This sermon emphasizes the importance of praying for God's will and His kingdom, going beyond personal needs to intercede for leaders and governments worldwide. It highlights the impact of secular authority on our lives and the need to pray for leaders to align with God's purposes, promoting peace and godliness. The foundational principles of secular authority being established by God and the responsibility to pray for leaders for a peaceful and godly life are discussed.

So when we are praying for God's will and for God's kingdom, we are going beyond the ordinary level of prayer where we are praying for our needs or the needs of other people. We have health concerns, we have financial concerns, we need direction, we need guidance about a thousand different decisions, and I'm not minimizing that. That's very important, and we should let those requests be made known to God, and we can expect that God, through the Holy Spirit, will answer our prayers and will give us the individual guidance and direction and healing and blessing that we seek. But there's another level of prayer, and it's prayer that is joining together in agreement for the fulfillment of God's will and God's kingdom in the earth as it concerns all the nations of this world. In a very real sense, the church or the ecclesia is the means through which this gap between God's will and earth's reality is brought into alignment until Christ has the manifest preeminence over all things. And in that day, we will see all things submitted to Him. But we don't see it yet, so what do we do? When it comes to the problem of evil, of human suffering, of lack, of neglect, there are many, many practical things that you and I can do to make life better for other people in the world. We can do good works. We can love our neighbor. We can feed the hungry. We can clothe the poor or clothe the naked and give money to the poor. Whatever it is that they need, we can share our substance. We can share our material possessions, and we can all work together to make the world a better place. There is lots of practical things we can do to overcome evil in the world, and all those things are needed. But one of the most impactful things that you and I can do to address the problem of evil on a spiritual level is to pray for the leaders, for the kings, and the presidents, and the prime ministers of all the nations of this world, for the governments of this world. And that's the concept that I want to introduce to you in this message titled Pray for Kings, and it's based, as I said, in 1 Timothy chapter 2. I want to talk to you about secular authority and how you and I, as kings and priests in a spiritual kingdom, are to relate to secular authority. You and I walk in spiritual authority, but the presidents and the princes and the kings, the leaders of the nations of this world, I call that secular authority. So you have secular authority, some would say political authority, but we're calling it secular to distinguish between spiritual authority. Secular authority is to the nations of this world what spiritual authority is to the body of Christ. Why is it important? Because secular authority touches every single man, woman, boy, and girl on the face of the earth. Secular authority is either making the quality of your life better or it's making it worse. Secular authority has a lot to do with who is leading the country that you live in, work in. Secular authority has a lot to do with the laws that are passed. It has a lot to do with what is allowed or what is not allowed in your country. Think about the differences in freedom in the United Kingdom, in the United States, in Egypt, in Somalia, in China, in North Korea. We have all the nations of the earth and all are led by different people in secular authority, and these secular authorities are either favorable to the kingdom of God or they are hostile to the kingdom of God. Either they are helping the gospel of Jesus or they are hindering the gospel of Jesus. So this is why I believe God is telling us that we should pray, not just pray for spiritual leadership in the body of Christ, which I do on a daily basis, but also to pray for secular leadership, secular authority, those that are in charge of our governments, of our cities, of our nations. So let's go ahead and read in 1 Timothy chapter 2, beginning in verse 1. It says, therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men. For kings and all who are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sign of God our Savior who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now just as an aside, the very next verse there says, for there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time. So again, going back to this previous verse, he desires all men to be saved, and some people say that doesn't really mean all, it just means all kinds. They want to limit all to mean not really all. But if you limit all there, why would you not limit the word all later in verse 6? Who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time. So you're not allowed to pick and choose how you want to interpret different words. If all means all in verse 6, he gave a ransom for all, then it certainly makes sense that in verse 4, he desires all men to be saved. That's why he gave himself a ransom for all, not for some, not just for the ones who believe, but he gave himself as a ransom for all. Why? Because he desires all to be saved to come to the knowledge of the truth. It's elementary, I believe. I don't think you should make it any more complicated than that. The real issue is, what are you going to do about this word? How is that going to change the way you see the world? Well, that's just an interesting little tidbit. But what I want to focus on is verse 2, or verse 1. Supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and all who are in authority. Why should we pray for kings and for all who are in authority? Well, a lot of people will say the reason we are to pray for kings and all who are in authority is so they would be saved. And I think that's a great answer. All men, God desires that all men, all mankind, certainly women as well, but he desires that all people would be saved and would come to the full knowledge of the truth. Certainly kings and those who are in authority are included in all, because all doesn't exclude anyone. So he gave himself a ransom for all, including kings and all who are in authority. So certainly God does desire that all would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. And so we should pray that kings would be saved, that presidents would be saved, that they would come to the knowledge of the truth. I think the greatest thing in the world would be if the nations and the people leading these nations, the nations of the world, if they were to all be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth, you would instantaneously see a big change across the whole world. And God can certainly do that. But why are we to pray for kings and for all in authority? Certainly because God desires them to be saved, but also he tells us so that we can live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. King James Version says all godliness and honesty. The reason we are to pray for secular authority, don't get hung up in the word kings. Different governments have different forms of leadership. If it's a monarchy, a republic, a democracy, or a dictatorship, it could be a king, could be a president, a prime minister, could be a dictator. But the point is we pray for all those who are in authority because they have such influence and such power, often in the nations that they are leading. Not only because God wants them to be saved, but because God desires us, wants us, you and me, to be able to live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. The government, whatever government you live under, wherever you come from, whatever nation you are a citizen of today, the government has quite a lot to do with your quality of life and with your ability to be able to live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. So what Paul is basically saying is that you should pray that kings and all that are in authority would leave you alone. If you're living an honest life, if you're living according to moral principles, and you're not hurting anybody, and you're not bothering anybody, then we pray for kings and for all who are in authority that they would leave us alone so that we can continue to live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. So you say, well, what's your political persuasion? Well, I would tell you that I'm of the conservative view of government. I believe that government governs best, that governs the least. And I believe that the size of government should only be as large as to effectively govern and no larger. Because what happens and what was happening in Paul's time, because remember, he is a Roman citizen, but he is writing and he is living under the Roman Empire where they were occupying many nations. They were occupying Israel and they were conquering that whole area of the world. And the Roman Empire had a lot of say-so. They had a lot to do with whether or not you were able to live a quiet and peaceable life. And so what Paul is saying is pray for kings and for all that are in authority so that we can live a quiet and peaceable life so that the government doesn't come in and restrict our freedom, restrict our travel, restrict our ability to share our faith or to spread the good news about Jesus. So his first line of defense or offense, depending on your point of view, is to pray. To pray for kings and for all who are in authority that we would lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. Because if we're living good, honest lives and we're obeying the government, then the government has no reason to persecute us or to give us any problems. So I believe government is necessary, but I also believe that government, when it becomes too big, it becomes more of a problem than a help. And so we are to pray for kings and for all who are in authority. Provided we are living a godly, honest life, the government has no reason to persecute us, to harass us, to hinder us, or to prevent us from following the Lord Jesus and worshiping God as we see fit. Now in the beginning part of this message, I'm going to give you the ideal. And as soon as I begin to say this, you're going to say, but Brother Chip, what about this country? What about this nation? What about this leader? What about this government? I'm giving you the ideal. I'm going to give you the ideal so that you can have a principle-based foundation upon which you can understand our relationship to secular authority. Now later in this message, I'm going to address what happens when secular authority goes wrong, when it abuses the authority that God has given it to govern, and or when it contradicts God's spiritual authority, God's spiritual law. We're going to talk about all of that later on. But first, I want to give you the foundational principles of what it means to live in the world, to live among the nations, and what it means to be submitted to secular authority as well as to spiritual authority. So there's a few principles that I want to share with you to begin with. Number one, secular authority is established by God. God is a God of order. He is not the author of confusion but of peace. And history has shown us that without government, society cannot function. Without government, without limits, without a mutual understanding of how society is supposed to function, how we are supposed to relate to one another, anarchy ensues, and your quality of life goes down and is made worse. When the Roman Empire collapsed, it initiated what historians call the Dark Ages. Without a system of government, without an empire, without some sort of system to keep things in check, then things went into anarchy. The barbarians took over, literally, and it plunged the world into what we know as the Dark Ages. So government, secular authority is established by God, and I'm going to give you four principles of secular government's relationship to God. You say, but this government is not a Christian government. It doesn't make any difference. If it is a Christian government, it doesn't matter if it's a different kind of government. It doesn't matter if it even acknowledges the fact that God instituted them as government. God still establishes government, and God still holds those governments accountable for their actions, and I'm going to show that and demonstrate that to you from Scripture. So I hope you brought your Bible, because we're going to go through a lot of Scripture so that the point is really made not by me, but by the Word of God, so that you can clearly see, first, that secular authority is established by God. So four principles. First, the earth and its people belong to God. The earth and its people belong to God. Now, I know that there's a teaching that was popularized back in the 80s. It may be in the 70s, but it's a teaching that basically said that when Adam sinned... Let's back up. It basically says that God put Adam in charge of the earth, and then Adam sinned, and when he did, the devil was in charge of the earth, and that's how they try to explain the existence of evil. Yet that contradicts Scripture, once again. If you're ever confused about a teaching, just go back to what Scripture says. Psalm 24, verse 1. Turn there and let's read that together. Psalm 24, verse 1. It says that the earth is the Lord's and all its fullness. There's that word all again. The earth is the Lord's and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein. See, when the Bible says love not the world or the things of the world, it's not talking about the people of the world because the world belongs to God. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. So the earth is the Lord's. That's principle number one. Doesn't belong to you, doesn't belong to me, doesn't belong to the government, but the earth is the Lord's and the people belong to God. Isn't that encouraging? Just that right there helps to give you a better understanding of God's relationship to the nations of this world. God is concerned for the nations. He's concerned for its people. He's concerned for everyone on this earth. And that's why he is interested in the governments of this earth. And that's why he holds those governments accountable for the things that they do or the things that they fail to do. Why? Because the earth and its people, all of its population belongs to God. You've been listening to Crosswind featuring the teaching ministry of Jeff Brogdon. 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