Changing God's Mind?

Again today I counted myself blessed to have discovered Tabletalk magazine a few months ago. Available for subscription at www.ligonier.org , Tabletalk is a daily devotional and Bible study plan that has helped me become consistent in reading the Word every day. And the articles and daily Bible studies are well worth the few minutes it takes to read them.

Today's study dealt with the account in Genesis 18 of Abraham's encounter with the three visitors. After the Lord has delivered the news of Sarah's impending pregnancy and has rebuked her unbelief, the visitors turn their faces toward Sodom and Gomorrah. Here begins the fascinating account of the Lord's decision to share his intentions with Abraham, and of Abraham's brazen bargaining session: will the cities be spared for the sake of fifty righteous inhabitants? How about forty five? Forty? Thirty? Twenty? Ten?

The point is first made that in all his negotiating, Abraham "never implies it is wrong for God to destroy wickedness. By asking Him to act accordingly to His nature, the patriarch shows that divine justice demands only that the righteous be spared. In not requesting the Lord to relent entirely, Abraham reveals that perfect justice also requires evil to be punished." Do we moderns forget what Abraham remembers?

But what I really want to get to is what the text reveals about prayer. Reformed theology often gets challenged with a question that goes something like this: "If, as you Calvinists claim in your Westminster Confession, God has 'unchangeably ordain[ed] whatsoever comes to pass' [3.1], then why pray? Hasn't God already determined what He shall bring to pass?"

It's a good question, and I think Genesis 18 provides a good answer. As today's study guide notes:

Abraham's intercession revealed the Lord's intent to save the cities if certain conditions were met, and moved Him to relent should ten righteous men be found. God knew Abraham's prayer and his response long before they occurred, but He does not reveal this knowledge so that He might test the patriarch's sense of justice and move him to intercede. God's declaration of judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah invited Abraham to wrestle with Him in prayer and see that his actions are not incidental to God's plans.

God had already willed what He would bring to pass, but it's crucial not to forget that God ordains both the end (judgment on Sodom; salvation of Lot and his family) and the means (Abraham's prayer). What's more, in God's mysterious and sovereign plan, opportunity is provided to Abraham to sharpen his sense of justice and to get some practice coming boldly before the throne of grace.

Speaking of God's mysterious plans:

Deuteronomy 29:29 distinguishes between the Lord's secret and revealed wills. His secret will contains the unalterable decrees by which He foreordains all things that come to pass. These decrees are basically unknown to us, and for the most part, we are not to worry about them. Rather, we know that our prayer is the means by which He often brings about His desires, and thus we must pray, confident that God uses our intercession to make a real and eternal impact.

So why we do we pray to the sovereign Lord who has unchangeably foreordained everything that is going to happen? Maybe I would say it something like this:

Because He has planned not just the end result (like maybe the salvation of your weirdo neighbor, who knows) but every step along the way to Weirdo trusting in Christ, including his grandmother's habit of dragging him along to Sunday School all those years ago, and the truck with the bad brakes that just barely missed him an hour ago, and that nudge you're getting right now to wander over and ask him about the old car he's restoring.

Because (as with whether Weirdo is among the elect) God's secret will is unknown and unknowable to you. Don't even ask. Just do the stuff the Lord tells you to do. After all, how do you know Weirdo isn't among the elect? (You were kinda weird once yourself, if you don't mind my saying so.)

Because God uses crises like the imminent loss of one's nephew to grow us in holiness. Sure, God perfectly planned all along to deliver Lot. But in not telling Abraham everything about everything that was going to happen, he fashioned him in Christ-likeness: concerned about both righteousness and justice, and one heck of a prayer warrior to boot.

Does that help?