Can Unbelievers Pray to God?

Can unbelievers pray to God? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. You can call us right now with your question.

Here's the phone number. It's 833-THE-CORE. We're open to questions about theology, doctrine, maybe doubts you have about the Christian faith, you name it, we would love to talk to you. Again, 833-THE-CORE. You can also email us your question at questions at corechristianity.com.

First up today, let's go to Jared calling in from Texas. Jared, what's your question for Adriel? Hi, my question was about Luke 1324, where it says that you know, strive to enter the narrow gate. I guess my question was how does one reconcile Jesus's words to strive to enter the narrow gate, while knowing that it is only by faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ that saves us?

And how can one avoid a false theology of works, or like performance driven moralism, and yet carefully and practically obey Christ's command in in Luke 1324? And then, I guess maybe kind of a spin off from that is for someone who's, I mean for myself, my conscience often accuses me of often having not truly repented and believed unto salvation, and just how to know, like if I've repented enough to demonstrate a saving faith, which I know no one ever repents enough, but just maybe some advice there. Father in heaven, lift up our brother Jared to you. Thank you for your word. Thank you for the promises that you give to us in your son, Jesus Christ. Those solid gospel promises. And I pray for my brother, that you would give him confidence in those promises for himself, that they belong to him, that he can rest, Lord, in the forgiveness of sins, not on the basis, Lord, of how perfectly he's repented or kept your word, but on the basis of what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross and in rising from the dead for him. Be with our brother, Lord. Be with all those, Lord.

We know it's so easy for us to feel the accuser come against us when we fall short and to think, I know I'm not good enough, and to be despairing. So help us, Lord, to rest in you, in your promises, in your grace, and to live in light of that great love that you've shown to us, I pray in Jesus' name, amen. The passage you bring up, a parallel text in Matthew chapter 7, is one of those passages, Jared, I'm sure you know, that strikes fear into the hearts of many a very sobering text. The words of our Lord Jesus beginning in verse 22, he went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, Lord, will those who are saved be few? And he said to them, Strive to enter through the narrow door.

For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, open to us, and then he will answer you, I do not know where you come from. Then you will begin to say, We ate and drank in your presence and you taught in our streets.

But he will say, I tell you, I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil. Or in the parallel account in Matthew's Gospel, I never knew you, Jesus says. So here's a helpful distinction, Jared, grace, the grace of God is not opposed to effort, but it is opposed to earning. In other words, we don't earn God's grace, otherwise it wouldn't be grace. Grace is demerited favor. It's what God gives to sinners, those who don't deserve it, right? Now you think of what the Psalmist says, you have not repaid us according to our iniquities.

The wages of sin is death. Grace is not getting what we do deserve. It's the mercy of God, the salvation of God in Jesus Christ. And as those who are the recipients of grace, we are called to make every effort to grow in holiness, to walk with the Lord. And so grace is not opposed to effort, but it is opposed to this idea of earning. That is meriting our salvation before God.

And so we ought to make every effort recognizing at the same time that this isn't something that we earn and we make every effort out of this position, out of this place of having already been received by God. And it's interesting, this passage here in particular, I think Jesus is rebuking those religious people, the scribes and the Pharisees in his day who were around the truth, who heard the truth. They had the prophets, they had the law, they had Jesus's teaching. He says to them in John chapter five, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And these are the very scriptures that testify of me, but you're not willing to come to me that you may have life. This is why they say, we ate and drank in your presence.

You taught in our streets. There's a difference between being in the proximity of Christ and his teaching and making it your own and having that vital relationship with Jesus Christ by faith, just because an individual is around the church or around the things of God or hears the message of the gospel. That doesn't mean that they're born again. We're called to lay hold of these promises by faith.

And so I would say, first and foremost, recognizing that these promises are for you. It's like what the author of the Hebrews told the Christians that he was writing to. If you think about the book of Hebrews, you have a group of people who are professing favors, but they're being tempted to go back to the sacrifices of the Old Testament. This is why the author of the Hebrews is continually telling them to hold fast to the word that they had received, not to drift away from the preaching of the gospel, the preaching of salvation. And then he says to them, he likens them to the wilderness generation in chapter four, and he says, good news came to us just as to them. That is gospel, these objective promises of the grace of God.

Good news came to us, the church, just as it came to that generation, but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened. And so we're called, you're called, to lay hold of those objective, concrete, solid promises of the gospel for you. Now if your question is, well, in light of that, how can I know that I've truly repented, that I have enough faith?

It's sort of interesting. Jesus says, a mustard-sized amount of faith will do. It's not the strength or the amount of your faith that saves you. It's the object of your faith. It's that you're placing even your weak faith, even your imperfect faith in Jesus Christ for your redemption.

You're saying, I believe, help my unbelief, Lord, like that man in the gospels. And we need to recognize that our repentance, this side of glory, is always going to be imperfect. None of the works that we do can ever be perfect.

They can be truly good before the Lord, but they can't be perfect. We still have that indwelling sin that we wrestle with, and it sounds to me like that's what you're wrestling with. You look at that indwelling sin, you think, man, is my repentance good enough? Well, the fact of the matter is our repentance is never, quote, unquote, good enough or perfect. We come to the Lord, contrite with faith, saying, Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner, and he does have mercy upon us. He does have mercy upon you. And having received that mercy, we're called to make that effort, every effort, to draw near to the Lord from a place of love and joy, having been received into the family of God. May the Lord bless you, Jared, give you that confidence, and strengthen you in your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jared, thanks so much for listening to Core Christianity. We really do appreciate you.

By the way, if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, we would love to hear from you. Our phone lines are open right now. We'll be taking calls for the next 15 minutes or so. Here's the phone number.

It's 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. You can also leave a voicemail at that number anytime.

And here's a voicemail that came in from one of our callers earlier this week. Hello, Pastor Adriel and Mr. Bill Meyer. I am calling to ask a question, but first I just want to say I thank you guys so much for your ministry, it has been just so helpful to me and I know that God is speaking through you guys because of the way that it changes the heart when I listen to you guys. So I just thank you for putting out so many podcasts, but I digress.

Here we go. Instruments in worship. In the Old Testament, I know that we are commanded to use certain instruments.

The priests who worship incorrectly were killed. I get a little nervous of the thought of Christians using instruments while worshiping. I would appreciate any feedback you can give me, any insight, and I just love your ministry so much and I thank God for it. Well, thank you for all of that encouragement, brother, I pray that the program continues to be a blessing for you in your life. So with whatever we do in worship, we want it to fit with the fact that we're glorifying the triune God.

It's not a show, it's not a production. We're called in Hebrews chapter 12 to worship the Lord with reverence and awe because our God is a consuming fire. I think in fact that that text is echoing the passage that you brought up in Leviticus 10 with Nadab and Abihu who are consumed by fire, why?

Because they offered incense to the Lord that was not prescribed, a strange fire to the Lord, and so they were consumed by fire. It shows us that God doesn't just care that he's worshiped, but that he also cares about how he's worshiped, that he's also called us to worship him in a particular way. I just want to stop and reinforce that point because I think so many people today when they think about worship, they just think it doesn't matter really what you do or how you do it so long as you are sincere, but that's not the case. God actually calls us to worship him in spirit and in truth. He calls us to worship him in accordance with his word, not to invent or make it up as we go. The issue is so often we're prone to creating idols and to worshiping God in ways that take the attention off of the Lord and put the attention onto us.

This is something that I think we need to take more seriously within the church. Now more specifically with regard to your question about instruments in worship, there are some people who think the instruments that are described in places like the Psalms were a part of the old covenant system. Now that we're under the new covenant, those instruments are not to be a part of worship anymore because we don't worship in the temple and they were a part of the temple with its system.

I don't personally buy that line of argumentation. I am okay with instruments in worship. Our church uses a piano, a violin, a flute at times. I think that's the perfect sort of trio of instruments.

I can see him right now. He's doing some drum motions. Bill, are you a drum guy? I'm an electric guitar guy. Bill is electric guitar and didgeridoo.

If you've not heard Bill on the didgeridoo, he's pretty spectacular. The question is, with whatever we're doing in worship as we're thinking about music, is this contributing to the congregation lifting up her voice to the Lord and worshiping the Lord or is this a production that's taking the eyes off of the true and the living God in his holiness and in his glory and putting the attention onto us? I think that's the big question to ask ourselves. Then in whatever we do, in accordance with scripture decently and in order and lifting up the name of the Lord, glorifying him. As I said, I don't buy the line of argumentation that says those are a part of the old covenant sacrificial system, so we don't have the stringed instruments and so on and so forth that you hear described in the Psalms. I think that we can still, even in new covenant worship, have that, but let's make sure that whatever we do, we do it decently and in order and that the focus is on the Lord. Your caution about making sure that the attention is not on ourselves as a worship team, I think is really valuable, a few years ago my wife and I were visiting a church and they had great worship music and they had a fantastic band and singers, but these singers all did these choreographed movements on stage with their hands and with their bodies and my wife just couldn't deal with it. She was like, they're just drawing attention to themselves and so it wasn't very worshipful for her or for me.

Once the bodies start gyrating or whatever they're doing up there on the stage or chancel or whatever you want, I just think, yeah, okay. I know David danced in Jehovah's sight with all his might, but I don't think that you should in the worship, sir. It is a really important point, Bill, to bring up for us to think about what we do in worship and why we do it and to make sure that we're giving all the glory to the Lord.

Amen. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Our phone lines are open. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, you can call us for the next 10 minutes or so. Here's the number. It's 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. Maybe there's a Bible passage that's always kind of stumped you and you'd like some clarification on it, or maybe there's something in your Christian life that you're struggling with right now.

Maybe running up against some kind of opposition because of your faith at school or at work. We'd love to hear from you. 833-THE-CORE is the number. Let's go to Irene, who's calling in from Kansas. Irene, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Can you hear me okay? Hey, Irene, I can hear you.

Okay. Hey, one of the ladies in my Bible study went to a creation museum and purchased a creation Bible. And it looks at things from a little different angle, and one of the things she shared with us was that it talks about Mary being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, but there was no DNA involved. And so the question is, did Jesus have Mary's DNA, or what kind of DNA did he have, or do we know, and what do you think about that angle?

Irene, thank you. I've not heard of the Creation Study Bible, but it sounds interesting. I think that this is a really important question, because we're talking about the true, here is the humanity of the Word, the eternal Son of God. And we would want to say that yes, absolutely, he had human DNA, he's a true human.

I think of what the author of the Hebrews said in Hebrews 2, verse 14, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people, for because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted as well.

So this is actually a really important question. If we were to deny that Jesus had human DNA, then what we would be calling into question is the true humanity of Christ, and if we're calling into question the true humanity of Christ, the Son of God who assumed humanity for us, then we're calling into question the redemptive work that he accomplished in our place. This is why some of the earliest debates in the church centered around, revolved around the person and work of Jesus Christ. There were some people who said, yeah, you know, he was sort of like this God, man, sort of melded together, but then when they did that, they sort of called into question, well, was he truly human, or was he sort of this like, you know, divine superhuman kind of a thing? Well, no, the word of God, the eternal Son of the Father, assumed true humanity for us and for our salvation, and because he did that, we can be confident that his redemptive work for us in our place is powerful and efficacious to redeem us so that he might deliver all those, as that text just said, who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

He's conquered the devil and sin for us by assuming our humanity and dying in that humanity so that we might be raised to new life. Thank you, Irene, for that question. Thanks, Irene. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adrian Sanchez. Want to take a moment to say thank you to a very special group of people. We call them our inner Core.

Yeah. If you're blessed by the broadcast here at Core Christianity, answering your questions every day about the Christian faith for 30 minutes, I mean, what a wonderful time we're able to have together here, would you consider encouraging us and partnering with us to continue to get the word out by joining the inner Core? It's a monthly donation of $25 or more, and it's one of the ways you can get in the saddle with us to continue to advance the word of Christ in the world through podcasts, through the airwaves, and even through the different written materials that we produce here in house and give away so often for free. Again, please prayerfully consider joining the inner Core.

As a thank you, we'll send you a copy of the book, Core Christianity, by Dr. Michael Horton, another just wonderful resource for you and for your building up or being built up in the Christian faith. If you'd like to learn more about joining the inner Core, just go to our website, which is corechristianity.com forward slash inner Core, again, corechristianity.com forward slash inner Core, love to have you prayerfully consider joining that special group of people this week. Well, we do receive voicemails here at the Core. You can call us 24 hours a day with your question. Here's the number, 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. We do our best to review our voicemails each day, and here's one from a listener named Ray. Hello, Pastor Adriel, enjoy your ministry. Keep up the good work, brother. I have a question. In the wake of the DeMar Hamlin situation, how should a non-Born Again believer pray? All right, thank you very much.

Take care and God bless. Non-Born Again believers, I'm assuming, you know, just someone who's not a Christian, but maybe says, I'm praying. And for those of you who don't know the DeMar Hamlin situations, last month, there was a NFL football player who collapsed during a Monday night football game, and it was really scary all over the news because the concern was, did he just die on national television? Now, thankfully, I know many people were saying, we're praying, and there was so many calls to prayer, and this is why you're asking that question, you know, would the prayers of people who reject the gospel or don't believe in Jesus, are they powerful and efficacious?

But let me just say, you know, praise God that DeMar Hamlin is doing better, and he was released from the hospital last month. But this question is a really important question. First what we can say is God is omniscient. He knows everything.

He hears everything. His ears, quote unquote, right, and God is a spirit, so he doesn't have ears in the sense that we think, but his ears are not clogged so that he cannot hear, but he does not hear, i.e., respond to the prayers of the wicked that come to him superstitiously. You know, there are many people who pray, Jesus said, don't pray like the pagans, like the Gentiles.

They think that they're going to be heard for their many words, but God doesn't hear that, and you see this over and over again in scripture, Proverbs 15, verse 29, the Lord is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous, a man that Jesus healed in John chapter 9, verse 31, when he's being interviewed, basically, by the religious leaders. He says, we know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him, as John 9, 31, Isaiah chapter 1. God is rebuking his own people, the covenant people, because of their idolatry and sin, because of the way in which they're not caring for the widows and orphans, and he says to them, when you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.

Your hands are full of blood. There's still this judgment also on the covenant people in places like the book of Lamentations, in Lamentations chapter 3, verse 44, the person who's lamenting is crying out to the Lord saying, you have wrapped yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through. So over and over again in scripture, it's very clear that God does not hear the prayer of the wicked, those who are superstitious, those who are coming to him faithfully, maybe going through the motions, but their hearts are clinging to sin.

Their hands are stained with blood. We do know that when a sinner turns to God, God receives that person. God hears everything, and when somebody calls upon the Lord in truth, the Lord receives that person, welcomes that person. You think of the example of Cornelius in Acts chapter 10, for example, verse 4, the angel says to Cornelius, this person who hadn't been baptized yet, this person who still didn't fully understand the gospel, had not received Christ, he says, your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. As believers, we make our prayer to God through Jesus Christ, our mediator, and by the power of the Holy Spirit. As believers, we can say our Father, which presupposes that we've been adopted into the family of God. You have, by virtue of your union with Jesus Christ, a special relationship with God so that you can go to God as his son or daughter through Jesus Christ and the work of grace that God has done in your life confidently. I've been talking about the book of Hebrews already a couple of times on the broadcast earlier.

There's that beautiful text early on in Hebrews. It says we can come boldly to the throne of grace because the one who sits on that throne of grace is our Father, the one who loves us, the one who cares for us, and so we should be confident as we come before the Lord. But what do you say to somebody who maybe isn't a Christian, who doesn't embrace Jesus Christ, but says, I'm praying for you, or I'm praying for DeMar Hamlin, or I'm praying about whatever it is that they say that they're praying about. I think that we ought to be respectful as believers, but maybe use it as an opportunity to talk about what prayer is and the great confidence that we have as Christians in coming before God and knowing that he receives our prayers, not because they're perfect and not because we're perfect, but because they're sanctified by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Prayer is an offering up of our desires to God for those things that are agreeable to his will with thanksgiving, confession of our sins, or dependent upon his mercy. In the name of Jesus Christ, we come, as I said, through Jesus Christ, and because we come through Jesus Christ, we know that we are well received by our Heavenly Father, that we can be confident that he hears our prayers and that he loves us. Thanks for listening to CORE Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar or call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833-THE-CORE. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program and be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's word together.