Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost1 Timothy 2September 21, 2025
An uncomfortable text, isn’t it, the text we just heard Paul speak to his spiritual son Timothy? Now, don’t get me wrong, the first half of the text, up to verse 8, is wonderful. Everyone loves prayer and talking about prayer…well, to a point. And we’ll get into that.
But it’s the second half of the text, verses 8-15, that causes people to squirm.
I spent some time on the internet pulling up the sources I use for sermon helps such as the seminaries and the Steadfast Lutherans website, and I was shocked to discover that very few pastors preach on the second half of today’s epistle. And this is what culture does. It causes us to fear the truth. But it’s the truth that sets us free, so we should not be scared to preach it or hear it.
When Jesus says that we are to take up our crosses, part of that cross-bearing is abiding in the Word of Christ even when the world around us calls us names for doing it or when we live contrary to the ways of the world. So, verses 8-15 can’t be ignored or run through the feminism grinder just because modern culture objects.
Let’s go through the text. Paul is writing to his spiritual son Timothy, a young pastor who was serving at the church in Ephesus. Through Timothy, Paul is establishing some rules for the pastors and bishops and deacons, and he is also setting some house rules concerning how the church is to operate including in the worship service.
Paul first says that everyone should offer up supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for all people. To keep it simple, this list of four things is the full package of what prayer actually is. If you listen intently to the Prayer of the Church that we speak every Sunday, you’ll see that all four of these parts of prayer are included, and in the prayer our Lord taught us, all four parts are also included.
Now, this isn’t a problem, and we like prayer – prayer is good. But then we start to talk about the “power of prayer,” as if prayer has a magic all its own. We almost walk the wiccan, witchcraft road when we say that prayer has power. They like to attribute power to the mantra, to the words themselves, to the liturgy of conjuring – there’s power in the words, power in the prayer. But the power is not in the prayer because the power is not in the pray – er, the one who prays. God is the omnipotent one who answers prayers, and it doesn’t matter how into the praying you are or how emotional or how zealous you are in the praying, or how many times you repeat the prayer, God hears you and He answers. He’s got the power, not you and not your prayer. And He answers as He chooses to answer. Prayer is not a way to manipulate God through many words and human energies.
We look to Jesus and how He prayed and as He said in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Not my will but yours be done,” and we pray the same.
Who do we pray for? Well, we can certainly pray for ourselves, but praying for ourselves should not be the only reason we pray. Sometimes we only pray when we need something for ourselves. But prayer is more than just our wants or desperate needs.
This is why Jesus teaches us to pray aright in the prayer He taught us, and why Paul tells us what to pray for in today’s epistle. We pray for all people – ourselves included. We pray for kings and all who are in high positions. Notice Paul doesn’t say for all whom we agree with politically, but all. We pray for Putin; we pray for the N. Korean supreme leader. We pray for Governor Walz, for our president, for our congress, for all of them. We pray for them whether we like or agree with them or can’t stand them and can’t stand their politics. We pray for both friends and enemies, those who love us and those who hate us. We pray for the families of the assassinated and for the assassins. We pray for those in prison and for those who guard the prisons.
Do you see how counter-cultural this is? And it’s meant to be because the culture lives by sin, death, and the devil, and we are not of this culture, not of this world for we live in and by Christ our Savior.
Further, we pray that we might lead peaceful and quiet lives. Peaceful lives means that we pray to be at peace with everyone, that as individuals, we not harbor any anger against others, and that they not harbor any anger against us. That’s a wonderful thing to pray for, isn’t it?
And then we pray that we live quiet, godly, dignified lives in every way. We pray this for our children and grandchildren, that rather than they being obsessed with worldly living and satisfying their youthful, carnal desires, that they be humble, quiet, gentle, and respectful people, serving one another as Christ has served them.
Next, Paul says that it is God’s desire that all people be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, which is why we pray and live as we do. We pray for the sake of others; we live peaceful, quiet, godly, dignified lives for the sake of others, because by this living and praying, sinners are drawn to repentance.
But we have to be careful not to take Paul’s words and use them incorrectly. See, we don’t want to read into this text something it doesn’t say.
For the Reformed Calvinist churches, in order to assert their “double-predestination” dogma which, in part, means God chooses some people for hell, they change the meaning of the word “all” to mean “all kinds.” They’ll say that by “all kinds” it means every person who is going to be saved God desires to be saved, but no one else.
But if you do a study of the word ?????? in Greek, the word for “all,” and you look at the word in the context of this whole passage, it is quite clear that Paul is calling us to pray for all people, indiscriminately, because it is God’s desire that the same all people be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. To try and read into this text a limit to “all” is to follow the traditions of men and not abide in the Word of God.
The other side, of course, is the notion of Universalism, that God is going to save all people. But such is not what the text says either. God surely desires all people to be saved, and that we should pray for all people, including our enemies and those outside the faith, but people can reject God’s Spirit and refuse to repent and defy God’s desire, in which case they are not saved. And should they continue to reject Christ’s mercy until the day they die, they will be judged accordingly. It’s a sad state of affairs that some people, people we know, go to hell, to the place prepared for the devil and his angels, but we do not let our opinions dictate the Word.
Paul then gives the beautiful Trinitarian truth, and that he was called to preach the truth to the gentiles. And he preaches the Gospel, that Jesus gave Himself as a ransom for all, the savior of the world.
So far, we can swallow what we’ve heard. Perhaps the Law of God has convicted us and revealed that we are not the greatest at praying or that we are too easily swayed by human opinions or pop-culture Christian lingo, but nothing is yet beyond acceptable. But just wait, for now we move on to verses 8-15.
Up until now Paul was dealing with individuals in the Christian community and how they should pray and live among others and the world. Now, Paul shifts to how the church herself should be ordered, how the people gathered together as one should conduct themselves.
Paul first says that men should be praying in every place, lifting holy hands. This is corporate praying. The “every place” he speaks of is the worship setting and Paul’s use of the word “men” or ?????? here shows that this is for public praying. In private prayer, both men and women should pray, as we read earlier, but in public prayer, just the men. That men are to stand in every place, among the believers, and pray “the prayers.” This is corporate prayer, and this includes the pastoral office. This is why most pastors in the LCMS still lift their hands to pray.
And we don’t do it to draw attention to ourselves.
See, I am not the presenter or the main speaker or the object of worship. Jesus is. I am His servant and every direction I face, everything I say, every action I make is meant to draw your attention to Him, to Jesus. Even the vestments I wear are meant to cover me and hide me away so that you see and hear and look to Jesus.
Paul then says that there should be no anger or quarrelling among those who lift their hands in prayer. This is certainly true for pastors, that we should not harbor anger or waste time arguing with anyone, but it’s also true for the elders of the church, the officers and boards of the church and for all the members of the church. This is a fifth commandment issue and an eighth commandment issue, no anger and hate, and no slander or gossip in the church.
Now Paul talks about the women. Women should dress modestly, not adorning themselves with anything that will draw attention to themselves. Why? Because Jesus is at the center of what goes on here. If women, or anyone dresses or carries themselves in a way that draws attention away from Christ, they are becoming a distraction from and obstruction to the Gospel.
But as cultural feminism started making waves in the world, it was also affecting people in the church. You know, up until the 70’s or 80’s there was never a discussion about whether or not women should serve as elders or read scripture from the lectern, at least not in the LCMS. It just wasn’t done. Now, churches have female pastors, female bishops and I suspect one day there will be a female pope in the Roman Catholic church.
This isn’t progress, folks. When we forget that God created male and female with different roles and different purposes, and we instead superimpose the feminist principles atop God’s Word, so that they become the lens, the filter through which we read it, who are we really being faithful to?
There’s a great book out right now, I’ve been listening to it on Audible, called “Man Up!” written by a Lutheran pastor, and it talks about how the roles of male and female have been so gravely distorted both in the world and in the church. It messes up marriages, the raising of children, it distorts the Trinity, and we even see a greater feminization of Christ Jesus Himself.
And it really all goes back to the mid-20th century where this thing called “Radical Secular Theology” took over the place. The Radical Secular Theology movement, in a nutshell, insisted that Scripture and Christianity need to secularize and blend in with the world in order to remain effective. And a big part of that was to bring cultural feminism into the church and to create a church where liberalism and progressivism were front and center.
But the Lord gives us a whole different perspective on how things are to be in the church and concerning men and women. And let’s just be clear, in the beginning God created male and female as He did and assigned roles to male and female as He did. And this means, contrary to feminist doctrine, that man was created first, and then women from man. That’s the order. This order is to be reflected in family and in church.
Now, what does this mean and what does this look like in church? Let’s read on.
Women are not to adorn themselves with costly attire which takes attention away from Jesus, who is the Man of the house. They are to be modest and in control of themselves, exhibiting godliness and good works. For women represent the Bride of Christ in the church, and their attire and demeanor should represent the value and worth of the church for whom Christ died.
Ephesians 5 uses similar language concerning women and men in the church. And women are the pearl, the diamond – they are symbols of the Church of Christ, the body of Christ in the great marriage of Christ, the lamb of God, and the bride, and they are to symbolize the holiness and spotlessness of the holy Christian church. We might consider Mary the mother of our Lord as an example of womanhood in the church.
It’s not about importance or superiority or control. If the church were not absolutely important to the Lord, He would not have given His life for the church.
What we do here in the church, how we practice male-female roles and who does what and who does not, represents to the world how things are in God’s kingdom, and it’s also represented in the family. Men who forfeit their roles in the home so that the women take the place of men, this is just not good for family. And in the church, when men forfeit their role as hand lifters and pastors and elders, the servant of the people, so that women take on the role which God Himself assigned to men, it distorts everything, and it does not rightly confess Christ and His church to the world.
And it always starts with open communion, did you know that? It’s true. Open communion is low picked fruit. Because all you have to do is change a couple words and suddenly the family meal, prepared for the immediate family only, becomes the community table where everyone is invited and no one is turned away. It sounds great, right, until that family across the street starts fighting with your favorite neighbors, and the rowdy children from that neighbor with the unkempt front yard starts a food fight with your kids, and all hell breaks loose because every family is on a different page, and where is the community and family in that? Open communion is theological chaos communion which is how the devil wants families to operate. Closed communion says just our family and the close, in fellowship relatives who come to visit from time to time.
And from open communion on it goes to the distortion of the male-female roles in the church and finally to the embracing of things like LGBT and the distortion of human sexuality in the church, the marginalizing of human life and value, and then, as our Lord warns the churches in Revelation, if we do not repent, our lampstand will be taken away; we will no longer be a church of His kingdom.
We must be careful not to let culture tell us how church is to operate. The culture, the world has no authority over the church. And you know what else has no authority over the church? Our brains, our thoughts, our opinions, or our feelings. We submit to Christ and His Word alone. And this is what Paul means when he says that women are “saved through childbearing.” It sounds sort of, I don’t know, restrictive or limiting for women, like Paul is saying women are no more than baby-making machines. But again, don’t let the culture tell you what Scripture says. It’s not what Paul means.
It’s all about roles. Whereas the men lift up holy hands before the congregation in prayer and supplication, the women teach their children the Christian faith through their deeds and words, so that the boys who grow up to be men also lift up holy hands in prayer and the girls grow up to teach their children the Christian faith through their deeds and words.
When this gets distorted, when women are not bringing up the children as Christians because they are too concerned about their worldly lives, and where men are not lifting up their hands to the Lord but are too busy with their own desires and priorities, then the children suffer because they do not grow up in the faith and do not learn their roles in the Kingdom of God and do not teach it to their kids, and this leads to generations of young adults who know nothing of the savior. This isn’t theory, folks, just look around. Where are the kids? Where is an entire two generations of teens and young adults? They’re off chasing the world because that’s what they were raised to do.
Women, do you wish to do right by the Lord? Ask yourself if your priorities and concerns are with the Lord or with the world. Men, do you wish to do right by the Lord? Ask yourself if your priorities and concerns are with the Lord or with the world. Then repent of whatever it is in your life that keeps you from faithful Christian male-female roles, from right worship, from godly living, prayer, and whatever keeps you from raising believing children, and pray to the Lord, asking for His help to change these things.
For, as our Lord teaches, set your minds on things above, where Christ is seated – look to that goal, that finish line, so that when all the philosophies and ideas of the culture and the world come pining for your attention, you can brush it all off and say, “I don’t care about all that, my goal, my purpose, my life, my salvation is seated at the right hand of God and nothing in this world matters or compares to Him.” Amen.
