Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Does Prayer Change Things?
Prayer, like everything else in the Christian life, is for God’s glory and for our benefit, in that order.
Everything that God does, everything that God allows and ordains, is in the supreme sense for His glory.
It is also true that while God seeks His own glory supremely, man benefits when God is glorified.
We pray to glorify God, but we also pray in order to receive the benefits of prayer from His hand.
Prayer is for our benefit, even in light of the fact that God knows the end from the beginning.
It is our privilege to bring the whole of our finite existence into the glory of His infinite presence.
One of the great themes of the Reformation was the idea that all of life is to be lived under the authority of God, to the glory of God, in the presence of God.
Prayer is not simply a soliloquy, a mere exercise in therapeutic self-analysis, or a religious recitation.
Prayer is discourse with the personal God Himself.
There, in the act and dynamic of praying, I bring my whole life under His gaze.
Yes, He knows what is in my mind, but I still have the privilege of articulating to Him what is there.
He says: “Come.
Speak to me.
Make your requests known to me.”
So we come in order to know Him and to be known by Him.
There is something erroneous in the question, “If God knows everything, why pray?”
The question assumes that prayer is one-dimensional and is defined simply as supplication or intercession.
On the contrary, prayer is multidimensional.
God’s sovereignty casts no shadow over the prayer of adoration.
God’s foreknowledge or determinate counsel does not negate the prayer of praise.
The only thing it should do is give us greater reason for expressing our adoration for who God is.
If God knows what I’m going to say before I say it, His knowledge, rather than limiting my prayer, enhances the beauty of my praise.
The Bible says there are certain things God has decreed from all eternity.
Those things will inevitably come to pass.
If you were to pray individually or if you and I were to join forces in prayer or if all the Christians of the world were to pray collectively, it would not change what God, in His hidden counsel, has determined to do.
If we decided to pray for Jesus not to return, He still would return.
You might ask, though, “Doesn’t the Bible say that if two or three agree on anything, they’ll get it?”
Yes, it does, but that passage is talking about church discipline, not prayer requests.
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