Sermon Transcript:

Last week, we started working phrase by phrase through the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6 and we saw that when Jesus teaches us to pray, He begins with a relationship. We pray to a God who loves us, claims us, and puts His name on us. We come to God in prayer not merely as subjects, but as children. In Christ, God casts our sins away, adopts us, and delights in us. It is God’s desire to richly bless His children to the praise of His glorious grace.

Every good father wishes the best for his children but there is a difference between wanting something and the ability to make it happen. There are many things I want for my children that I cannot guarantee but Our Father is not limited in that way. Jesus says we pray not only to a loving father, but to a father in Heaven. Today we look at those next two words of the model prayer, “In Heaven” and I pray they will come to be a great encouragement to you. Our main point today is,

           Believers pray to a sovereign God.

That means not only is He willing to answer our prayers, Ephesians 3:20 says, we pray

…to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think…

Since God is Our Father we are assured He is not far from us and is concerned for us. But to say that He is in heaven reminds us that His nearness does not make Him small. He is not like us. He is exalted, enthroned, and unsearchably glorious. And yet this high and holy God, the One before whom angels veil their faces, has drawn near in love. We only know Him because He has chosen to make Himself known. The God who dwells in heaven has stooped to speak, to save, and to shepherd us. That is the wonder of grace.

Jesus isn’t telling us where God is located. Heaven isn’t a place on a map. God is everywhere, there is no place we can go to get away from God. Saying God is in Heaven is to say that God has dominion. It is to proclaim His sovereignty. Psalm 115:2–3 makes this clear.

2 Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” 3 Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.

When Jesus teaches us to pray, He directs our hearts to marvel at the glorious truth that God is both our loving Father and our sovereign King. His will is unstoppable, His power uncontainable, and His purposes infallible. He does all that He pleases, and we rejoice because this is not cold doctrine, it is the foundation of our hope of salvation and confidence in prayer.

Whatever is happening in our life, understand that it comes from the loving hand of a sovereign God. Just as a loving dad sometimes gives bitter medicine to heal a sick child, there is always a loving purpose in the suffering of a believer. The wounds you receive are not the wounds of an enemy, but of spiritual surgery conducted by The Great Physician. Our struggles are not by chance, they help us, like an athlete strains their muscles to gain strength, God strengthens faith’s grip on Him through adversity.

The flesh doesn’t just resist the sovereignty of God, it resents it, because it doesn’t want to surrender. It wants control. It wants the throne. And maybe, if you're honest, this doctrine still makes you uncomfortable, even as a believer. But I pray that today, by God’s grace, you’ll see what the flesh cannot: that God's sovereignty is not a threat to your peace and freedom, but the foundation of it.

There’s a reason our Lord begins with these two truths as He teaches us to pray: Our Father in heaven. They must be taken together. His power without His love would be terrifying. His love without His power would be tragic. But together, they provide a peace the world cannot understand. These are the twin rails on which the life of faith runs. Remove either one, and we derail into fear or despair. 

In Isaiah 46:9-10 God says,

9 … I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, 10 declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’

It is idolatry to think of God as if He were like the created things we can observe. He is unlike anything or anyone else. God knows and proclaims the future, not simply because He knows everything or looks forward to observe it. He knows the future, because He plans it. His purposes are accomplished because He declares it to be so. Our Father isn’t an analyst or a reporter, He is Almighty God. Verse 11 says,

 11 ... I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.

This is not a vague hope, it is the word of the Lord. When Pilate boasted to Jesus that he held the power of life and death, Jesus replied, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.” It is God who raises up Pharaoh for His purposes. It is God who guides David’s stone into Goliath’s forehead. In Isaiah 14:24, God says to the king of Assyria,

24 The Lord of hosts has sworn: “As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand

This isn’t an exception. All His purposes come to pass. A couple verses later He says,

26 This is the purpose that is purposed concerning the whole earth, and this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations. 27 For the Lord of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back?

Behold Our God! We pray to one who never sleeps and can do all things. It may seem like the whole world is against us. It doesn’t matter, because Our Father is in heaven seated on the throne. What a comfort it is to read Proverbs 19:21!

21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

That means in Christ, we are invincible. Even if in God’s wisdom we are called to lose everything in this age, our health, our wealth, even our lives, victory is still ours because we will be with Him in the age to come. This doesn’t just apply to the big things. His rule extends to every detail.  Proverbs 16:33 says,

33 The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.

For every flip of the coin and every roll of the dice it is God that ultimately determines what comes up. When you are playing games with your kids or grandkids, the cards you are dealt are ultimately determined by God. Nothing is left to chance. Everything in this world is working together to ultimately achieve God’s purposes. This is the Father we pray to. Nothing escapes His attention. Matthew 10:29–31 says,

29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.

God is sovereign over all things. His rule extends even over nature. Psalm 135:6–7 says,

6 Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. 7 He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses.

Even the winds and waves obey His commands. He tells the sea where to stop and the rivers where to flow. He is sovereign over every creature. If He commands birds to feed his prophets, they obey. If He commands a fish to swallow a man and spit Him out, they obey. If He commands a worm to kill a tree, it does.

He is sovereign over men and nations. Daniel 2:21 says,

21 He … removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding;

All it takes is a word from Him and the great Nebuchadnezzar, once clothed in royal robes, is crawling in the grass like an animal. Herod, arrayed in glory, is struck down and eaten by worms before he can finish his blasphemous speech. There is no power God cannot bend to His will. Proverbs 21:1 says,

1 The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.

He is sovereign even over suffering and sin. We see it in the life of Job when even Satan cannot go beyond what God allows. In Genesis 50 Joseph tells his brothers who had sold him into slavery that although they intended it for evil, God intended it for good. God didn’t just jump in to fix it. He intended it. 

It was part of His plan. Amos says, “does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?” God is not reacting to what sinful men and devils do. He is the active, governing King who ordains all things for His glory and the ultimate good of His children. His power and wisdom are such that the free choices of billions of creatures, even their sinful choices, ultimately and in every way result in His will coming to pass.

Listen to what God says in Isaiah 10:5–7,

5 Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! 6 Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. 7 But he does not so intend, and his heart does not so think; but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few;

Assyria acted arrogantly with evil motives and they will be held accountable. They did exactly what they wanted to do, and it was sinful, and they will be punished. But here’s the staggering truth: at the very same time, Assyria was doing what God had ordained. Their intent was not to serve Him, but they did. They were sinning but God was working righteous purposes through them. They were a rod in His hand. Like Pharoah, their rebellion was real, but so was God’s reign over it. The same action, freely and sinfully chosen by men, is sovereignly woven into the plan of God.

This confounds philosophers, but comforts believers. It’s not a contradiction, it’s the majesty of divine providence. God is never the author of sin, yet He governs over it. He does not cause evil, but He works through the choices of creatures, according to their own desires, so that even what they mean for evil, He ordains for good, without ever being guilty of wrongdoing. He is never outmaneuvered. Never caught off guard. Never left cleaning up someone else's mess. God isn’t just working in spite of evil, He’s working through it, over it, and beyond it, to accomplish His righteous purposes. Like a master chess player who sacrifices a queen to setup checkmate, He uses even the moves of His opponents to bring about His perfect plan.

Look at the Cross. The evilest act in history was also the greatest display of God’s love and mercy. It looked like a victory for Satan, but in that suffering and pain was the glorious triumph of God to save His children. The greatest blessing God ever gave was worked through the sinful desires of evil men. God used Satan’s own plans to seal his doom.

This wasn’t God making the best of a bad situation. This was decreed in eternity past, before there was any such thing as time or space. Jesus is the lamb slain before the foundation of the world and He was slain to purchase the salvation of every believer. Believer, before there was a sun or a moon, God loved you. 

Peter says in Acts 2:23 that Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. Then in Acts 4:27–28 Peter says,

27 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

The men who put Jesus to death chose freely. They did as they pleased, but what pleased them in their sin was planned by God as an act of holy love leading to salvation. Brothers and sisters, we are not wise enough to evaluate what God is doing but we can trust Him. A child doesn’t have to understand why their father leads them through the dark to hold his hand. 

God has proven His love for us by sending His own Son to die in our place. And He has proven His power by raising Jesus from the dead. We don’t have to wonder if God can be trusted. When things are difficult, don’t turn from Him, turn to Him. Follow Christ, who not only saves us, but shows us how to suffer faithfully, trusting the Father. You may not understand what God is doing right now, but that’s ok. He’s working on levels far above our wisdom. He always does what is right and good, even when we can’t see it. Pastor Tim Keller said,

“God gives you what you would have asked for if you knew everything He knows.”

Not only is God smarter, He is better than us. His purposes are more loving and His methods wiser than ours. The Good Shepherd knows how to care for His sheep. As pastor Bryan Chappell observed,

“Were we with Joseph, we would have prayed for his rescue from his brothers’ plot to sell him into slavery. Had we been with Mary and Martha, we would have asked God not to let Lazarus die the first time. Were we at the foot of the cross, we would have cried for God to send his angels to the rescue. In each case, the Lord knew better how to accomplish his will for his ultimate purposes.”

To walk by faith and not by sight is to trust that the clearest picture of God’s heart toward us revealed not in temporary circumstances, but in Christ. The repeated message of the Bible is that God keeps His promises and those who wait on Him in faith are blessed. We see again and again from Genesis to Revelation that out of deep sorrow God brings deeper glory.

To know that God is almighty and Father is to understand not only can we endure, but we can rejoice even in suffering, because it isn’t random. It is under God’s supervision, He cannot fail, and has a glorious purpose in it. That’s why James 1:2–5 says,

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

Trust Him and don’t look back. The reward is worth the trials. 1 Peter 1:6–7 says,

6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

I cannot tell you what God chose the specific details of your suffering. I don’t know why it pleased Him to give you cancer, or to take your child or your parents. I don’t know why He chooses to give some disabilities or diseases, but I do know this. I know that if you are a child of God by faith in Jesus Christ then every pain and heartache you endure is preparing you for an eternal weight of glory beyond your imagination. I know that every cancer cell, every virus, and every ache and pain is under His sovereign control and is working for your eternal pleasure.

It is no accident Jesus begins our instruction on prayer by linking these two profound truths of God’s love and sovereignty. This is not some academic theological analysis. This is our Lord laying an unshakable foundation for our prayers with the knowledge of who God is. We don’t pray to change God’s mind. Any change to His perfect plan would result in a worse, not better outcome for us. Prayer doesn’t change God, it changes us. We pray with confidence because He is our Father in heaven, mighty in power and overflowing with mercy. Prayer is the reflex of a heart that knows God is wise, God is good, and God is near.

Some refuse to accept that God is truly sovereign because they cannot wrap their head around how that can be true, and it also be true that we are responsible for what we do. We don’t have to have it all worked out; the Word of God says both are true. Let’s not try and shrink God down so He fits comfortably into our tiny little brains. Let’s instead let God be God and stand in awe before Him, thankful that He has poured out His grace on sinners like us.

Reflect on this and the sovereign grace of a loving God will become to you the most precious and practical doctrine you ever heard. It brings peace, patience, joy, humility, and faithfulness because it leads us to rest in God’s promises and the finished work of Christ. Jesus says in John 6:37–40

37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

How blessed it is to have these promises secured by Almighty God. How do we know we are included in God’s sovereign will? Because we have believed in Jesus Christ. That is our assurance.  2 Corinthians 1:20–22 says,

20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

There is so much more I’d love to show you, but our time is almost gone. So, in these last few minutes, I just want to bring it down to where the rubber meets the road and let the Word itself press home why the sovereignty of God isn’t just a doctrine for the seminary classroom, but a precious and deeply practical truth for our everyday lives.

We have assurance because our salvation is being guarded by a sovereign God.

1 Peter 1:3–5

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In John 10:28–30, Jesus says,

28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

The very faith that unites us to Christ is a gift of sovereign grace.

Ephesians 2:8

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God

Our spiritual maturity is a gift of sovereign grace.

2 Corinthians 3:18

18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Our fruitful obedience is a gift of sovereign grace.

John 3:21

21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

Ephesians 2:10

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Our perseverance is a gift of sovereign grace.

Philippians 1:6

6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Our future glory is a gift of sovereign grace.

Romans 8:28–30

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Beloved, salvation is of the Lord! Every gift, every triumph, every trial, and every tear are intricately woven by His hand to shape us into His image and lead us to eternal glory. Do you belong to Christ? Then, be assured, every aspect of your life, whether pleasure or pain, is being used by God to refine you and prepare you for the day when you will stand in His presence, reigning with Christ in the fullness of His kingdom.

When we pray we are coming before a loving Father who is not against us, but for us. He doesn’t need to be persuaded to help us. He has been working for His glory and our good from eternity past and will into eternity future. When we pray, we enter the throne room of a sovereign King who loves us because we were purchased by the blood of Christ.

I don’t know all the details of your story, but if you belong to Jesus, I know it ends in glory and I know you can trust Him no matter what you are facing. 1 Peter 5:6–7 says,

6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

If you have not yet put your faith in Jesus, I want you to know it is no accident that you are hearing me today. God is calling you to confess your sin, repent, and put your faith and trust in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Do not die in rebellion to the King of the Universe and face His judgment when He is even today offering you peace through Jesus. Jesus invites you to come and find peace in the God of mercy. In Matthew 11:28–30 He says,

28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Come as a child into His mighty hands, you will not be crushed, you will be lifted. Bring Him your sin, and He will give you His righteousness. Lay down your burdens, and you will find rest for your soul. Don't wait. Don’t harden your heart. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a holy God in judgment, but those same hands are full of mercy, love, and pleasures forevermore for those who repent and believe.

Let’s finish with Romans 8:31–39.

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.