Word of Salvation – Vol. 31 No. 28 – July 1986

 

The Desire Of Father’s Heart

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf on Lord’s Day 49

Reading: Psalm 139, 1Thess. 5:9-18

Singing: Ps.H. 206; 461; 251; 450; 452.

 

What is a small child of man saying when he prays: Father… Thy will be done as in heaven… so on earth?  How can a small earthling, with rebellion still so big in his heart, pray this prayer and mean it?  When even he who was one with the Father had to say it in agony: Father not my will but thine be done?

Is this not the most difficult prayer of all, when our own will clashes with that of God all the time; our own will, so scared or so proud, so selfish, so short-sighted?  Thy will be done…!  What is God’s will anyway?  You know, at times that will of God is seen as a riddle, a dark secret.  You never know what he wills, maybe your death tomorrow, maybe your eternal destruction.  God is a sovereign God, and he can do whatever he pleases.  What do I say then when I say: “Thy will be done?”  Am I inviting a dark fate to play with me?

If you see it like that you have for a moment forgotten what you never should forget: or how this prayer starts: “OUR FATHER…!”  True, He is in heaven, and that is a lot higher up than we are, and that is in a brilliance of holiness where my little mind would boggle if we saw only a glimpse of it.  But we have been invited to call him “FATHER”.  And His will is holy and good.

The desire of His heart is deep as the ocean and wide as the universe.  But a dark riddle it is not.  Our Father just isn’t like that.  The will of God, what is it?  Well, the Bible abounds with expressions of that will.  We see that will expressed in father waiting at the door of his home to welcome the straying child.  We hear it from the prophet Ezekiel: “As I live says the Lord, I DO NOT DESIRE THE DEATH OF THE SINNER but rather that he turns from his deadly way, and lives!”

That will of God is no dark riddle, it has been told to us, revealed.  When Jesus cried in the dark garden: Father NOT MY will BUT thin…! He knew what that will was and knew what it aimed at.  It included unutterable suffering, it included the bitterness of the cross, and the alien darkness of hell, the utter humiliation of the grave.  But the Son, who shuddered as he thought of it all, was not looking into a dark riddle.  He saw the Father calling the Son obediently to do the work that would save a fallen world.  He saw the will of God that reached out to a lost mankind!  “As I live… I do NOT desire the death of the sinner!”  I preach you the word of God on the DESIRE OF FATHER’S HEART:

1.  The mystery we may learn to know and trust.

2.  The impossible thing we may begin to do… in hope.

You know, The Heidelberg Catechism straight away steers towards that will of God that we are called to do.  The will of God which we find in His Law.  And yes, that was in Jesus’ prayer too as he prayed this prayer before us.  Our Saviour – here too as with “Glorify thy Name” – does not teach us to pray what he would not pray himself.  He is not a conductor asking us to play an instrument he cannot play himself.  He prays this prayer before us, hacks for us a path through the wilderness or our unwillingness, and because He prayed this prayer like that in that dark garden, we, as we begin to pray this difficult, yes even suicidal prayer, so much against ourselves!!! need only to follow him.  Come, he says, I will teach you something.  Say it after me: “Father, thy will be done!”.  But that is then not only obedience.  I will come to that later.  It is not only: teach me to do what you told me.  Do it, like the angels do it, willingly.  No, it is also: Father, do with me what you like, take me, and let it all happen with me as you deem best.  I trust you, you are my Father!

You know, we have often made the will of God into a riddle.  A dark secret, we with our theology, we have even seen fit to say of God that he decided to set aside people for hell… everlastingly.  And so we have church people who sit back and say, like Eli said it when he was told off about his disobedient sons, “Well, He is the Lord, he must do as pleases Him!”

Because the Bible teaches us the wonder of God electing sinners who were rebels and miscreants dead in sins, that in Jesus they might be made alive (and what a wonderful gospel that is; that we owe our salvation NOT to our will, and NOT to our choice but wholly and totally to the initiative of God who came to redeem and gave his Son for that and gives his Spirit to complete that work!)  Must we now sit down and figure it all out and make our little sums and say: Since God must save sinners and since he does not save all sinners, it therefore follows that he wills that sinners do not live but die, and he desired to destroy those who therefore would never stand a chance?

You see, when you say that, you say too much.  Our logical mind must stop before going that “one bridge too far!”  And why?  Because the will of God is a mystery, but no riddle.  The mystery of his will, that’s what Paul talks about in Ephesians 1, and then he says: “He has MADE KNOWN TO US THAT MYSTERY…”  This is the will of God says the Bible: “That sinners repent and come to the knowledge of salvation!”  He does NOT desire the death of the sinner.  The will of God is a mystery that baffles our minds.  But it is a mystery we may KNOW.  And we are called to be very careful here and NOT to darken the counsels of God with our accursed cleverness, thereby saying about our Father what he clearly told us he does NOT desire.  There are things in the will of God which make us keep quiet, until we can fall on our knees and praise him.

This is also true when we think of the will of God in our suffering.  To pray: THY WILL BE DONE when your loved one lies on his dying bed, when your husband suddenly is snatched away, when your child is born mentally retarded or no-one asks you in marriage and your whole heart cries for that togetherness, is no easy thing.  But Jesus can beckon you to follow Him, and He can teach you, to see not a dark fate, but Father in all this, and then this prayer becomes no passive thing but a very active song of praise.

Here, too, we do not know how to pray as we ought.  But the Spirit of Jesus teaches us here too – to pray Jesus’ prayer with sighs too deep for words.  Then you hang on and say: Father You are no Cruel Despot, I hang on to that for dear life.  Your will is no dark riddle, but it is a mystery we may get to know.  Father I trust you!  Father, teach me to trust you more: what do you want from me in all this?  You do nothing for nothing: your will be done!

When Paul wanted to obey the command of His Lord and go preaching in Asia minor, the Lord had other plans with him.  But he let Paul struggle for weeks (says Acts 16) passing through Phrygia and Asia – but the Holy Spirit forbids him to speak the word.  Trying to go into Bythinia – but the Spirit says “no”.  Mysia they pass by – but no, not there either.  At last after a long tiring detour of closed doors all over the place, there is at last in Troas that vision of the Macedonian man.  And even then in Philippi there awaits them prison and torture before something happens.  Now we know.  Now we rejoice.  As did Paul who never wrote such a joyful letter, as the one we have, to that church in Philippi.  You see:
            THERE WAS SO MUCH ABOUT THE WILL OF GOD THAT PAUL KNEW,
            THAT HE COULD PUT UP WITH WHAT HE DID NOT KNOW,
            AND SO HE KEPT GOING AS HE PRAYED.

You can trust your Father therefore.  This prayer is a joyful one, even in the midst of testing and suffering.  As Paul says in 1Thess.5:18 Give thanks to God in everything, this is the will of God.  Maybe it will not be possible to give thanks FOR everything, but give thanks IN everything – and if it is the will of God, do you think He shall not make it possible?  After all you are PRAYING: Praying for what you cannot just do yourself: Father, thy will be done.

Thy Will… Not Mine.  I need correction all the time.  Even when I think I am doing God’s work.  Thy Will… Not Mine.  My pride must go on the cross.  My old self must die.  Father, will You please deal with him: not my will… but thine.  But remember, it is a known will.  Even when it is a mystery, the main thrust of it is known.

You go ahead, Lord, I know what you’re after!  I do not always know your ways, and how can I figure out your reasons?  But Father you have told me the desire of your heart: That the sinner should live!  Live in you, which is more than just: be comfortable!  O Father!  Make me alive according to your mercy.  Whatever you deem necessary for that, go ahead and do it: Not My, But Thy Will Be Done.

For Your Will is no riddle.  It is a mystery we may know… and trust.  That is the wonderful gift of God in Jesus, that we may learn to say that as we pray this prayer.

And from there leads the line to that second point: The Will of God… as the impossible thing WE may begin to do… in hope.  Impossible for one who was an enemy of God and follower of Satan.  Impossible even for one who begins to have a small beginning of obedience.  The will of God is perfect says the Bible.  Perfect and Holy.  And I shall do that will?  Well, says Jesus, why don’t you ask it from Him?

God who knows me through-and-through.  I cannot fool him by saying: Well, I am getting along nicely with that will of God.  Man alive!  I am making a constant mess of it.  And that while I am supposed to be a child of God and the angels are only servants.  No wonder the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism think it’s already quite something when I in my daily work and my life’s calling would do the will of God.  As readily as the angels in heaven… Yes: with no “Yes… But!”  No excuses.  Just: Yes, Lord, Gladly!  What can I do for you!?

But in Psalm 103 we find a little sinner who has to begin by saying: Bless the Lord who redeems me from all my iniquities…! saying at the end of the Psalm: Bless the Lord you His angels, you mighty ones around the throne in heaven!

Man, of all the cheek!

Here is a little beggar just picked up from the gutter and he shall command the fiery spirits of heaven (who are also around us here on earth and just as well they are): “Come on angels, what about it!  Do your duty!” And yet that is the kind of boldness that makes the heavenly Father smile.  And he says: “Listen to that, angels, listen to that and laugh and rejoice: the little one is beginning to learn, one day when he has lost all his self-will and sees at last for what purpose I made him, when he has become utterly humble, then he shall sit on a throne and will you be delighted to serve him!”‘

Oh that wonderful will of God!  This, says, Paul this is the will of God: Your sanctification!  You made holy all over.  And that has not made you into a plaster statue with a halo of gold around your emaciated face.  It has made you into a full man, a complete woman, at last living the life of joy and praise that God has made you for.  The will of God then is the programme, the plan of God, and in it he has a place for you and me, a place in a new and clean creation, a symphony of beauty full of meaning and praise.  Again: God’s child prays to Father: Thy will be done, and then he prays for something he has begun to know!  Jesus has shown him.  The Father has told us about it, the Spirit keeps on whispering about it from the pages of the Bible, fanning the homesickness for that perfection in the heart of God’s child.  But that homesickness I repeat it – is no paralysing dream about beautiful isles of nowhere.

Father thy will be done… as in heaven (perfect in beauty and wholeness) so also… and then when I say on earth I do not first of all think of China (that too of course), but I think of my home… my child.  I think of my work yes my hectic job, or my long days now I’m on the dole.  I think of my creaking marriage, and I know what I am doing wrong to endanger it, and now I pray: Father NOT my will…but thine.  I think of my church… small, full of human weaknesses, full of the ravages of pride; boy, what a self-will, what a bulwark of rebellion.  But, I pray after Jesus: not my will, not even our traditions, not my comfort and custom… thy will!  Open my eyes to what you wrote Father, so clearly in the word of righteousness and justice and obedience and cross-bearing…!  Father, not my will but thine…!  What a practical prayer… and what makes it difficult is not the things we do NOT know about the will of God, the things we used to belly-ache about… but the sting of it is the things we only know too well…!

Oh Father make me obedient as Jesus was…!  Make us pray it after Him… and then live it after Him.  Oh Master… Let me walk with thee!

AMEN.