(music) - In thinking through
what the Bible teaches regarding the relationship
between divine sovereignty and human responsibility, a question often comes to the forefront of prayer. If God is really sovereign, and He has planned all things and knows all things before the foundation of
the world, then why pray? It seems as if prayer is either meaningless or doesn't change anything. Some will then say well,
if He's already planned all these things, then why
petition a sovereign God? Well this is a very,
very important question and it really is an
application of the larger divine sovereignty human
freedom relationship. As we work through Scripture, we have to very, very carefully put together all that Scripture
teaches, and on this issue, as we work on God's sovereignty, God is presented from
Genesis to Revelation, as the God who is planned all things, created all things, rules over all things. You think of a Ephesians
1:11, a kind of overall summary statement, that God's plan is that which encompasses all things,
the council of His will, and that includes then
our individual choices, and prayers, and actions,
and all that we do. Yet, at the same time, Scripture also says that we are God's image bearers. We are free in the sense that we are held accountable for our actions. Our actions matter, our prayers matter, what we do matters, but many, many people see a tension in holding
these two together. Well, Scripture does
give us a tension here. It's not contradictory,
Scripture will teach that God knows all things
and plans all things. That's His sovereignty,
yet it will also say that our prayers are important. That our prayers are to petition God. I think of the parable that Jesus gives in Luke's gospel about
the person who constantly is asking and He tells us
to ask over and over again. Well that's part of
petition, so that Scripture will hold both of these together. Now, I think the best way
to think of the relationship of divine sovereignty to our prayers, and the importance of our prayers, is to think of our prayers
as God's planned means. Our prayers are means to
bring about His planned ends. Their real means, and
sometimes we struggle with how can they be real means? But Scripture says they are. Our prayers are real, they're important. In fact, they are planned
so that they, indeed, bring about those ends, and sometimes we can then use the reverse logic and say, well, what if I don't bring about or don't pray for certain
things, will I thwart God? Scripture says no, you won't. We could even say He'll raise up someone to pray and bring about that end. We can't do that kind of reverse, yet we have to then say
God's sovereign plan is brought about through our actions, through our prayers,
through our evangelism. That is how sovereignty
and freedom go together, and that's how our prayers go together with divine sovereignty as well. When we think about petitionary prayer, we think about what we ask God. It's very, very important to think about prayer in terms of how we are taught to pray according
to the Scriptures. You think of the Lord Jesus in John 17, that great high priestly prayer, where He petitions His Father, knowing that the hour is coming. And the hour in John's gospel is God's sovereigned, foreordained
plan of the cross. Yet He petitions His Father and says, "Lord and Father, the hour
is here, glorify your Son." Well of course the Father's
going to glorify His Son, but the Son prays in relationship to that very sovereign plan, the prayer functions as a larger means to an end. Or you think of in Daniel
9, where he's reading, the prophet Jeremiah, and he knows that 70 years will be the exile. He doesn't then say, well, that's part of God's sovereign plan, it's
going to happen 70 years. I just might as well sit around and wait. Instead, knowing that very plan, he then takes that knowledge and
he turns it to prayer, in confession and petitioning that God would keep His promise, that
it would only last 70 years. Well of course it's only
going to last 70 years. But he prays and petitions God in light of the very plan, the sovereign
plan, the eternal plan of God that he knows from
the prophet Jeremiah. You read the prayers of Paul and this is a very, very helpful for us. How does Paul pray for the churches? Ephesians 1 is a great example of this. Ephesians 1:15 and following, follows off the heels of Paul's wonderful doxology of praise in verses 3 through 14. In the early portion of
Ephesians 1, he is praising the triune God for the work
of the Father and election, the work of the Son and redemption, the work of the Spirit in sealing all of Christ's work to us, and giving us the guaranteed inheritance. All of that's part of
God's sovereign plan. And then he says, "For this reason," because of God's sovereign
election and redemption and salvation, he then
prays consistent with that very plan, that the God who has called you to adoption,
the God who has called you to know the riches that are
the inheritance in Christ. He prays then, "Lord, help
the church know those riches. "Help them to know that inheritance. "Help them to know that adoption." So he prays in line with
God's sovereign purposes. That's how prayer functions in Scripture. It's important, our choices are important, they're part of God's sovereign plan, means to ends, and prayer, we then take what God's plan is, what He's revealed, what we know of that plan,
and we turn that back to Him in petition, in praise, in
praying for one another. We pray specifically, we petition God according to His sovereign plan. So sovereignty and prayer
and petitionary prayer go hand-in-hand, never
let the two be separated. Scripture holds them together and we must hold them together in our
thinking and in our practice, in our daily lives, and in the church. (music)
