Sermon Tone Analysis
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What is our responsibility if God is totally sovereign?
Example of the man with a divine fatalism and falling down the stairs.
I’m glad that one’s over.
We must be careful not to fall into this trap.
A student who takes a test and fails it saying It must’ve been God’s will I not pass this test.
A careless driver.
SOVEREIGNTY AND PRAYER
Author’s trip and airport being closed due to weather.
God knew about the conference he was going.
If God knew all this, he wasn’t going to worry about it.
Comes home, tells his wife, she says, “Don’t be anxious, but pray about it.”
He had forgotten that he needed to pray about it, even though God was in control of it all.
Phil
The knowledge of God’s sovereignty is supposed to encourage us to pray.
Think about Peter and John in Acts when they were threatened by the Sanhedrin and told not to speak or teach, or even mention the name of Jesus.
Their prayer was this:
Acts 4:28-29
Acts 4:
The disciples believed in the sovereignty of God, but it encouraged them to pray.
The believed everything that had occured in the past had been according to His will, no matter how bad (the crucifixion) or good (Jesus being raised from the dead).
Due to their strong belief in this, they believed God had the power to move obstacles out of their way for their ministry.
Prayers assume the sovereignty of God.
If He isn’t sovereign, then our prayers have no power.
If He can’t change and control events, then why pray?
His sovereignty is the foundation of our trust in Him, prayer is the expression of that trust.
Puritan preacher Thomas Lye in a sermon titled “How Are We to Live by Faith on Divine Providence?” said, “As prayer without faith is but a beating of the air, so trust without prayer is but a presumptuous bravado.
He that promises and expect obedience to his commands.
He will give, but not without our asking.”
Paul, while in prison writes to his friend Philemon
Philemon
Notice he doesn’t say, I will be restored, but says he is hoping to be.
He knew that if God willed for him to be released it would happen.
But, he didn’t presume to know what God’s will was.
His prayers would’ve probably been asking for his release, but when talking with his friend, he spoke of the hope to be released.
John Flavel, another preacher from Puritan times wrote a paper on
He says, because God is sovereign, we should pray.
God’s sovereignty doesn’t negate our responsibility to pry, but rather makes it possible for us to pray with confidence.
SOVEREIGNTY AND PRUDENCE
Just because God is sovereign doesn’t mean we shouldn’t act prudently.
What does this mean?
To use all legitimate, biblical means at our disposal to avoid harm to ourselves or other and to bring about what we believe to be the right course of events.
David and the way he continually evaded Saul when he was trying to kill him.
David did everything he could to keep Saul from being successful in his quest to kill him.
He didn’t presume on God’s sovereignty, but acted in a way and trusted that God would bless his efforts.
Paul’s trip to Malta also demonstrates this.
The ship had been involved in a very bad storm.
Paul stands before them and says in
God told Paul they would be safe, not one life lost, but they would be shipwrecked in the process.
When Paul saw some of the sailors trying to escape, he told the centurion
Paul knew all hands were needed to get the ship where it needed to be.
God had promised all who were sailing with Paul would survive.
Paul acted prudently in trying to keep them all together so not one life would be lost.
He didn’t confuse God’s sovereignty with his responsibility to act.
God’s sovereignty doesn’t give us a right to shirk our responsibilities.
As a matter of fact, he will works through those things to fulfill His will.
He works through those things He has placed at our diposal.
Nehemiah
What was Nehemiah’s response to this threat?
He lead them to pray, and they acted prudently.
Reading further, you find
Nehemiah trusted God’s sovereignty, but he also used everything at his disposal and trusted that God would bless their efforts to not only continue to build the wall, but protect themselves as well.
Nehemiah
One of the most basic means of acting prudently is to pray, but we, in our prayer, must also pray for wisdom to understand what we are going through and use what He has given us to see us through.
An example of when Joshua forgot to pray for wisdom in a circumstance in found in
The Gibeonites had come and made it look like they were from far away.
They deceived Joshua and he agreed not to attack them.
The truth of the matter was, they lived in the land God had promised them and would now be a constant thorn in their side because they promised not to attack them.
If Joshua had followed what God had told him to do, God would’ve revealed the deceit of these people.
God has also given us the ability to seek and ask for godly counsel.
Proverbs
But we also must remember within asking the counsel of others, that if what we have planned isn’t in His will, the plan will ultimately fail.
This is the reason we must fervently pray and ask for His guidance.
PRAYER AND PRUDENCE
Both of these elements must go together.
To do one without the other would be folly.
When we looked at the passage in Nehemiah, we see how he lead the people of Isreal to do both.
We also see this demonstrated in
When reading this, you see that these men were quite capable for battle.
They were trained and it even says they were experts in battle.
But even through all of the training, these verses point out that they didn’t trust in their own abilities, but cried out to God and didn’t trust in their abilities alone.
All of our plans, all of our efforts, and all of our prudence are of no use unless God blesses those means.
There is both offense and defense in this scripture.
Offense - building
defense - guarding
This sums up everything we do in life.
We should always be building and defending.
However, this says that if God isn’t involved in this process that we are in, it will not prosper.
God isn’t simply blessing or helping, He is involved in the building and the defending.
However, He also isn’t there to replace the builders and the watchman.
While we are responsible for acting in our own efforts, we are dependent upon God to enable and prosper our efforts.
I can’t think of anyone who would be more dependent on God than a farmer.
He can prepare the soil, sow the seed, fertilize it, and do everything in his power to try to be successful in his harvest.
However, he is very dependent on the forces of nature which God controls for his success.
But yet, we can even take a deeper look into the abilities of the farmer to do what he does.
Where did he get his skills, his ability to learn from his experience, the financial resources to buy the equipment, fertilizer, and seed?
Where does his physical strength come from?
Acts
In every respect, we are dependent upon God.
When the Israelites were in the desert after they left Egypt, God made them dependent on Him for their very survival.
deuteronomy
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