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Well, welcome, everyone, and good morning, and we come now to our time for the message. I want to invite you, today's sermon we're going to be looking at various texts of Scripture. Good morning. But I want to go ahead and invite you to turn your Bibles to Isaiah 6.
Go ahead and turn to Isaiah 6. As most of you who were here last week probably remember, we had begun a sermon entitled, If God is sovereign, why do we pray? If God is sovereign, why do we pray? And the ultimate crux of the question was this, if God has already determined His will, if God has already decreed the end from the beginning, which is what the Word says that He has, and if God is unchanging, which the Word says that He is, then why do we pray?
Why? What is the purpose of prayer? Why even engage in such a thing? Isn't it superfluous to pray if God's will has already been established? If God has already decreed whatsoever will come to pass? Well, we learned last week that God is unchanging.
We said that the very nature of Him being perfect demands that He is unchanging. A perfect being could not change, because if a perfect being changed, then He would cease to be perfect. If He changed for the better, that means He wasn't perfect to begin with.
If He changed for the worse, that means He would cease to be perfect. And if He made a lateral change, that would demonstrate a need for change and thus demonstrate that He wasn't perfect to begin with.
So the very essence of His perfection demands His immutability, His changelessness. So we ask the question, well, then why pray? Well, last week we looked at the first reason for prayer, and that is that prayer has been established, it has been appointed to us as an act of worship.
The reason why we pray primarily and first and foremost is because it is a method by which we worship God. We worship through our prayers. People think worship is only singing songs. Well, that's not all worship is.
Worship is all of our interactions with God, and there is no more intimate interaction that we get to have with God than when we pray to Him through the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the most intimate of interactions that we get with the Heavenly Father on this side of heaven is that we get to speak to Him directly, and the Word of God tells us that we actually get to call Him Abba, which in the dialect meant Daddy or Father.
We get to call Him that. The Bible says we get to enter into His throne room boldly because He has made us His sons through the work of Jesus Christ. He has brought us into His family. He has adopted us into His family.
And now we have a relationship with Him, and we get to carry on that relationship through the medium of prayer. Prayer is first and foremost an act of worship. So if God is sovereign, why do we pray? Well, we pray because He is sovereign.
We pray because He deserves to be worshipped. We pray because prayer is worship. And that is what we learned last week. Well, this week we will continue on in our lesson looking at two more reasons why we pray.
We said first that prayer has been appointed as an act of worship. Well, the second thing, the reason why we pray, is that prayer has also been appointed as a means of spiritual growth. If you're taking notes, prayer has been appointed as a means of spiritual growth.
And before we begin to read the text and study, let's bow our heads and ask the Lord to bless the message. Our Father and our God, we thank You for this opportunity again to hear Your Word and to study it together.
We pray that You would first and foremost keep me from error, as I am a fallible man incapable of preaching error. And I pray that You would open the hearts of the people to the truth and that You would put a hedge of protection around them.
And Lord God, that all that we learn today would come from Your divine Word, that it would be truth, and that the truth would keep us focused upon You, drawing closer to You, and having a desire to be Your people in this world.
I pray, Lord, that we will have a better understanding of Your sovereignty and how it relates to our prayers when this message is concluded. Lord, that You would edify the believer, that You would convict the unbeliever, and that You would draw us all closer to You, is our prayer in Jesus' name, Amen.
Alright, so with our Bible turning to Isaiah 6, some of you may remember it wasn't too many weeks ago that I actually preached through Isaiah chapter 6, the very first portion of it. So I am not going to give an extensive exposition of this text.
We have done that recently, and for a desire not to be too redundant, I don't want to give a full exposition, but I want to use it as an example of what we are learning today. Because again, we said prayer is first appointed as an act of worship, but prayer is also appointed as a means of spiritual growth.
Well, how does prayer help us to grow spiritually? Well, the first thing that it does is that it humbles us. It causes humility in us. Coming into the presence of God is something that you can never do with a haughty and prideful spirit.
Coming into the presence of God is always a humbling experience. And that is why I call your attention to Isaiah 6 as we start today. Isaiah 6 is a great example of someone who was brought into the presence of God and they responded appropriately.
I have mentioned this before, but I have heard so many preachers today, well, I saw the Lord and it was such a pleasant and calming experience. No, no, no. It was not. First of all, you didn't. And second of all, the experiences of somebody in the presence of the Lord in Scripture are always that of an understanding of His holiness and our unholiness.
That is the experience that we get in the presence of the Lord. And it is exemplified here in Isaiah 6. It says in verse 1, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.
I always like to mention this at this point, even though I did, again, I preached on this recently. The Lord here in question, the reference is to Christ. In John 12, it actually makes the point that the One who Isaiah saw was Christ seated upon the throne.
That is important because the text of John actually tells us that no one has ever seen the Father. Only the Son who has seen the Father makes Him known. So when we see Isaiah here seeing the Lord, it is a reference to Christ.
This is what we call a pre-incarnate vision of Jesus. Just to point that out. So in verse 2, it says, Above Him stood the Seraphim, each had six wings, with two He covered His face, with two He covered His feet, and with two He flew.
And He called one to another, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is filled with His glory. And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of Him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.
Alright, so this is the vision. He sees the Lord. He sees the Seraphim, the worshipping angels. The earth has shaken and filled with smoke. And His response is, I'm so calm. No, that is not at all His response.
His response is not, well, I had a little talk with Jesus and I told Him all about my troubles. No, that's not what happened. What He did was He shook with fear. It says in verse 5,. And I said, Woe is me, pronouncement of judgment upon Himself.
Woe is me, for I am, some texts say undone. The ESV says lost. For I am lost. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of the people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
Now, without going any further, just think of the experience of Isaiah in the presence of the Lord. That is supposed to be the experience of the Christian when we enter into the presence of God through prayer.
It is supposed to be an experience of humility. Not an experience of pride. Not an experience of haughtiness. Not an experience wherein we are boastful. But it is supposed to be a moment where we remember who it is to whom we are addressing.
Jesus is not our homeboy, as some t-shirts say. Jesus is the Lord of glory, the very Creator of the universe. By Him and through Him and to Him are all things. Right? So when we address this One who is God, we experience, or should experience, a type of humiliation.
Now, people think of humiliation inappropriately. When you think of humiliation, you think of someone who trips and falls down and they're humiliated. Some type of embarrassment is associated with humiliation.
Humiliation is not what I mean. If you hear me say that word, that's not what I'm referring to. What I'm referring to when I say humiliation is when someone falls before the Lord in reverence to Him. To get down.
To humiliate ourselves. To humble ourselves. To get down before Him. Not to be boastful. Prayer grows us spiritually because it first tears us down in our pride. It grows us spiritually because it first tears us down in our haughtiness.
It grows us spiritually because it first tears us down in our self-reliance. People are inherently self. They want to be self-reliant. They want to not feel like they need God. Prayer is first and foremost.
We're saying to the Lord, we do need You. And we are suppressing that inward independence and confessing our natural dependence on God. And it's a form of humility to pray. It's a form of humility to bow in His presence.
That's part of the whole idea behind bowing in prayer. You know, we still bow in prayer with our heads. Sometimes people will kneel in prayer. I know some people have physical inabilities to get down on their knees.
Some of us pray, still prostrate before the Lord. What is that? It means to lay completely prone on your face before the Lord in prayer. Why? It's symbolic. It's symbolic of who it is you're talking to.
Why did the seraphim cover their face? Why did the seraphim with six wings have two wings with which they covered their face? Because they were in the presence of God and they did not look upon the presence of God.
Their face was covered so as to not see the glory of God. Moses, when he was given a glimpse of the glory of God, his face was so bright that the people of Israel could not look upon him because of that glory.
So too, when we pray, we bow our heads. When we pray, we kneel our bodies. When we pray, we lay prone so as to show the Lord we understand our presence before You, as creatures and Your Creator. We have humbled ourselves and through learning humility, we grow spiritually.
You cannot grow spiritually with a prideful and haughty spirit.
Because the Bible says, God resists the proud.
How can you grow spiritually if God is actively resisting you? You can't. So it says He resists the proud, but what does He give grace to? The humble. So true prayer causes us to humiliate ourselves, to humble ourselves.
And I say true prayer because we all know there's a difference. We know there are guys who are out there naming and claiming Mercedes Benz and all this. That's junk prayer. That's not real prayer. That's not godly prayer.
That's garbage prayer. And it does not fit into the paradigm that God has set aside for prayer that we should humble ourselves. So it causes us to humble ourselves, and it also causes us to exercise our faith.
How do we grow spiritually from prayer? Well, the very nature of prayer is demonstration of our understanding of the need for God in our lives. It's a demonstration of faith and it's an exercise of faith.
Faith is a gift. Don't get me wrong. But just because something is a gift doesn't mean that we don't have to exercise it. We do. We exercise the gift of faith. We exercise that gift when we pray. It's not supposed to sit dormant.
We talk about in James 5 the prayer of faith, which has great power. Prayer is an act of faith. Not only that God exists and can hear us, but we pray because He has an ordained will. And we are praying in accordance with that will.
And we're exercising faith in Him by praying. I think probably the thing that is devoid in so many churches and in so many ministries is that heart desire for prayer. That desire not only to humble ourselves, but to exercise that level of faith that we are constantly with the Lord in prayer.
Constantly seeking the Lord through prayer. Constantly reaching toward the Lord in prayer. I mean, so many men talk about... And I get emails all the time from different ministry groups that I'm associated with that they send me these five things you should never do in the pulpit.
I've broken every one. I think I broke every one today. Ten things you shouldn't do here. Five things you should do here. All these things. It's always these methods of either trying to grow spiritually or trying to grow the church or trying to build the ministry that you are associated with somehow.
But ultimately, it's going to stand or it is going to fall on our dependence on God. It's going to stand or it's going to fall with our prayers. Because our prayer is demonstration of our faith in Him.
Many a man have started many a ministry that was founded on their talents and not on prayer. And many a ministry has failed as a result. Because they were dependent upon self rather than dependent upon God.
Talented men. Blessed men with gifts that far exceed the norm. With ministries that could not continue because they were dependent upon the man and not on God. So again, prayer is appointed that we would humble ourselves.
Prayer is appointed also that we would trust in Christ. It forces us to understand from where our strength comes. And it causes us to grow. So prayer has been appointed as a means of spiritual growth.
So we've seen two things now. We saw last week, prayer has been appointed as an act of worship. Prayer has been appointed as a means of spiritual growth. And thirdly, prayer has been appointed as an avenue for petition.
Prayer has been appointed as an avenue for petition. Throughout the Bible, prayer is seen as the avenue through which God's people petitioned things for which they were in need of. This is how we ask God for that which we need.
Turn to Psalm 70. You're in the Old Testament. Turn back to Psalm 70. This is David's prayer. It's a short prayer, but it's a prayer for refuge and deliverance. Hear the words of David. He says in verse 1, Make haste, O God, to deliver me.
Hurry, Lord, is the modern vernacular. Hurry, Lord, deliver me. Hurry, O Lord, make haste to help me. Let them be put to shame and confusion who seek my life. Let them be turned back and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt.
Let them turn back because of their shame.
Who says, Aha! Aha!
The person who laughs at their failure. Let this person be turned back. May all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You. May those who love Your salvation say evermore, God is great, but I am poor and needy.
Hasten to me, O God. You are my help and my deliverer, O Lord. Do not delay. See, David is here petitioning God for deliverance. He is consistently petitioning the Lord, not only to deliver, but to hurry and deliver.
Save me, Lord, and save me quickly. And beloved, asking of the Lord is not a bad thing. It's not a wrong thing to ask of the Lord. In fact, the Bible says we have not. Why? Because we ask not. The Bible commends our petitions to the Lord.
It commends for us to ask the Lord, even in Jesus' model prayer when His disciples said, Lord, teach us to pray. He said, as you pray, pray this. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And then what was right after that? Give us this day our daily bread and lead us not into temptation. These are petitions to the Lord. Forgive us of our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Yet for some, this is confusing, especially for the reformed crowd. This can sometimes become confusing. We are amidst that crowd. I teach, of course, what is known as reformed theology. And of course, one of the hallmarks of reformed theology is the sovereignty of God, that God has decreed the end from the beginning.
And this is where the issue comes up. Well, why would I ask God if He's already decided? Why would I petition God if He has already decreed? If God has foreordained all that shall come to pass, and that's what our classical confessions say that He has.
If God has foreordained whatsoever shall come to pass, how do my petitions affect any of this? Why even pray? Well, we've already seen why we pray. We pray because it's worship. We pray because through it, there is spiritual growth.
But, we mustn't forget that just because God has ordained whatsoever will come to pass, that does not mean that our prayers are not part of that decree. This is the part I think so many people have trouble with.
And sort of the same way with predestination. People say, well, God has predestined, so that means we don't have to evangelize. No! That's a wrong understanding because part and parcel of God's predetermining the end is He predetermines that which leads up to the end.
God doesn't just ordain that I'm going to be a 33-year-old man who's preaching here today, but God ordained all of the things that brought me here today. You know how many things in my life that could have stopped me from being here today?
Not only the many times which I could have died in car accidents or things like that, but the very things that have brought me to this place where I am today. And God has ordained that I be here today.
I believe that with my whole heart. But were choices involved? Absolutely. Were sinful actions involved? Sadly, yes. God ordains the ends, but He also ordains the means to those ends. And that is the heart of understanding Reformed theology.
In particular, things like election and predestination and God's providence and sovereignty. It's that He's ordained the end, but He's ordained the things that bring about the end. And one of those things which He has ordained is the prayers of His people.
That His people would seek His face. That His people would ask of Him and that He would respond to their requests. That's part of the plan. I hope I didn't blow your minds here. I hope you're understanding what I'm saying.
Because He ordained the ends, He has also ordained the means to the ends. And one of the means is prayer. So it should not be confusing. But it does help us understand verses like Matthew 6 -8 which says that remember when you pray, what does it say?
Your Father knows what you need before you ask. Your Father already knows. He already knows what He's going to do. He already knows His plan. But you don't. So you ask. So you petition. So you go to Him in humility.
You go to Him in faith and you say, God save me, like David said. God deliver me, like David said. God save my child, like David said. We call out for deliverance. We call out for God's help. We call out for God's guidance.
We call out for all these things. Not to furnish God with information that He does not have, but to confess our need of Him. We're not furnishing God with information He doesn't have. He knows what we need before we ask.
But we are confessing that we need His help. Petition is all about understanding our place before Him. That without Him, we can do nothing. Mr. Haldane said this, If indeed all things happen by a blind chance or a fatal necessity, prayers in that case could be of no moral efficacy and of no use.
But since they are regulated by the direction of divine wisdom, prayers have a place in the order of history. See what he's saying there? He's saying if God wasn't sovereign, if God wasn't bringing about His plan, then our prayers could be meaningless because they're not helping anything because God's not guiding anything.
But because God does have a plan, our prayers are part of the plan. John Gill said this, the great theologian. He said, when God bestows blessings on a praying people, it is not for the sake of their prayers as if He was inclined and turned by them, but it is for His own sake and of His own sovereign will and pleasure.
Should it be said, to what purpose then is prayer? It is answered, this is the way and means God has appointed for the communication of the blessing of His goodness to His people. For though He has purposed, provided and promised them, yet He will be sought unto to give them and is a duty and privilege to ask.
It is a duty and privilege to ask. When they are blessed with a spirit of prayer, it forebodes well and looks as if God intended to bestow the good things asked, which should be asked always with submission to the will of God saying, not my will, thine be done.
Gill is again, he's just making the point. We're not changing God's mind when we pray. Remember I talked about that last week? People talk about prayer changes things. Well, in a sense, prayer does change things because it's in part of God's plan that we pray and He responds.
But it's not as if God's up there changing His mind. Well, you know, I wasn't going to save you, but since you asked. Yeah, I mean, that's the idea that God is somehow subservient to our person. No, but they are part of the plan.
Thus, we pray as part of His divine appointed, divinely appointed will. Now, I want to ask a question because this question is often asked of me. And sometimes when I think when I'm preaching, I like to think, well, what might be a question which is popping into people's mind and respond to it?
And one of the questions is this. What about unanswered prayers? What about unanswered prayers? I mean, the truth is that if we have truly prayed that God's will be done above ours and we believe it, then there's no such thing as unanswered prayer, is there?
But people always talk about, well, I prayed to God for this and I didn't get this. Thus, the prayer was unanswered. And I've heard people say, well, God has three answers to prayer. It's either yes, no, or wait, or yes, no, or maybe, or well, you know.
I think sometimes we try to make too many things fit on bumper stickers and T-shirts. Then really look at it as what it means. The truth is, when we pray, sometimes the answer is just no, because it's not what the will of God is.
And some people say, well, wait a minute, Pastor. And I have some friends in the more charismatic movement who would say, well, wait a minute. The Bible says, whatever you ask in my name, it will be given to you.
John chapter 16, verse 23. Whatsoever you shall ask in my name, it shall be given to you. And hasn't that one been raked over the coals? Hasn't that one been used inappropriately by so many? Well, I asked God for a Bentley and he said, whatsoever I ask in his name, ipso facto, I get my Bentley.
You know, that's the understanding of some people. But the text is there. I mean, if you want to write it, John 16, 23. Truly, truly, I say unto you, whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he will give to you.
Yet the person praying this, this is not a blank check so that you might determine the will of God. That's how some people understand it. But that is not what that verse intends us to understand. That we, by that verse, are given a blank check to coerce the will of God.
In fact, genuine examination of that text shows that it is in perfect accord with everything that we have learned so far. That when we pray, we are praying what? We are praying the Lord's will. Jesus said, whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name.
By adding the caveat in my name, that doesn't mean that we can say to God, God, this is in Jesus name. Give me that Bentley. I mean, whatever, however, you know, just let you know, I put the caveat on it.
I added in Jesus. That's not what it means when you say that you want to use someone's name in a petition. What you are saying is that you are expressing the will of that person in the petition. Let me maybe make it, I'll bring it to a modern day example.
Let's say Ashley wants to go on a school field trip. No, she's homeschooled, so that's easy. Let's say she wasn't homeschooled and let's say she wanted to go on a school field trip. And I said no. Yet she took that form that they gave her and it said sign Keith Foskey.
And she signed my name on that form and handed it in. Well, does she have my approval? Is this according to my will? She's using my name, but she's using my name inappropriately. She's not using it in accord with my will.
So when Jesus said whatsoever you shall ask in my name, he's expressing the fact that whatever you ask in accordance with my will. It's the same thing. Which is why later it actually says that whatever we ask in accordance with the will of God.
This is why Jesus, when he's there the night before the crucifixion, he's in the garden of Gethsemane, he says to the Father, Lord, take this cup from me. The cup of your wrath that is about to be poured out on me for the sins of the people.
If there be another way, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done. Beloved, if you can't pray your prayer of petition to God and end it with the same words of Christ's prayer of petition to God, nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done, then know that you're not praying in accordance with God's will.
You're praying in your own will. We must always be willing to say... I've heard people say, don't say that in prayer because that's... Bobby and I talked about this one time. Because you were told in another church, don't pray, not my will, but thy will be done, because that's a show of lack of faith.
That's garbage. That's garbage. It's not a lack of faith because Jesus said it. It's not a lack of faith. In fact, it's the exact expression of the type of faith that we're supposed to have. A faith which says, no matter what, no matter what, I know what I want.
I know what I desire. I know what I'm asking of you, God. And I know that the outcome of this is already predetermined in my heart what it should be. But I am not God. And my desires are always going to be influenced with the will which is bound by flesh.
Thus, when I ask of you, God, I always ask for what I want. But I always add that it is not what I want that is ultimately going to determine this. But your will be done. And when your will is done, I will submit and say, blessed is the name of the Lord.
The Lord giveth. The Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Must be how we pray. And again, it goes back to the issue of spiritual growth. When we pray as that, we grow in our faith. The meeting place between God's sovereignty and human prayer is found in 1 John 5 .14.
And I'll leave you with this verse. 1 John 5 .14. And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. A .W. Pink said this, What is prayer? Prayer is not so much an act as it is an attitude.
It is not so much an act as it is an attitude. An attitude of dependency. Dependency upon God. Beloved, if God is sovereign, why do we pray? As I said last week, we pray because God is sovereign. Because He deserves to be worshiped, and prayer is a form of worship.
Because we need to grow spiritually, and prayer is a means to our spiritual growth. And because God has ordained our asking of Him what we need, so that we can learn to trust and rely upon Him. And prayer is an avenue for those petitions.
If God is sovereign, why pray? We pray because He's sovereign. Let's bow. Our Father and our God, we thank You again for this opportunity to have examined Your Word, to examine this important subject of prayer.
And I do pray that You have used this time to encourage Your people and to build them up in their faith. I too also pray, Lord, that throughout this service that the Gospel has been proclaimed, that people have heard about Jesus and His salvation, and the fact that there are none who come to You except through Him.
And I pray, Lord, now that You will use this time of singing for a time of reflection upon ourselves, that we would use it as a time of true prayer to draw closer to You, and that all this would be done for Your honor and Your glory and in accordance with Your will.
In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Let's stand together and sing. If you have a need for prayer, please feel free to come as we sing.