Matthew 6, again we're going to read verses 9 to 15, but just a quick review. I know we just reviewed it some this morning, but our minds sometimes we forget, and so let me just quickly remind us where we are, that we are looking at the Lord's Prayer, or the beginning of the Lord's Prayer, that Jesus teaches His disciples, He teaches us to pray, and we see that He starts off with the address, of how we are to address God. And the things that we've learned from that first phrase, our Father in heaven, is that one, we are together in the body of Christ, in community. Two, that we get to call God the creator of all things, Father. There's an intimate relationship there, a privileged relationship. And then in heaven reminds us that He reigns and rules all things. And then we looked at the first request last Sunday night, being that Hallowed be your name. And then this morning we looked at the second request, the kingdom come and God's salvation, that it would come to the ends of the earth and that God would conquer our hearts and all people would hallow God's name by glorifying Him, by reverencing Him, by honoring Him. And so tonight we turn our attention to the third request. And so let me read that passage for us. And so if you will follow along with me as we read God's word. as Jesus is speaking here, teaching the disciples and us how to pray. Pray then like this, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Let's pray and ask God to give us wisdom as we look at this passage this morning. This evening, excuse me. Father, we do thank you that this is your word. Lord, as we turn our attention to it now, would you teach us Holy Spirit, would You show us what it is that we are asking when we pray, Your will be done. Would You convict us of where we need to be convicted? Would You remind us of the promises of where we need to cling to Your truth? Would You teach us, O Lord? In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Have you ever, has there ever been an instance in your life where that you wish that you could change your circumstances? That perhaps you've asked this question, Lord why me? Or perhaps, God is this really your will? Are you really doing this? Is this really what's happening? This morning I shared a little bit that Jennifer and I had spent a couple years in New Zealand. And we had been there right at two years, or we were there for two years total. But after the first year that we were there, we found out that our team was being pulled out. that God was bringing us back to the States. And the thing is, is that those four families of us that had gone, our prayer was that God would raise up laborers in New Zealand and that eventually that that ministry would be led by a national. But here it is, being there one year or the first year, we'd spent that first year as we got to know students, feeling like even the believers didn't trust us. They looked at us as Westerners, what are you bringing in? Why are we trying to do this? And so they really kept us at an arm distance. And it's that after that first year, we had taken the students to Australia with the ministry, that's the same ministry that we were trying to plant there in New Zealand. And they, so for what we call a summer beach project. Basically, it's a month long project where they learn and they study God's words, they learn to share their faith. And the students from New Zealand finally caught the vision, oh, this is what they're trying to teach us. This is what they're trying to do. And so they came back after that first year, beginning that second year with a vision and understanding. And so we were excited. And then we as our staff found out that we were gonna be pulled back. We really asked that question. Jennifer and I wrestled with that. God, we've been pushing, sometimes we describe ministry as pushing a rock up a mountain. And you push, you push, you push, and you finally get to where you get over a hump, and it starts to take off, and that's where we were. And so it made no sense to us, but the reality of it was that God was bringing us home, or bringing us back to the States. Whether we could explain it, whether we liked it, it didn't matter. This obviously was God's will, and so we had to trust. We had to obey. You know, as I think of this request, that's exactly what we're doing. As we pray, your will be done. We're asking God to cause His will to be done. Sometimes we can understand it. Many times we don't. But we have to trust that He knows best, that He knows what He's doing, and so we submit and we obey. Again, the structure of the Lord's Prayers, three requests focus upon God, and then the three requests focus our attention upon the needs of ourselves and of others. You know, as we look at this, this is the third request of focusing upon God, and it focuses upon the fact of God's will being done. But when we say God's will, what are we talking about? What do we mean by that? And so let's clarify, let me clarify a couple things on it. When we think of God's will, we think of it in two ways. Often what is called His Decreative Will, His Secret Will, that is that it's God's will that we may not, that we don't know. And we won't know until He and His Sovereign, until He decrees it or reveals it to us. And so the plans that, the creative will is the plans that come to be as this is what God has decreed. That's what He's determined for the foundations of the world. That this is His plan. This is what's gonna happen. And then we have what is often called the revealed will. Or what is called the revealed will. This Noah boy, he's made it known to us. that God's plan that He has revealed in Scripture. In fact, as we look at, if you glance or think back to me with Acts 2, 23, where Peter is sharing and explaining what happened with Christ. You know, one of the things that he points out here, we get a glimpse of, not only do we get a glimpse of God's declarative will, but we also get a glance of God's revealed will. and the fact that Peter is explaining why Christ had to die. In fact, what he goes on to say here, let me read it to us. This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. In other words, what Peter's pointing out here is that that was God's plan all along. That yes, men did it, they carried it out. But it was God's plan that Christ would be killed and then that Christ would rise again. So again, we see His decreative will, that is His sovereign plan. And then secondly, we see His revealed will, that it's revealed, that Peter's pointing to that this is what Jesus has been teaching us. You know, the phrase, on earth as it is in heaven, again, it reminds us of that already, not yet, that in heaven it is already, meaning that when we pray that God's will be done in heaven, it's immediately done. There's not a second guessing. However, on earth, at least right now as we experience it, until Christ returns, it's not complete, it's not immediate. that yes, His will will be done, but we still see even in ourselves the struggle to obey, the struggle to obey what He calls us to do, even as we struggle with our own sin, and as we struggle knowing that one day, that when Christ returns, there will be no more struggle. So as we consider this petition, we're reminded that God is in control of all things. and that He calls us His will to be done, whether it is revealed, that we see it in the Scriptures, or whether it is His decreed of will, that it's His plan. So when we pray that phrase, Your will be done, we are asking God to one, cause us to know and obey His will, and then secondly, to cause us to submit to His will. So let us look at these two sides of it. That when we pray, your will be done, we're asking God to cause us to know and obey His will. Now where do we learn God's will? Where do we see it? It's in the scriptures. The scriptures teach us and show us that what God desires for us. It's in the scriptures that we learn as we look at our broken world, as we experience the simpleness in our own hearts that we see that why it is this way. That God created the world perfectly. Adam and Eve were perfect. And then they sinned. And so we live in this brokenness because of Adam. Because of our sin. Because of sin entering the world through one man. But we also learn what God is like. And we also learn what God expects of us. What He desires for us. You know, we're pretty good sometimes at seeing the rules, the do's and don'ts. But in the Bible, as we see God's plan as His will, we also need to see that it's more than just the do's and don'ts. That because we are sinful, we cannot understand the Bible on our own, that we need the Spirit to open our eyes, to let us see the truth, to see His salvation. In fact, part of what the Holy Spirit does is to show us and reveal to us God's plan as revealed in the Bible. In fact, as we said, Acts 2.23 shows us that it was God's plan all along that Jesus would go to the cross. He'd go to the cross to redeem us. John 18.37 says this, Then Pilate said to him, So you are a king. And Jesus answered, You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. You know, even as what he's saying to Pilate is that Jesus came, He lived, He died for one purpose and that was to glorify God by being the perfect lamb, by dying on the cross for you and I to take away our sin. Also Galatians 4, Paul writes, verses four to seven, that when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoptions of sons. And because we are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, so you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir to God. You know, even as we think of the Great Commission, we see God's plan or His will for the ends of the earth that all people would come to know Him. That His people would come. Why? Because it's His plan that all would hear the Gospel. That people would come to believe and trust in Him. It's because His plan is that we would know Him. That we would have eternal life. that we would experience His forgiveness. You and I, as believers, we have the privilege in our trust with the Gospel to give the Gospel away, to share about creation, that God created all things, that man fell and is sinful, but there's hope, a hope and a Redeemer, that God created us, and that even though we would rebel and He would assault us, He redeemed us, for us to know Him and love Him. You know, it's in the scriptures that we learn God's will for our lives. In fact, as we look at the Ten Commandments, it tells us how we're expected to live. Jesus summarizes those Ten Commandments in two. He brings it down to two statements. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself. You know, even as we look at and think of the Ten Commandments, or even just look at the two statements that, two commandments that Jesus gives here, do we do that perfectly? So we look at our hearts. Do we love God unconditionally all the time, 24-7? Do we love our neighbor as ourself? No. We don't. So again, as we look at it, we see God's Word reveals our sin and it points us to look to a Savior. To look to Christ. To recognize our need of a Savior. So what God desires for us is to know Him. To realize that we need the gospel every day to hear it anew. Of what God has done for us. And then to take that good news and give it away. Give it to others. To make Him known. Philippians 1.6 gives us hope that God is still at work in you and I. That He's not done with us. Even when we mess up. He's not done. He's continuing to work to grow us. That one day, God's will is that one day we, every nation, will all worship the great king in heaven. John picks up on this in Revelation 7, verses 9-12. Let me read it for us. After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and people and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out in a loud voice, Salvation belongs to the Lord our God, who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the 24 living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying, Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen. You know, knowing God's will is one thing, but the second question we need to ask here is, what are we to do with that knowledge? What are we to do with it? when I entered seminary, Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, one of the things that every student was expected to do was they were given this booklet by John Frame, not a big, it's more of a pamphlet than anything. But in it, he is, Professor Frame is speaking of seminary and the reasons to come to seminary, but one of the key things that he said in there, in that pamphlet was this, that theology is application. In other words, you're coming to learn But it can't just stop in your head. It's got to be applied. As we look at what God is calling us to do, or God's will, and we learn what He expects of us, we've got to apply it. We've got to take the next step and apply it to our lives. That God's will is that we would obey His laws. God's desire for us is that we would not only know His will, but that we would obey His will. Not to earn favor, as we only have favor from God because of what Christ has done for us, but because of what He's done for us that we want to obey. You know, as the Scriptures are very clear that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. In fact, the evidence of our faith is our works, is that if we believe and we trust in Christ alone, the Spirit works in us and we cannot help but be transformed. And as a new creation, the old is gone, the new has come. And we seek to obey Him and to honor Him. You know, as God's Word transforms us, applying the knowledge we learn from Him, Jesus tells His disciples in John 13, 34 to 35, a new commandment, I give you that you love one another just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. You know, knowing God's will and His good news transforms us and it causes us to show that proof by what we're doing. In fact, there's other passages we look at. John 14, 15, it says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. Or James 1, 22 and 25, it says, but be doers of the word and not only hearers. deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and he goes away and at once forgets what he looks like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and preserves, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. You know, as we look at the scriptures, as we look at God's law, what he calls us to do, and we see, we struggle with it, and also we're reminded that this is God's desire and God makes it happen. In Ezekiel 36, 27, the God promises to give us a new heart. A new heart. It says in Ezekiel 36, 27. 26 and 27. I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statues and be careful to obey my rules. You know, God's plan is for you and I to know Him and to obey Him. And He accomplishes that by giving us a new heart. Making it happen. Causing His Spirit to be in us. To cause us to learn to want to follow Him. To want to know His Word. To want to obey. One of the things that I enjoy doing is fishing. Here in Northeast Tennessee I've gotten into fly fishing, especially with the big rivers that you have. One of the places I fish at is Ware's Dam. And early on when I was out there, I realized as I was talking to somebody else that there are particular rules that you need to know and make sure that you're aware of. For example, one of the guys I met while I was fishing was a guy telling me that he had a friend who had fished there the week before who caught a fish that was probably about 17 inches, nice sized trout. And he kept it. Now the problem is, is that the rules say that if it's between 14 and 20 inches, you have to put it back. If it's smaller, you can keep it. If it's bigger, great, don't mind. But if it falls in here, you gotta put it back. Well, apparently this individual didn't put it back. And instead, that particular day, the ranger happened to be there, happened to ask to see his license, asked to see what he had caught, and then essentially went on to arresting him, confiscating all of his stuff, including his truck that he had just bought. And he was very, apparently this guy was very worried about his truck, and the ranger said, oh, I'll be driving it by Monday on work. But you know, here's the thing, it's one thing To go and to look at the rules, we've got to apply it. And as we look at God's law, and we see our shortcomings, we have to apply it. And the application to it is to run to the gospel, hear the good news, and how God has redeemed us, how He's forgiven us, how He's transformed us. You know, to know God's will, we have to know His Word. Meaning that we have to read the Bible. Study it. Memorize it. So that as we're faced with different temptations or as we're questioning what we should do, we know God's Word that we can see what His will is. As we pray and trust the Spirit to lead us. So when we pray, your will be done, we're asking God to cause us to know and obey His will, to know His plan. However, sometimes our circumstances makes it difficult to really want to submit to God's will. You struggle with that. You struggle submitting when you know that this is what God is doing. I do. So when we pray, or in praying, your will be done, we're acknowledging that it is God's will and not ours that is to be done. It's hard following God's will sometimes. It's hard sometimes because we don't really know what it is. And we have a hard time of just having our hands open and entrusting Him. Honestly, sometimes I think my plan would be better. You relate to that? You think your plan would be better than God's plan? Sometimes I think we do. And we see that come out as we try to control things, to make it happen like we would want it to be, or how we want it to be. Sometimes we want our plans because we know that God's not gonna do what we want. that he's gonna take us through a difficult time, or we're gonna experience some pain, or we're gonna live through a situation that we wish we could change. Perhaps that's you this evening, that you're here and you're in a situation that, boy, you wish you could just get out of it, you could change it. But the truth is, this is right where God wants you. He wants you to trust him through this. He wants you to learn to trust His will as it is His good will, working for your good and His glory. You know, even in the midst of it, we have to trust that God has a plan. We may understand it or we may not understand it. But the bottom line is we have to submit. You know, in the times that we do struggle and think that our plan is better, then the invitation is to confess, repent, and submit to God's plan as He knows best. But you know, when we say submit to God's plan, what does that mean? What do we mean by that word? What does submit mean? Submit is acceptance or yielding to a superior force. Biblical submission would be to submit to God and His plan. Both His revealed wills in His decreative will. That is, the will that we may not really know what it is until it plays out. But to submit involves humility. It involves surrender, to open our hands and say, God, I'm yours, whatever you want to do. Trust in God and leave it in His hands for Him to work all things out. You know, Paul says in Romans 8, 28, for we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. Submitting reveals our dependence upon God and our willingness to obey, even in the hard things. You know, just thinking of a couple examples as we think of the submitting, think of Job's life. Do you think Job wanted to change some things that was happening to him? Do you remember the story? That Job, that God had blessed him. He had wealth. Cattle. He had children. He was faithful to God, we're told. But what happens? God allows Satan to test him and he loses his children. He loses his property. He suffers pain and sores on his feet and his head. He even comes to the point where his wife looks at him and says, just curse God and die. But instead, what does he do? He doesn't. He continues on longing for God to intervene and attempting to trust God in all situations. Obviously, Job would have wanted to change his situation, just as you and I would love to change our situation when we're experiencing difficult seasons. But we must trust We must trust and submit, we must learn as we trust God and know that our thoughts are not His thoughts and our ways are not His ways. What about Jesus as an example here as we think of submitting? In the garden, in Matthew 26, verse 39, it says, And going a little farther, he fell on his face and prayed, saying, My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. The reality of it is Christ took the cup that you and I deserved. Because it was God's will that Christ would come, live, die, and be resurrected. You know, Paul goes on to say in Philippians of Christ, in the second chapter, verses 6-7, that, Who, though He was in the form of God, did not count in equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man. Jesus became human, God in the flesh, dwelt among us, doing what we could not do. You know, there are a lot of situations we'd love to change. you know, as I think of just learning to submit to God's will. I have been in ministry since 2001, and in pastoral ministry for the last five plus years, and we're currently kind of in an in-between stage of looking for a new call. And recently, in August, we had an opportunity, in fact, we had bought tickets to go visit a place that we were looking at as a possible place to come and minister and serve the Lord. I bought the tickets on Saturday. Monday morning, I get a call from one of the pastors there saying, hey, we're going to need to postpone this trip. Now, of course, they reimbursed the expenses. That wasn't the issue. But my wife and I found ourselves in this situation of, God, what are you doing? What are you doing here? Because it seemed like everything was pointing to here. And now the brakes are put on again. You know, we may never really know why God chose to do it this way. But we've got to trust. Walk with Him each day. Submit to His will as He knows best. We know He has a plan. We know He has a plan for you, for this church, for this community. And so we pray, God, Your will be done as we know that He will accomplish His will as we trust Him, as we rely on the Holy Spirit, as we submit to Him, and as He leads and grows us through this. The rest of that story of our time in New Zealand as God took us away from there only being two years. Again, when we come back and we're talking to supporters that had supported us to go, we couldn't really say why necessarily God had chosen to bring us out at that point. But it wasn't until a year or two later, a couple years later, that we got to look back and see what God was doing. You see, while our team was there, we were able to minister to a couple of the college students there that caught the vision of what we were trying to do. That after we left, one of the students went on to graduate, went and became part of the Australian version of it. and within about three years took the ministry back to New Zealand, has replanted the ministry, and God has blessed it. In fact, a few years ago, they just sent their first team to Thailand for the summer of college students to work with other college students to share the gospel. Do you remember when I said part of our team, our prayer, was that God would raise up a New Zealander that would lead that ministry? Wasn't in the way I was anticipating it happening. But God did. He answered our prayer. He caused His will to come about in raising up Josh, who continued to be faithful, who took the ministry back. And God is still using him to this day in the church there and on the campus. So as we pray that prayer, that praise, your will be done. Let us remember what we're asking, that we're asking God that we would know and obey His will, that we would submit. As we cry to Him, Your will be done. Let's pray. Father, we thank You that even when we can't explain situations or why things happen, that we know that You are still in control of all things, that You have a plan, and You're working Your plan out. Would You help us, Father, as we trust You, As we cry to You. As we learn, Father, to open our hands and just know that You're in control. And as we seek to just be faithful to You. As we cry to You that Your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. We thank You and we love You. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.