Psalm 8 [NLTse]

Last week we talked about some of our Father in Heaven’s promises to us when we pray and what His Word tells us we should pray for. This week I believe the Lord would have us focus on why He asks us to pray.

Last week we acknowledged some of the questions Christians can have when it comes to prayer, like: Does it really matter if we pray, isn’t God just going to do what He wants to anyway? And if our praying does matter, why does it sometimes take so long for our prayers to be answered?

Open, if you would, to Psalm 8 that we just read this morning… Look with me at vv. 6-8, “You gave them [that is, us, human beings] charge of everything You made, putting all things under their authority—the flocks and the herds and all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and everything that swims the ocean currents.” God gave us – men and women, boys and girls – charge of everything He made, putting all things under our authority…

With that in mind, let’s turn to Genesis 1:26… Whether you believe God made the world in six literal days or whether you believe the opening chapters of Genesis poetically portray the foundational principles of creation, one of those foundational principles the Lord God inaugurated on Day Six was setting humankind to “rule” – to be God’s manager, His governor – over the Earth and its inhabitants. (I’m reading v. 28:) Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”

Psalm 115 speaks of this in a slightly different way. Let’s turn there together… Psalm 115:16 says, “The Heavens belong to the Lord, but He has given the Earth to all humanity.” That’s our New Living Translation, the Bible we read from and have in our pews here, but The Message version of the Bible adds an important Hebrew nuance when it says, “The Heaven of heavens is for God, but He put us in charge of the Earth.” So the Lord didn’t give away possession of the Earth to us, as we might get from our New Living Translation. (And this is confirmed for us elsewhere in the Bible. Turn to Psalm 24:1… It says, “The Earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to Him.”) So the Lord didn’t give us possession of the Earth, but He did put us in charge of things around here.

Therein lies the reason for prayer: Human beings are God’s ambassadors – His managers, His governors – here on the Earth. He tells us what He wants us to do here, and then when we’ve understood His will we ask Him to bring it about, even as we join Him in doing our part to bring it about with Him.

Not only is that what the Bible tells us, but – at least in my reasoning (and the reasoning of many others across the centuries) – that is the only process that makes sense of the biblical record: Why the Bible can show God’s desire to judge Sodom and Gomorrah, while also showing Him waiting for His believing people to pray asking Him to judge those cities before sending His angels to bring His judgment; why the Bible shows us that, although the LORD desired for Israel to be free from their bondage in Egypt that, it was only after believing Israel began praying to be delivered that the Lord called Moses forth to be His agent of deliverance.

A little confusing, perhaps. But that’s the pattern we see again and again throughout the prophets, and as the Lord Jesus prays, and across the Book of Acts: 1) The Lord reveals Himself and His will for the Earth and for the people of the Earth to His believing people, 2) but He does not act until His believing people ask Him for His revealed will to be done here on the Earth.

God has not and will not go back on His Word: This Earth is ours to rule, and He will not impose His will upon a person or a situation without first being invited and asked to do so!

It’s similar to my interactions with my kids when they are in their rooms: Their rooms are mine, I own the house (Amy and I do) and I can do with their rooms whatsoever I please. However, out of love and respect for my children, and because we have set those rooms apart for them, I choose to knock and ask their permission to enter their rooms every single time I enter their rooms when they are there in them.

That’s the picture, I think, the Bible gives us, and I believe it is the only explanation as to why God asks us to pray when He already knows what He wants to do and already knows what’s best for us and already knows our needs even before we ask Him to supply them: He asks us to pray because He wants our permission to save us and care for us and heal us and provide for us and impose His will (when we’ve asked that His will be done) on our lives and in the situations and circumstances of the world around us.

And so that’s the Bible’s answer to last week’s question: Does it really matter if we pray, isn’t God just going to do what He wants to anyway? Yes, but He wants our permission to act here on the Earth before acting.

That being answered, what about our next question: If our praying does matter, why does it sometimes take so long for my prayers to be answered? Well, as we’ve seen, God set Mankind to “rule” – to be His manager and governor – over the Earth and its inhabitants, but…

So complete and final was Adam and Eve’s (and through Adam and Eve, all humanities’) authority over the Earth that, just as God had given it to Adam and Eve to rule, Adam and Eve also had the authority and ability to give it to another.

It’s like our Pulpit here: You have hired me to be your pastor, so according to the Holy Spirit you have given me the authority to minister the Word of God to you week after week. Now, our church’s Constitution defines the terms of that authority as being so complete that I alone get to decide who’s going to preach and to even have others preach, if and when I so choose. (The Elders can make recommendations and any of you can ask for your favorites to fill in, but the authority you have given me over the Word of God here during Worship is such that I can even give it to another if and when I choose.)

So when Adam and Eve shifted their allegiance from obeying the Lord to begin obeying that serpent Satan (and in Adam and Eve, all humanity after them) – in that sinful shifting of loyalties – Adam and Eve suddenly took Satan as their master: And the dominion the Lord God had given them they, in turn, gave to the Devil, Satan! Turn to Luke 4:6… This is why, while tempting the Lord Jesus with all the kingdoms of the Earth, the Devil could say, “I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.”

What was intended by God to be a peaceable dominion across the face of the Earth as Adam and Eve and all humanity continued in trusting communion with God – learning His will for the Creation and asking Him and working with Him to bring it about – had fallen and has become Satan’s dominion, so that even the Lord Jesus would call Satan “the ruler of this world”. (Look at John 12:31 with me… Jesus says, “The time for judging this world has come, when Satan, the ruler of this world, will be cast out.” And John 14:30… Jesus says, “I don’t have much more time to talk to you, because the ruler of this world approaches…” And 16:11… Jesus saying, “Judgment will come because the ruler of this world has already been judged.”)

Why does it sometimes take so long for our prayers to be answered? Because Almighty God has unequivocally granted Adam and Eve dominion over the Earth. And that dominion was so complete that Adam and Eve could give it away to another, which they did, giving Satan dominion over the Earth and its inhabitants in their place. So even though Satan’s dominion over believing Christians has been broken and – in Christ – our dominion re-established, Satan has real authority around here, too.

We need to be persistent, we need to fight and push and do (what can sometimes be) the hard work of prayer because there are powers out there opposing us. The famous passage from Daniel 10:12 exemplifies this… Then [God’s messenger] said, “Don’t be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day you began to pray for understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your request has been heard in Heaven. I have come in answer to your prayer. But for twenty-one days the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way. Then Michael, one of the archangels, came to help me, and I left him there with the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia. Now I am here to explain what will happen to your people in the future, for this vision concerns a time yet to come.”

Daniel prayed fervently, persistently for weeks and nothing seemed to be happening. But the messenger reveals that Daniel’s prayer had been heard the very first day Daniel began to pray. The delay in God’s response was simply some demonic powers that tried to get in the way.

Anglican priest John Wesley once said, “God does nothing on the Earth save in answer to believing prayer.” Building on Wesley’s comment, Methodist pastor E. M. Bounds wrote: “God shapes the world by prayer. The more praying there is in the world the better the world will be, the mightier the forces against evil… The prayers of God’s saints are the capital stock of Heaven by which God carries on His great work upon Earth. God conditions the very life and prosperity of His cause on prayer.”

God our Father is counting on us, and what a privilege it is: Let us pray!