Well brethren, I would have loved to have been with you on this occasion. My heart was set, my mind was in South Africa until bad news got a hold of me that my passport was held up with an embassy where I am awaiting a visa to another country and I tried my best to try and retrieve the passport for this trip but as you know, there are situations out of one’s control – this was one of them.
And so, inevitably the second-best thing that I could do is that of recording my message and preaching it. I am nonetheless hoping that we can have our Q and A to be live so that I can hear you and I can speak to you through this channel. So, yes life is like that – isn’t it? But I’m glad that God’s word is not changed and therefore we can spend some time together listening to the gospel.
How the spirit world affects our thinking
I want to draw your attention to 1 Timothy 2, just the first few verses up to 1 Timothy 2:7. 1 Timothy 2 I’ll read from verse 1-7. And in doing so, I am mindful that we are together thinking about the whole spirit world as we understand it within the African context. It’s one that pervades all areas of our lives; the way in which we handle human birth, the way in which we handle the transition from being single to getting married, the way in which we handle someone’s illness and death.
Every aspect of our lives somehow as Africans we tend to think in a way that is fairly foreign to our Western friends. I would think also in terms of just prosperity or lack of prosperity we tend to think that it is somehow affected by the spirit world and these are deeply ingrained thoughts in us generally speaking. I trust that an area speaker has already handled that showing us a little more about the way in which we process such thoughts, such challenges and just enabling us to see this from a Biblical perspective. What has happened inevitably therefore is that even when people are converted, when they’ve come to Christ, somehow, we don’t completely break away from that psychological thinking about life.
You inevitably have individuals still thinking that the primary movers of even Christian life and living are still ancestral spirits, demonic spirits and that God to some extent is so far away from us that somehow, we must still find ways of dealing with and appeasing such spirits independent of God and his word.
The Spirit World and the Gospel
It is in order to address this that I want us to think in terms of the spiritual world and the gospel – the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, I’ll spend that time looking at this passage of scripture and then asking ourselves the question. “In the light of this, how should we be relating to the spirit world?” Especially as those who now know what Jesus Christ has done in order to save us from sin, to save us from destruction in the end.
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Well, the passage that I’m reading from, 1 Timothy 2 is one that was written to Timothy who in many ways had been sent into Ephesus within Gentile territory in order to help the newly born Church. This is what Paul says in the passage that we’ll be looking at. He says this, 1 Timothy 2:1-7, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.”
Prophet, Priest and King
Now, as we think in terms of the work of our Lord Jesus Christ which is what the gospel is all about, it is the good news concerning the saving work of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is helpful for us to think in terms of three categories. Theologians have broken it down for us in this way, that in Jesus Christ saving us from sin, from death and from hell, he functions as Prophet, Priest and King – Prophet, Priest and King. And I want to suggest that it is a failure to see this full opt nature of the work of Jesus that often robes us from declaring a gospel that liberates people from the fear of the unknown, from the fear of the spiritual world or spirit world for that matter. It’s because we tend to think only for instance that Jesus Christ died for our sins and therefore, we will go to heaven when we die. But between now and then we must somehow find other ways to deal with the spirit world.
I want to suggest to you that that is not the biblical gospel. The biblical gospel is fully formed to deal with all the areas of life and especially those areas in which the African traditional religious beliefs tend to often undermine what we are supposed to believe in. Let me try and also put it a little differently and it is this, that when we think of Jesus as Prophet Priest and King, actually in each one of those areas we are addressing an all-important aspect where ART’s (African Religion Traditions) tend to grip the minds of people and hardly ever let them go and I’ll prove that point in a moment as we look together at this gospel. In looking at this passage, 1 Timothy 2:1-7, I will be starting from the end going upwards. And it’s because the Apostle Paul deals first of all, with Jesus as king and then as priest, and finally as prophet. But I deliberately want to begin with prophet, then go on to priest and then to the king.
Brief History of Ephesus
I’ve already told you that this was to Timothy as he was sent in Ephesus in 1 Timothy 1:3, we read the words, “As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine …” Ephesus was the capital of the Roman province of Asia and so although you will definitely in any capital have a mixture of people including Jews you were exposed to a lot of Gentile culture – Gentile religion. It is the kind of place where there was the great goddess of the Artemis which is again referred to in the book of Acts. And it’s in the midst of all those details that the gospel was brought, individuals were brought to repentance and faith. There were people like Apollos who ministered there no doubt, Paul himself ministered there as well and so many others because again, it was a capital that needed to be brought to its knees before the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ as Prophet
And what I want us to see especially from this passage that we are looking at is the prophetic element of the ministry, the saving ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. We see it towards the end of the words that we have just read. For instance, 1 Timothy 2:6 after speaking about Jesus as mediator, we are told, “… who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.” Testimony given at the right time. In other words, there was a time when this testimony was held back and therefore people were groping around in darkness following their own cultures, following their own common sense but now there’s been a testimony that has been given that brings us into a completely different phase of belief and teaching. And the Apostle Paul says there, “For this I was appointed (I didn’t call myself to this work.) I was appointed as a preacher and an apostle ( And he says, I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles …” Now, I love that because he is saying, ‘I am now taking this testimony that has been given and I am going to a people who are outside the Jewish nation, to go and proclaim to them this testimony, this truth. It says there, “…a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.”
So, we need to grasp the fact that the Christian faith is one that goes to any peoples in the world with whatever the infrastructure of their belief system and goes in and says this is the truth of God. This is what you must now begin to believe concerning the God who is there and so on and so forth. And Jesus our great Savior came at the right time in order to bring the light of the knowledge of God into this world so that we may now know there is but one true prophet the Lord Jesus Christ himself. In Deuteronomy 18 this is what we read. Deuteronomy 18 about the promise of God in the Old Testament about a prophet who was to come. Deuteronomy 18:15, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers— (this is Moses speaking) it is to him you shall listen—” Let me say that again, “It is to him you shall listen.” And then later on I will read Deuteronomy 18:18, ” I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.” The question there is, ‘Who is this who was now to be sent as a prophet?’
Let’s quickly go to Acts 3 because remember, we are dealing with a bringing in of a new phase. Acts 3:22, I will begin from Acts 3:17. “And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled.” And then I will just skip down to Acts 3:22, “Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.” Who is this? It is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now it’s vital that we…