Chapter Eight
Let God be God!

Dear Reader, this may well be one of the most difficult chapters for you to read in this entire book. I don’t mean difficult in the sense that I am going to introduce some especially difficult words which will send you scurrying for a dictionary, or that the concepts involved are overly complex and confusing. However, we are going to meet some theological issues head-on that can be extremely hard to digest emotionally. I am going to ask--and answer--some of the toughest questions that any Christian man or woman will ever consider.

As I said in the previous chapter, the doctrine of God’s sovereignty is often passed over quite lightly--if not completely ignored--in many churches throughout the world. There are some pastors and theologians who deny the idea of God’s perfect sovereignty altogether; others only accept a severely limited version. This enables them to glibly sidestep the issues that we are going to address, such as: Does man have free will? Is God the culpable cause of evil? Is Satan a part of God’s sovereign plan? If God does create evil and declare disaster, then how can God be a good God? Has God ever compromised His holiness? How can man be responsible for his sins, if God is sovereign? Why should men pray if God is sovereign? Does God change His mind?

As you can see, there aren’t any “warm and fuzzy” discussions ahead of us in the pages to come. As I did in the opening pages of chapter seven, I want to encourage you again not to give up! I promise you that a careful reading of this chapter will give you a new understanding of your heavenly Father that should cause you to fall to your knees and praise Him with a deepened and renewed sense of reverence and awe! There is real spiritual gold to be mined in the following pages; don’t get discouraged because the digging is difficult! We must come to the point of understanding where we can truly let God be God and worship Him in all His sovereign majesty and holiness. May God give us the courage and the wisdom to honestly investigate these questions according to the light of God’s Word. Let us measure the of doctrine of God’s sovereignty in the light of the unwavering truth of Scripture, and not by the fickle and unreliable indicators of our emotions.

Does Man Have Free Will?

This question and the implications that arise from it are probably the most controversial in all of Christian theology. In general company there are certain issues that people tend to avoid discussing, because a “conversation” is likely to lead to a violent argument. The subject of abortion, for example, is almost certain to provoke passionate opinions on both sides of the issue. A friend of mine once described sitting at an absolutely delightful dinner party-soft music, candlelight, gentle laughter, etc.--when the issue of abortion suddenly arose. My friend, believing that he was comfortably seated with a group of like-minded people, bluntly expressed his opinion that abortion is the murder of the innocent unborn. Boom! Another guest exploded in furious disagreement, becoming so agitated that saliva actually flew from her mouth while she spoke.

While a debate about the freedom of man’s will may not get quite so ugly, it is almost certainly just as divisive. Luther and Erasmus, for example, were friends before their debate over free will. Their relationship didn’t survive the controversy. Churches have split over this issue. Entire denominations have formed around this central question. I have personally observed a cold glint of anger in the eyes of otherwise gentle and loving Christians who are confronted with the notion that man’s will is not free. In fact, as I confessed to you earlier, I used to react in just that way myself! Again, I feel compelled to urge you not to blindly reject a notion which is challenging or disconcerting.

Most Christian churches today assert that man’s will is free. But when we come to a proper understanding of the sovereignty of God, we come to the unavoidable question: If God is truly sovereign, then that must mean that man cannot resist His will. We have already seen a great many verses of Scripture indicating that this is true. There are dozens more that I could cite for you here. King Jehoshaphat stood before the people of Judah and proclaimed,“O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not the God who is in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. Power and might are in your hand, and no one can withstand you.” Jeremiah confessed,“I know, O Lord, that a man's life is not his own; It is not for man to direct his steps.” The Christians in Jerusalem raised their voices to God “with one accord and said ... ‘Truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done.’” Paul preached to the citizens of Athens that “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.” Solomon asserted that “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”

The testimony of Scripture is clear and unequivocal: Man thinks he is in charge of his actions, but it is the Lord who has sovereignly foreordained every thought and action of every creature and every event of history to work in accordance with His eternal plan. Many Christians, when confronted with this truth, become extremely uncomfortable. “If man is not free,” they reason, “then isn’t he just a robot, a puppet dangling on God’s cosmic string?” This is a perfectly reasonable and vitally important question, and I am going to devote some time to answering it.

What Do We Mean by “Free Will”?

It is extremely important to define what we mean when we use the phrase “free will” throughout this discussion. In a marvelous essay written to answer the question of whether God foreordains evil or merely allows it to exist, Gordon Clark defined free will this way: It is “the theory that a man faced with incompatible courses of action is as able to choose any one as well as any other.” In other words, if a man stands at a crossroads, he is equally likely to choose to go east as to go west. There are no outside forces that would compel him to choose one direction over another. For the purposes of this discussion, I would stress that those who believe that man’s will is free assert that God does not cause the man to choose one of the two directions. They claim that man makes up his own mind, without any outside influence or superintendence.

If you have read through the previous chapter and honestly considered the Scripture verses provided there, I think you will have to agree with me that man’s will is not free in this way. In fact, we just read Proverbs 16:9, which asserts that “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” So much for the equal likelihood of heading east or west!

But what about the heart of man? Does a man determine his own moral direction? The prevailing notion in most churches today is that man is free to choose to do evil or to do good. We hear from respected preachers and theologians that God permits or allows evil to occur. An honest examination of the Scriptures forces us to admit that such teaching is not based on the truth. We have seen that “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord;” that “it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails,” not man’s purpose, and that “A man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps.” We read in Judges 14 that Samson saw a Philistine woman and insisted that his parents arrange for him to marry her. His parents protested: “Can’t you find a wife from among our own people?” But Samson was adamant. It must be this woman and no other! In verse 4, the Holy Spirit explains, “This was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel.” I’m quite sure Samson thought he had “freely” chosen this woman for his wife, but in reality his seemingly impetuous desire for her had been sovereignly decreed by God. If Samson could have chosen any woman he wanted for his wife, and God had merely “permitted” it to happen, then God would not be sovereign--Samson would!

If Scripture is so very clear about God’s complete sovereignty over all of man’s affairs, why do we deny the truth of God’s Word and insist that a man “chooses” his path and that the Lord “permits” his steps? As Gordon Clark brilliantly argued in his essay, there can be only one reason: those who teach that God “allows” evil are trying to protect God’s reputation! After all, if God is truly sovereign over every event, that means God decreed that scores of men, women, and children would be incinerated at Waco, Texas! God foreordained that Adolph Hitler would order the Holocaust! God determined that over 100 million people would die as the result of Communism! To even suggest a thing seems blasphemous to most of us! We know that God is pure and holy, that He is “of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness.” How could anyone possibly dare to suggest that God is the cause of such ghastly evils?

Dear Reader, it is precisely because of difficult questions like these that I began this book by laying down the foundation--the axiom--of Christianity: The Bible alone is the Word of God. There are far too many people in seminaries and churches across this land who teach that the Bible contains “paradoxes” that we cannot possibly understand. Some attack the Bible by claiming it contains contradictions. The existence of evil in a world governed by a pure and holy God is one such “contradiction” that these enemies of the Scriptures often cite. There are even conservative theologians, men who love God and revere the truth of Scripture, who teach that the Bible contains antinomies (“an tin ah mees”), apparent contradictions which only the infinite mind of the living God can see as true consistencies.

None of these ideas is reflective of historical, biblical Christianity. The reality is that God has given us a complete system of knowledge and truth. There are no mistakes, no falsehoods, no contradictions, no paradoxes, and no antinomies. Every word of God is pure, and that means that the Bible does not, can not, contradict itself! Are there difficult passages? Certainly. Are there wondrous mysteries? Most assuredly. The doctrines of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the eternal existence of God, and a host of others are, indeed, glorious mysteries that are fully answered only in the mind of God. Are there doctrines, such as the one we are discussing here, which we must struggle to understand? Absolutely! The question of the existence of God and evil in the same universe has troubled theologians for centuries. However, this does not mean that it is an unanswerable question! If we have a complete system of truth, then every verse, every precept, every doctrine is a vital member of that truth, and is perfectly interwoven in such a way as to present every facet of that truth. When we encounter an idea that doesn’t seem to “fit,” we do not discard it as a paradox, a contradiction, or an antinomy. Instead, we rely on the fact that God has given us an organized body of knowledge, a system of truth, and we dig deeper to see where each piece fits into “the whole counsel of God.” Armed with this confidence in the cohesion and the consistency of the Word of God, we may confidently begin to unravel the more difficult questions that confront our Christian faith.

We have been discussing one such question in these recent pages. Does man choose to do evil, and does God merely stand back and permit him to do so? The vast majority of Christians like to believe that this is the case. Again, the laws of logic teach us that it is vitally important to define our terms at the beginning of our discussion. We have defined “free will” to mean an “independent, autonomous will.” A will that is independent and autonomous would be a sovereign will! If man were capable of making independent decisions beyond God’s control, then man would be sovereign and God would be subject to man’s sovereign decisions! If God “allowed” Pastor Lannom to choose to do evil--or to do good, for that matter--whenever Jack felt like it, independent of God’s will, then God would be a reactor, a responder, to my actions. He would not be the One who sovereignly decrees all my thoughts and actions. God would, in effect, be sitting in heaven, adjusting His plan to fit mine. To even suggest such a thing is to realize the absurdity and outright blasphemy of the idea. We have seen that God is sovereign over all the affairs of the earth. He has an eternal plan for the history of the cosmos, and he directs the affairs of all men--king or commoner, president or pastor, monk or murderer--He “works all things according to the counsel of His will.”

Since this is so, does that mean that man is a mere robot, a puppet that God directs at all times, just as you or I direct every twist and turn of a radio-controlled model car? This is not the case, either. Man does make choices, but his choices are God-ordained choices.The great Reformers were emphatic that we do have the power to choose. The Bible is filled with verses that confirm man’s ability to make choices. Nor is man held in the grip of any kind of mechanistic or psychological determinism. Man is not compelled to act in a certain way because he was raised in a certain environment. A man is influenced by his environment, of course. However, his environment does not rob him of his will. You could probably cite several instances of men and women who overcame horrible childhoods to become successful, and several more stories about those who were raised in privileged environments only to fall into the pits of depravity and degradation later in life. Man does not behave in predetermined ways because the planets are aligned in a particular position. Man is completely free of this kind of deterministic compulsion.

The Reformers did not believe in what is called behavioristic determinism, but they did believe in theistic determinism. In other words, they believed that God determines everything that will ever happen in time and eternity. That is why the Reformers referred to man as a free agent, in contrast to man possessing a free will. Free agency means that man’s will is free from any physical forces determining the outcomes of his attitudes or actions.

However, man is only free to choose according to his nature. In fact, he will always choose according to the dictates of his nature. There is one problem, though, which affects man’s decisions in a truly dreadful way: the sinful nature of mankind. The unsaved man or woman is only free to choose to sin! “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” Jeremiah wrote. The unsaved person will naturally and voluntarily choose to sin on every occasion. “The carnal mind is enmity against God,” Paul wrote; “For it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” The mind of the man or woman that has not been reborn, or regenerated, by the Holy Spirit is hostile to the things of God! Unsaved men and women “cannot cease from sin,” Peter asserted, and are incapable of pleasing God. Nor do they have any desire to do so! So unsaved man’s choices are free, but they are free only in a downward, sinfulsense. Man will freely, voluntarily, choose to turn away from God and turn toward evil every time! “The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men,” the Psalmist wrote, “to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one.” No unsaved man or woman seeks after God or chooses to do good. Not one. This is the word of Scripture concerning the nature of man. It is much like a suicidal person who has jumped off the top of a skyscraper: man is perfectly free to choose to continue to plummet downward. He will always choose to continue to move downward, because that is the direction that is entirely compatible with his nature. It is only when he raises his eyes toward heaven and considers a return to the top of the building from whence he leaped that he finds he is incapable of doing so. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?” the Lord asked rhetorically. “Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil.” Man is no more capable of changing his sinful nature, which is accustomed--quite comfortable in fact--with evil, than a leopard is capable of changing the shape or color of the spots on its skin! It is only when one has been born again and indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God that one can choose to seek after God and do that which is pleasing to Him. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” Paul wrote. It is only in Christ that we receive the freedom to choose to do good.

It is important to note that the believer can and will still sin. The believer is no more worthy of the grace of God than is the unbeliever.Jesus once addressed His disciples by saying, “If you then, being evil...” Jesus was stating that even the disciples, the men whom He called friends, were also sinners. If these men are “evil,” then surely you and I and all believers are sinners also! Indeed, Paul called himself the “chief” of sinners. “There is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But the believer now has the ability to truly choose, by the grace of God, to do good. The Holy Spirit of God living within us gives us the divine power to do good. Prior to the moment of salvation, you and I were in abject slavery to the sinful nature.

At the same time, no man or woman, saved or unsaved, operates independently of God’s sovereign, eternal decrees. We have seen that God has an eternal plan, a plan that is moving to its inevitable conclusion, a plan which will ultimately cause every man, woman, and child--living and dead, saved and unsaved--to recognize and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. There is nothing and no one--none of God’s creatures--which can resist God and operate in opposition to that plan. There are a great many men and women who appear to resist God’s will, but in actuality all of creation, all of history, and all of God’s eternal plan for redemption and damnation are a glorious display of His divine sovereignty! Paul exulted, “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.”

What About Satan? Is He a Part of God’s Plan?
Does God merely “permit” the activities of Satan and his demons? Did evil climb over the impregnable wall of God’s omnipotence, slip past the watchful eye of His omniscience, and subdue His insuperable sovereignty? To answer such questions in the affirmative is to elevate evil to omnipotence and to superimpose sin over sovereignty! Is there anything that can exist outside God’s sovereign will? Was Satan able to fight God to a draw, to the point where God conceded, “All right, Satan, you may go this far and no farther”? If this were true, then God would have to share His throne with Satan, would He not? God would be a limited God, a finite God, acquiescing to at least some of the rapacious demands of the evil one. In this case our theory of metaphysics would be reduced to a pagan dualism, where the powers of good and evil are locked in an eternal struggle for supremacy, thereby keeping each other in check and balance. This, however, is not the teaching of the Bible. “Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?” the prophet asked. “Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?” There is nothing that can come to pass unless the Lord has commanded it. God is not only in command of His people and the blessings of goodness and truth and beauty, He is sovereign over sin and evil, as well. “I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me,” proclaims the Sovereign God of the universe, “ ...that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”   The prophet Amos also declared that God sovereignly decrees evil: “Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?” I have researched a total of sixty-one verses of Scripture which teach that God is the sovereign, primary cause of evil. I found these verses by tracing the original Hebrew root word for evil, ra. The English translation that best reflects the accuracy of the Hebrew text for these verses is the King James Version of the Bible.
Verses Which Asserts that God is the Sovereign, Primary Cause of Evil

Joshua Judges            1 Samuel         2 Samuel         1 Kings            2 Kings         
23:15                9:23      16:14-16            12:11                9:9                     6:33
18:10                17:14                14:10                 21:12
                                    19:9                                          17:20                 22:16, 20
                                                                                                21:21, 29
                                                                                                22:23

2 Chronicles   Nehemiah        Job                  Psalms             Isaiah              Jeremiah        
7:22                  13:18                2:10-11 54:5                  45:7                   1:14
18: 22                                       42:11                78:49                                         4:6
34:24, 28                                                                                                           6:19
                                                                                                                        11:11, 17, 23
Lamentations  Ezekiel            Amos              Micah                                      16:10
3:38                  14:22                3:6                   1:12                                           18:11
                        38:10                9:4                   2:3                                            19:3, 15
                                                                                                                        21:10
                                                                                                                        23:12
                                                                                                                        35:17
                                                                                                                        36:3, 31
                                                                                                                        39:16
                                                                                                                        40:2
                                                                                                                        42:17
                                                                                                                        44:2, 27, 29
                                                                                                                        45:5
                                                                                                                        49:37
                                                                                                                        51:64

There is nothing in the universe that acts outside of the sovereign will of God. Read the magnificent words of the Lord God Almighty at the conclusion of the book of Job.
Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?
What is the way to the place where the
lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are
scattered over the earth?
Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm...?

Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?
Can you loose the cords of Orion?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up [God's] dominion over the earth?

Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
Who endowed the heart with wisdom
or gave understanding to the mind?

“Therefore know this day,” Moses called to the people of Israel, “and consider it in your heart, that the Lord Himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.” He is “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords,” as Paul proclaimed to Timothy. Nebuchadnezzar worshiped God and acknowledged that “He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’” The Lord is the Sovereign King of all the universe. He is the King who directs the hearts (the thoughts and minds) of all the kings of the earth. The Lord sits enthroned over all the earth. God has a literal throne in heaven, and He rules over His kingdom--which is all that is in the heavens, all that is in the earth, and all that is in the seas--precisely according to His will. “You, whose name alone is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth,” Asaph affirmed. He is not “a” king, He is The King! Satan does not make a move apart from the sovereign decree of God. The evil one whined to God that he could not attack Job because God had “made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side.” The Lord told Satan exactly what he could and could not do to Job. Satan never slips free of God’s sovereign leash. Satan had to ask God if he might sift Peter as wheat, and the Lord foreordained that Peter would fall away only for a short time.

Everything that happens has been decreed by God. “Remember the former things of old,” says the Lord, “for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.’” The fact that you are seated right where you are, at this very instant reading this book, was foreordained by the Lord before the beginning of time. Nothing escapes His decree. All reality comes from the sovereign decree of God Almighty. The flight path of the bird outside your window was foreordained by God. We have read that the path of every lightning bolt is directed by Him. God’s sovereignty is the clear and unequivocal teaching of Scripture. To assert anything else, to suggest that God is only “semi-sovereign” over the thoughts and decisions of any man or any creature, even over the activities of Satan, is to attack the truth of Scripture and impugn the sovereignty of God!

Is God the Culpable Cause of Evil?

Once we have established God’s absolute sovereignty over all events, including actions which you or I would call “evil,” we are confronted with a most disquieting--yet unavoidable--question: Is God the culpable cause of evil? This is a frightening thought, one which many of us do not even wish to consider. Everything in our being rebels against the very thought, because we assume that if God causes evil then God is also responsible (culpable) for evil.

We seem to have reached one of those apparent contradictions in Scripture. Specifically, how do we reconcile these two verses: Isaiah 45:5‑7, which reads, “I am the Lord, and there is none else... I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things;” and Habakkuk 1:13, which reads  “You [O Lord] are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness.” Is one of these verses incorrect? That is impossible, since we know that “All Scripture is God-breathed,” that “Every word of God is pure,” and that “The entirety of [His] word is truth.” Again, Dear Reader, this is where we must hold firmly to the truth that God has given us a complete, comprehensive system of knowledge and truth. All the verses we read are different components of the same whole. How then do we integrate these verses from Isaiah and Habakkuk into one consistent system of truth, when they seem so irreconcilably opposed to each other?

Let us begin to answer this question by considering some specific examples. In Genesis 22, God commanded Abraham to “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” Abraham was to take his son, his only son, and kill him and burn the body as an offering to God. Now, Dear Reader, let me ask you two questions: Was it “evil” for God to command this action? Would it have been sin for Abraham to disobey God and spare the life of his son? Abraham set out the very next morning and took Isaac to the top of the mountain. There Abraham built an altar, bound Isaac to it, and took up a knife to kill his own son. Suddenly the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham and commanded him not to kill Isaac! Was this an “evil” command on the part of the Lord? Would it have been sin for Abraham to disobey God and kill Isaac, thereby carrying out his initial orders? While you’re considering these questions, let’s look at still another example from Scripture.

In Joshua 6 we see the people of Israel, recently liberated by God from their slavery in Egypt, approaching the city of Jericho. God told Joshua that He would deliver the city into the hands of the Israelites. However, the Lord said, “Now the city shall be doomed by the Lord to destruction, it and all who are in it. Only Rahab the harlot shall live... they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.” The people of Israel slaughtered everything in Jericho that drew breath: every man, woman, child, and every animal were to be killed. Only Rahab the prostitute and her family were spared, as a reward for Rahab’s faith. Again I ask you: Was it “evil” for God to command this action? Would it have been sin for the people of Israel to disobey God and spare the lives of the people and animals of Jericho? Give these questions some thought before you read on!

God Is Not--and Can Not--Be the Author of Evil

Dear Reader, I want to congratulate you for sticking with me here! I know this is a very difficult subject, and the answers to these questions are not simple ones. Let me pull the different parts of this discussion together for you, so that you may truly see God in all His matchless, sovereign glory. Some of you are probably uncomfortable with the destruction of Jericho in Joshua 6. God’s command to Abraham is easier for us to accept because the Scriptures tell us in the first verse of Genesis 22 that God was testing Abraham. So we comfort ourselves with the idea that God never intended for Abraham to actually plunge the knife into Isaac’s heart. But the city of Jericho was an entirely different matter. This was no test! God commanded the people of Israel to kill every living thing, and He fully expected His command to be obeyed. Some of you reading this account might admit, “You know, I don’t ever want to call God ‘evil,’ but I’ll have to admit this doesn’t seem fair! I understand that God didn’t want His people to be contaminated by the pagan culture of the people of Jericho, but surely there had to be a better way of doing that than killing all the people and animals!”

Did your thinking follow this pattern? It is a perfectly natural, human response. But, Dear Reader, allow me to say this to you in love: it is a sinful response. When we think that “there had to be a better way” for God to accomplish anything, whether it is the testing of Abraham, the destruction of Jericho, or the plan of salvation, we are presuming to be wiser and more pure of thought than God! We are saying in our hearts, “I would have been more merciful than God. I could have been more just.” We are seeking to conform God to a moral or ethical standard that we believe to be superior to God’s! We are assuming that there is a “higher” law to which God must adhere.

But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?

When we allow our thinking to drift in such a direction, we forget the basic doctrine of God’s sovereignty! Remember our definition of sovereignty: God is the Creator, Owner, and King of all creation, who is a law unto Himself--acting according to the good pleasure of His will--without obligation to the creature and motivated by nothing outside of Himself, who freely decreed all things, both good and evil, solely for His eternal glory. To say that God is sovereign is to affirm that God is not subject to any outside cause. There is nothing higher than God or superior to God! God is not subject to any “higher” law or ethical standard because He is the law. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” said the God-man, Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Holy Trinity. God is truth, and goodness, and righteousness. “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes... the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” God is ex lex (“outside the law”) because He is the Law. Just as God is sovereign over all the affairs of the universe, He is also the sovereign Lawgiver. God’s commands are perfect, they are pure, and they are true and righteous altogether. If God commands Abraham to kill Isaac, or He commands the people of Israel to kill every living thing in the city of Jericho, those commands are not “evil,” they are perfect and holy and altogether righteous because they are the commands of Holy God! For Abraham or Israel to disobey God’s commands based on a man-made moral code that they considered to be “more” righteous than the Word of God  would most definitely be sin! John Calvin expressed it this way: “[God’s] will is, and rightly ought to be, the cause of all things that are... God’s will is so much the highest rule of righteousness that whatever he wills, by the very fact that he wills it, must be considered righteous. When, therefore, one asks why God has so done, we must reply: because he has willed it. But if you proceed further to ask why he so willed, you are seeking something greater and higher than God’s will, which cannot be found.”

In answering the question of whether God is the cause of sin, Gordon Clark was blunt:

Disaster does not just happen to befall an individual or a nation. There is no such thing as “bad luck,” or “the ill winds of fate.” It is the Lord who creates prosperity and evil.

If God Creates Evil and Declares Disaster, then How Can God be a Good God?

There are some of us who would shy away from such a question. We feel that it is blasphemous to even suggest that God is not good. But it is a fair question! Scripture teaches that God is pure and holy and righteous. “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne,” the Psalmist proclaimed, and there are numerous other passages that proclaim the absolute goodness and justice of the Lord God Almighty. Yet how do we reconcile God’s goodness with wars, crimes, natural disasters, and the like?

In teaching groups and individuals the doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty, I have seen people get stuck at a point midway between no understanding and a complete understanding. Most of us start with no understanding of God’s sovereignty for the simple reason that we have never been taught otherwise. Most churches and theologians teach that Satan is the ultimate cause of all the sin and evil in the world, and that God “permits” the activities of Satan for some mysterious purpose that will not be revealed until we arrive in heaven. According to this viewpoint, God intended for all men and women to be good, but Satan outwitted Adam and Eve, and their weakness caused sin to enter the world. At that point God had to come up with “Plan B” to counter Satan’s dastardly move, a ploy which seemed to place humanity’s eternal relationship to God in the gravest jeopardy.
After any open-minded man or woman has examined the Scriptures I have included in these chapters and honestly considered their logical implications, they come to the correct understanding that God never “reacts” to anything; He has been working His perfect will throughout history according to His perfect timetable. Every single event in history, from the death of a bird to a world war, from the most noble acts to the most savage, only occurs according to the sovereign decree of God.

However, it is at this very point of achieving a complete understanding of the doctrine of sovereignty that many Christian men and women lurch into a dark valley of misunderstanding, even despair. “If God has decreed all the evil acts of history,” they reason, “then God cannot be good! If He not only knew before the creation of the world, but decreed that Joseph Stalin would order the extermination of tens of millions of his countrymen, how can God be a good God?” I personally know one woman who sat through a sermon on the subject of God and evil, and became so distraught that she went home and was physically ill for three days!

Jesus once was teaching on another subject, and His disciples grumbled, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” This is precisely the initial reaction of many believers who are exposed to accurate biblical instruction on this doctrine. You, yourself, Dear Reader, may be wrestling with such thoughts at this very moment. Don’t give up! If you have come this far, stay with me for just a few more pages and watch the glorious majesty of God unfold!

Five Questions That Help Us Fully Understand the Sovereignty of God

These are merely a small sampling of the hundreds of verses in Scripture that assert God’s perfect goodness. God’s decrees are perfect, His deeds are righteous, and His Word is proven and trustworthy, for He is perfectly faithful and righteous, “glorious in holiness.” God’s goodness is revealed in His justice. His marvelous plan of salvation is a perfect demonstration of “His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” We often speak of God’s love and God’s mercy, but it is important to remember that God’s perfect justice is perhaps the most important manifestation of His goodness! The Lord God Almighty has never compromised His holiness. Dear Reader, I’ve said it before, and I repeat most emphatically here: We must let the Word be the Word and let God be God! All Scripture is God-breathed, and every word of it is true. That Scripture asserts most emphatically that the Sovereign God of the universe is perfectly just, perfectly holy, and perfectly righteous. At this point we are confronted with a decision: Are we going to believe that Word? Are we going to accept the Scriptures as the true and perfect testimony to the character of the living God? Will we believe what the Word of God says about God’s goodness and holiness? Will we trust that teaching or will we insist that God must conform to some other standard of “righteousness” that we believe is superior to God’s righteousness?

“Not So, Lord!”

Oh, how some wrestle with this doctrine! The apostle Peter had a terrible time coming to grips with the sovereignty of God. We see this on several occasions. “Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!’” Jesus responded sharply, telling Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.” Recall that Jesus was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” We read in Acts 2:23 that Jesus’ suffering and death had been foreordained “by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God.” Yet Peter began to rebuke God for His eternal plan of salvation! “This shall not happen!”

Even after the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, Peter still struggled with this concept, as so many of us do. In Acts 10 we read that Peter fell into a trance, during which the Lord spoke to Peter and taught him. While in the trance, Peter saw “heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth. In it were all kinds of four‑footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. And a voice came to him, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ But Peter said, ‘Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean.’” God patiently, lovingly helped Peter adjust his thinking. “And a voice spoke to him again the second time, ‘What God has cleansed you must not call common.’” In both instances we see Peter resisting the sovereign decree of God. “This is wrong, Lord,” Peter would protest, probably believing himself quite righteous in doing so.

Contrast Peter’s objections with the behavior of Abraham. (In fairness to Peter I should point out that at the time of Abraham’s great test he was much more mature and had probably made a great many more mistakes than Peter. Abraham, just like Peter--and just like you and I--learned the hard way!) When the word of the Lord came to Abraham, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love... and offer him there as a burnt offering,” Abraham did not argue and he did not delay. He set out the next morning to obey the command of the Sovereign Lord. As Abraham and Isaac climbed Mount Moriah, Isaac asked that terrible question: “Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” There is no record that Abraham hesitated for even a second over his reply. “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” Abraham had come to a complete understanding of the perfect righteousness of the sovereign God! If God said, “Kill Isaac,” then that command was pure and holy and righteous, and to disobey--or even to argue--would be a sin, because Abraham would have been working to subvert God’s perfect and holy plan.

Job, like Abraham, had a perfect understanding of God’s divine sovereignty. Despite having just learned of the deaths of all his children and the most devastating financial losses, Job worshiped God! “In all this,” the Scriptures report, “Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.” When Job’s wife urged him to “Curse God and die,” Job responded that she sounded like a fool.   Job knew that God is good and God is holy, and that the evil that had befallen him was just one small part of God’s perfect plan. Job biblically corrected his wife by proclaiming, “Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” Job would not even consider accusing God of doing evil.

Peter, on the other hand, demonstrated by his resistance that he assumed there was a higher law, a superior ethical code, that bound both him and God to the same standard! These ethical absolutes were, in Peter’s mind, binding on man and on God as well. Again, although I’m sure Peter meant well, his thinking was sinful! He was denying the Word of God and saying, “Not so, Lord, there is a law that binds You. You are not truly sovereign, because you must conform to this standard of ‘goodness’ that is superior even to your decrees!”

When you view it in this light, it is a rather sobering thought, isn’t it? “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?” I have seen a great many present-day Christian men and women stumble into the same kind of sinful thinking as Peter. They talk back to God! They reason, “God just cannot be good if He decrees evil acts. God is not good.” These men and women fall short of the point of complete understanding by thinking of decreeing evil in the same way as they think of committing evil. God cannot sin. He is too pure to even look upon sin, it is impossible for Him to lie, and He in no way will commit an evil act. God decrees sin without being the author or the agent of that sin. He is not the one who commits the sin. God is the decretive first cause of sin, but He is not responsible for the evil acts of man. Man is the author and the culpable agent of his sin.

Gordon Clark used a superb, simple illustration to help answer the question of whether God is the author or agent of sin. Look at the author’s name on the cover of this book you hold in your hands. It reads “Pastor Lannom.” I am the author of this book, and I am responsible for the contents. Now, you and I know from the scriptural evidence presented throughout this chapter that God is the primary cause of the writing of this book. He sovereignly decreed that Pastor Lannom would write a book titled Legacy. However, I am responsible for this work. I am the secondary cause, the person who committed the act of writing this book. There will come a day when I will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an accounting for any inaccuracies that might occur in this work.

Although God decreed the writing of Legacy and is the primary, decretive cause for its creation, I am the secondary cause for this book, and I am still responsible for the action and the outcome. While God is the decretive cause for evil, it is also true that God cannot sin. His nature will not allow it! Man is the secondary cause for evil events, and God works through these secondary causes to accomplish His perfect and holy ends. Jesus said, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Man is accountable for his actions because the truth has been revealed through God’s Word, and God’s truth is also written indelibly on man’s heart. God is the higher authority who will reward His children for their good works and punish the children of the devil for their evil.

Why Is Man Responsible for His Sins, if God is Sovereign?

We read that “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” These “secret things” belong to God, and man is not responsible for that which God has not revealed to him. But there are those things which have been revealed to us--the truths contained in the Word of God--and for these truths we are responsible. Sovereignty does not absolve humanity of responsibility, but actually establishes the basis for our responsibility to God! Gordon Clark wisely stated that “Morality, therefore, is based on God’s sovereignty. His command alone makes an action right or wrong.” God has revealed Himself to man both internally and externally. He has revealed Himself to us internally through the work of the law written in our hearts and our consciences, as Romans 2:15 attests. God has also revealed Himself and His law to us externally, by His written Word. As the only Sovereign Lawgiver, God has the power to provide eternal rewards for our deeds that are done to His glory, and also the power to punish the unsaved for their acts of sin and rebellion.

All men and women, both the saved and the lost, will give a response (an accounting) to God for their thoughts, deeds, and actions. You might ask, “How can the unsaved man or woman, whose mind is hostile to God, who cannot please God, still be held responsible for his or her actions? The answer, as always, is found in the pages of the Bible. Paul began the Epistle to the Romans by explaining the responsibility of all men to the law of God: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Paul continued in the second chapter of this letter to explain that the unsaved “show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness.” We all have an innate moral framework written in our hearts. We may reject the God of Scripture with our mouths, and our hearts may burn with sin; we may follow the pattern described by the Psalmist: “Why do the wicked renounce God? He has said in his heart, ‘You will not require an account.’” However, in spite of our sin there is an inner witness--which we often call our conscience--which knows there is a God who will judge our actions. However, we have suppressed that truth in our unrighteousness. After one of the dreadful plagues God sent against the people of Egypt, Pharaoh confessed to Moses and Aaron, “I have sinned against the Lord your God.” Pharaoh was a pagan, a polytheist who believed that thereweremany “gods.” But his conscience, the law of God written on his heart, called him to account. He admitted his guilt, even as he persisted in his sinful behavior!

The very best example of the relationship between God’s primary cause and man’s secondary cause and responsibility for sin is revealed by the betrayal and death of Jesus Christ. Acts 4:27-28 unequivocally states that God is the primary cause of the death of Christ: “For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done.” God was the primary, decretive cause of the death of Christ, who was “delivered by the determined purpose of the foreknowledge of God.” And yet the men involved are fully responsible for their actions! Peter directly confronted the people of Israel with their sin: “[Jesus of Nazareth], being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death.” Do you see how Peter acknowledged both the primary and secondary causes of the crucifixion of Christ? The primary cause was the determined purpose of God. The secondary cause was the lawless hands of men. If these men were not responsible for their actions, Peter would not have called their actions lawless. God used these men as the agents who carried out God’s perfect plan of salvation, a plan that the Lord had outlined for Satan in the garden of Eden, “You shall bruise His [Christ’s] heel.” Having uttered this prophecy, indeed, having decreed the death of Christ from before the foundation of the world, “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief.” This was accomplished that Jesus would pay for our sins. “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust,” to accomplish God’s eternal purpose of bringing His people to Him. God’s plan reveals the perfect, eternal wisdom of His glorious mind. God’s plan is the best plan that could possibly have been formulated, simply because it was created by the majestic mind of sovereign grace!

Someone might say, “But that just isn’t fair! Judas and Herod and Pilate shouldn’t be condemned for an action that God had predetermined.” But if any of us believe that, then we believe that we are wiser than God! We are saying in our hearts, “God, you’re pretty wise, but I am wiser. I could have come up with a better plan of salvation. You’re pretty merciful, but I would have been more fair to Pilate and Judas, and to the people of Jericho.” When we think this way we are thinking like Satan; we believe that we are “like God, knowing good and evil.” Dear Reader, please don’t be offended, but the plain truth is that such thinking is idolatrous. If we think this way we are maligning the infinite wisdom of God and exalting ourselves. We believe that we could have done it better, that we could be more just, more fair, more wise than God! We are saying, “I would be a better Sovereign Ruler than You!”

Soli Deo Gloria!

We must remember, when we consider a question such as Does God have the right to do with His creation as He pleases?, the answer is that God has the absolute right! We must remember that God’s main goal is not the happiness and comfort and welfare of all of His creatures. God’s goal is Himself. He is working all the events of history to His glory, not man’s glory! Creation is not man-centered. Creation was not designed to give glory to man, but to give glory to the Creator.

All too often sinful men and women (and that means all men and women) labor to develop a theology that is man-centered rather than God-centered. All too often we define what is “good” in terms of what is good for the creature! The cross of Christ is not man-centered. We like to say that Christ died to atone for the sins of His redeemed ones. Our focus is on man, i.e., the redeemed. While it is true that Christ died to save sinners, the main reason He died on the cross was to demonstrate His righteousness, and that God’s justice and God’s grace would be magnified! God, not man, is glorified in the sacrificial death of Christ! We must develop a God-centered definition of “good.”

A friend of mine recently asked me a question: “Jack, do you mean to say that if one of your daughters was kidnapped, brutalized, and murdered by some lunatic that you would sit here and tell me that God is good? Could you still say that?” My answer: Yes. I would tell everyone in my family that God is good. That is the only response consistent with the justice, sovereignty, and goodness of God. It was the response of Job when he learned of the violent deaths of all of his children: “‘The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.”

The Greatest Evil of All

Dear Reader, if you are still struggling with the concept of God actually decreeing evil acts, let me ask you a question: Do you praise God for the death of His Son on the cross? Every week we go to church and offer up prayers and songs of praise and thanksgiving for the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. We thank God for His grace, and praise Him for His amazing love, a love that decreed that God Himself would suffer and die so that you and I might live forever with Him. But have you ever stopped to consider that the death of Jesus Christ--from cowardly Judas accepting thirty pieces of silver (which was the going price for the purchase of a slave), to the kangaroo court in which He was tried, to the mocking brutality of the Roman soldiers who beat Jesus so badly that he could not be recognized, to His hideous death on the cross--this crime was the most heinous crime, the most vile act in all of history? It was the murder of God! There is no act more monstrous or despicable than that. And this act was decreed by God before the foundation of the world.

“But Jack,” you might protest, “think of the slaughter of millions of innocents throughout the twentieth century alone!” Is that a greater crime than the slaughter of the Creator of all men and women? The most incredible atrocities in all recorded history pale into insignificance compared to this, the ultimate outrage! “Think of the torture of men and women that has taken place in concentration camps throughout the world,” you persist. Was that torture more awful than the torture that the Son of God experienced? No one has ever experienced the unspeakable agony that Jesus Christ suffered that day.

Men did their worst to God on that awful day. They mocked Him and they spit upon Him. The Roman scourging was so violent--actually tearing the victim’s skin so cruelly that the backbone was often exposed--that it is likely that Jesus would have died from that experience alone. Then came the cross, with the sharp, searing pain of heavy iron spikes being driven through His wrists and His feet, followed by the terrible struggle to breath, during which our Lord had to push Himself upright on that cruel spike through His feet in order to draw in each shuddering breath. We derive our English word excruciating from the concept of crucifixion. It was a horrible, fiendish death that Roman law would not allow to be visited on a Roman citizen, but only on aliens and “barbarians.”

And yet, with all that man could do to torture Jesus Christ--and the Romans were experts--Christ’s physical torment was only a tiny fraction of the horror He would experience that dark day. As He hung there upon the cross, God the Father poured out His wrath on the Son for all the sins of every man, woman, and child who has ever and will ever trust in Christ as Savior. The hatred and condemnation that God Almighty holds in His heart for centuries of murder and mayhem, lies, greed, hatred, lust, theft, covetousness, and hundreds of other violations of the perfect Word of God was visited on the Son. God imputed all those sins to His Son, and then treated Him as if He were guilty of your sins, and mine, and the sins of millions of others. “The punishment that brought us peace was upon him.” As He hung there on the cross, He mustered the strength to gasp out the despairing cry of a damned soul: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” There is no one who has ever experienced the absolute and utter horror and despair that our Savior suffered for six agonizing hours as He hung there, while a bloodthirsty mob shouted and cheered and mocked His slow, torturous death. “When He came into the world, He said: Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me.’” God prepared that body for Him... to damn it! No one, even at the hands of the most fiendish torturers, has ever come close to experiencing what the God-man did on the day of His death.

The death of Christ was the most egregious evil that has ever occurred and will ever occur in all eternity. Do we thank God for decreeing that evil act? We should fall on our knees and praise Him every day for His sovereign grace, which made it possible for you and for me to be forgiven for all our sins and declared righteous in the sight of God! We are saved only because God, in His perfect infinite wisdom, decreed that these events should take place in order that the perfect righteousness of Christ would be imputed to us by means of faith, thereby providing us with a free, irrevocable ticket to heaven. Dear Reader, I pray that you will never question God’s mercy, God’s love, God’s justice, or God’s goodness, because all those doubts were answered for all God’s adopted children in one glorious, triumphant cry, “It is finished!”
All the Powers of Hell Could Not Prevail

Let us look back at the crucifixion for one last moment. God’s law decreed that none of the bones of the sacrificial lamb should be broken. John 19:36 confirms that this was the case with Jesus, the Lamb of God who took away the sins of His people. Do you realize that the beating Jesus received had been decreed by God? Isaiah, writing some seven centuries before the birth of the Messiah, foretold that “There were many who were appalled at him‑‑his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness.” God had foreordained the scourging, the beatings at the hands of the religious leaders and Roman soldiers. When Christ stood shivering with pain before the bloodthirsty mob, He was no longer recognizable as a human being! God had predetermined that the Roman soldier would run his spear into Jesus body, for it had been prophesied that “They will look on Me whom they pierced.” But of all the forces of hell arrayed against Him that day, all the power of Satan and his demons working through those whom they had taken captive to do their will, no power on earth could contradict what was written: “Not one of His bones shall be broken.” This is the power of the sovereignty of God: what is written in the Scriptures and all that has been decreed in the infinite wisdom and matchless perfection of His will shall occur. But not one bird will fall, not one bone will be broken, unless God has foreordained it.

After all I have written here, I know that there are some of you who will still struggle with this doctrine. Please, don’t be angry with me for introducing you to this idea, and don’t be angry with yourself for not being able to accept it! Remember that as great a hero of the faith as was the apostle Peter, he, like many other saints, struggled to comprehend God’s sovereignty. I encourage you to pray, ask God for wisdom, and study the Scriptures that I have included in this chapter. I ask you, too, to remember some of the spiritual giants who embraced this doctrine. The apostle Paul wrote about it extensively. Abraham had his knife poised over his own son’s heart, so complete was his belief in the absolute goodness and sovereignty of God. Job praised God for His sovereignty in the midst of catastrophe. When David was fleeing from Absalom and those with him who were seeking to take David’s life, a man named Shimei cursed David and threw stones at him. One of David’s advisors wanted to kill Shimei for his disgraceful treatment of the king, but David would have none of it: “Let him curse, because the Lord has said to him, ‘Curse David.’ Who then shall say, ‘Why have you done so?’... Let him alone, and let him curse; for so the Lord has ordered him.” Years later Paul would echo David, rebuking those who would question God’s sovereign decrees, asking, “Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?” Martin Luther and John Calvin wrote extensively about God’s divine sovereignty. These men all had something in common: they were spiritually mature Christians who loved and understood the goodness and the sovereign majesty of God. We would all do well to ask God to give us the wisdom He bestowed on these great men of faith.

God Hates Evil, But God Uses Evil

As we draw near to the close of this discussion of the existence of God and evil, I want to emphasize one last thought: Evil is not good in disguise. Eastern mysticism teaches that good and evil are all interconnected, that good is evil and evil is good. This in no way reflects the truth of Christianity. God hates evil with a holy hatred. He will punish with perfect justice the wicked acts of all those who reject the pardon offered by the substitutionary death of His Son. But God will use that evil to glorify Himself! God, in His holy, infinite, eternal wisdom decreed that the best vehicle to display His wrath and His justice was to create creatures who fell under that justice and incurred that wrath. Evil was also the best way for God to display His grace to unworthy creatures who do not deserve to receive it! Paul explained, “What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory.” God, in eternity past, decreed the evil acts of men in order to accomplish His perfect plan.

Why Should We Pray, if God is Sovereign?

This is another question that I often hear when I am teaching others about the sovereignty of God. “If God has foreordained every event that will take place throughout history, what is the point of prayer? God has already decreed what will take place. He isn’t going to alter a plan that was formulated before the creation of the world just because I ask Him to!” Dear Reader, prayer, rather than being rendered profitless by the sovereignty of God, is instead even more purposeful! Prayer is profoundly purposeful and efficacious because it pleased God, in the eternal counsel of His will, to ordain prayer as part of the means through which He accomplishes His holy decrees. God’s sovereignty is not an impediment to prayer; it should be the impetus for our prayers, because we can pray with a renewed sense of holy confidence that all our prayers were woven into the intricate tapestry of God’s sovereign plan long before the foundation of the world!

Prayer does not change God, but it is the means to God’s perfect ends. Our prayers are part of the “good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” that Paul wrote of in his letter to the Ephesians. We must understand that prayer does not alter God’s eternal decrees, but our prayers are a part of the means that God has foreordained to bring about His holy ends. Prayer is a holy means to an holy end. There is a foreordained end, and there are also foreordained means. Just as God decreed that Judas, Herod, and Pilate would be the means to condemn Christ to the cross, He also decreed that your prayers would be the means through which a friend would accept Christ as her Savior.

The angel told Joseph that Mary “will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” God foreordained that Jesus’ people would be forgiven of all their sin; this was His end. He also foreordained that the gospel of Christ, uttered through the lips of His servants and powered by the prayers of the saints, would be the means by which God’s perfect ends would be accomplished. With this in mind, let us look at some reasons why God’s people are to “pray without ceasing.”

We are Commanded to Pray

Jesus told His disciples a parable that was expressly designed to teach them “that men always ought to pray and not lose heart,” and admonished them to “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.” Paul encouraged the Roman church to be “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord... continuing steadfastly in prayer.” He told the Ephesians to “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.” He further commanded the Philippians, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” Paul wrote to the Colossians, simply, “Continue earnestly in prayer.” And he instructed Timothy, “I desire therefore that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands.” James, likewise, urged Christian believers to “Pray for one another, that you may be healed.” These verses supply quite a biblical mandate for a life of frequent, fervent prayer!
Prayer Causes Us to Grow in the Grace and Knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ

Christians should follow the clear and shining example of our Savior’s prayer life. Throughout the gospels we see numerous examples of Jesus offering up both public and private prayer. We read of His glorious, public prayer of praise and thanksgiving--“I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.” We also see the intensely personal prayer of Christ at Gethsemane as the hours of His damnation drew near--“O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” The many verses that describe His attitude toward prayer are perhaps best subsumed by Luke 5:16--“Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” Our Lord was a model of prayer, and His followers are to be conformed to the likeness of Christ. We are to be “the fragrance of Christ,” and prayer causes us to become more like Him.

Prayer is a Form of Worship Which is Pleasing to Our Lord

You and I are commanded, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” What better way can we acknowledge Him than to lift up our every action to Him in prayer? We are told that “The prayer of the upright is [the Lord’s] delight,” and that our prayers are like incense to Him. We are to come to God like little children, and we should declare our praise and adoration of Him, just as the creatures in heaven do, night and day. “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand,”as Peter urged all believers, “that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”   It is worship when we proclaim our praise and adoration of Him publicly and privately, and it is also a sincere form of worship when we confess our complete and utter dependence on Him for our every need. “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,” Jesus reminded us, “How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”

But What Difference Will My Prayers Make?

All right, the skeptic might ask, we have been commanded to pray, we are to follow the example of Jesus, and prayer will make me a more godly person. But will my prayers matter? Do they make any difference? The answer, most emphatically is YES! Note well the reasons James gave for prayer: “The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” God hears our prayers. He will give us wisdom if we but ask Him. In fact the Scriptures say that He will give “to all liberally and without reproach.” We have just read the words of the Son, affirming that the Father will “give good things to those who ask Him.”

How is this possible, if God has decreed every event from the falling of a single leaf to the downfall of a nation from before the creation of the world? As I said before, it is because God has foreordained our prayers as the means to accomplishing His perfect ends. He decreed before the beginning of time that He would enjoy the fragrant incense of our heartfelt petitions! So just as God had decreed that the new home you prayed so earnestly for would become available, He also decreed that you would pray for it! This is perfectly consistent with God’s ultimate goal, which is His glory. When our prayers are answered, who gets the glory? Do we walk into church the following week and thump our chests about what great “prayer warriors” we are? No! We give glory to God. We thank Him and praise Him for answered prayer. When others hear our testimony about God’s faithfulness, they are encouraged, and God is lifted up in their hearts.

When we understand that God has decreed our prayers and petitions, we then come to a better understanding of the phrase, “praying according to His will.” “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him,” John wrote, “that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” When we pray according to His will we are praying in harmony with His sovereign decrees, and He will answer those prayers gladly, to His glory! Now we read the beginning of the Lord’s prayer with new eyes: “In this manner, therefore, pray: our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Hallowed be His name: to God be the glory! Hiswill, we now know, is done on earth! This is not a hope that God’s will be accomplished, it is a statement of fact, an utterance of praise. This is why James instructed us to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that,” because we will only do those things if it is according to the Lord’s will! Similarly, when we pray according to God’s sovereign will, those prayers will be answered--gloriously answered--every time!

God’s Sovereign Response to the Prayers of the Saints

Look at the dissimilar examples of two very godly men: King Hezekiah and the apostle Paul. Both men lived exemplary lives. King Hezekiah’s numerous reforms to the then-apostate nation of Israel are recorded in 2 Chronicles 29-31. Paul, of course was perhaps the greatest evangelist and church planter who ever lived. One day, Hezekiah was “sick and near death.” Hezekiah “wept bitterly” and prayed that God would remember his good deeds. The Lord responded immediately: “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will heal you... I will add to your days fifteen years.” And the Lord gave Hezekiah a miraculous sign to confirm His gracious response to prayer.

Paul suffered a dreadful affliction also. While the Scriptures are less specific about Paul’s ailment, he wrote about suffering from “a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.” Paul prayed three times that the Lord would deliver him from his trial. God refused. Instead, He inspired Paul to write one of the most magnificent passages of Scripture: