Word of Salvation – Vol. 36 No. 41 – November 1991

 

Praying For Obedience To God’s Will

 

Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on Lord’s Day 49

Scripture: Luke 6:20-49

 

Congregation, beloved in Christ,

The first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are very much centred on God.  After we have respectfully drawn near to God in prayer, we ask Him to help us make His name holy; we then ask Him to so rule over us so that His kingdom is established more and more.  Today we consider this third request, namely, help us, O Lord, to obey your will.

These petitions, taught to us by our Saviour, are full of meaning, especially when you look at them separately, as the Catechism does.  The explanations of these petitions, as set forth in the catechism, are really prayers in themselves.  The petitions tie into each other beautifully.

God’s name will only be given proper respect when we and all men are ruled by God.  But to be ruled by God you need to obey His will.  In other words, the hallowing or making holy God’s name takes place when and where His Kingdom comes.  But for that to happen God’s will has to be done.  Indeed, when all that lives fully and perfectly obeys God’s will, then you have the condition of the new heaven and earth and that means the kingdom of God has fully come.

Well, let us look at this third petition which says: ‘Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’  We have often prayed this whenever we make use of the Lord’s prayer.  But do we also realise what we are praying?

We will first say something about the harmony between God’s will and our will; then, secondly, we note the conflict between God’s will and our will; and thirdly, we must seek to overcome the differences between God’s will and our will.

1.  Praying for obedience to God’s will we firstly observe the harmony between God’s will and our will.

When a choir truly sings in harmony then all the different voices blend together beautifully.  To sing out of tune is to break the harmony.

Can there be such a beautiful harmony between God’s will and our will?  A true blending together of the two wills?

If the church of Jesus Christ were to deny that this is possible, then it would not believe the reality of grace.

You see, prayer is something that Christians do.  God’s children, redeemed by grace, come to their heavenly Father and pray that His name be glorified in all the earth.  They really want this to happen, for in their eyes God is great.  He has come to them in His wonderful mercy and made them new in Christ.  God has put His Holy Spirit in His people and revealed His marvellous acts of salvation to them.  He has changed their will, their purpose, their aims, yes their whole life’s direction.  Once they were not a people, now they are God’s people.  Once they were darkness, now they are light.

Therefore, with the love and the newness that God has put in them, Christians want to see God’s name made holy.  And therefore, for all these same reasons, they pray also that His kingdom come, yes, that they may more and more submit to God’s rule.  But having put those petitions before God, it is only natural that these same redeemed people pray for God’s will to be done.

If you, as a child of God, have seen the grace of God in your life; if you, by getting to know God from His Word, have become convinced that God is good and that His rule ought to be acknowledged and accepted by all people, then surely you would also love to see His will done in your own life and in others.

There can be, therefore, a genuine Christian longing for harmony between God’s will and our will.  The apostle Paul, whom God inspired to write about the tension inside the Christian, openly confessed to the struggle within.  Yes, he could see that sometimes he wanted to go along with sin but that power was not the strongest.  The Holy Spirit is stronger than the power of sin and therefore Paul could also see deliverance time and again.  Indeed, he could say, ‘…in my inner being I delight in God’s law.’ (Romans 7:22).

When we search the Scriptures, we come across many examples of people who delighted in God’s will.  Before God’s people, Israel, crossed into the Promised Land, Joshua reminded them about their covenant obligations and called upon the people to make up their minds whom they would serve, and added: ‘But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.’ (Joshua 24:15).

Many years later, in New Testament times, the apostles Peter and John faced an angry and hostile meeting of the Jewish ruling council who were determined to stop the apostles from teaching and preaching Jesus.  But they said, ‘we must obey God rather than men!” (Acts 5:29)  And the Christians at the church in Philippi were praised for their obedience to God.  ‘…my dear friends,’ wrote Paul, ‘as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – …’ (2:12).

Most of all, look to Christ, how He delighted to obey the will of His Father.  His will blended in perfectly with His Father.  In Gethsemane, we know He prayed, ‘not as I will, but as you will’ (Matthew 26:39).  Christians are people whose slavery to sin has been replaced by a new obedience to Christ, and they have been given His Spirit.  Something of Jesus’ nature is now in them.  And because that is true, it is also possible that they want harmony between God’s will and their will.

But now we must be clear on what aspect of God’s will this petition in the Lord’s prayer is referring to.  It cannot be the hidden will of God, it must be God’s revealed will.

The Christian church speaks about this distinction in God’s will because with the commandments it is clear to us what God wants.  The revealed will of God, therefore, is what God asks from us.  In the days of the prophets and apostles, God’s people heard God’s will from their lips.

When God through Joshua told Israel to march around the city of Jericho, or Philip the evangelist was told to go to the road to Gaza and to meet the Ethiopian to whom he had to preach Christ, then God’s revealed will came through these direct communications.  For us the revealed will of God is only found in the written Word.  And we need to interpret the Scriptures correctly in order to know what God is saying to us today.

But God has not revealed what His will is as regards the time of Jesus’ second coming.  Nor do we know what God will do in China, or South Africa, or Australia.  We can make our predictions but they remain human predictions.  Whilst in Dachau concentration camp, Jack Overduin could not tell if he would come out alive, or when the war would end, or what diseases he might pick up or be spared from.

All these things fall under the will of God too, but that aspect of His will remains hidden from us.  We know when things happen and when they don’t, but even then it is not always clear to us what God’s purposes are.  With regard to God’s hidden will, we just have to keep on believing Him and trusting Him, for God is all-wise and all-knowing, and all- powerful.  But with regard to His revealed will, it is matter of obedience.  I have to trustingly accept the outworking of His hidden will and pray that whatever it may mean to me, I will be given the strength to keep on serving my Saviour.  God’s revealed will I know, however.  It is God’s will for my life and this is spelled out clearly in the commandments.

We should not forget that the Lord’s Prayer is right in the middle of His Sermon on the Mount.  The Lord shows us the characteristics of the Christian when He sets forth the beatitudes.  Then He spoke about us having to be a salt and a light.  The fulfilling of the actual commandments came next and Jesus dealt with murder, adultery, divorce, oath-taking, revenge and love for enemies.  He proceeded to mention the needy but not to show off with our giving or fasting.  Jesus also showed us how silly it is to have treasures on earth but not in heaven.  He told us we should trust our heavenly Father for the things we need and therefore to stop worrying about them.  He told us not to judge others when we don’t know all the facts.

And when it becomes difficult to live with others then we may ask, seek and knock.  The Lord told us to avoid the sinful ways of the world and to enter through the narrow gate.  And He summed it all up, by saying that we must be both hearers and doers of His words.  Then we are like a wise builder who puts his foundation on rock, and not on sand as the foolish builder does who ignores Jesus’ words.

Now in all of that you have the revealed will of God and you find such expressions of God’s will everywhere in the Bible of course.  All of that is what the Lord Jesus has in mind when He taught us to pray, ‘Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’  So we know what God wants.  It is now for us to obey His will.

2.  In the second place we want to note the conflict between God’s will and our will.

How happy we are when we, as God’s redeemed children in Christ, obey our Lord.  Blessed are we when do God’s will.  If you love me, said the Lord, then you will obey my commandments.  We experience deep joy when we know we love God and love to obey Him, for love is from God, and for us to love and obey Him it must mean that God is at work within us.

But we do not only pray: Your will be done – but, ‘your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ How is the Lord’s will done in heaven?  The answer must be that it is done perfectly.  The Catechism speaks of the willing and faithful obedience of the angels in heaven.  But it is not only the good angels who obey God’s will perfectly, there are also the saints in heaven.  There are saints on earth too, in fact, all God’s children are called saints.  But when they are taken out of this life and taken up to be with God in heaven, then they are fully perfected.  In heaven angels and these Christians fully redeemed, are perfectly obeying God’s will.  In fact, to have full redemption, to be saved to the uttermost, is to perfectly do God’s will.  Here on earth, Christian believers are always in the process of becoming what we are already in Christ.  We are made perfect in Christ when we believe.  But here on earth we have to become what we are in Christ; in heaven believers are made fully perfect.

And now you can also see the conflict between God’s will and our will.  The Lord says that we must pray to obey God’s will on earth as it is obeyed in heaven.  The angels and the redeemed in heaven are our model.

So what is to be our aim in our obedience to God’s will?  To what extent must we go up?  The answer is straightforward and uncompromising – as it is done in heaven!  Yes, as willingly and faithful as the angels and the redeemed in heaven do it!

And there at once we clearly see our conflict.  We can’t do it.  In heaven God’s will and the will of angels and the redeemed may line up perfectly but it is not so with us on earth.  We work at our spiritual house a bit more, we cut and chisel, we put the plane on it and sandpaper it but every time we put God’s revealed will next to it and line up the two, we note the difference.  There are still gaps; we haven’t got it right as yet.  So that’s our conflict.  Yes, Lord we love to do your will, for your will alone is good but we do not always reject our own will when it does not line up with your will, Lord.  In fact, it’s worse than that!  Sometimes we even talk back to you, Lord, and our back talk is criticism, complaints, and protests.  Yes, we know, it’s clearly stated in your Word, that we are to love you and our neighbour and it’s all spelled out in the commandments, but we just don’t do it.  We admit it, Lord, our obeying is not as willing and as faithful as it is with the angels in heaven.

In fact, that comparison with heaven bothers us a bit, doesn’t it?  It’s not fair, we say, that we are expected to put in an heavenly performance in an imperfect world.  And so we say that in certain circumstances we can lie and cheat.  You know, when everyone else is doing it, then we can do it too.  And adultery and divorce are not always as bad as it is made out to be.  There are exceptionally difficult circumstances.  And surely, God doesn’t want us to always live in loveless situations.  He wants us to be happy, doesn’t He?

Yes, that rejecting of our own sinful desires is not easy.  It is easier for us to talk back to God with our protests than to deny ourselves.  Of course, life is complex and there are very difficult situations and we all know that it is not always black and white.  But in coming to terms with God’s revealed will for our lives, what do we do?  Have endless discussions in trying to justify the grey area or are we on our knees in prayer, asking God to help us to reject our own will and stop giving back-talk to God?

3.  And so, let us in the final place seek to overcome these differences between God’s will and our will.

As we learn how to do this we must keep in mind all the time that we are in the prayer section of the Catechism.  We are asking God to help us.  We are not having a discussion or a debate, and it certainly is not a time to be arguing.  We are on our knees before God and because we are made into the likeness of Christ we have a longing to glorify God, to submit to the rule of our Saviour King, and to obey His good and perfect will.

But it is not easy.  We are not always so eager to be moulded into the right shape for God.  But, remember, we are on our knees.  We pray, ‘Help us!’ and ‘Help all men!’ Yes, ‘Help everyone carry out the work he is called to…!”

In trying to overcome the differences between God’s will and our will, it will help each one of us if all others also start obeying God’s will.  We pray – help us, and help others.  If in the church and in the covenant community there are only a few who are serious about obeying God and all the others follow the ways of the world, then obedience becomes more difficult still.  When the children in a few families are told what it means to obey God with regard to church attendance, catechism classes, Christian education, and the like, but many other families in the church take their liberties with regard to God’s will for church and kingdom activities, then the obedience of a few is being undermined by the disobedience of many.

But if all of God’s children are serious about obeying God’s will, then the whole church and the whole covenant community will benefit.  Indeed, if society as a whole were to obey God’s commandments, if there was no stealing, no adultery, no divorce, no assaults, no murder, but honesty, faithfulness, kindness, consideration for the other, then we would come a lot closer to having the conditions of heaven come on earth.  So it makes sense to pray – help us and help others.

Yes, Lord, help everyone, whatever we do – digging, building, governing, teaching, driving, learning cooking, cleaning, selling, buying – to do it in such a way that it reflects a love for you and love for the neighbour.  And help us, Lord, not to conform any longer to the pattern of this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.  Forgive us when we are more concerned with our interests than your interests.  For it is true, we pray more often for your blessing upon bodily food than upon the sermon; more for a good night of sleep that for those teaching in Sunday School, Cadets and Calvinettes; more for a safe journey than for humility; more for money to pay the bills than for hungry and needy; more for good family life than for the oppressed in the world; more for stable government to benefit us than for the conversion of those who govern.  On the whole we are more busy with ourselves than with the obedience God requires from us and others.  But it’s first the holiness of God’s name, the coming of His kingdom, and the doing of His will, and then our well-being.

As Jesus said: Seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness and all those other needs will be looked after as well.  Let us often pray for obedience to God’s will.

AMEN