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Part 5: Mystery

Ephesians 1:1-23

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of prayer from Ephesians 1:1-23.


Prayer changes things. At least, that’s what the ubiquitous plaque says found in many Christian homes and bookshops and the like. Prayer changes things, or does it? If prayer changes things, how can we say God is sovereign, omniscient, transcendent, and ordains all things according to the counsel of his will? Unless you say, of course, when you’re praying you’re simply doing what he has ordained you would do in any case.

But if prayer does not change things, why pray? Some say, “Perhaps the reason why we should pray is not that, by our prayers, we get God to change other things, but that, by our prayers, we change. We become a little more reconciled to doing what he wants.” So prayer changes things in the sense that we pray, but then perhaps, we should just pray that we might change instead of praying God would change the other things.

In any case, if God is that transcendent, sovereign, and overwhelmingly determinative, in what sense is he personal, a responding God, the God of who it can say 40 times no less in Scripture that he relents or, in the older versions, he repents, he changes his mind? But if he’s a God who changes his mind, in precisely what sense is he sovereign?

This is related also, of course, to our evangelism. Many of you, no doubt, have read J.I. Packer’s excellent little book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. It starts off in a very interesting way. It starts off by saying, “When we get down on our knees, then we really believe in the sovereignty of God.”

We start praying for the salvation of our friends. If we don’t think God can actually save our friends, what on earth is the point of asking him to do so? If God has done all he can and now it’s entirely up to us and our evangelism and our friends and their decisions, why bother praying to God? Which is a good question, but one might also ask the question, “If God is sovereign they’re all elected in any case, why bother praying in the first place?”

You can really hurt your head thinking about this kind of stuff. Indeed, it has to be confessed that thinking about the sovereignty of God can actually become a disincentive to prayer. Shameful, but it’s true. You start thinking about the sovereignty of God, and instead of being dissolved in worship, you start saying, “If God’s that sovereign, Lord, your will be done. Amen.” That sort of covers it.

Of course, we know that doesn’t sound like the prayers of Moses when he’s interceding with God, “Please, do something,” or the passion of Paul, but it seems to go along with the doctrine of Moses and the doctrine of Paul, so tonight we’re going to talk about something of the mystery that is at stake in praying under a sovereign God.

In the passage that was read to us, we read, “In him …” That is Christ. “… we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” An extraordinarily strong statement. Commentators who don’t like it bend over backwards to make it mean almost anything than what it actually says.

Then, as if that’s not enough, after Paul has finished that paragraph, he says, “For this reason …” Because of the sweeping sovereignty of God throughout the first 14 verses or so, “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, and I keep asking God and praying.” For Paul, the sovereignty of God actually becomes an incentive for prayer. Why?

1. Two propositions, both of which I shall maintain are, biblically speaking, true.

Two propositions that are everywhere either presupposed or taught in Scripture.

A) God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions to mitigate human responsibility.

That’s the first proposition.

B) Human beings are morally responsible creatures.

By this, I mean they believe, they disbelieve, they obey, they disobey, they choose, they rebel, they submit, and their actions in this regard are morally significant. They are morally responsible creatures, but in Scripture, this never functions so as to make God absolutely contingent. It never functions so as to make God less than sovereign.

That’s almost enough to choke on a week before exams. I’m aware of that, but bear with me since I am persuaded, unless we see both of those propositions are true and at least start to think of the ways in which we may articulate them without building in a contradiction, we get ourselves into a place where we alternatively believe in a sovereign God or in a less than sovereign but personal God and we never get our picture of God together.

What I want to maintain is those two propositions are true in Scripture everywhere. We could begin by looking at many, many texts that justify the first and many texts that justify the second. Instead, I want to draw your attention to a handful of texts where both of them come together. We’ll begin with Genesis.

Genesis, chapter 50. Joseph’s father, Jacob, has died. Joseph’s brothers are afraid that now that their father is dead their brother, Joseph, now the prime minister of Egypt, will turn on them and take them to pieces for having sold him as a slave through the Midianites to Egypt so many years before.

They come with their long story (chapter 50, verses 15 and following). Joseph responds with tears (verse 17) and replies (verse 19), “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.”

It’s very interesting how Joseph words this. He does not say, “Your evil intent was to sell me as a slave to Egypt, but God rode in on his sovereign, white charger and turned the terrible evil around to bring good out of it.” He doesn’t say that, nor does he say, “God’s purpose all along was to send me to Egypt, preferably in a chauffer-driven chariot, but you chaps mucked it up by doing something from the side, as it were, that God hadn’t foreseen, so that I got there all right but not exactly in the condition I had hoped.” He doesn’t say either of those things.

Rather, he says, in the one event, the brothers were evil. They had evil intentions. They intended to sell their own flesh and blood as a slave, if you please, but in the same event, God’s intents were all good. His intentions were all good, and the result, to God’s praise but scarcely to the brothers’, is through Joseph’s appointment to this office, he has been able to reserve food and save many people alive through the years of drought that God himself had foreseen. Both propositions are simply assumed to be true. How they’re true, nobody explains for us. They’re simply assumed to be true.

Isaiah, chapter 10, verse 5 and following. Here, God speaks through Isaiah to the Assyrian hordes to the north and God says, “Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath!” Notice God is addressing the Assyrians whose terrible war machine has been used to chasten all kinds of enemies, all kinds of sinners including God’s own covenant people. God treats the Assyrians as if they are nothing other than his war tools, the club of his wrath, the rod of his indignation.

He says, “I send him against a godless nation.” He is referring now to Israel, his own covenant people. “I dispatch him against a people who anger me, to seize loot and snatch plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets. But this is not what he intends.” This isn’t exactly what the Assyrian has in mind. He’s not saying, “I’m just an instrument in God’s hand. I’m doing what God wants me to do.” That’s not what the Assyrian is thinking.

“His purpose is to destroy, to put an end to many nations. ‘Are not my commanders all kings?’ he says.” That is, “Even my commanders are greater than your kings.” “Has not Kalno fared like Carchemish?” He starts reeling off a list of cities they’ve already subjugated. “Is not Hamath like Arpad, and Samaria like Damascus? As my hand seized the kingdoms of the idols, kingdoms whose images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria—shall I not deal with Jerusalem and her images as I dealt with Samaria and her idols?”

That is, “I’ve already subjugated Samaria. Watch me take on Jerusalem. Jerusalem isn’t any better than Carchemish.” Isaiah comments. “When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem …” His work through the Assyrians punishing them. “… he will say, ‘I will punish the king of Assyria for the willful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes.

For he says: “By the strength of my hand I have done this, and by my wisdom, because I have understanding. I removed the boundaries of nations, I plundered their treasures; like a mighty one I subdued their kings. As one reaches into a nest, so my hand reached for the wealth of the nations; as men gather abandoned eggs, so I gathered all the countries; not one flapped a wing, or opened its mouth to chirp.” ’ ” Talk about arrogance!

And God’s response: “Does the ax raise itself above him who swings it, or the saw boast against him who uses it? As if a rod were to wield him who lifts it up, or a club brandish him who is not wood! Therefore, the Lord, the Lord Almighty, will send a wasting disease upon his sturdy warriors; under his pomp a fire will be kindled like a blazing flame. The Light of Israel will become a fire, their Holy One a flame; in a single day it will burn and consume his thorns and his briers.”

Notice then, in Assyrian aggression God is so sovereign that he can actually talk of using this entire people like a tool. On the other hand, the people are not thereby exonerated. They’re responsible for all their actions, not least their haughtiness in thinking that they’re doing this all by themselves. Both propositions are simply assumed to be true.

Now come to Philippians, chapter 2, verses 12 and 13. “Therefore, my dear friends …” In the light of Christ’s amazing humility and subsequent glorification just expounded in the preceding verses. “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

Again, it helps to see what is being said if we observe what is not being said. The text does not say, “Let go and let God.” It doesn’t say, “Just be passive. It is God who is doing it all. God is willing in you. God is working in you. Therefore, just back off and let God do it all!” Still less does it say, “God has done his bit. He sent his Son. He gave you his Spirit. Now, quite frankly, it’s all up to you. Unless you make the right choices and unless you do the right work, who knows where you’ll end up? Work out your own salvation. God has done his bit.”

What it says, instead, is, “Work out your own salvation, for it is God working in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” The fact that God is sovereignly working his will in you both to will, if you please (working actually at the level of your will), and to do (your actions) his good pleasure, becomes an incentive in Paul’s mind to work out your own salvation not a disincentive.

That’s very hard for us in the West to come to grips with because we so often pit human responsibility against God’s sovereignty. It’s not the way it is here. The one becomes the incentive for the other, not the means of mitigating the other or qualifying the other or subtracting something from the other.

It’s not only so in connection with our Christian walk, but even in the way we’re to look at evangelism. Consider Acts, chapter 18. A little earlier Paul had arrived for the first time, so far as we know, in Europe. He went on to Philippi, started a church there, but landed up in jail, beaten in stocks. He gets out of there and goes on to Thessalonica and is run out of town on a rail. He arrives in Berea, starts another church there, and has to fly.

He goes to Athens and enters into intellectual debate but is somewhat lonely since he sent off his messengers to go north again to look at the fledgling cities in Macedonia he has already been through. Now he comes to Corinth, the kind of international port city known for its immorality, known for its cosmopolitan and, quite frankly, cocksure ways. He has been beaten up and suffered quite a lot, and clearly, he is discouraged, for one night the Lord comes to him in a dream, a vision.

Verse 9: “ ‘Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.’ So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.” You must understand, when God said to Paul, “I have many people in this city,” it was before there was a church.

What God meant was, “I have many people known to me, my elect. Your job is so to preach that they will get converted, and because I have so many people here, I will protect you and they will get converted. Preach on, Paul. Don’t be discouraged. Don’t give up now. I have a lot of people here. Get on with the job.”

Isn’t that an interesting way of looking at election? For most us, election is some kind of disincentive to evangelize. In God’s mind, it’s an incentive. In fact, if you believe as strongly as the apostle does on the perversity of human nature, it takes nothing less than the power of God to bring about conversion in the first place, so of course, you have to have God at work, and unless God is going to work, there’s not much point preaching. Paul finds even election is an incentive to get on with the task.

There are scores and scores and scores of passages like this, but let me draw your attention to only one more. Acts, chapter 4. Persecution is just beginning to break out in the church. Peter and John have been arrested, and they’re released (verse 23). They go back and report to their own people all the chief priests and elders have done to them, and the church responds appropriately with a prayer meeting. This is the substance of what they prayed.

“ ‘Sovereign Lord,’ they said, ‘you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his anointed one.” ’ ” Quoting Psalm 2.

In other words, in the midst of persecution, they remember God is sovereign, both by referring to creation and by referring to Scripture where God is quite aware at the machinations of evil rulers. Indeed, the supreme example has been in the death of God’s own Son, so they go on in their prayer and say, “Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.”

In the light of that, they go on and pray, “So fill us with boldness that we may the better proclaim the gospel.” That is, again, a remarkable passage from the perspective of much Western thought today. They do not say, “God planned to send his Son and be a Redeemer. We don’t know quite how, telling us a lot of nice things and filling us with hope and good cheer, but somehow the plans got mucked up because of an international-class conspiracy. The result being that Jesus ended up on the cross, so God went into plan two, and as a result, we’re saved.”

If you put it that way, the cross becomes an afterthought in the mind of God; whereas, all of Scripture insists it is the very centerpiece of God’s purpose of redemption. On the other hand, if you say God’s whole plan and purpose was to bring Jesus to the cross and Jesus got there because of God’s full intention to bring him there as a Redeemer for us, you don’t want to say the evil people who entered into their conspiracy were not really guilty because, if they’re not really guilty because God is so sovereign, why does Jesus have to die for their sins anyway?

If God is so sovereign that all that we do is just in the class of the robotic, there’s not much point dying for sin, is there? There’s no moral significance in what we do. In other words, for the Christian who understands the cross is at the very heart of God’s redemptive purposes, there is no choice but to adopt the two propositions I’ve outlined for you. None.

Human beings are responsible. We are responsible for the choices we make, for what we do, for what we say, for what we think, for what we love. We are responsible creatures with moral significance attached to the steps we take in our lives, but that does not mean God becomes contingent.

God is sovereign, so sovereign that Paul can say, for example, “All things work together for good to those who are the called of God,” so sovereign that Job, in the midst of all his anguish in the maintenance of his integrity, when he’s so sure he hasn’t done anything evil enough to deserve such terrible punishment and almost accuses God of being unjust, finally gets by way of response, not an explanation but simply a powerful reminder from God himself that Job isn’t big enough to understand everything.

In other words, the Christian comes to terms with mystery. There are some areas where Christians have already come to terms with that. We speak of the Trinity. We hold the Bible teaches the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, and there is but one God, and I would be the first to defend that is what the Bible teaches.

Then we try to work out our models to explain it. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago a Muslim chap, Mohammed Yusuf Guraya. He was a wonderful fellow in forcing me to think through the elements of my faith. One night as we walked down Mount Royal in Montreal, he said to me, “Don, you are studying chemistry and mathematics.” I said, “Yes.”

“If you have one cup and you add another cup, how many cups do you have?” My mathematics was up to that, and I said, “Two.” He said, “If you add another cup, how many cups do you have?”

“Three.”

“If you have three cups and you take away one cup, how many cups do you have?”

“Two.”

“Is Jesus God?”

“Yes.”

“Is the Father God?”

“Yes.”

“Is the Spirit God?”

“Yes.”

“So you have a God and a God and a God. How many Gods is that?” I said, “Guraya, I’m not a theologian. You are.” He was finishing his PhD in Islamic studies. I was an undergraduate in chemistry and mathematics. “But if you’re going to use a mathematical example, let me choose the math. How much is infinity plus infinity plus infinity?”

He smiled. He said, “Infinity.”

“Three times infinity minus infinity. How much does that give you?” He knew enough math for that one, too. I said, “I serve an infinite God. It’s a lousy model, but it’s the best I can do.” Over the years, then, people have tried to think of analogous models, and I could take a couple of hours and talk about the way theologians have tried to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity, but by and large, if we’re Christians, we’ve come to accept that, that the Bible teaches that. We’ve come to accept Jesus is presented in Scripture as both thoroughly God and thoroughly man.

We’ve come to accept that, but many of us as Christians have not come thoroughly to accept this one, but I would argue, if I had enough time, I think I could show you ultimately the tension between these two propositions I’ve given you, the proposition that God is sovereign but his sovereignty does not mitigate human responsibility and that human beings are responsible but their responsibility does not make God contingent, is finally tied to the way God is presented as God in Scripture.

God is presented both as sovereign and transcendent, above time and space, the Creator of all things and controlling all things, and he is presented as personal, but all that you and I mean by personal is in the realm of the finite. What do we mean when we say we have a personal relationship? It means I talk to him or her, and she talks back to me. I ask a question, and she responds. She tells me off. My children ask me for something. I say yes or I say no. I yell at them, “You’re late for school.” They say, “Oh, Dad!”

Relationships. Time. Sequence. Cause and effect. All that I understand of personal relationships is in the realm of the time bound, and the presentation of God in Scripture is that he is a personal God. I talk to him. He listens. He talks to human beings. He foreordains things. That’s a time category. He predestines things. That’s a time category. He relents. He changes his mind. Those are all parts of the presentation of God in Scripture.

If you get a God that is only sovereign, he’s not a God you can talk to. If you get a God that is only personal, he’s not big enough to do very much. He might hold your hand and weep a few tears with you, but at the end of the day, you can’t be sure how it’s going to turn out in the end because he’s not big enough. But the Scriptures insist the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is both sovereign and personal. Clearly, there are ways of saying that that wind you up in just plain, flat-out, logical contradiction.

There are ways of saying that that are unacceptable because they’re just plain illogical, but what I’m suggesting to you is there are some holes in our knowledge of the way we think about God that mean, although I can’t explain exactly how those two things are simultaneously true, there are enough areas where I don’t know things that it makes sense to me to affirm they’re true. There’s nothing logically contradictory about them, even though they go way beyond my ability to put them together.

For example, I really don’t know the relationship God has to time. I barely know what time is. I certainly do not know what eternity is. Some people speculate, for God, everything is simultaneous or everything is eternal because God stands outside of time, but I don’t know that. Maybe God has sequence. It just doesn’t look like ours. Is it true to think, for God, Christ is always dying, and Christ is always rising, and Christ is always being born? I doubt it, but I don’t know. I don’t know what eternity look like to God. I don’t know what time looks like to God. I’m barely clear of what time looks like to me.

I don’t know, either, how God handles secondary agents, but in Scripture, it is again and again the case that God works through secondary agents in asymmetrical ways. When God works behind an evil character or an evil nation like Assyria or like Judas, they never escape the bounds of his sovereignty but the evil is not ascribed to him, but when God works through a good agent, an apostle Paul, his own Son, Jesus Christ, the good is always ascribed to him. I don’t know how God handles secondary agents.

I don’t know, but I know that’s the way it works out in Scripture, and if you say, “That sounds a bit too convenient for God,” my response is, “It’s the only God we have.” It’s the God who has disclosed himself in Jesus Christ. When I start to think of possible alternative gods in some sort of philosophy course in alternative worlds, the gods that come out are infinitely worse.

Not only so, but I don’t even know what freedom means. That’s another thing I don’t know. I’m sure of what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean I’m so free I can make God contingent, because then I’ve denied one of the things the Bible says everywhere is true. When somebody asks me if I believe in free will, I want to know what they mean. If it’s a kind of freedom of the will that denies God is God, I don’t believe in it, which is why many, many Christian theologians have spoken of freedom of the will in terms of voluntarism, in terms of doing what they want to do.

Judas is condemned, not because he escapes the sovereignty of God but because, at the end of the day, he did what he wanted to do. At the end of the day, we’ll be condemned or praised not because we managed in our great power or wisdom or intricate machinations somehow to elude the sovereignty of God but because we end up doing what we want to do.

Again, if you’re a philosophy major and you want to pursue that one a little farther, the book I would recommend to you is by Robert Young called Freedom, Responsibility, and God. The theory is called compatibilism. If you’re not a philosophy major, don’t even try to read it. It reads like a book for a philosophy major.

There are ways of thinking about these ones. I’m not going to push it any farther. All I’m saying is there are enough unknowns surrounding these two propositions that I’m prepared to believe they’re both true, not only because Scripture teaches them and Scripture does, but also because any other alternative world I can think of ends me up in even greater problems. If you want to ask questions on that one later, you go right ahead.

What does this mean? This means it becomes vitally important, then, if we grant there is some mystery in the very character of God (things we don’t understand), we must put our hands to our mouths and bow down in worship instead of simply dragging out artificial explanations. If there are some mysteries to God, it becomes vitally important how we handle the poles of the mystery.

In other words, what are we to conclude from the fact that God is sovereign? Do the biblical writers ever conclude from the fact that God is sovereign, “Therefore, I don’t need to do anything; I just sort of wait and it will happen to me”? Do they ever conclude because God is sovereign, “I’m a robot, so I’m not responsible”? No, because that would be denying another pole that’s also a given. It’s part of the truth that’s given.

Do the biblical writers ever conclude from the fact that I am responsible, “Therefore, God is contingent waiting for me to do my bit”? The Bible never makes that kind of conclusion. It never draws that conclusion. The Bible is prepared to live with the tension. Here’s the important part. All that was introduction. Here’s the important part.

If you want to stabilize your faith on these two truths, work through how those two truths function in the Bible. Find out in the Bible what those two truths do, what is deduced from them, what biblical writers infer from this pole or that pole. For example, we saw one in Acts, chapter 18. From the fact of God’s election, Paul concludes because of this message in the night that he should get on with evangelism. In other words, election functions as an incentive to evangelism not a disincentive.

I first understood what that meant when I was a boy growing up. My father was trying to plant a church in French Canada, and it was very slow and discouraging work. In those days, Protestants of any description tended to get beaten up just because they were Protestants. Baptist ministers alone spent 8 years in jail between 1950 and 1952 in French Canada for preaching the gospel. The charge was always inciting to riot or disturbing the peace; nevertheless, that was what it was like.

When I was about 10 or 12, a number of American missionaries came up to French Canada who had spent years and years and years in French West Africa. They had seen a lot of fruit out there, a lot of people who had been converted. They came into French Canada (I don’t mean to be unkind) with a slight chip on their shoulders.

By this time, I was old enough to ask questions, and I said, “Dad, all these missionaries, why aren’t they staying?” He said, “Don, you have to understand these people have seen a lot of fruit. They’ve worked in areas where there have been a lot of conversions, and they just cannot imagine there cannot be conversions. They cannot imagine a dry field, so they got very discouraged, and they’ve gone home.”

“Well, Dad, why are you staying? Couldn’t you get a church somewhere where there’s a little more going on?” Dad turned to me, and there were tears in his eyes, and he said, “I stay because I believe God has his people in this place.” For him, election functioned as an incentive to evangelism, as an incentive to fidelity and to perseverance. Now my Dad is almost 80. He’s coming to see us in a couple of weeks. Now he’s the grand old man of Quebec, but I remember the lean years when election functioned, for him, as the incentive to fidelity.

Isn’t that what Philippians 2 is about? God is working in you both to will and do his good pleasure, so get on with it. Work out your own salvation. Don’t use that as a sop for laziness, lethargy, independence, and rebellion. Find out how these truths function in Scripture and run with it.

That is exactly the way we must operate when we come, then, to the matter of prayer. How do these truths function in our prayer lives? What does it mean to pray under the sovereignty of God? When you look at Ephesians, chapter 1, the first 14 verses are larded with the most amazing ascriptions of praise to God because of his gracious sovereignty.

Verse 3: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms.” Verse 4: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” Sweeping claims that turn on the sovereignty of God. “In him we have redemption through his blood.” (Verse 7)

Verse 11: “In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ …” The first converts. “… might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession.”

All of this by God to the praise of his glory. Then Paul says, “For this reason, I have not stopped giving thanks. I have not stopped praying.” All of God’s sweeping sovereignty is, for Paul, an incentive to prayer. Never, never, never a disincentive. If you get one thing out of this meeting this evening, get this: never, never, never stoop to using God’s sovereignty as a disincentive to pray, as an excuse for prayerlessness.

In the Scripture, it doesn’t function that way. Granted there is tension there, granted there is mystery, but in Scripture, God’s sovereignty functions as an incentive to get on with praying in line with what God is determined to do.

2. Because God is sovereign, Paul offers three things.

A) Thanksgiving for God’s intervening, sovereign grace

Because God is sovereign, Paul offers, first, thanksgiving for God’s intervening, sovereign grace. Verses 15 and 16: “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.”

Here he observes again their faith and love, and he has just tied that in the preceding verses to God’s intervention in their lives. In love, God predestined them to show out the grace of God, to show out the mercies and mysteries of redemption. Now he has observed their faith and their love. Having observed this, he knows God is at work in them, and because he knows God is at work in them, therefore, he prays and gives thanks for what God has done.

In other words, every sign of spiritual growth and grace in your life or the lives of others ought to be a cause for thanksgiving in your own prayer life. “I thank God you have worked through the life of my dear brother, so-and-so, or my dear sister, so-and-so. I thank God you have sovereignly worked in grace in their lives. Otherwise, they wouldn’t change.”

God knows I wouldn’t change if it weren’t for his intervening grace in my life. God knows none of us would. Paul looks at the important things and sees them as signs that God is sovereign, and because God is sovereign, he offers thanksgiving for God’s intervening and sovereign grace.

B) Because God is sovereign, Paul offers intercession that God’s sovereign, holy purposes in the salvation of his people may be accomplished.

Verses 17 to 19: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”

Note, then, because God is sovereign, that governing for this reason covers the whole paragraph. Because God is sovereign, Paul intercedes that God’s holy purposes in salvation may be accomplished. What in particular does Paul pray for? In verse 17, he prays for the knowledge of God. Do you feel you know God better this year than last? “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you wisdom and revelation, so you may know him better.”

Paul is not satisfied with mediocrity. He wants you to know him better, and to do so will require revelation. Some people think of revelation only in terms of what God has authoritatively given in Scripture or what God has authoritatively given through Jesus Christ himself, but sometimes revelation is used in terms of what God gives us the better to know him, the better to understand him, the better to obey him.

For example, in Philippians, chapter 3, verse 15, we read these words after Paul has told them what they are supposed to do, how they’re supposed to press on, “All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will …” The NIV has “… make clear to you.” The verb is will reveal it to you. There is a kind of quiet, internal revelation as God opens up our minds as Christians and enables us to know him better, to love him better, and to grasp who he is better.

This comes about, in part, by meditating on his Word, by joining in corporate worship, by interacting with other Christians, and by getting out and witnessing. It comes about by many things, but above all, it comes about by God, through his Spirit, revealing things to us and opening up our minds.

“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened …” so we can grasp God and know him better. That’s what Paul prays for, and he prays this because God has predestined us and ordained us that we should be chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Because of God’s determined purposes in the first half of the chapter, therefore, Paul prays these purposes might be worked out in our lives in his prayer.

He prays, therefore, for knowledge of God (verse 17), for spiritual insight, that we might then grasp (verse 18) the hope of our calling. That is what we’re ultimately looking forward to, the ultimate hope, what it will be like to go home to heaven, and the riches, the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints. How wonderful it is to be a Christian now enjoying the Spirit as the down-payment of the final inheritance and, finally, on the last day, receiving from his hand all that God has won for us by the death of his own Son on our behalf, and indeed, his incomparably great power to believers.

This, of course, is in anticipation of the prayer Mark Ashton will be dealing with in two weeks’ time. That’s found in chapter 3, verses 14 and following. There Paul prays for power twice and tells us what the purpose of this power is. The purpose of this power is that Christ might dwell in our hearts and we might have the ability, because of this power, to grasp the limitless dimensions of God’s love. Mark will come to that in two weeks’ time. The fact of the matter is Christians cannot be mature until that power is worked out in our lives.

C) Paul offers a brief review of God’s most dramatic display of power.

Verse 19b and following. He mentions this power he wants worked out in us who believe, and then he explains what this power is like. He says, “That power is like the working of God’s mighty strength he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church.”

“That power,” he says. When you think of the power of God what does your mind gravitate toward? If you tried to think of the most powerful thing God has ever done, what would you think of? The creation? The terrible destruction of the flood? Maybe thermodynamically impossible things like the burning bush? What do you think of?

If you believe in an omnipotent God, there cannot be degree of difficulty with him, so when you think of the most remarkable testimony to his power, you can’t think of the most difficult thing because there are no degrees of difficulty to an omnipotent God. Paul doesn’t look around for the most difficult one; he looks around for the most significant one, and the most significant example of God’s power is when he raised Christ from the dead because that ushered in a whole new age. Redemption was accomplished.

The same power that God exerted when he raised Christ from the dead is the power that Paul prays for in the lives of believers now. That’s what he prays for, the power exerted in Christ raised, the power displayed in Christ exalted, already raised to the heavenly realms above all other authorities. Indeed, a little farther on in chapter 2, verses 3 to 7, it says, “We too are raised in him already in the heavenly realms.”

As far as God is concerned, as he looks at us.… He knows we’re down here, of course. He’s not dumb. He looks at us as already belonging to that realm. As our citizenship is in the New Jerusalem, as already we belong to the kingdom that is to come, so also we have been raised with him. Christ stands in our place. He sees us through him. We are justified in him. We are already raised as Christ has already been raised.

That’s why, elsewhere, Paul can say in Colossians, chapter 3, “Since you are already now seated with Christ in the heavenlies, therefore, act in a certain way.” We are raised also in him, not quite personally yet. That comes at the end, but principially already, positionally already, forensically already. We are already raised in him.

It is the power, then, displayed in Christ exalted. It is the power exercised by Christ, the head over everything. All of God’s power, Scriptures insist, is mediated through Christ raised. All of God’s power is mediated through this Jesus Christ who once lay in a tomb outside Jerusalem and is now risen. God has committed all of his authority and power to be mediated through him. Isn’t that what Jesus said? “All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples.”

What, then, does Paul conclude about how we should pray in the light of God’s sovereignty? In a word it is this: study Scripture, study what God is doing, and when you recognize the footprints of his sovereignty, when you see what his character and his determined purposes are, thank God for the signs of his intervening grace, for his infinite wisdom, and pray that his purposes in redemption will be accomplished in our lives, in the lives of his people everywhere for the praise of his glory and grace. That is what we should be praying for. Everything else is just explanation. Let us pray.

Our Father, we freely confess you are far beyond our comprehension. Far too often we have wanted a domesticated God, but you are the Sovereign Lord. You cannot be tamed. You fit in no one’s pocket. We freely confess there are many things to your character and power we cannot begin to fathom, but we do bow in worship and acknowledge you with joy and gratitude to be the sovereign, personal God of Scripture, the sovereign, personal God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our God, all powerful, all wise, all good but hearing, responding, and intervening.

We do not know how all of these things are true, but we see they are mightily confirmed, not least in the very death and resurrection of your Son. While angels desire to look into your redemptive plan, you worked all things together for good to those who are the called of your purposes.

So hear us, Lord God, and expand our understanding. Increase the response of our hearts in worship, and work out your good pleasure in us that we may do your will and delight in it and understand even our very desire for prayer is the fruit of your Spirit working in us both to will and to do of your good pleasure. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.

There are many things I would have liked to have added in, but I left out some of the passages on God’s relenting, for example, and many other things, but let’s take at least five minutes or so for questions, and then we’ll join in worship.

Question: Do you think God has a specific will for each Christian believer?

Don: The question was, “Do I think God has a specific will for each Christian believer?” It’s tied to a book several people have mentioned to me, a book by Needham. Yes. But when you have said yes, you need to be careful what is not to be drawn from that, it seems to me. We’ve already seen three weeks back or so when the Bible speaks of the will of God it speaks less frequently in terms of God’s will for us in terms of a mate or a vocation than it does in terms of God’s will for us or his desire that we be holy.

The question is partly, “Is God so sovereign that, in fact, we cannot escape the bounds of his sovereignty, and in that sense inevitably we do his will?” The answer is yes. “Does God have desires toward us as he has desires toward all men that we should return and repent and believe and obey and be holy?” Yes. “Is God’s will frustrated?” Well, it depends on what you mean by his will. His will is used in a variety of ways.

“Turn, turn, for the Lord has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” In that sense, it’s God’s will that all should be saved, but sometimes his will is his determinative will, as here in Ephesians, chapter 1, verse 11. You don’t escape that one no matter what you do. You can’t. Then there’s the next layer of question that says, “Does God give you a complete plan of his will?” No. No. Not in the determined sense. He forces you to make decisions.

There are times, even with my children who are still quite young, where I know what I will allow them to do and what I won’t, but I might not tell them in advance, partly because I want them to make decisions. This whole question of the will of God turns on a whole lot of further categories. We should seek the will of God in all matters of life, no doubt, but we shouldn’t become so fearful, so frenetic that we go into a shop and say, “Shall I take this potato or that potato? Lord, what’s your will?” I don’t think God is treating us that way.

On the other hand, which potato you do take, in one sense, will be determined by God’s will. You’re back to the fundamental tension again. If God is so sovereign that not even a bird from heaven falls to the ground without his sanction, if even the hairs of my head are numbered in continually decreasing count, then of course, which potato I pick up is within the purview of his will. It doesn’t mitigate my responsibility. I don’t know what precise responsibility I have. Not to pick the rotten ones, probably. You see the point.

It seems to me there’s a fair bit of stuff that’s written on the area that is a bit simplistic because it hasn’t dealt, first of all, with the fundamental tension that comes about from the fact that God is both sovereign and personal. A lot more could be said on that, but we’ll let it pass. Yes?

Question: On that basis, do you have any recommendations or guidelines for second- or third-year students who are wondering what they’re going to do after university?

Don: Did everybody hear the question? “On that basis, do I have any recommendations or guidelines for second- or third-year students who are wondering what they’re going to do after university?” What I’d like to know about your question is what you mean by “on that basis,” but that would probably be a bit quibbly.

What I would say in individual cases is not necessarily what I would say to a whole bunch. To a whole group I would say, if you’re really desirous above all of knowing God and making your life count, then you must ask God and ask others who know you well to make you willing and eager to serve with your life as best you can to his glory and his people’s good. That’s what you should pursue. That might make you a nuclear physicist or a dustbin man, I don’t know.

On the other hand, it might also help to break down an awful lot of the false criteria for success that are endemic in our society. I’ve indicated I first studied chemistry and mathematics. The turning point came for me when I was in a research lab in Ottawa working on air pollution. In the laboratory, my colleagues were divided, as far as I could see, into two groups.

One group for whom chemistry was everything. It was their god. It wasn’t mine. I was at the same time working with a chap up the valley trying to plant a Sunday school and a church. It was a fascinating job. I liked it a great deal. I enjoyed chemistry, but it wasn’t my god. The other half were cynical, cynical through and through. Everything didn’t matter. They were just putting in time waiting to collect their pension, waiting for the cottage at the weekend. That wasn’t me either.

I had purpose in my life. I still do! I haven’t hit my stride yet. There are more things I want to do. Eventually, for me, chemistry, in my case, wasn’t enough to offer to God. I could picture myself on the last day saying, “Here God. Here’s my chemistry.” I’m not saying that’s not appropriate for many chemists. I’m saying the way God worked in my life, that was an important step. I remember a chorus I learned in Sunday school.

By and by when I look on His face,

Beautiful face, thorn shadowed face;

By and by when I look on His face,

I’ll wish I had given Him more.

After about four months I heard a preacher preach, in fact, on a passage I left out tonight I wanted to refer to but ran out of time, Ezekiel, chapter 22. “I sought for a man to stand in the gap before me for my people, but I found none.” God is personal. You have to pit that verse over against Esther, where Mordecai says to Esther, “If you don’t step in and save Israel, salvation will come from another place, but you and your family will be wiped out.”

It’s not as if God’s hand are tied because he’s sovereign (he will work out his own good pleasure), but at the same time, because he’s personal, he can say things like, “I sought for a man to stand in the gap before me for my people, but I found none,” and it was as if the whole Spirit of God welling up within me forced me to cry out, as it were, “Here am I! Send me.”

How people are called, on the other hand, to “full-time vocational ministry” (not an entirely happy term) is not easy to nail down. There were other factors. Several years earlier, a pastor of a church had said, “Don, I want you to help me as my associate, my assistant, this summer.” I said, “Come on! You need somebody in theology, somebody who is doing divinity. I’m doing chemistry.” So I didn’t do it. I was always stubborn.

The point is it was the first sign somebody had spoken to me and said, “I see something in you that tells me you should consider doing something else.” The call in Scriptures is amazingly diverse. It’s Paul telling Timothy to look out for young men who will be able to pass on the truths to others. It’s also the Spirit of God working in you. It’s also weighing up your own values and your own goals and your own commitments.

I’ll tell you this, if you’re going to be a meatpacker or a nuclear physicist or an environmental scientist or a lawyer, determine, if you’re a Christian, to do it for the glory of God all the days of your life or don’t do it. It’s just pagan idolatry all over again. If you cannot offer it up to God as a sacrifice (all we eat, drink, and do) we are living like pagans.


New International Version

 

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