Let us turn to our Bibles to 2 Timothy chapter 2, 2 Timothy chapter 2 verses 24-26, 2 Timothy chapter 2 verses 24 and following, let us listen attentively to the word of God. And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient in humility, correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will. Let us pray.
In these words, Lord, by the pen of Paul, by the power of the Spirit behind him, we read much here, a description of the calling of Timothy here in correcting and admonishing Lord and redirecting those who are causing troubles that we read earlier in this book and the prior book as well, our Lord and Savior. May we see that this is a description not only for the pastors of the church and the leaders therein as well, but for all of us, that although we are not public servants of the Lord the way Timothy is, we are still all servants of the most God Almighty, and we have our duty and requirement not to quarrel and the like. May this encourage us, strengthen us, or bring conviction as needed, Lord, whenever we may find ourselves, that these words are also relevant for us in our Christian walk.
Give us more of your Spirit therein so that we can apply and live these things to your glorious namesake. Amen. The problem with troublemakers in Timothy’s church was indeed bad.
Heretics were denying the resurrection, and others were just, well, troublemakers, arguing about anything and everything it seems like. In the midst of this, Paul urges Timothy to be restrained. To restrain him, that’s how I read this, be gentle to all, teach, be patient, and in humility correct them.
He calls to mind important attributes the young pastor must bring to bear in dealing with troubles in the church. Instead of hammering them, which we know Paul has done when appropriate, the book of Galatians is a good example of that. He directs Timothy to be gentle and humble in this case, but at the same time that gentleness and humility do not eclipse the important task of what? Teaching and correcting.
What Paul means by these things and how they work together is the point of the sermon and for our edification, I hope. So let’s look here at the text.
Servants of the Lord Must Be Gentle
The first point, the servant of the Lord must be gentle, verse 24, must not quarrel and be gentle to all, making a clear contrast there.
He’s described as a servant of the Lord, as all the leaders of the church are and ought to be by practice. That is, this word, and I’ll translate it here, servant, it’s a slave, slave. It could be a servant in the sense of we think of it today, although that’s pretty rare historically.
It’s out and out slaves. They are not their own masters. Timothy and the Apostle Paul are not their own masters.
They are under Jesus Christ, their King and Lord. They work for Jesus. They do His will for the good of the church.
And this is a reminder therefore of the pastors and of the leaders of the church not to have a big head and think that it’s all about them and they can do whatever they feel like because they’re the leaders of the church. No, they are servants under Jesus and Jesus gives them directions that all of us can read. This isn’t a private matter that none of us can find out what exactly is the role or function of the pastor, but for all the members of the church to see, this is what is expected of them and therefore they can hold that standard up to him and to see if he needs correction, help, or assistance or otherwise.
That’s the idea here of a servant of the Lord and it’s therefore application for all of us in the church of Jesus Christ. And it’s the Lord, the Lord of the covenant, the Lord of grace, Jesus Christ Himself, pastors are under His authority, sent by Him through the church to publicly teach, correct, exhort, encourage and the like in their job, their public post and their responsibility. It is of the Lord and it’s through Him.
Yes, the church lays their hands through the officers themselves representing the power of Jesus working through the people of God and it’s given to Him, but it’s still real authority nevertheless and it’s under the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It’s Him and nobody else. Now He’s called, and by extension all church officers, ruling elders who do just that, rule and lead, and deacons who assist in many regards especially of the material things are called to be gentle to all, patient and the like.
Now, the word gentle here, we get the understanding of what it means by its contrast with quarreling and being a troublemaker, of course. The word quarreling there means a physical fight, but clearly here given everything else we’ve read in 2 Timothy and the like, it means a battle of words. It’s more metaphorical.
It’s a figure of speech here, argumentative perhaps is another way of describing it. In John 6.52 we read, the Jews therefore strove among themselves saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? They were battling back and forth. They weren’t obviously fighting and fist fighting, but they had words that were serious, strong words.
He’s a cannibal. What’s going on here? So you can imagine the uproar that happened from Jesus’ words from the fleshly-minded Jews listening to His words, eat my flesh, and how they took that. That’s the idea of argumentative quarreling and word battles here that Paul is describing that Timothy shouldn’t fall into.
Avoid that. James 4.2 we read, you lust and do not have, you murder and covet and cannot obtain, you fight, that’s the same word, and war you do not have because you do not ask. Clearly an issue ongoing around Timothy’s ministry, others in his church there who caused these problems, who strive about words to no profit or no good or no end, because there is a time to strive over words, for example, people attacking the name of Jesus or what the Trinity is, but that has a purpose, that has an end, the glory of God, the truth of His word.
These men did not have that in mind and were not doing that clearly. They were arguing over words, definitions, they had nothing useful, so here it became so bad that they even denied the resurrection, as you recall back in verse 18 and 19. Now gentleness here, the word is kind of unique here in the New Testament in its usage, and it’s like the English word, just the word gentle, not harsh, kind, the contrast again is not fighting, fighting over words in particular.
For the vast majority of the times, a point can be made without getting into a verbal fight. There’s an old saying I grew up with, my parents used it wisely and often, as I recall, because my sister and I had a problem like this. It takes two to tango, it takes two to get in a fight and argue, so you can simply just be quiet.
You made your point, you’re done. There’s a time, of course, to push back, we all understand this, especially when you deal with children in the family, but other times, just simply be quiet. The gentleness here is clearly exemplified in the ministry of Jesus, who had much patience for His followers, and especially for the disciples.
As you recall, a number of times through the Gospels, I preached through Mark a year or so ago, they said and did some pretty amazingly naive or stupid things, and Jesus didn’t bonk them over the head, He didn’t yell at them. Other times, He was kind of stern, like He did with Peter, get behind me, Satan. Imagine that, whoa.
But that wasn’t common, at least not what we read here in the Gospels. He would correct them, as Timothy does, He’s not so winsome that you lost the message of what Jesus was saying. That’s one of the dangers we have when people go down that route for leadership, but the message was clear, nevertheless, and He approached it with a gentleness.
Paul’s ministry does the same thing here. I mean, think about it. These men are bringing danger upon the church, who have strayed concerning the truth, saying the resurrection has passed and has overthrown the faith of some.
That’s how bad the striving and words and argumentiveness and quarrelsomeness had been going on, and yet Paul doesn’t say, hammer them, but he says, be gentle and humble when you do correct them. I would think that’s Paul being pretty restrained here, given what we read elsewhere, when Paul goes after the Galatians for the error and heresy of works righteousness and circumcision and the like. So these are examples for us, for yourselves, I hope, and as you understand, going through the history of the Bible and Acts and the like, and of course for the ministry, that this is something that we are called to do.
Perhaps the best way to look at it is as kind of a default situation or state of mind in which we should push ourselves into. By default, I use that distinction as overt against what I run across sometimes, you’ve heard this warning before, people take these texts as though they are absolute language. You must always be gentle, in every situation, at all times, everywhere, in which case Christ broke that, Paul broke that, Peter broke that, of course not, there’s a time and a place for everything under the sun.
But when it comes to a new situation, you don’t know exactly what’s going on, the default state is usually be gentle, be considerate, slow down, figure out what’s going on, and then go on from there. Now as I use it here in the first point that the servant of the Lord must be gentle, I’m using the word here gentle as a catch-all for all the descriptions here of patience and humility as well, for clearly they all go together, don’t they? Typically someone who’s humble will be gentle as well as meek, and those who are patient or meek will also be gentle and humble. That’s how I’m using it through the rest of the sermon here.
It’s a package deal, in other words. We’re all servants, of course, but not all of us are ministers, and so much of this is indeed for us, that we are called as well. You can’t simply say, well, that’s just the pastor, he’s got to be super holy, the rest of us, we get off the hook, this is great.
No, he’s supposed to be an example for you, the leadership is supposed to be an example for you, something to strive for. Yes, Jesus is your example as well, but Paul says, you follow my example, elsewhere in the epistles, and that’s a good thing. God gave us living flesh here and now that we see and touch and deal with.
We must be gentle, brothers and sisters, if this is a temptation of ours, if we have a temper problem and the like, with our friends and our family, with our children. Family example is a very good example. We do this with our little kids, just like, okay, well, that’s what kids do, and you adjust and you’re careful in how you speak to them.
Now, sometimes we may go too far on that, of course, but that’s a good example for us to keep in mind if we do struggle with a temper problem, for example. Patience is the next word. Not quarrelsome, gentle, able to teach, I’ll get to that in a minute, patience.
Patience here, again, like the English word, just tolerant, forbearing, and the practice of this, when someone is in the right, like a parent, but the teenager still argues, they may wait for them to wind down because they know that I can get through their skull until their emotions get control. That’s what you do with adults sometimes as well, in fact. That’s the idea of patience, or the purpose of the patience is not just to sit there going, okay, hurry up so I can bash you over the head, but okay, I’m going to slow down, I’m going to be gentle in my words, I’m going to wait for a little bit, forbear with what they’re doing, maybe even wink at it and cover and ignore the way in their tone, for example, to deal with the substance of the matter if it’s serious enough.
Things like that is what goes through my head 20 years as a minister, and before that a ruling elder and a deacon, and of course a parent, and basically a human. We’ve all had to deal with this. Those kind of details are not here, it just gives them these kind of generic patience and gentle, you’re like, what does that look like? Well, think of your own life often, and on the other hand, you may think of your life and go, I’ve been perhaps a little too gentle at times, and a little too patient, and you eventually have to drop the hammer on some things, right? Of course you do, we all know this.
So it’s the context and the matter before us and before Timothy here. This call and this practice that we are called to do of patience is the idea as well behind this of waiting upon the Lord, because sometimes we can’t always get our voice in immediately to the situation at hand, and we have to therefore forbear or wait, or just simply wait for something to change in God’s providence so that we can continue to deal with the matter before us. And this call to be patient, of course, all of us are called therein, with one another, even when dealing with sin.
Peter talks about that, right? Love covers a multitude of sin, quoting the Old Testament. I take that picture of covering sin twofold. One is the patient forbearance of, as it were, turning a blind eye as God did in his forbearance of the Old Testament church.
There are little sins that you can’t always nip in the bud for everybody you meet, you just put up with it and say, well, that’s their quirk. We have to cooperate on the job or in our family to take care of these matters. Because you can turn easily into a perfectionist and just go after every little difference.
And sins, there are small sins and there are great sins. That’s why it’s important to have that distinction of heinous sins, more heinous in the sight of God than others. Because we’re finite, we can’t deal with everything at once.
And so that sense of the idea of covering a multitude of sins. If you didn’t have that kind of love and patience, forbearance, in the family life, you’d just fall apart. You’d be fighting and arguing all the time.
I caught you in another sin. What are you saying? What are you atoning for? Everything else. And the other way of describing and understanding that passage there from the Old Testament in Peter is when people ask for forgiveness, you do cover it.
Jesus says that very explicitly. Your brother comes to you and sins. Seventy times seven.
Wow. And ask for forgiveness, you ought to grant it. That certainly takes what? Much patience and forbearance.
That’s the imagery and picture that we have here. For young Timothy, who perhaps did struggle with being a hothead at times. He wasn’t a perfect man either, I’m sure.
To the best of our ability at the end of the day, of course, by God’s power and might. And here, lastly, in humility, correcting those who are in opposition. The word here, this is interesting.
That’s why I pointed out the other two words here, gentle and patient, are pretty much straight across what we have in English. But this particular word, humility, can sometimes be translated gentle or meekness. So it comes across in English kind of confusing at times.
You’re like, oh, it’s the same word again. It’s actually a different word here. And this word is a little more flexible, as it were.
This particular word is broad. And the idea here is strength that accommodates to another’s weakness. And because it has that very broad idea of a strength accommodating to another’s weakness, you can see why it’s sometimes translated meekness, humility, or gentle, depending on how you accommodate to another’s weakness.
Or it could be understood as considerateness. Put that as a noun form, considerateness, that you are considering and understanding where they are and you meet them at their level. God Almighty does this with us, brothers and sisters.
And that’s the idea of His forbearance and His patience. He knows our foibles, our weaknesses, and our sins. And He deals gently with us.
That’s the picture. Not that God just gives up His authority and, hey, you know, this is how I… No. It’s the same idea here.
So the idea of humility here isn’t, hey, you better stop what you’re doing as a leader and correcting me because you’ve got to be humble. But rather, when you are correcting, you do it with the understanding of accommodating and adjusting that correction to the mindset, perhaps. The person doesn’t understand some theological concepts.
You’ve got to instruct them a little more. Or their upbringing, you realize they’re a new Christian. We talked about that in Sunday school class.
You come in to Christianity after being born again, not with a blank slate, but with everything you had before you. But you have a new direction, however, in life. But you still have these hang-ups and ways of thinking and doing that are with you.
And you have the new convert. Other Christians and leadership should adjust accordingly. And we, again, know this, as it were, intuitively because we would want that to be done for us, as you would do unto others, do unto yourself, do unto others.
The golden rule. That’s the idea here of humility or meekness. For Timothy, that he understand why God gave him the power to correct and correct publicly, but that should be tempered with the proper considerateness of the situation at hand.
This is particularly hard, of course, if we cannot see beyond the end of our own experience. We are locked in and narrow-minded with respect to our own lives. When dealing with others who struggle, with something especially that we find easy, that is your, dude, I can do that in my sleep.
That’s not a temptation. How is that a temptation? You may ask yourself. But Timothy, and by his example for us, and Paul telling him we should be considerate and understanding, well, okay, I could appreciate that, given the way you were raised or you haven’t been Christian very long or whatever the case may be.
Not, again, as an excuse for sins, but how you interact and talk and deal with them to the goal of changing them, of course, because you want them to stop the sin or the way of thinking or whatever the case may be. We may have little consideration that is empathy in that regard and understanding that would change the matter in which we talk or engage with somebody. And so, at the same time, of course, we must correct.
Servants of the Lord Must Correct
The servant of the Lord must correct. You can overthink and be all considerate and consider where they’re coming from and put all the pieces together, but if you don’t get to the final finish line, which is give them the proper correction that they need and instruction to change by the power of God as needed, then it’s all to no avail. You may feel holy and just because you’ve been gentle, you’ve been patient, you’ve been meek, but to what end? What have you accomplished with that? He wants to accomplish something here.
The servant of the Lord must correct, must teach and instruct. Here he describes that he’s able to teach, same word in 1 Timothy 3, the chapter in which describes the office of bishop slash pastor slash minister slash parson slash preacher. Got a lot of words for it.
That’s his qualification. That’s what makes it different. So, as I pointed out, as you go through these epistles to church officers, Timothy and Titus, how’s that relevant to me, pastor? I hope you see a lot of it’s relevant.
Just cut out the public part and the public authority and the teaching, the qualification. Everything else is pretty much the same. You should have this kind of qualification.
You should strive for these things by the power of God within you. These are parts of the fruit of the spirit. Able to teach, the ability there to instruct, that should be common to all pastors across the world.
The skill to teach, of course, is relative to other Christians and life. That is what I mean by that is that indeed we all teach. Parents teach their kids.
You better. You may feel inadequate. You may feel like someone who’s bumbling, but you get the point.
You can do it. But we’re not all, of course, equally gifted that way. This is a gift such that people recognize a man that he can speak in public.
He can explain these things. He can get to the point. He can do it with proper humility or understanding of the situation, patience, and gentleness.
But teach, he must and should do. It’s central to being a minister. It’s the important part of the church because the Spirit of God, of course, and His truth in the Bible is here for us.
And he could have just simply left it. Here you go. You got your Bible.
Well, I’ll create a bunch of scribes for you, right? The Old Testament scribes who wrote everything down, kept things going. And there you have it. No, he gave you pastors as part of the Great Commission to preach and to teach and disciple the nations.
They speak with the public authority by Jesus Christ through the church. And people ought to listen to the extent that they are faithful to His Word. This is how God designed it.
He’d given us this office. It’s one of the ordinances of the church to preach, to teach to the whole world, anybody who would listen, to bring the law to bear and the gospel as the balm of Gilead for our hearts and our souls. This is the office.
This is the teaching. This is the ability to preach and the like. But again, to what end here? In this particular end is to correct.
Issues he’s dealing with here of those who are quarrelsome, those who are striving and fighting about words and the like, he’s called to change them, to correct them. The word here is paideia. You’ve probably heard that.
There’s institutions that have that name sometimes. It was a big name in our homeschooling circles in Colorado for a while. They use it almost like a magical mantra for some reason.
But it simply means instruction with a view to correct. So it’s not just simply teaching, but with a view to change or correct the person that you are teaching. And because those two elements are there, sometimes the word has more of an emphasis on one or the other, and other times it just simply means both of them.
Like we do in English often, we move around our words sometimes by context. 1 Corinthians 11.32, for example. 1 Corinthians 11.32 we read, but when we are judged, we are chastened, there’s the word, by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.
Paideia, chastened, corrected, is the emphasis there in 1 Corinthians 11.32, of course. But that chastening came by way of the prophet-apostle, Paul and others, teaching them that’s wrong, this is right, this is the gospel, and that is not, for example. It’s not unlike our word discipline, in the sense of the concepts, if we use it this way.
We discipline, that is, we bring about discipline, being a disciple, to bring change in a person’s life. But often, of course, it’s tied to verbal instruction. Some texts emphasize this instruction, which is the entire ministry of Jesus and the apostles, of course.
Much of that is, don’t do this, do that, instead, this is wrong, this is the right way, this is the good news, that’s the bad news. Sometimes there are longer discourses on other matters, of course, and the like. They wouldn’t be called paideia as such.
You have other words for teach or instruct or to evangelize that comes right out of the Greek. We get that word evangelism from the Greek there, and you can hear the English more or less equivalent to that. That’s a different word, but the same idea of the broad category of open your mouth to say something truthful.
And paideia is a more specific way of doing that. It’s a specific word here. Now, this word describes the function of the minister.
One specific application of his ability to teach is also to correct, and that’s for the good of our sanctification. What Timothy is doing here, it’s like coming in over the shoulder of the elder apostle, elder teacher, elder minister to the young man. You can see how he teaches these ministers and what their calling and duty is.
It’s like getting into the back room with the camera you see on TV and say, what’s really going on back there with the leadership in America or in politics or big business or something? You can see this is what Paul is doing here, describing what the church officer, the pastor in particular, is supposed to do. And so he’s giving us then in this picture of how the pastor is called to do good things for you. And one of the good things that we are called to do is to correct you.
That’s not my favorite part. It’s not our favorite part. Yeah, I get to correct you again.
This is wonderful. Parents don’t like that. I got to spank my kid? Yes, yes, you do.
Thankfully, I don’t have to spank adults or beat them or anything like that. Praise be to God. But verbally, I may have to.
That’s part of correction if need be. And so the text shows us here how the Lord Jesus, through the writing of the apostle Paul, directs pastors to the good of the church, for your good, for your sanctification, for your growth as a believer. That’s what you’re reading here.
That’s what you’re seeing, to help you to go a long, long way in the Christian walk. Others, like this, emphasize instruction that is of this word with correction together, to change the minds and the actions and the like. And of course, here, it’s for adults.
That is, the word paideia is often used in Greek literature with respect to kids. And so that would include physical correction. But clearly here, the apostle doesn’t have that in mind.
He means simply verbal instruction or correction or rebuke. Being a pastor is not about being aloof and preaching behind the pulpit. Look, I’ve got the ability to teach, but having at times to get down into the weeds of life, into the trenches of warfare, to teach and correct people, even a one-on-one at times, or in groups like Peter does, and publicly and the like.
And say, this is wrong. This is the wrong way. This is dangerous.
Go the other way. This is better. This is helpful.
You are going to become a better Christian and a mature Christian if you but take God’s word seriously. Something along those lines. This is their calling, to speak the truth.
So that people would change. And through the purpose here of instruction and gentleness, they are called to correct those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will. One of the long sentences by Paul, he likes to write those.
What he’s describing here is, why should Timothy be gentle and humble? What’s the purpose of the correction? The purpose of the correction is for these people who oppose Jesus, oppose the good news, oppose the truth, that they may be born again. That’s why he wants them to do this. That’s the purpose.
That’s the goal. In opposition, it’s hanging there. This is not uncommon in the Bible.
In humility, correcting those who are in opposition. You’re like, in opposition, where’s the object to whom? Are we in opposition to Jesus, the good news, the gospel, sanctification, holiness, so that you’re not arguing over words for no end. Maybe a combination of all that, again, be more relevant to this striving about words to no profit, that they’re in opposition.
But here, the language is quite strong that they would bring repentance, so they may know the truth. So maybe he has others in mind as well. So the unstated object is opposition to what is needful in the case here of the truth of good practice and holiness, of the truth of the gospel, perhaps, or a mixture of all of these things.
That, to what end? That they may repent, right? Change their mind is the basic meaning of that word, but of course, the idea is that, well, I just changed my mind, that’s great, now what? But change your life as well. Your mind, ideally, is supposed to be the one directing you to the proper path of things, not your emotions. We’re trying to control our emotions, because you go off on the deep end that way.
The point of the correction is not to throw his weight around, in other words, but that they should change, that the offender would give up and return to the Lord God Almighty in his life, to turn away from denying the resurrection, perhaps, in verse 18, or whatever the situation he is dealing with here. And this is a serious matter, so Paul uses strong words. Whether a pastor or a layman, we should desire a change of heart for those whom we are talking to, when the task at hand is to bring correction.
The Lord would touch their souls, because he could use our words, and that the admonition for them would prove useful, or for one of us. It doesn’t have to be unbelievers. We’re talking about people in the church here.
We’ve talked about those who were already in the church, Himanius and Felicius and the like, who cast away the first faith and first love, and God Almighty grants this grace. This is one of the classic proof texts. If God perhaps will grant them repentance, it’s not native to the human situation outside of Christ.
We were born in sin, and we know this. We struggle with it as believers already right here and now. It is a gift of God through the power of the Holy Spirit, repentances.
The unbeliever does not have this. He’s bound in iniquity and sin. We see the description here, having been taken captive by Him to do His will, the devil of sin, of the flesh, of the world.
That’s the native condition. That’s natural to us. Not repentance, not even faith itself.
We fight against it, unless God breaks our stony hearts. And the result of the almighty grace of God granting this repentance, if perhaps God will grant them repentance so that they may know the truth and come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil. That’s our goal.
That’s our desire as pastors. It should be your desire as well for unbelievers and believers alike if believers are going down the false path and walking away from the faith. Then to know the truth.
Salvation cannot bypass the mind. It’s a danger that we see around us at times where we have excessive emotionalism. He sounds so sincere.
He cried about his sins. Then you ask him, who does he believe in? Oh, he believes in Jesus of the Mormons. Okay, well, we have a problem.
You cannot bypass the mind. That is the truth, to know, to have the knowledge of these things. Come to their senses.
This is an interesting word, not used often. It’s only used once or twice. A lively phrase to describe conversion, come to their senses.
It’s literally the one word here to be sober. And so, again, used metaphorically to mean to wake up, to be observant, to use your senses as opposed to subduing your senses on the flip side. And so regeneration, in other words, is likened to waking up to the real world, saying this is it.
I’m not going to bury my head in the ground, but realize this is where we are in life, and that I need a savior in this case. I need to be redeemed. To what? To escape the devil.
And escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will. The trap that Satan leaves for us are all the temptations of the world that we struggle with, whatever your particular temptations and struggles are. Those are snares by the devil to catch you as a fowl, as a bird.
Because knowing the truth, waking up or reviving our senses, means that we’re going to escape the clutches of Satan, because no sane person wants to be in those clutches. Of whom we were a slave to doing the will of Satan in our lives, of sin. Slaves to sin.
Even willing slaves to sin, as the Bible describes them. That we would flee his clutches and enter the kingdom of God Almighty. That’s the desire of Peter, Paul, the apostles, of Timothy here, of all ministers, and of course I believe all sincere believers want this, for those who need to hear this.
So what does this mean for us? It means, of course, for the pastors, their duty and responsibility. As circumstances arises, you need to pray for them, to exercise gentleness and consideration of using their strength and ability, and understanding with respect to the object and person before them. To have a right combination of these things, because they need to be bold in their correction as well.
To be clear, even if the person is offended. And to pray for one another, brothers and sisters. That we are all servants of the Lord, this is true, although not publicly called to the ministry.
And to that extent, we have much in common here, that this should be our desire, these should be our practices as well, or as I put it, our default condition. To speak the truth in gentleness to those near us, our family, our friends. That they would know Jesus and repent of a life of sin, and have their senses wakened up.
That they may escape the snare of the devil. Let us pray. Father God Almighty, we indeed ask that any who have not escaped the snare of the devil, Lord, would have their hearts pricked by this truth.
And indeed, we pray for ourselves. And as we have opportunity to speak to others of this, unfortunately, Lord, many people do not want to speak of the Bible. That we would speak clearly with the proper humility, patience, and gentleness, Lord.
But at the end of all this, God, clearly speaking the truth of your word. Help us in this regard, we pray. Give us more of your spirit, we ask, by the blood of our Lord and Savior, the everlasting covenant, Jesus Christ, amen.
Let us arise.