Numbers 4 and doing this whole "honor David" thing. But Uzzah is the one who broke through on God, and so God breaks out against him. Nothing, it seems, grieves God more in Scripture than when people act religious on the outside to put themselves forward while hiding sinful actions and sinful motives on the inside. When you do that, you're saying your pride is more important than what God sees. Honestly, as I mentioned this morning, everybody embraces a little of this hypocrisy in a culturally appropriate way. You wear clothes, and it's not hypocritical to wear clothes. "I just want people to see me as I am." No, brother—put on a shirt, please. You restrain your speech, and you don't justify sinful speech by saying, "I'm just revealing my heart to everybody." No—restrain your speech. So everybody is a hypocrite at some level. But it's a particular level of sin when a person puts themselves forward in a religious setting to lead others in the worship of God while harboring false motives and an empty life. God will not be mocked. It's not just Uzzah's hypocrisy that got him in trouble. It's that in his hypocrisy he tried to cover sinful motives by leading others in worship. God sees the heart, and He will not be mocked. Archaeology 101, rule two: God is not on your side. You can be on God's side, but God is not on our side. If you ever put God in a position where He has to choose between honoring Himself and honoring one of His servants, God will choose Himself every time. Do you remember the prophet back in Kings who went and confronted the king? He was a godly man and a well-known prophet. The Lord told him to come straight back—don't even eat a meal while you're up among the ten tribes; don't eat until you get back to Judah. And he ignored it, because somebody else told him, "God told me you could eat a meal here." So he does it, and then he gets killed by a lion. And again you think, "Overreaction." No, it's not an overreaction. He put God in a position where God had to choose between vindicating God's Word and vindicating God's man. And God will vindicate His Word every single time. What's He supposed to do with Uzzah here? Say Numbers 4 doesn't matter? Of course Numbers 4 matters. If you make God choose between defending you and defending His Word, He will defend His Word every time. That's where the breaking out comes from. David is mad because the LORD broke out against Uzzah. But God is not on their side. This is the lesson the Israelites should have learned the first time they brought the ark into battle. They thought if they had the ark, they would win because God was on their side. That was their mistake. God is on His own side. You can be on His side, but He's not on yours. That's the point. And that realization helps you see exactly what the sin was. The worst sin you can commit is using worship to promote yourself rather than God. When you view worship as a promotion of self rather than God, you are flirting with the sin of Nadab and Abihu. You're flirting with the sin of Ananias and Sapphira. You're flirting with the sin of Uzzah. When God struck Nadab and Abihu dead in Leviticus 10, remember, He said, "Among those who are near me I will be sanctified." Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5—the same thing. God will be feared by those who worship Him. That was Peter's message after their funeral. And by the way, that's insane, right? The husband dies, and they bury him without even letting his wife know. They didn't have pastoral ministry classes in seminary back then. Go ahead and let the wife know before you bury the husband! They didn't do that. They bury them both instead. And the message from Peter is that if you approach God, you have to do so with fear. This is why Paul says that before you take Communion—we're not taking Communion tonight—you examine yourself and confess your sins. Don't take Communion with unconfessed sin in your life or unrepented division. Don't take Communion to put yourself forward as holy, but receive it as a grace of God. People will sometimes say they don't like church because of all the hypocrites. Well, God has a pretty big problem with hypocrites too. He sees their hypocrisy even more clearly than we do. And God is never mocked. We don't have the tabernacle or even the temple anymore, much less the ark. There are all kinds of stories about where the ark is. You can watch an Indiana Jones documentary about it. There's not even a temple there today—just the Temple Mount. That's because when Christ comes to earth, He, in a sense, becomes the ark. He is the mercy seat. He is the appearance of God. If God dwelt in the temple in the Holy of Holies, and the ark demonstrated that He was prophet, priest, and king, we recognize that the ark gives way to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our prophet—He's the one who gives us the Word; He is the Word. He's our priest—He's the one who makes atonement on the cross for our sins. And He's our king, because He is the High King of heaven, sovereign over the universe. So we recognize that Jesus, in that sense, is the ark. He is prophet, priest, and king. Similarly, the only way you can come to God is through Christ. No one comes to the Father except through the Son. So the New Testament reality is that you cannot approach God unless you approach Him through Christ. And no one can come to Christ unless he is drawn by the Holy Spirit. So all three persons of the Trinity covenant together, in a sense, to bring about worship. They set their affection on people, draw them to faith in Christ, forgive their sins, and make them worthy. You don't make yourself worthy to approach God. God approaches you and purifies your heart through the blood of Christ. He seals you with His Spirit. Christ becomes your priest by forgiving your sin, your prophet by giving you His Word, and your king as you submit yourself to Him. Can you still commit this sin today? Of course. A person could be a flagrant hypocrite while leading worship. And there are varying degrees of even this sin. How many times are you singing in church with mixed motives—aware of who's listening and who's watching? Again, there are degrees of this kind of sin. I'm not saying that if you raise your hand just so the person next to you sees it, God's going to strike you dead. There are varying degrees of this sin. But behind all of it is the reality that God is not mocked, and He creates worshipers by drawing them to faith in Christ. Lord, we're grateful for Jesus Christ, who is indeed the true ark. We are the temple, the body of Christ. His body is the temple, and we gather for worship around the ark—Your presence in the church. Lord, I pray for anyone here tonight who has never given You their life. I pray that You would work in their heart tonight. Help them see that You are a lawgiver. You are just. You are also merciful. You show mercy to those who come to You through Christ. You show kindness to those who appeal to You for kindness through Christ. In a sense, we can sympathize with David. There's a spiritual awareness: who can approach God? You're so holy, God. Who can approach You? If thirty thousand people can't usher the ark into Your presence in an unauthorized way, what hope is there for us? And we know that question is ultimately answered in Christ. You draw us to Yourself, and we're thankful for that. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Grace That Grows

September 20, 2026 • Jesse Johnson • 2 Corinthians 8:6–8

Second Corinthians 8, verses 6 through 8, is what we'll read this morning. The text begins: "Accordingly, we urged Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace. But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you—see that you excel in this act of grace also. I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine." This is the Word of God, and I pray that He would seal it in your hearts. A few years ago, a security video from a mall went viral. Perhaps you've seen it. An older man was getting on an escalator, and he stumbled as he got on and fell down. The escalator, of course, is going up, and he's trying to get himself up, and he falls backward and tumbles down several stairs. Then he tries getting up again, trips on his own briefcase, and falls backward down more stairs. The guy falls maybe four or five times. Every time he tries to get up and take a step forward, he falls down again. And wouldn't you know it, he gets to the top of the escalator. He's always falling backward, but somehow he arrives at the top. If you've seen this video, you know what I'm talking about. If you have not seen this video, you have probably lived this video. If you are a Christian, that is an image of our sanctification. We know the Lord is taking us up into the image of Christ. We know the Lord is transforming us. We know God is working in us, bringing us heavenward. But our efforts, it seems, are always going backward. Sometimes our spiritual life seems like one step forward, two steps back. And yet somehow, mystery of mysteries, we keep growing in godliness. That is because the Christian life is a life of spiritual growth. I'm not saying the Christian life is a life of uninterrupted growth. It's not straight-line growth. It's not a life without stumbling. But the Christian life is a life of spiritual growth. Sometimes we feel like we are falling, but over time God works in us to bring us forward into higher and higher degrees of godliness. It was the philosopher of our age, Shel Silverstein, who described it this way: "I tripped on my shoelace and I fell up." Up above the clouds, up where the colors blended into the sky—I fell up. That describes the process of sanctification. God keeps bringing us up despite our efforts to the contrary. We stumble, we sin, and we regress, but the grace of God continues to move us toward maturity. Salvation, of course, gives us our spiritual life, and then we grow in our spiritual life. There is a reason the Christian life is called the Christian life: because we're living it out. We are growing and maturing, just like your physical life. Your physical body grows and matures and gets older and ages. So it is with a spiritual person. The spiritual person grows in maturity and ages. We have a joke in our family where we'll tell our youngest daughter, Geneva, to stop growing up. We like her as a little girl. "Stop growing up." But the problem is that she keeps growing. And as she has pointed out a few times, it's because we keep feeding her. Well, you could no more command a child to stop growing than you could command a Christian to stop growing. What are you supposed to say—"Stop being conformed to the image of Christ"? It's the Spirit of God who works in us to conform us into the image of Christ. Paul tells the Philippians, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." And if God gave us His Son and seals us with His Spirit, of course He's going to give us everything pertaining to life and godliness. God, who gives us all things through His Son and Spirit, is not going to withhold godliness from us. But He doesn't give it to us instantly either. We grow and mature. We trend upward—and trend is the right word. Over the Christian life, you are trending toward godliness. You are godlier today than you were yesterday, and you'll be godlier tomorrow than you are today. That's not always going to be true, though, because there are bad days. When I said you're godlier today than yesterday, some of you are thinking, "Let's not talk about yesterday." Okay, go back a year. You are godlier today than you were a year ago, and you'll be godlier next year than you are today. It's a trend upward. In a sense, it's like the stock market. It trends upward. Yes, there are dips and declines and all of that, but generally it trends upward over time. I am not a licensed broker, so that is not investment advice. I'm merely making the point that things generally trend up. And so it is spiritually as well. We don't mature in a straight line, but over time we grow in godliness. There's a sense in which we're like an oak tree. The acorn falls to the ground, and the acorn has to die for the oak tree to live. The acorn has to be no more. That's conversion. You are spiritually dead. You are living for the flesh and the lusts of this world. Then the Lord gets hold of your life. You become convinced that your sins were laid on Jesus Christ, that Jesus suffered and died on the cross bearing the penalty for your sins, that He rose from the grave on the third day, and that His resurrection assures your salvation if you put your trust in Him. You were leading your own life, you become convinced of that, you put your faith in Christ, and the old you dies. That's what Paul says a few chapters earlier, in 2 Corinthians 6. When you become a Christian, the old man is dead. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." The acorn dies, and in its place comes a little oak tree. Those new little oak trees are so small a squirrel could eat them. They're tiny. But over time they grow. By the third year or so, they have roots that go down, and they keep growing, bigger and bigger and bigger. Not that every year is necessarily a banner year. Some years there might be blight on the tree. Some years lightning might strike the tree and branches fall off, or who knows what happens. Disease can hit the trees. And do you know the crazy thing about oak trees? Every year all their leaves fall off. But next year they all grow back—and more of them grow back than the year before. I think of that every fall when I start blowing leaves. There were not this many leaves last year! And so it is with the Christian life. Sometimes you feel like everything is dead, and then, lo and behold, it grows back more robust than it was before. That is the Christian life. It is overall progress and increasing maturity. So here's a very interesting question to think about. When you hear me say that you grow in spiritual maturity, what does that mean? How would you see growth in spiritual maturity? That's where Paul starts in this passage with the Corinthians. He's going to give five descriptions of spiritual maturity—five measures of spiritual maturity—and he does that in verse 7. Before we get to verse 7, though, verse 6 sets you up for it. I'm not going to go all the way back into Paul's relationship with the Corinthians, as complicated as it is—we looked at that last week. But remember that Paul is asking the Corinthians to give money for the church in Jerusalem, and he's using the Macedonians, a poor church, as an example. Back in verse 1 he says that the churches in Macedonia—the Thessalonians, the Philippians, and the Bereans—gave so generously for the church in Jerusalem. So he's asking the Corinthians to do the same. The letter of 1 Corinthians, or maybe a letter between 1 and 2 Corinthians, was brought to the Corinthians by Titus. The Corinthians do not like Paul. They view themselves as having graduated beyond Paul's ministry. But they do like Titus. In God's providence, they respect Titus. So Paul is sending Titus to collect the offering. That's what's described in verse 6: "We urged Titus that as he had started" on his last visit, "so he should complete among you this act of grace"—collecting their offering. Paul is letting them know, "Hey, Titus is going to be there on Thursday. It would be awkward if you don't have your church's money ready for him." And so he gets into that by reminding the Corinthians in verse 7, "As you excel in everything." Now, this is Paul talking to a church that doesn't like him and that is, by all accounts, an immature church. When you read 1 and 2 Corinthians, you do not come away thinking, "Man, that is a mature, godly church." I always laugh as a pastor when people say, "We should do this because the Corinthian church did it. Look how the Corinthian church spoke in tongues—we should do that." No. If the Corinthian church does something, it's an argument against doing it. Do you understand? That's who Paul is talking to. Even so, he points out to them that they are growing spiritually. And this gives us hope. The Corinthians are growing spiritually? Praise God. That means someone like me can grow as well. Their growth is seen in five areas, and he lists them in verse 7. The first is faith. They're growing in faith. Now, faith, of course, is a gift. In one sense, faith is binary: you either have it or you don't. That's talking about saving faith. Before you come to faith in Christ, you don't have faith in Christ. Then you have an encounter with Christ through the preaching of His Word and the gospel. You believe it, and you come to faith in Christ. That's the work of the Spirit in your life. The Spirit causes you to be born again. He plants a seed in your heart, and that seed is life and spiritual energy. You are brought from darkness to light, from death to life. You were dead; now you're alive. That's saving faith. It brings you to life. In a sense, you can't get more saving faith. Saving faith is tied to regeneration in that sense, and you can't get more regenerated. When a baby is born, the baby doesn't get more born. So it is with the Christian. You don't gain saving faith throughout your Christian life; you have it at the moment of your conversion. So it makes sense to distinguish between saving faith and sanctifying faith. You grow in sanctifying faith throughout your spiritual life. Without saving faith there is no spiritual life, but saving faith is not the end of the spiritual life—it's the start of it. So what does it mean to grow in faith? It means to grow in your confidence in God. When Paul says the Corinthians are growing in faith, he means they're growing in their confidence in God: confidence that His Word is true, confidence that His promises are true, confidence that heaven is real, confidence that Christ is worth following no matter the cost. That's how you grow in faith. The Bible often pairs faith with hope. Hebrews 11 says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. You can't come to God unless you have faith. It's obvious to say, but in order to come to God, you must first believe that He exists. That's faith. And faith doesn't end there. The second part is that you must believe He rewards those who seek Him. That's faith—believing that God exists and that He is worth it, that He rewards me when I pursue Him with my life. That's why Abraham left his family and his life in Ur to go to a foreign place where he didn't know anybody or what was there, except that God had promised something good. So he went. He believed that whatever he would receive by trusting God was better than everything he had. That's saving faith, and that faith grows in the sense of sanctification. Think of Moses in Pharaoh's household. He had everything. He was treated as Pharaoh's son, and yet he considered the riches of Egypt nothing compared to the blessing of God. Moses is sizing things up. Yes, he believes God exists, but he gets to the point in his spiritual maturity where he believes with all his heart that it is better to be persecuted with God's people, making bricks without straw, than to be numbered among Pharaoh's own family. That's faith. And you grow in that faith throughout your lifetime as you become more aware of God's promises and treasure them more and more. This is the kind of faith that drives John to leave Galilee and go to Patmos, where he'll basically die a martyr's death. This is the kind of faith that compels martyrs. And to bring it into our world, it's the kind of faith that lets you stop compromising in your life—that tells you it is worth it to obey God rather than chase whatever gains you were pursuing through sinful means. And you grow in that throughout your life. It's encouraging as a pastor to hear somebody who's been a Christian for a short time say, "Now that I'm a Christian, I feel like maybe I should stop stealing from work." Yes! Praise God. That's a good conviction to arrive at. It would be odd if you'd been a Christian for twenty years and said that, but for a new Christian, that's a great conviction to reach, isn't it? You come to that conviction because the eighth commandment is there: stealing is wrong. But the more mature reason—the reason it's working in your heart—is that you become convinced obedience to God is a better reward than whatever you were stealing. This is the kind of faith that says, "I need to break up with that ungodly girlfriend or boyfriend. I need to create distance between me and these ungodly friends, because the knowledge of God and the blessings of holiness are more pleasurable. They bring me more joy and more reward than this sinful conduct." That's sanctifying faith. As faith grows, your resolve grows with it. The longer you're a Christian, the stronger your confidence in God should be, because you've seen more of His faithfulness. You know His Word better. You've watched Him keep His promises. Doubts have less of a grip on you the longer you're a Christian. There are some people who are always plagued by doubts—that's true. Nevertheless, you notice that the longer you follow the Lord, the darkness of doubt seems to lessen. The grip that doubt or sin once held on you seems to loosen. The Christian who has walked with Christ for decades should have a stronger faith and trust Him more deeply than the one who has just begun. That's what Paul means in verse 7: you excel in everything. You're growing in faith. Second, your spiritual growth is seen not only in the realm of faith but also in the realm of speech. That's the second measure of spiritual growth Paul gives. And speech is probably the realm where your spiritual maturity is most evident to others. It's so clear how spiritually mature somebody is based on their speech, because your speech is an overflow of your heart. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." It's a window into how mature a person's heart is. First of all, the word for speech here is the Greek word logos, "the word." It's the word used in John 1 to describe the Son of God. The eternal Son of God is the Logos of the Father. Whatever is in the Father is in the Son. All that God is, the Son is. The speaker has a word; the Word is the Logos; the Word is the Son. That same principle applies to us. What is in our heart—who we are—is what comes out in our speech. Not perfectly, of course. With the Father, everything that is in the Father is perfectly in the Son. With us, there are measures of self-control and filters and rambling and all that. So it's not a one-to-one correlation, but generally it is true that your speech reveals who you are. Speech generally reveals at least three things about a person. It shows you what is in their heart, of course. It shows you what is in their mind—what they're thinking about. And it shows you the level of self-control they have, because as you grow in self-control, you learn not to say everything that's going on in your mind. Little kids don't have that self-control, right? If a little kid thinks it, they say it. Some kids ramble 24/7. They talk in their sleep. They're always talking. They have no unarticulated thoughts. And that's cute in a little kid for a while. Even at ten or twelve, it's nice to know what's going on in their hearts and minds because they're always telling you. That's great. But Paul says, "When I was a child, I spoke like a child... when I became a man, I gave up childish ways." So people develop a level of self-control to regulate their speech. Just because it's on the inside doesn't mean you need to say it on the outside. I've had somebody non-ironically tell me, "I don't want to filter my speech, because that's hypocrisy." That's like saying, "I don't want to wear clothes, because I want everybody to know who I really am." No, brother—go ahead and put on clothes. And go ahead and rein in your speech. It's a favor to all of us. That's self-control. As you mature in Christ, your self-control grows, and your speech becomes more and more controlled. I've heard people try to justify profanity by saying, "It's just me being authentic. This world is raw, yo. Something bad happens, it's all in my heart, and it's just got to come out. That's authentic speech. It's reflecting the raw emotion of who I am." That may be true, but it is very immature. A mature person demonstrates self-control over their emotions, and as they become more mature, their speech becomes more mature. Like I said, you can see this with children. If it's in, it comes out. But as you grow into adulthood, you regulate your speech. That's true spiritually as well. I'm talking at an educational-psychology level about kids, of course, but Paul's bigger point is that this is true spiritually. As you grow spiritually, you learn to speak things that are true. You've developed self-control. Think about stages of speech. I'm drawing this from 1 John, where John talks about children in the faith, young men in the faith, and fathers in the faith. The same principle applies to speech. To a child in the faith, you would say, "Don't use profanity. It's unwholesome speech. It doesn't honor the Lord. Get some self-control over your emotions." That's what you'd tell a child, and it works for a child: "Don't say those words. Those words are bad." A teenager has grown a little beyond the list of naughty words. To the young men, John says, in effect, speak with confidence and conviction. Talk about things that are true and reflect your faith. And then a mature person has moved into the Ephesians 5 world, where there's no filthiness coming out of your mouth, but rather thanksgiving. For a mature saint, it's not just that they avoid certain words, and it's not only that they say things that are true with conviction. It goes beyond that. They say things that are praiseworthy. They give thanks. Say you're in a car accident and somebody crunches the back of your car. The first words inclined to come out of your mouth are probably not godly, so you use self-control to keep them in. A mature saint has self-control, but on top of that says, "Praise God for this opportunity to grow me in patience with my insurance company this week. Lord, I'm so thankful for this accident, because I will be so patient by the end of this week." Now, I'm speaking a little jokingly, of course, to help you understand the point. But the more mature you are, the less of a joke that is. It's always going to be a little funny, but it becomes less of a joke. An immature person says, "Oh, those words I said when I got rear-ended were bad." The more mature person has self-control. And the senior saint knows how to give thanks in any situation. As grace changes your heart, it changes your mouth, and you can grow in it. It's worth asking yourself: what does your speech show about your own spiritual maturity? As the Christian grows, his heart is sanctified, his mind is renewed, and his self-control is strengthened. Third, you see spiritual growth in the realm of knowledge. The Corinthians placed a high value on knowledge. I'm not saying they had knowledge—they placed a high value on it. In 1 Corinthians 13:2, I would say Paul is being sarcastic with them. When you read it, you might not know it's sarcastic, but when you hear it out loud, it obviously is. He tells the Corinthians, in effect, "You excel in all knowledge and all mysteries." That's sarcastic, right? "Corinthians, you know all things." At the very least, it shows that they valued knowledge. But there's a legitimate sense in which spiritual maturity should produce greater spiritual understanding. The Bible contains deep truths. It contains complex doctrines. It contains paradoxes. And as a Christian matures, you should grow in your understanding of those things. You never reach the point where you say, "I have God figured out." Of course not. In some ways, the more you know God, the more you recognize how far beyond you He is. But you also recognize that the more you know God, the more you're growing in your knowledge of Him. Sometimes people will ask, "Do you have to believe in the virgin birth to be saved? Do you have to understand the Trinity? Do you have to believe this or that in order to be saved?" The answer to all of those is basically no. To be saved, you have to believe whatever you're confronted with about Christ. Not that you believe all things, because you don't know all things—but you believe all that you know. Then you grow in godliness as you grow in knowledge and continue to believe all that you know. Do you need to believe in a global flood to be saved? No, of course not. But once you read about it in the Bible, you need to believe it. Does that make sense? Do you need to believe the Trinity to be saved? No. But once you understand that Scripture says God is three in one, you need to believe it. This is where those deep doctrines come in. A new believer says, "You tell me there's one God, but that Jesus is God and He's not the Father, and the Father is God. I'm not good at math, but one plus one is not one." What do you tell the new believer? You say, "You just have to believe it. That's what the Bible teaches. You believe it even if you don't understand it." That's a great answer for a new believer. But as you grow in your understanding of God, you grow in your understanding of a doctrine like that. You recognize, "Wait a minute—God is one being in three persons." You start to make those kinds of distinctions. As you grow even more, you make further distinctions, and you grow in your understanding of the Trinity. God's sovereignty and man's responsibility is another example. A new believer says, "If God is sovereign over who will be saved, how come people also choose to follow Christ? How can both be true?" And you tell the new believer, "They're both true. Deal with it." But as you grow in maturity, you start to see how God's providence and sovereignty superintend our decisions. Here's a great example at hand: who wrote the book of 2 Corinthians? Did Paul write it, or did God write it? You tell a new believer, "Both. Deal with it." But as you grow in godliness, you learn about providence—that God superintended every action in Paul's life and everything that happened to Paul to shape him into exactly the person who would write this book. The Spirit inspired him and superintended every word Paul wrote so that it is inspired and inerrant. That is more mature doctrine. Not that you ever reach the point where you say, "I have now solved the mystery of the Trinity. I now fully understand the relationship between God's sovereignty and man's responsibility and the way the Spirit works in inspiration." No, you will never get there. But you should be growing in your knowledge of those things throughout your life. I harp on this point because I've heard people say that knowledge of God—doctrine, theology—stunts maturity and doesn't help spiritual growth. They almost view it as the enemy of spiritual growth. Those people tend to elevate experiences and downplay knowledge. But notice that on this list, Paul does not say, "As you've grown in your experiences of God." He says, "As you've grown in knowledge." Maturity does not mean refusing to think. Your doctrine should get better the longer you walk with Jesus. Doctrine is not the enemy of spiritual growth. It's one of its evidences. Which leads to number four: the realm of earnestness. Spiritual maturity is seen in earnestness. This is a really cool word—not one we use a lot. I can't remember using it outside of the Bible. But it's a fun word. Earnestness can mean zeal or energy. I'll define it this way on the screen: wholehearted enthusiasm. That's how the Greek lexicon defines it, and it gives "zeal" as a synonym. It's energy. It's being excited about something. That's what earnestness means: you're stoked about it. The more mature you grow in Christ, the more excited you are about the things of God. That doesn't simply mean having an enthusiastic personality, like every Christian needs to be a Tigger bouncing off the walls for Jesus. But it does mean you should be growing in your enthusiasm for the things of God. If you're an Eeyore Christian, you should grow through that over the course of your life. Some people are naturally excitable, and some people are naturally reserved. But Paul is talking about something deeper: a growing eagerness for the things of God. As you mature as a Christian, spiritual things should mean more to you, not less. You should have an increasing eagerness to serve Jesus, an increasing enthusiasm for ministry, and an increasing willingness to extend yourself for things of eternal value. This is one of the key ways you see maturity grow in people's lives. When you're immature, you can spend so much time on things that don't matter. As you grow in maturity, what matters for eternity starts to become clear. Kids spend half their time in an imaginary world, which is fine—it's adorable when they're kids. But you grow out of that. Here's a practical example, and I know I'll get a few emails from people who don't like it, but I use it every now and then, and now is the time. When you're a kid, you can spend hours and hours playing video games that just suck the life out of you. But you should grow out of that. When an older person is throwing their life away on video games, it's a sign of sadness, not of virtue. You have to grow through that. Maturity is growing up to appreciate what matters. I'm not just trying to pick on other people's hobbies—all of my hobbies are completely sanctified. But there's a part of maturity where you gain clarity on those kinds of things and grow in them. They recognized this in Jesus, didn't they? When He overturned the tables in the temple, His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house will consume Me." That is the model for us: to be consumed with the things of God. The more you mature, the more your zeal gains depth. You become more eager to serve, more diligent in prayer, more serious about holiness, more invested in eternal things, more concerned about salvation and spiritual knowledge and growth than other things. And again, you can tell what somebody is concerned, eager, and zealous about by what they talk about. What a person cares about is all over them. As you grow in earnestness, the things of God become less peripheral and more central. I love that Paul pairs this with knowledge, because knowledge without earnestness—knowledge without zeal—is dead and dry. Knowledge without zeal is a thousand-page theology book that nobody will ever crack. Knowledge paired with zeal becomes a potent demonstration of maturity. Which leads to the final example. There's one more phrase before we get to the fifth point in verse 7: "and in our love for you." Just a quick note on that. It's more obvious in the Greek than in English. In the Greek it's very clear that Paul is saying the Corinthians are growing in Paul's love for them—not in their own love for Paul. Remember, in 2 Corinthians they're not really stoked about Paul right now, and Paul is fighting the battle in his own heart. He said it back in chapter 6: in effect, "I'm still trying to love you guys." In chapter 7, verse 2, he says, "Make room in your hearts for us." So here he words it very cleverly. He's not telling them, "I know you love me more than you did yesterday," because that might not even be true. There's a reason he's sending Titus to get the money and not going himself. But he does tell them, "I want you to know you're growing in these areas, and because of that, I'm growing in my love for you, even if it's unrequited." Very clever way of putting it. And it sets up his fifth point. The fifth way you see spiritual growth is in giving. Because you're growing in these ways, keep giving: "See that you excel in this act of grace also." We don't always think of giving as an area of sanctification. But notice Paul's logic: if you're growing in faith, speech, knowledge, and earnestness, excel in giving too. Your giving should grow throughout your Christian life. Now, a quick point here. I've heard it said that people are supposed to give a tithe, and even that your tithe grows because your income grows as you get older. That may be a bit anachronistic—a Western way of thinking—but it's not true. In the Old Testament, you weren't commanded to tithe as your worship to God. The Old Testament commanded tithing, of course, but it was closer to taxation. They paid a tithe for the maintenance of the Levites and a tithe for the temple festivals. That's 20 percent, if you're keeping track at home. They paid a tithe every three years for ministry to the widows, the poor, and the orphans—that's about three percent. Then they left the corners of their fields, which adds another one or two percent. So you're looking at basically a tax rate of about 25 percent in the Old Testament. That's what the Israelites were paying in tax. That was not necessarily their worship. On top of that, they had—we looked at this verse last week—a freewill offering. So I think it's a bit errant to describe the Old Testament Israelites as tithing for their worship. They tithed for their taxes, and they gave freewill offerings for their worship. In the New Testament, tithing is barely mentioned—maybe twice—and it's kind of sarcastic. There's the Pharisee who goes into the temple and says, "God, I thank You that I am not like that tax collector over there. I give tithes." That's the New Testament use of tithing. It also comes up in Matthew 23, where Jesus says, "You Pharisees tithe mint and cumin." He doesn't mean it as a compliment. The New Testament doesn't teach tithing. It teaches generous giving. You give as the Lord works in your heart. You're commanded to give to your church in 1 Timothy 5, and your church here is defined by where you're hearing the Word preached. So you give to the church where you worship. You give to the ministry that is preaching over your soul. That's the command. But the amount isn't given, because your giving reflects your heart. Do you see how all of these are the same? Your giving, like your speech, reflects your heart. As you mature in your knowledge and love of the Lord, your speech matures. What you know reflects what you spend your time studying, so as you learn more about the Lord, your knowledge grows. The longer you walk with Jesus, the more your faith grows out of the overflow of your heart. And that's the point about giving: the longer you walk with the Lord, the more generous you become. Paul's use of the Macedonians is very insightful, because they were poor. The Corinthians were not poor. The Macedonians—the Thessalonians, the Philippians, the Bereans—were poor. And remember what they were doing? Begging Paul to let them give their money. The Corinthians tried to give to Paul for his ministry, and Paul said, "No, thank you. Keep your filthy lucre." The Macedonians, meanwhile, are grabbing his coat saying, "Please, brother, let us give." They hardly had anything. So now Paul is telling the Corinthians, "Here's your chance. If you're growing in godliness, give generously." The longer you know Christ, the more eager you should become to give. So, like I asked you about your speech, let me ask you this: can you measure your own spiritual maturity by your giving? And by the way, it works in both directions. What you love in your heart is what you end up giving to. Your neighbor's abandoned, derelict car in his front yard is an eyesore to you. You can't stand it. You wouldn't pay a penny for it. But then you get it. He gives it to you—or maybe you did pay a penny for it—and now you start working to fix it up. You start buying things for it and investing in it, and suddenly it becomes a treasure to you. You can't even imagine why your other neighbors roll their eyes at it. Don't they know how special this car is? That's a little illustration of what giving to the church is like. The world wouldn't understand why you would give to gospel ministry, but it's your gospel ministry. It's the people preaching the Word to you. It's the missionaries your church sends out. It's the congregation you're part of. And as you give to it, you grow in your love for it. Like I said, it works in both directions. What you love is what you'll give to. You can go backward and ask, "What am I giving to?" That will reveal what you love. Growing Christians should become growing givers—not merely giving more dollars because their income goes up over their life, but giving more generously, sacrificially, instinctively, and willingly as they grow. At the very least, give some money. I had a high school student between services say, "I make fifty-five dollars doing two hours of lifeguarding a week. What are you asking me to give?" And I told him—a lot of you were around, so many of you probably heard the conversation—"Throw a dollar in the offering box." As a kid, put a dollar in. That starts the pattern of giving in your life, so that as you earn more money, you'll grow more generous over time. A student might roll his eyes and say, "A dollar? That's weak sauce. I'm not going to give a dollar—that's embarrassing." Okay, fine. I'm glad you said it, not me. Your giving indicates your growing love for the Lord. And that's what Paul means in verse 8: "I say this not as a command." So you're missing the point if you say, "The pastor just said I have to give a dollar next week." I am not saying this is a command. I'm saying it to prove your earnestness and to demonstrate that your love is genuine. If the New Testament just said, "Give 10 percent," that verse would make no sense. The New Testament doesn't say what percentage to give. It says to give generously, sacrificially, and joyfully, because giving is a reflection of your genuine love, as all these things are. So a quick closing point, with that list on the board. You want to grow in spiritual maturity, and you can do practical things to grow in those areas, sure. But growing in those areas is not an end in itself. You could make a list of four words you want to stop saying. You could do something like that. You could get a Bible-reading plan in your life—set an alarm and read the Bible in the morning. You could do something like that. When the offering plates are passed next week, you could put a few dollars in. Those little practical things will help you grow in godliness, for sure. But those practical things can come very close to stapling fruit onto a tree. You know what I mean? Don't confuse the fruit with the root. The root here is your love for Jesus. As your love for Jesus grows, those other things happen more naturally. As your love for Christ grows, maybe you don't need the list of words anymore. You just have a love for Jesus, and that becomes compelling enough. This is what Paul means when he tells the Ephesians that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. Don't use the law to boost your own godliness. Use the law as guidelines for the overflow of your love for Christ. That's the Christian life. We stumble, we lose ground, there are moments when we go backward, but God's grace keeps carrying us up. Like the man on the escalator, we fall and we get up and we fall again, and somehow, supernaturally and providentially, we grow in maturity despite ourselves. And one of the places where that growth should become increasingly visible is in our giving. I pray that God would make us a generous congregation. Lord, we are grateful for Your gospel that You gave to us. You gave Your Son while we were still sinners. You gave Your righteousness when we had no righteousness of our own. You gave mercy when we deserved wrath, and You will ultimately give heaven when we deserve hell. You give Yourself, and not what we deserve. We're grateful that because we have received much, we too can be generous. We're thankful for the areas of growth we've seen in our own lives and in our congregation. You have made this a blessed and mature congregation, and we're thankful to be part of it. We give You thanks for this in Jesus' name. Amen.

For There is One God

September 13, 2026 • JJ Engelbrecht • 1 Timothy 2:5–6

Well, 1 Timothy chapter 2. We're studying verses 5 and 6, but I'd like to read beginning in verse 1 of chapter 2. "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." Little Johnny had a very interesting prayer life. Johnny didn't pray much from January through November. But one December, when his family came into town — grandma, cousins, you know, the whole family — his prayer life began to increase. But don't get it wrong. Johnny loved his family and he loved visits, particularly visits from his grandma. So every single day, as the family were gathered together and as Christmas grew nearer and nearer, Johnny's prayers became more fervent, more frequent, and particularly more loud. So as the family were gathered together, day after day, they would hear in the corner of the house, "God, I really want a green mountain bike. Thank you, God, that you can hear my prayers. Green mountain bike, God." And it reached a point where mom and dad decided, we need to talk to Johnny, because we want to come alongside this fervency he has, but we want to make sure his theology is right. So they go into Johnny's room, they close the door and sit down, and they say, "Johnny, we want to talk to you about your prayer. We are very excited that you've been so fervent in your prayer, and it's amazing to see this increase in passion you have. But Johnny, you know God's not deaf, right?" And Johnny looks right at mom and dad and says, "Mom and dad, I know God's not deaf, but grandma is." You know, everyone's theology gets exposed when they pray. What do your prayers reveal about what you believe about God? When do you pray? And what does the timing of your prayer reveal about your own view of your need of God? And, for the purpose of this text tonight, how do you pray for the lost? Tonight, in God's Word, I want you to come face to face with five reasons that God can answer your prayers for the salvation of the lost. And my desire is that these five biblical truths would be the wind in the sails of your prayers for the lost. Tonight I'm not talking about how to evangelize. I'm not even talking about how to pray for the lost. I'm giving you five reasons why, when you pray for the lost, it's effective, and there's actually power in our prayers for the lost. If you want to hear how to evangelize, well, we've got to wait until Sean Morton over there gets ordained. All right. So we're going to be in 1 Timothy chapter 2, verses 5 and 6, but we've got to get there first. In 1 Timothy chapter 1, Paul is writing to a young pastor named Timothy, and he's ministering in the city of Ephesus. It's a blended church context, and there are teachers coming in and out of town all the time. And there had been some false teachers who had made their way, made their rounds around Ephesus, and they were devoted to, according to the text, myths and endless genealogies. Ultimately, Paul says they were teaching a different doctrine than the gospel. So these teachers are misunderstanding the law of God. They're misunderstanding the Old Testament, which was really meant to magnify the sinfulness of man and preach man's need for the gospel. And instead, they're holding up the law as if it can save, as if salvation can be found in their own efforts. And so Paul urges Timothy not to let go of the truths of the gospel and to stay true to the Scriptures. That's what he says in chapter 1, verse 18: "This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith." I don't know if you've ever tried to charge your phone overnight on one of those little wireless charging magnets, and then you wake up the next morning and your phone had almost no charge whatsoever — and it's because you didn't center the phone on the magnet. It's like Paul is saying to Timothy, you need to center on the gospel. You need to understand accurately what the Word of God teaches, because as you center on it, there's power in your life and in the lives of those you preach to, Timothy. And then in chapter 2, what Paul does is go from this charge to hold to the Scriptures, and he says, now what does it look like practically for a Christian who's holding true to the gospel to live in a pagan context? How are you salt and light in the world? And what he says at first may seem surprising when you consider the context of Ephesus. He says this — listen to verse 1 again: "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." Paul is speaking to a young pastor in Ephesus, which means that there is a wicked government reigning over them. Nero was reigning during this time, and Paul tells Timothy and his congregation, pray for your leaders. Why? Well, he says that it'll give them a peaceful and quiet life. This is not only peace with your community, because you're not causing a ruckus, you're not causing a stir, but you'll even have peace within your own soul as in prayer you trust God. He also goes on to say that you'll be a good witness. You'll be dignified in every way when you have a posture of prayer for your leaders and for all people. And also — and I would say most importantly — this is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior. And the reason it's pleasing that you would pray, no matter the context you're in, for all people, including your leaders and your neighbors, is because God is a Savior at heart and he desires all people to be saved. For God is not pleased by the wickedness of men, but God is pleased with the repentance of man, whether they be a king or a pauper. So Paul encourages Timothy, and thus his congregation, and thus us now, to pray for all people. And note, just a footnote, this instructs us how we ought to pray for our leaders, right? We don't pray for our leaders to align with our preferences. We pray for our leaders that they would repent and align with the King, that their hearts would change. And this is what Paul instructs Timothy to teach his congregation to pray. And then we get to our text. In verses 5 and 6, we see the basis for this prayer. Why is it that you can pray for the salvation of the lost? We will see in verses 5 and 6 five reasons that our prayers for the lost are effective. And the first reason is this: the reason that our prayers for the lost are effective is because there is one God. So Paul begins by giving them the practical instruction, pray for all people. And then in verse 5, he gives the reason: "For there is one God." So why is that important in Ephesus? Well, Ephesus worshiped many gods. They were a pluralistic society. This is why Paul, when he was in Acts 17 and he visited the Areopagus, looks around and says rightly, "I perceive you are a very religious people. The one problem, though, is you've got this statue to the unknown God, and I'm here to tell you, I know that God. And you can know that God, and he is the true God." That's why Deuteronomy 6:4 says, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." And you know, the reality is that we are no different than Ephesus. Because the problem for the lost in Ephesus is that they are worshiping false gods which cannot truly save them. And that's the exact same problem that every generation and every culture and every society has ever had. There's really only two religions, right? You can worship God through Christ — there's worship that is outside of yourself, to God — or there's worship directed anywhere else, or mostly to yourself. Those are the only two options, but they manifest in different ways. So if you live in Northern Virginia, what are your idols? What are the false gods that we worship? They may not be little statues, but I thought of some. I think that in Northern Virginia, we worship money. We believe that enough money would make us happy. We believe that enough money will give us our second idol, which is security — that if we have just enough money, if we're just secure enough, if everything is just perfectly in a row, then we'll truly be happy, and this will give us a sort of salvation. Or maybe one of our idols is sexual freedom, being able to do whatever I want with my body whenever I want. Maybe if you're a little bit younger, maybe one of your idols is individual autonomy — your ability to make your own decisions separate from anyone else's influence. That's your god. Or maybe it's something silly like cars, or the amount of money that you get in your check every month, your salary. Maybe it's sports, maybe it's pleasure, maybe it's entertainment, political parties. Or maybe it's just as simple as comfort — you're truly happy, you find true, salvific-level joy, when you get to just sit on the couch and no one's bothering you. These are our false gods. And I think that oftentimes we don't even acknowledge that we're worshiping. In Ephesus, there was certainly an acknowledgment: I'm going to this pagan temple to worship this god. But here we've almost disguised it as family planning, estate planning. We have different terms for it, but we still have false worship, and we're living as if there's no God and as if our autonomy is the determinative factor of our life and its outcome. But Psalm 14:1 calls us a fool if we deny the existence of God. You know, it's interesting to consider that Satan didn't even sink to this delusion in the garden. Satan never denied the existence of God. He knows there's a God. What he did is he questioned God's Word. So what does this have to do with the lost and praying for them? Well, their real need is that they need a real God who can actually save them. And there's only one God. So for their worship to be directed anywhere other than on the true God through his Son Jesus Christ is a path to hell for them. Therefore, our prayer for the salvation of the lost has real power because there is one God. There is a true God who can truly save, and he's the only God who saves. And we're not praying on our knees that money would save people, or that security would save people, or that the circumstance in their life that's keeping them away from church would finally go away and that would save them. We're just praying that God would save them, because he's real, and he's one, and he's living. But we have a problem. We have been separated from the one God by our idolatry. So how does God answer our prayer for the salvation of others in light of our own sin? How do our prayers pierce the veil if we ourselves are sinners? How do sinners pray for other sinners and a holy God answers that? Well, that's our second point: there is one mediator. The text says, in verse 5, "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." A mediator is a person who represents two parties in order to remove disagreement or to reach a common goal. They stand between the two to help the two reach an understanding or overcome some sort of obstacle or disagreement. But I think in the case of guilty sinners and a holy God, the stakes are much, much higher than a disagreement or a lack of common vision. See, this mediator must stand between a holy, righteous God and a sinful, guilty, rebellious humanity, because God has been offended and mankind is guilty. God is angry at sin. God hates sin. All of us in this room, and all the people we will ever pray for, have sinned to the level that they deserve to go to hell for eternity. And God doing that, and sending them and us to hell, is right and appropriate because of our sin. The Bible says it so clearly: the wages of sin is death. Eternal punishment is appropriate for sin against the holy God. And so mediation — even needing a mediator — implies that there's a break in relationship, that there's a break in purpose, that there is this reality that humanity is not living in covenant relationship with the God who created them. And so, therefore, mediation is necessary for our prayer to have any power at all. So who can do that? When we pray that God would save our neighbor, who can stand between the holy God who we're praying to and our sinful neighbor? The man Christ Jesus, who is fully God and fully man. Why only one? Why only one mediator? This was one of the carryovers from the apologetics talk that I found very interesting. Why just one? Well, first, this is a necessary reality theologically. There's only one God. So if there's only one God-man — right, if God becomes a man, he can't become two all of a sudden. That is theologically inconsistent, because God remains one in his essence. So for the mediator to be the man Christ Jesus, he must remain one as God. And therefore, there can only be one mediator, because there's only one incarnation. But secondly, any more than one mediator would imply that the mediation was insufficient. If there was more than one mediator, immediately you're saying one of them was not enough. And the testimony of Scripture precludes this possibility. Romans 6:10 says, "For the death he died to sin, he died once for all." Moving on to Hebrews, he says, "He did this once for all when he offered up himself." "He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." "Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many." And finally, in 1 Peter, "Christ also suffered once for sins." And the question too is, if you open the door to more than one mediator, when do you decide arbitrarily to close the door? At what point is it enough? One for every nation? One for every people group? One for every generation? One for Gen Alpha, because man, they're way different? No, this is not what the Bible teaches. And again, the biblical testimony is that there is a mediator who is the God-man, humanly descended from one nation to bless all the nations. Genesis 12:3, God promises Abraham, "In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." And he goes on later to say it's in your offspring — singular. So there is only one mediator, and it is the God-man. It is Christ Jesus. He is the only one who can stand between a holy God and those we pray for, who are humans. He's the only one. So God can answer your prayer for the lost because, first of all, he exists. He is there. And secondly, because he came to mediate. So what did the Son do, then, for the lost we pray for? What is this mediation? Well, that's our third point: there is one ransom. I'll read again from 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." It's really beautiful if you look at the text here and remember verse 4. We saw that God our Savior desires all people to be saved. And then in verse 6, we see that the man Christ Jesus gave himself in answer to that desire that all people would be saved, as a ransom. We see a harmony between the Father and the Son, a united purpose in the salvation of the lost. So when you're praying for the lost, you are joining in a stream of what God has desired from all eternity. Which is exactly what John 17 says. In John 17, verse 1, when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and he says to the Father, "Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed." This is beautiful — to see the Father and the Son and the Spirit applying that salvation to his church, and applying it particularly to those you pray for. The Trinity is involved in this prayer that God commands us to do, to pray for all people. And then we see a God who desires all people to be saved, and we see a Son who dies as a ransom for all people, and we see a Spirit who applies that ransom to all people. So what is a ransom? It says that Christ gave himself as a ransom. What is that? Well, in the ancient world, this word refers to the paying of a price for the release of a slave or a prisoner. But Paul affixed a little preposition on it. Instead of just saying ransom, he added this little Greek word anti, which means "instead of" or "in place of." So what he's saying is that Christ gave himself as an "instead of" ransom, meaning that Jesus mediates between us and a holy God by paying the ransom price of his life instead of ours. It's an "instead of" ransom. So the price he paid wasn't a check that he wrote. He just went himself instead, and died upon the cross as the ransom for sinners, as the ransom for us, as the ransom for those we pray for — to redeem us. Which is exactly what Mark 10:45 says, a pretty famous verse that many of us probably have memorized: that the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many. That language right there, when it says "ransom for many" — that "for" is that word anti again. It's the same concept, that he came to give his life instead of your life, to save you, to redeem you. The price was his own life. And once again, why is this necessary? Why Christ? Well, first of all, you can't be your own mediator. That's not how it works. Try that with your wife. All right? "We don't seem to be coming to an agreement, so I've decided to bring in the wisest guy I know — me. And you tell me what you're thinking, I'll tell you what I'm thinking, and then I will decide what's happening here." That's ridiculous. A mediator implies a third, and Christ is that third, who gave his own life to redeem us to God. Secondly, though, we would not be sufficient if we gave our own life. This gets us full circle back to false worship. If you think that there's anything outside of God that could possibly save you, if you think that there's anything sufficient outside of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, well then you're on shaky ground. You're on insufficient ground. There's no sufficient mediation apart from the God-man mediating between the holy God and us, the sinners, and those we pray for, because infinite holiness requires infinite justice. The sin in the garden wasn't merely eating fruit; it was disobeying the covenant-keeping, loving God of the universe. Here's an illustration to think about why sin against this holy God is so offensive. And this is a very small illustration. When you spill food on a black shirt, you usually don't run to the bathroom immediately. You usually can't even notice — that's why I wear black shirts when I preach, you can't even tell that I'm sweating. But if you had a white shirt on, or a wedding dress, and you spilled something on it, immediately you have to do something about it, because of the contrast of the white purity of the clothing and the stain that is now on it. Well, God is radiantly holy. And any sin at all is immediately an infinite contrast to his holiness. And therefore, we needed a ransom. So the salvation of the world is achieved by the one God, through the one mediator, who gave himself, as the author of Hebrews said, once for all. That means that Christ became sin, who knew no sin, so that the person that you pray for could become the righteousness of God. That's incredible. That's incredible. So God answers our prayer for the salvation of the lost because he exists, because he sent his Son to be the mediator in the place of sinners, and also because that Son actually paid the price on the cross. But now the question is, what are the means by which God answers our prayers for the lost? Because you might leave tonight and then you might go pray for your neighbor, or you might pray for a sibling, you might pray for anybody. And then how's God going to answer the prayer? Because he's done the work, he's saved — but what actually happens? Well, when we go on in verse 6, we see that there is one testimony. I'll read again from 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." So the word "testimony" is a cool Greek word, because you know the word. It's martyrion — martyr. It means witness, or testimony, or a proof. So God's witness, or proof, of his desire in verse 4 that all people would be saved is the life-giving ransom of Jesus on the cross. So someone says to God, "How do I know you desire all people to be saved?" And God says, "Look at my testimony. It's my Son upon the cross." So the main meaning, then, of this word "testimony" here in verse 6 is the declaration of the gospel facts. Paul says, I want you to pray for all people, because look at the testimony God gave of salvation. Pray, because that's true. Because look at what God showed us. Which means the implication is that we can pray for the salvation of the world because God has shown us he actually wants to save the world, and he testified that truth out loud on the cross. But look down at verse 7. Paul goes on and says, "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." This testimony, these gospel facts, this proof of God's desire that all people would be saved, and this fuel for us to pray that people would be saved — this testimony is meant to be carried by Christians and proclaimed to the world. The means by which God saves the world is by believers praying for the salvation of the world, and then God answering that prayer through the means of his Spirit, through the means of the preaching of his Word, and through you going and sharing the gospel with the person that you've been praying for. This is how God saves. I was baptized when I was a senior in high school. And I remember the day that I was baptized. It was outside of Briar Woods High School in Ashburn, Virginia, if you've ever been down that way before. We did not have a baptismal, because our church was in a high school. And we were outside in the sort of foyer of the — well, outdoors, the front of the school — and we had a horse trough, you know, one of those really big, like, horse baths, I think is what it's called. And I was baptized there. My dad baptized me, along with the youth pastor who had led me to the Lord. It was awesome. After the baptism, a couple came up to me who I knew sort of well, because they knew my parents, and I wasn't really involved in church before that moment — I'd gotten saved like a month before. Their names were Shannon and Danny Blackwell. And they walked up to me and they handed me a crumpled-up little note card, like the kind of crumpled note card that you look at and go, that's got some use, that's been touched many times before and refolded. And they opened it up and handed it to me, and it said on the note card, "God, please break the chains holding JJ back." Now, I don't know that I would say the prayer that way nowadays, but they'd been praying for me and I didn't even know it. And that day they saw me getting baptized, and they walk up to me and they say, "We don't need this in our prayer chart anymore." That had a profound impact on me. And I thought about that the entire time that I was preparing for today. Because that was a prayer for the lost, and I was the lost. And God saved me. So God answers our prayers for the salvation of the lost by sending us to the lost with one testimony: the gospel. And appreciate that God made this simple — not easy, but simple. It's not easy to share the gospel with someone, but it is simple. We don't have to make anything up. God isn't calling us to testify to anything that he himself didn't already testify loudly on the cross. Which leads naturally to our final point, the final reason that God can answer this prayer for the salvation of the lost. It's because this salvation was actually historically accomplished. There is one time. Look down at verse 6 again: "Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time." Verse 4 says God desires that all people would be saved. But we do not have a God who merely pontificated about this desire to save humanity. We have a God who proved his love, who testified to this reality in a historical moment, in which his Son stepped into human history, robed himself in actual humanity, died a physical death, and resurrected in a historically verifiable manner in first-century Jerusalem. Galatians chapter 4 says it this way. Galatians chapter 4, beginning in verse 4, says, "When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons." So what is the appropriate time? What is the fullness of time that God's Word speaks about when Jesus came? Well, I think firstly and chiefly, it's the time that God appointed that it would happen. I thought before, when I was thinking about this idea of the appropriate time, why didn't Jesus come now? Why didn't Jesus come earlier? Why specifically in the first century? And I don't have an answer to that question, but I'm going to let you into just some of my thought process. I think Jesus didn't come now because of iPhones. That's just my theory. I mean, think about it — fake news, AI. It would be the craziest — what would even happen in a world like that? Some guy resurrected somewhere and we're like, oh, that's fake news, it didn't even happen. That's kind of what happened in the first century, though. They're like, that didn't really happen — but he wasn't there anymore. But anyway, that was just what I thought about. I'm completely on a tangent now. Ignore everything I just said. This is why I should stick to the notes. So the fullness of time, firstly, is the exact time that God in his wisdom appointed that his Son would come to save the world. It was when he ordained that salvation would be accomplished through his Son. It was the exact moment when he decided that the Lion of the tribe of Judah would be born in Bethlehem. But secondarily, I think when you think about the fullness of time, or the appropriateness of the time that Jesus came, it's interesting that the majority of the world during that time in the first century shared a common language. Koine Greek made it quite easy for the Scriptures to be disseminated all throughout the ancient world. It was a beautiful way for the message of the gospel to be simply communicated to many people. God desires all people to be saved, and he gave them a language so they could all read the Scriptures together. Secondly, the Roman road system during that time made it incredibly easy for early missionaries to get to and fro, to go and share the gospel and visit churches and bring those letters to those early congregations who were hearing the gospel for the first time. So God desired all people to be saved, and he gave them a road system through the Romans to spread that gospel. And lastly, and interestingly, the Roman world, which isn't always known for its peace, was known for its peace in a very particular way during this time — the Roman peace, the Pax Romana. There was a unique situation in which, maybe just for a little bit, there was a relative amount of peace for the early church to begin to spread the gospel to many. So why was this the appropriate time? Well, because it was the predetermined time for God to send his only Son for the salvation of the world, making what we pray for — namely, that the lost would be saved — actually, historically, really, genuinely possible. Another way to say that is, if you're considering right now whether or not you should pray for that person, today is the day of salvation. Right now is the time that you can pray for that person and God can actually answer that prayer. And many times, he will. But the point tonight is not that if you follow all these steps, and if you just have enough faith that all these truths are right, that all of a sudden there will be enough power in your prayers that then God will finally save your neighbor, or your sibling, or your friend, or your kid that you've been praying for. That's not the point. The point is, God is glorified in the reality that he did actually provide a real salvation, and you can glorify him by praying like that's true, regardless of what his will is in answering your prayer. So God not only desires to save sinners, but God actually commands us — us in the room — to participate in the salvation of sinners by praying that God would save them. And God guarantees us of his ability to answer that prayer, because he exists, because he sent a mediator, his Son, who gave his life as a ransom for us and those we pray for, because he's given us a testimony in the gospel, and because this all actually happened in the first century. So I want to close with an illustration of how I saw this happen in real time here at our church. I was in seminary, and I was in a class led by Alexander Ray Hargrove. In this class, the assignment was to pray for 45 minutes a day. There it is. Which was super easy, because I pray all the time. No — it was actually quite challenging. And I remember one thing that I struggled to pray for, but I knew I needed to keep praying for, is that God would save the students. And you say, why would you say that in front of everyone in the church when there are parents of students in here? Well, because sometimes it's hard to think that those students are going to get saved. It really is hard sometimes. But I was specifically praying by faith, because I had to fill the time — you know, it's a lot of time to pray. "God, please save one student." I prayed that over and over and over again. And I remember one Sunday I was preaching through the book of Jonah, and I was in chapter 3, and I talked about the repentance of Nineveh. And I got a text from a parent that night that their son had placed their faith in Christ. Changed the way I pray forever. Incredible. God actually answers our prayers. God can actually hear the requests of our heart, that people would be saved, and he can actually save them. And he does. So God desires the salvation of the lost, and he took care of it all. But the question for us tonight is, do you also desire the salvation of the lost? And if you do, pray like God can save them, and then go testify to the truth, like God will use you to answer the prayer. Let's pray. God, I give you all the glory this evening that you are a Savior and that you desire all people to be saved. I give you all the glory, knowing that you are the one who answers our prayers, and you are the one who made it possible for those prayers to be answered through the life, death, and resurrection of your Son. I pray on behalf of everyone here tonight for the lost that we have influence over, for the lost that we've been praying for for decades, that you would save them. Please save them. Give us the opportunity to be the ones who share the gospel with them, or make a Christian around them bold to testify to the truth of the gospel. And use that truth to either grow the seed that's already been planted or plant a fresh seed in their hearts. And would you bring your church around those unbelievers to water the seed so it would grow? Only you can give the growth, and we're asking tonight that you would do so, so we can testify to your glory in the salvation of the lost. We ask this all in your Son's name. Amen.

Grace That Gives

September 13, 2026 • Jesse Johnson • 2 Corinthians 8:1–15

Jesse Johnson | 2 Corinthians 8:1-15

The Chosen

September 6, 2026 • Jesse Johnson • Matthew 22:14

Jesse Johnson | Matthew 22:14

The Great Invitation

August 30, 2026 • Jesse Johnson • Matthew 22:1–14

Jesse Johnson | Matthew 22:1-14

Paul Bids Farewell

August 23, 2026 • Michael Connor • Acts 20:17–28

Michael Connor | Acts 20:17-28

The Bloody Vineyard

August 16, 2026 • Jesse Johnson • Matthew 21:33–46