God may refuse to listen to your prayers when...
- You are not a born-again believer in Jesus (Psalm 18:41, 2 Samuel 22:42)
- You're living in unrepentant sin (Psalm 66:18, Proverbs 15:29)
- You're living disobediently to God's Word (Isaiah 1:15, Zechariah 7:13)
- You're not treating your wife properly (1 Peter 3:7)
- You ask with wrong motives (James 4:3)
The following is additional
clarification to what I believe the bible is teaching through these texts as
well as others that support this.
My hope is to address some things, which I believe could be used to counter these teachings. To start quite simply, I
stated God "may" refuse to listen...I was very intentional in
phrasing it this way because I'd like to give God the freedom to behave as God
- not that he needs it from me - but more so to not make presumptions and
declarations in principle to how God must behave. To state it another way, I don't believe
God is bound by formulas or anything of that matter; though He is a God of
order and wants us to see Him as faithful/reliable, He also doesn't fit in a
box that we often times like to put Him in. The Bible presents God as
incomprehensible, yet as a God who seeks to be known by us through the condescending self-disclosure He provides through creation(the world), His Son Jesus, and His written Word. Simply put, the teachings of
Scripture don't give us authority to define God on our own terms...
Now to consider some things that I believe could be used to refute these teachings. I believe strongly we must let all of Scripture form
our view of God; not what's comfortable, not what's palatable, or
trendy/culturally informed, or what's safe .
Argument...1) That
God is different in the OT and the NT -
Response: The Scriptures very clearly
teach that God is the same for eternity, which means He is the same God
from the beginning of the writings of Scripture in OT to the roughly 1,400
years later at the end of NT writings. I would agree that God does interact
with His people differently in the NT because of the new covenant of grace
ushered in by Jesus. Another way to understand this is that the OT is the New
concealed, and the NT is the Old revealed; the idea is known as progressive
revelation. In the NT the Old is directly stated as being authoritative
Scripture, the clearest example is 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:16-21..
Argument 2)
Because God is gracious there are not severe consequences for sin, and ignoring
His Word -
Response: A new covenant of grace is taught in the Scriptures to
demand more obedience and not less (Rom 6:15-18). The less we think of, or see our
sin clearly for what it is will cause us to see the sufficiency of Christ and
the power of the Cross that purchased our new covenant of grace as less valuable than it truly is. So motivating
the presentation of these teachings is to magnify and exalt the power of
Christ's love and conquering of sin and death, not to present God as mean or
cruel.
Argument 3) Because Jesus died for sins everyone is always acceptable to God,
even their prayers -
Response: The bible very clearly teaches that those who
don't believe in Jesus for salvation are enemies of God (Philippians 3:18,
Colossians 1:21, Psalm 5:5), always wicked in all they do (Ephesians 2:1-3,
Hebrews 11:6, Romans 14:23), sons of satan (John 8:44, 1 John 3:10), and have
wicked hearts (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:10-23)...
Argument 4) Worship and idolatry are just what people did in the OT and
that's not applicable today for us -
Response: To think that worship and
idolatry is an archaic, or simple issue of bowing and killing stuff before a
graven image shows a false view of what worship and idolatry are. Worship is
essentially what do you give yourself to, and thereby reflect (in your words,
thoughts, actions, and intentions) in life the most. Idolatry is Worship in
reverse; essentially it's been perverted, polluted, distorted, sin marred, and
become a corrupted version because we give ourselves and reflect what doesn't
deserve to be Worshiped. Idolatry is the exchanging of the truth for a lie
(Romans 1:18-23). We make idols, and therefore worship our emotions, families,
money, sex, drugs, food, media, security, safety, occupation, comfort,
knowledge, reputation, acceptance, value, identity, material possessions,
etc...Many of these things are inherently good, but they become false gods
because of sin. Anything that is not God, but is ascribed to God could be
idolatry because it's exchanging the truth of who He is for a lie.
Argument 5) God's justice, wrath, goodness, faithfulness, righteousness,
and holiness act separately from His love, grace, mercy, forgiveness -
Response: For God to be
loving He must remain true to Himself. God is always acting as all of who He
is. God doesn't choose in one moment to be gracious to the repentant because
He's ignoring/not being just. And God doesn't choose to be just in a moment
instead of loving to others. While God is being just He is being loving,
because it would be an unloving thing to be unjust and ignore sin. Everyone has
sinned and rejected God's infinite gift of salvation and His Son Christ, so we
all are always very ill-deserving of far more than what we receive; meaning
that whatever we receive (including the sinner in Hell) God is being merciful
and good and loving to us because He could always give us infinitely more of
what we deserve than what He actually does....
Finally, I'll use two illustrations that I hope will shed light on what I think the bible is teaching on
this topic.
Scenario #1 -
There is a king. The king has one beloved
son that will inherent his kingdom. The king leaves. The king puts someone in
charge of his kingdom. That steward kills the king’s son. The steward is now a
murder, committed treason, and works to steal the kingdom. The king returns.
What should the king do? He would be very just to have the death-penalty
exacted on this person. The king would also be very just, and good, and
righteous and loving to uphold the law for having the murderer, thief, and
traitor exiled. The steward/murderer approaches the king upon his return. Instead
of begging for his life, he assumes it, and instead asks for more of what would
please him and help him steal the kingdom. He ignores what the king would
desire and has asked him...How would you respond in this situation?
Scenario #2 -
There is a husband. The husband has
always loved his wife. The husband has been completely faithful, always
provided and protected his wife. Some might say this husband is perfect. In
fact this husband paid a 10million dollar bail for this ladies death penalty
sentence because she was a prostitute and murderer on the streets. This husband
still loves his wife unconditionally in spite of her dark past. One day the
wife approaches her husband and asks for $100. He gives it because he loves.
This happens dozens of times. The husband gets suspicious. The husband does
research. The husband discovers his wife spending all the money he's giving his
wife to sleep with other men, buy cars and tools for other husbands that are
not hers. The husband knows his wife's wicked and adulterous schemes. The wife
doesn't know he knows. The wife asks for more. The husband would be very just,
very good and very loving to not listen to her requests for more of the money
that hurts her, hurts others, hurts their marriage, and hurts him. How should
the husband respond to his adulterous wife? How would you respond to an
adulterous spouse? How hurt would we be by this scenario if we were the spouse
being betrayed in horrible ways?...
In conclusion my motivation for presenting
these teachings of Scripture is to move us toward evangelism, to be serious about pursuing Christ, to highlight that Christ paid
an awful price, that Christ is sufficient for all sin, to encourage us to pursue
biblical repentance from sin, encourage obedience to God and His Word, give clear teachings of the Scriptures, expose the truth of the bible, and
because God's grace and love and forgiveness made available by Jesus' sacrifice
are truly the most amazing realities that by faith we can lay hold of.
Let us
praise the One who paid our debt and raised our lives up from the dead!
