Your Will be Done on Earth

Please turn with me to Matthew 26. As we read this portion of God, as an illustration of praying the third petition of Jesus, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Christ is our great example and nowhere do we see a greater example of obedience to that petition to the Father than here in the final days of our Lord's life on earth. Matthew 26, verse 36. Christ has left the upper room. He is making his way to the garden of Gethsemane. He has now arrived there. And verse 36 says, Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane and said to the disciples, Sit here while I go and pray over there. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee. And he began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. And he said to them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here. and watch with me. He went a little farther and fell on his face and prayed, saying, O my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." And the cup Jesus is talking about is the cup of agony which he described in his cry from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's the cup of God-forsakenness. Let this cup pass from me nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. Verse 40, then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. and said to Peter, What, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Again a second time he went away and prayed, saying, O my father, if this cup cannot pass away from me unless I drink it, your will be done. And he came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. So he left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. Then he came to his disciples and said to them, Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand." So reads God's inspired word. May he be pleased to use it as the background to our study this evening. The prayer that our Lord Jesus gave to us in the pattern prayer is not only a pattern for all our prayers, but it's also a prescription for a godly life. So when we say, hallowed be your name and your kingdom come, we should be adding in our minds or under our breath the words, yes Lord, and do it in me. and through me. Likewise, when we come to the third petition, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we are praying not only for the rest of the world, that they will do the will of God as it is done in heaven, but that we ourselves primarily will be more obedient to God's will. For that is the real purpose of prayer, isn't it? It's not to get God to do my will. That is the purpose of magic. And prayer is not magic. It's not incantation. Prayer is to bring my will, like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, into line with God's will. So understood, your will be done. Take some praying. Because when it comes to everyday living, we regularly find that we want to do things that somehow we know or feel God does not want us to do. And we do not like to be crossed. Personal frustration is a nasty pill to swallow, especially when some darling plan has to be abandoned. We have to give up. somebody we fancy and love and would like to marry, because they are not Christians. But it is not only self-will that we have to struggle with. When we pray this prayer, it is against Satan himself that we wrestle, because Satan is determined at all costs to oppose the will of God. Just think of Jesus praying that prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. His struggle was so bitter and so intense that Luke says, his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Can you imagine the emotional, the psychological, and even the spiritual and physical agony That his whole body, mind and soul and body, were going through as he faced the prospect in a few hours of being forsaken by God. I mean, it boggles our minds. There is nobody who understands this passage of Scripture in the sense that they can feel something of what Christ felt. How can God be forsaken by God? And yet that is what happened. That awful horror gripped our Saviour's soul, and it was evoked not just by the expectation of physical pain and suffering He was going to go through on the cross, but the prospect of bearing the guilt of our sin and having the Father turn His back upon Him for three hours. And those three hours of total darkness in which no one could see their hand in front of their face was symbolical of the spiritual outer darkness into which Jesus went when he was forsaken by the Father. Never man feared death like this man, said Martin Luther, and this is why Christ's whole being in the Garden of Gethsemane shrunk from it. We in our naivety think, well, he should have just boldly gone ahead with the plan of the Father. But to say that is to say we know nothing about what he was going to experience. And yet, though his whole being shrunk from being forsaken by the Father, his prayer remained, nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. What it cost Jesus to pray for God's will to be done on that occasion, you and I will never know. What it may cost us to accept God's will in certain situations, we do not know at this time. which is just as well. Having made that clear, I want you to notice that this clause in our Lord's pattern prayer contains both a statement and a petition. The petition is that God's will may be done on earth. And the statement is that God's will is being done perfectly in heaven. It's always done perfectly, devotedly, joyfully, fully in heaven. The centerpiece of heaven is therefore a throne, the symbol of divine sovereignty. Moreover, this divine rule extends not only over heaven where God's throne is, but over the entire universe that He has created. The whole creation owes its existence to the spoken will of God. Revelation 4.11 says, you created all things and by your will they exist and were created. So the one who sits on that throne in heaven controls everything he has created. But man, created in the image of God with a mind of his own and a will of his own, has dared, and does dare, to disobey the will and mind of God. For example, Paul says, God works all things according to the counsel of His will. But Luke says, the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves. They were able to do that. That's the sad situation. God has created you and me with a mind and a will of our own to do what we know is right by our Creator and by His creation. And yet because we are all born in sin with a sinful nature, our darkened mind is ignorant of the will of God and our selfish will, our bent will, is unwilling to do the will of God. So for us to pray this third petition, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we need to pray for these two things. A renewed mind to discern the will of God, and a renewed will to will and do the will of God. First, there are only two main points, but might be a little bit longer than usual. Two-point sermons normally are. A renewed mind to discern God's will. It should be obvious that we cannot set ourselves to do the will of God until we first know what the will of God is. So the Bible abounds with commands that we should discern the will of God, discover the will of God, and it abounds in prayers that when it is discovered, we should do it. For example, the psalmist prays, show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths. Again, cause me to know the way that I should walk. Paul says in Colossians 1, we do not cease to pray that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. And in Colossians 4, he says that Epaphras labors fervently for you in prayers that you may stand perfect and complete in the will of God. Similarly, in Ephesians 5 verse 17, he gives this plain command, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. The question, however, is how do we discover the will of God? For our mind is fallen according to scripture and inherently darkened. In 1 Corinthians 2.14 Paul says, The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. So if any of us, speaking in general, want to know the will of God, the first thing we must be sure of is that we have been born again and have received a new nature with a new mind, the mind of Christ Himself. We must come to Christ in faith, repenting of our sinfulness, and ask Him to give us an understanding of the will of God for our lives. Now, it's very important at this stage then that we learn to distinguish between what is called the general will of God and the particular will of God. His general will is so called because it concerns all people in general. Nobody is excluded at all times. This is the will of God for everybody in the world. And his general will, to sum it up, is that everybody is saved and then brought by character into conformity to the image and the beauty and glory of his son. Whereas his particular will has to do with our particular business. With our careers, what are we going to do in life? With marriage, are we going to marry? And if we feel it's God's will to be married, who are we going to marry? Or our time and our money, how do we use it? How do we spend it? Christians believe that God is great and good and wise enough to have a particular will on all the particular issues that affect our personal lives. How then is a Christian to discern the will of God? Well, to begin with, let me say, as you all know, His general will is to be found in Scripture. That is to say, the will of God for the people of God is in the Word of God. And so those who make the most use of God's Word are those who make the most progress. in their spiritual life. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3.16, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. Put simply, it is profitable for doctrine because it tells us what is right according to God. It is profitable for reproof because it tells us what is not right in the eyes of God. Thirdly, it is profitable for correction because it tells us how to get right with God. And fourthly, it is profitable in instruction and righteousness because it tells us how to keep right with God. All right then, what is God's general will? Well, as I said just now, it is the salvation primarily of all men and women, boys and girls. Paul says in 1 Timothy 2 that we must pray, notice that, pray for all men, for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. God has the salvation of the world at heart. Peter says that he is, quote, long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And the best commentary on the Bible is the Bible itself. And we see this in all the Gospels, that the Lord Jesus delighted to invite not some, but all to come to Him for their spiritual needs to be met. Come to Me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. If anyone thirsts, spiritually thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. So salvation is offered to anybody who will come to Jesus for it. And Jesus says, and the one who comes to me I will by no means cast out. Pardon for sin, I say, is part of God's general will for you, for me, my wife, my husband, my children, my neighbor, my community, my town, my state, my country, the entire world. And we should pray for this privately and publicly like we did tonight, behind the closed door of our prayer closet in the house and in the church as prayer meeting publicly. Samuel Prime's account of the great revival that swept America beginning in 1858 describes how seven women met specifically every week to pray for the conversion of their husbands. Now, these prayer meetings had started a little earlier in a downtown little office with a simple little notice, all who want to pray for revival meet here at lunchtime. And the prayer meetings began to multiply and spread. Well, these women caught the fire. And they prayed for ten years without any success, and they were beginning to be tempted to give it up. But one of them said, we must not give up our meeting, because it is God's will that we pray for our husbands. So they prayed on for three more years, and not only were their husbands converted, but they saw their children coming to Christ. And indeed, their entire community in which they lived was largely one for Jesus Christ. It was a marvelous revival that swept our country, that began in little prayer meetings all over the place. Next, God's declared will after our conversion is our sanctification. Paul says in 1 Timothy 4 verse 3, this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from all sexual immorality and so on. God never saves a sinner without also working to sanctify him or her. He receives us as we are, but He never leaves us as we are. He has predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son. So, sanctification is going to be a very painful process, but we have to pray for it. It involves, says Paul, putting to death the evil things we love to do. I was trying to think of something that I wanted to tell Mike State and it's just come to my mind, Mike, so are you listening? C.S. Lewis likened it, sanctification, to going to a dentist. He remembered how as a boy he was too frightened to ever tell his mother that his tooth was aching. because he knew that while she would give him something to relieve the pain for that night, the next morning she would take him straight away to the dentist. I wanted immediate relief from pain, he says, but I couldn't get it without having my teeth set permanently right. And I knew those dentists. I knew they would start fiddling about with all sorts of other teeth which hadn't yet begun to ache. They wouldn't let sleeping dogs lie. And that's just like God. Once we invite Him in to save us, He doesn't stop. until the entire root of sin and all its pain and misery is removed from our lives. Augustine, that great theologian of the fourth century, who was such a prolificate in his time, spoke of his lifelong battle with indwelling sin in these words. And remember, he lived a celibate life because of his sexual problems. My thoughts and the deepest places of my soul are torn with every kind of tumult until the day when I shall be purified and melted in the fire of your love and wholly joined to you." Sanctification for him is a very painful experience and process. is a continuous process of striving after holiness, which Paul says, without which no man shall see the Lord. John Newton, the slave trader who was converted and composed that wonderful hymn, Amazing Grace, put it like this, I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be in another world, but still I am not what I once used to be. And by the grace of God, I am what I am. Being converted and becoming Christlike is God's general will for his people. And it is something which we need to pray for ourselves, for our spouses, our children, our neighbors, and everyone we know. Your will be done. Now, think for a few moments about how we are to discover God's particular will for our lives. Because God's particular will is not found in the Bible like his general will for all people. And so the Bible is never to be used as a kind of horoscope by which we discover our future. I do not deny that God sometimes reveals His will when we are reading our Bible in our morning devotions or evening devotions, and a certain verse suddenly lights up before our mind. I've experienced it, but I must say as well that it is a very dangerous procedure. That is not God's usual method. of leading his people. It is highly dangerous to follow such supposed guidance without first checking and confirming. the verse that is appealed to you in the Bible. I think now when I was preparing to go to college, hadn't yet gone, and we were in a wonderful young people's fellowship, some young, wonderful young people like you have here, and one of the girls said, oh, it's God, I know that it's God's will that David and I should be married. Because God spoke to me this morning, and as I read his word in the first epistle of John, the words just jumped out at me. Beloved, we must love one another, for love is of God. Well, I lost touch with them after a few years, and I don't know how that marriage has gone. But it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't go well, because it started on a very shaky foundation. How then are we to discover God's particular will for our lives? Well, there are four steps to take, and I give them to you in four monosyllables. The first is yield. It's a very important step to take, because God does not reveal His will to those who are unwilling or have Suppose hesitations if God's direction should not quite go their way. So Jesus is still saying to you and to me, if anyone wills to do his will, he or she will know. God will see to it. God's not in the business of hiding his particular will for your life or for mine. The second step is pray. There must not only be a willingness to do God's will when you discover it, but also an eagerness to seek it in precise, sustained, and believing prayer. God doesn't impose his will upon Christians. He will only reveal it to us if we want it, and we show that we want it by praying persistently for it. James says, you have not, because you ask not. The third step is think. Psalm 32 verse 9 is a verse that should be underlined by all of us when it comes to knowing the will of God for your particular life. God counsels us, do not be like the horse or like the mule, who have no understanding, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle, else they will not keep up with you. God's promises of personal guidance are not given to us to save us the bother of some hard thinking. Some Christians imagine that it is super-spiritual to receive directions from God in sensational and often questionable ways through so-called dreams. or visions, or words of prophecy from somebody else. That is not being super-spiritual. It is not even being spiritual. It is being carnal, and it is living purely on a fleshly level. It is asking God to treat me, or you, like a beast who has no understanding. like a horse that needs the tug of a bridle, or the whip of a lash, or the kick of a spur. We are not mules or horses who have no understanding. God has made us men and women with understanding who have, in Christ, a renewed mind, and with that mind he wants us to seek his will by noting what our circumstances are, and then taking advice from very trusted Christian friends, experienced Christian friends, as to what they think, so that we can have something to check our understanding of those circumstances and what God could possibly be saying through those circumstances. Problems about God's will will regularly become clear in our own mind as we bounce them off other people's minds. I said I was going to take a little bit of time because I would like to give you some anecdotal material. It's far more helpful than just teaching. Teaching is important, but to know how people make mistakes helps you to understand how not to make your mistakes. I think now of a man in my church in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, as it is known today. He was the manager of a railway station, getting a very good salary, and he was about five years away from pension. And a Canadian missionary came over to do some work in Zimbabwe, and he fellowshiped with us from time to time in our church in Bulawayo, and he got to know this railway manager. And one day he just said to him, you know, God has given me a word of prophecy. that you should come with me and we'll pool our resources together and we'll buy this farm in Canada. It's a beautiful place and we will turn it into a Christian campsite for this and for that and for the other thing. not taking the advice of experienced Christians, he cashed in his pension five years before it really matured, took all of his money out the country, went to Canada, gave it to this man, they bought the farm, and it was a complete flop. The man really had no interest in it, and he went away with most of the money. That Christian came back to our church in Bulawayo, a broken man. His faith was not broken, but his life was broken. I mean, he'd lost everything. And from being a manager of a railway station, he became a baggage minder, the last man on the train at the end of the line of carriages. It was a tragic experience from a man that I would never have expected would do such a silly thing. But he believed the word of prophecy that was given to him. And then the fourth step is wait. Because God says in Isaiah 28 verse 16, he who believes will not act hastily. There is no need to be in a hurry, friend, to make any important decision. Because God is never in a hurry when he wants you to make an important decision. God is patient. Impatience is a human failing. It takes God 25 years to make a mature man and woman who is physically and emotionally ready for the great challenges of life. It takes Him longer to lead us to intellectual and moral and spiritual maturity so that we can exercise leadership in His Church. That's why we call elders, and not young'uns, to the leadership of the church. Abraham was 75 when God called him to fulfill God's purpose for his life. Moses was 80 when his work began. And I have seen more Christians make mistakes by precipitate action than by sloth and by indecision. Now, God, please, Do not let me miscommunicate here. God uses young people. Spurgeon was 21 when he went to New Park Street and just a few years older, before he was 30, to the Metropolitan Tabernacle where he preached to thousands and thousands of people. The point I am making is don't act on a sudden irrational impulse. Look for that deepening, inward conviction of mind and of spirit that is spoken of in Isaiah 30 verse 21. Your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it. Whether you turn to the right hand, you'll hear that voice. or whether you turn to the left, you will hear that voice. This is the way. Walk in it. But you must wait for it. If you act immediately, if you have to act immediately, make the best decision you possibly can. And if You find out that you made the wrong decision. God will help you to recover from it and to discover his will. Now, very quickly, the second thing I wanted to speak about was a renewed will to do God's will. Because once again, by nature, we don't really want to do God's will. We're not willing to do God's will. any more than we are willing to discover it. Left to our fallen nature, we have an aversion to the will of God. That's the biblical diagnosis of man's nature. He has not only a darkened mind that is ignorant of God's will, but a rebellious will that is hostile to the will of God. And even after conversion, that hostility can still resurface. Paul says in Romans 8 verse 7, the carnal mind or the fallen mind with which we are born is hostile to God for it is not subject to the law of God nor can it be. So if we are ever to do God's will, we need not only a renewed mind to discern it, but we need a renewed will to obey it when it has been discerned. And this is also promised to us in the Gospel through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. By His death on the cross, He has won for us the grace to desire the will of God. For the cheapest of those blessings is regeneration. And regeneration means not only a change of our mind, but a renewal of our will. And as a result, it can actually be said of a regenerate Christian that it is God who is working in them to will and to do His good pleasure. The true believer finds that whereas he was once hostile to God's will, his language is now, I delight to do your will, O my God. And that's generally speaking. There are times when you are not going to do God's will. We all know those experiences in our lives, and we regret them. Paul says in Romans 7 verse 22, I delight in the law of God in my inmost self. But he could also say, The good that I wanted to do, I find myself not doing. And the evil I know I shouldn't do, that's what I find myself doing. The conflict is still there. We have to keep praying for strength to do the will of God. William Tyndale put it very well when he traced it all back to the cross. He put it like this, that we desire to follow the will of God, it is the gift of Christ's blood, that we now hate the devil's will, whereunto we were so fast bound and could not but love it, is also the gift of Christ's blood, unto whom belongeth the praise and the honor forever and ever, and not to us. Now, the desire to do God's will, like the discernment of God's will is not an automatic process. We have to work with God to cultivate it. And I close with these two suggestions. This is how we work with God to cultivate a willingness to do His will. I think the first thing we have to do is to dwell constantly and never forget the fact that God's will is good, absolutely good. In Romans 12 verse 2, Paul calls it the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. And we need to constantly remind ourselves that it is the will of a good and a righteous and a wise and a loving God, and therefore everything He wills for us is good and perfect. And then the second thing we need to cultivate this willingness to will the will of God is to remind ourselves that if God's will is good and perfect, it must therefore be acceptable to us. And we must look at it not only as what is good and what is right, but what is best for me. or for you. He is, it's not the will of an ogre or a tyrant or a despot. It is the will of my Creator who knows me better than I know myself and knows all of my needs and my potential. And it is the will of my Heavenly Father who has adopted me and loves me more than anyone else could love me. So even when God's will seems hard and painful, giving up, breaking off an engagement because the girlfriend or the boyfriend is not a Christian, I must cling to this assurance. This is what Jesus did in Gethsemane. He trusted in His Father's will and He found peace in it. He had said before in His life, my food is to do the will of Him who sent me. And nothing satisfied Jesus more than doing the Father's will, even though at the end of His life it meant the drinking of the bitter cup of God-forsakenness. Friends, there is no joy so joyful and no peace so peaceful as walking in the will of the Lord. There is also no misery so miserable as wandering from that path into the byways of disobedience. There is a hymn that expresses it well. He always wins who sides with God. To him, no change is lost. God's will is sweetest to him when it triumphs at his cost. Ill that God blesses is our good. And unblessed good, a marriage to an unconverted man or woman, an unblessed good is ill. And all is right that feels most wrong if it be God's sweet will. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you again for the patience and the love of your word that you have given to your people. And we pray that we may take these important lessons home with us, hide them in our hearts, so that we might be wise and understand what the will of the Lord is, not only generally as it affects all men and women, but also particularly as it affects our lives. Father, we want to do your will on earth as it is in heaven. That is a tall order given our infirmities. given our struggle with indwelling sin. But it's our prayer, Lord, because Jesus taught us to pray this prayer. So whether it means being exalted or laid low, whether it means having all things or having nothing, whether it means experiencing health or sickness, give us grace to freely and heartily yield. to your good pleasure. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.