Once you've got your Bible, you can turn to Matthew chapter 6, or there in your bulletin on page 10. We're making our way to a sermon series on the Lord's Prayer. We read that again this morning, picking up in Matthew 6, verse 5, and when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. where they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep up empty praises, as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask. Pray, then, like this, Our Father in heaven, 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 also have 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. Yes, to your blessing on our understanding and our living of it, O Lord. Jesus, amen. Amen. Something I often hear, I'm sure you've probably heard this, is you talk with people that maybe had a great dating relationship, and then they either get engaged or they get married. At some point thereafter, you'll often hear something like, from one of them, you know, I don't feel like this other person is pursuing me anymore. I don't know why I hear this more from wives and husbands. I don't know why. You could hear it from either one. Maybe a wife saying, you know, I just don't feel like my husband's seeking me anymore. You know, we were dating and it was all this fire and enthusiasm and flowers and dates and these things and now I just don't feel like I'm being pursued and sought the way I once was. And I've thought a little bit about what such a person is actually saying. I want to be sought. It's not I want to be located. you know, I'm locked at the mall, come seek me. You know, it's not that the husband doesn't know where she is, it's not like he needs to go out and seek her and find her, and it's not that she wants to be stalked, you know, I want to be pursued. That doesn't mean she wants to be stalked or hunted, exactly, but what does a wife mean, or what does a husband mean, when he or she might say, I just don't feel like I'm being pursued and sought anymore? It's interesting that God makes that very important in the Bible. You might remember the prophecy of Hosea. Hosea had a rather grim task from God. He was told to marry a woman who was a very, very bad girl. And she ran off with a bunch of other men, and it broke Hosea's heart. And God said, yes, I want this to happen so that you will see how it is between me and my bride, Israel. And at one point in that rather awful story, God says these words. He says, I will return again to my place. until they, until my people Israel, acknowledge their guilt and seek my face. And in their distress, earnest me, seek me." It sounds like God's going to give a bit of the cold shoulder to Israel, kind of a silent treatment. I'm going to pull away into my place until my bride seeks me. What is it that God wants from his people when he says, I want to be sought by them? What does it mean to seek the Lord? My kids and I are memorizing Psalm 119, 10. With my whole heart, I seek you. I think there's an answer in a famous text that for some reason we always cut short. I'm sure in Christian graduation cards you've probably read this a hundred times. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. And parents put that on the front of the card for their kid. Oh yes, I want that child to know God has plans for you. you know, a welfare and not evil in store for you and give you a future and a hope, it does go on. And God says, in the context of that, He says, then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me and I will hear you, you will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. And we want a future, don't we? We want a hope. But do we really seek God and His plans for us, because it is from God and His plans for us that the future and the hope come. And that, I think, is basically what God is saying. He wants us to seek from our hearts, not just for blessings apart from Him. We all want to be blessed. There's not a human being alive who wants to spend the rest of his or her life in utter, utter misery. In fact, even masochists get pleasure out of being cool to themselves. I mean, the human heart seeks blessing, but God says, I want you to seek not just blessings apart from me. I mean, anyone can want blessing. I want you to seek from the heart to relate with me and to receive from me as the God I really am. I don't want you chasing in your mind some God you've made up, some God you've imagined. I want you to know me as a God I really am, as your creator, your sustainer. your Savior, your Lord. I'm the God who gave you life. I'm the God who keeps your life going. I'm the God who saves you from all evil. I'm the God who is your Lord and your King. And what God wants to hear from his people is, God, our hope and our future lie with you. That's really what the wife wants, or the husband wants. The wife who wants to be sought, wants to be wanted for her own sake. She wants to be sought, not because her husband wants something else by means of her, He's using her to get some blessing he's after, but because he wants her. And Hudson feels that too. I don't want to be sought by my wife because I have a great benefits package. I want to be sought for my own sake. And God desires to be sought as the God he really is. And this is where the Lord's Prayer is so helpful. Because the first half of the Lord's Prayer doesn't leave us with any sort of way to get around this. We all want daily bread. Hopefully we're sane enough to know we need and desire forgiveness of our sins. Surely we would like to not be led into temptations and to be protected from evils, and that's all good stuff. But the Lord's Prayer begins with the fact that you want all that stuff, you've got to seek first God. Lord, hallowed and respected and honored be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done. Seek first God and His righteousness and all the rest of that stuff will certainly be added to you. Amos 5, verse 4, Thus says the Lord to the house of Israel, and live. And that's first and foremost what prayer is, brethren. Prayer is pursuing God. It's seeking God. It's loving God as a God He really is. In Tim Keller's recent book on prayer, he says something so powerful. He says, to fail to pray is not merely to break some religious rule. Now, you've all probably been there where you feel like if you're not praying, you're breaking some religious rule. You're being a very naughty Christian. You're not checking off your checklist every day of prayer. No, he says to fail to pray is not merely to break some religious rule. It is a failure to see God as God. That's what failure to pray is. It is failure to seek the Lord and His name and His kingdom and His will, out of which all other things will be added to it. Now, speaking of relating with God as He really is, the petition I'm going to look at today, Your Will Be Done, will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I want to talk about this petition as an act of repentance and as a source of reassurance today. First of all, Thy will be done as a prayer of repentance. Because if God's godness means anything, it means that he's the creator of heaven and earth. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. God is the creator of all things. And the creation that he has made both is, whether we realize it or not, and it is supposed to be subject to the will of the creator. The potter has power over the clay, because he's forming it. And if he decides to smash this clay into a different form and create something else out of it, that is his prerogative, because he is the potter. And the Creator has a will for his creation. God is a God who has a will. And that will shows itself in a few ways. When you think about the will of God, I imagine you probably think about his law. The thou shalt and thou shalt not of the Bible. But the will of God is actually quite a bit broader than that. You can think of God's will in terms of his designs, his doings, and his disclosures. Which I love. God has a design. He made stuff to work a certain way. There's a grain to the universe. And even though we human beings are very good at trying to somehow, you know, act against the grain of nature, I mean, the big thing in our time today is the idea that your gender is entirely moldable to your own wishes. There's no grain to gender. There's nothing actually, you know, sort of definitely there about manhood or womanhood. You can change that stuff around any way you please. And we have a lot of ideas about being able to sort of press against the grain of nature cut against the grain, and it'll all work out fine in the end. It won't. God has made the world to work a certain way, and you can only fight that so long before the effects of devastation. But not just God's designs in things, His doings. God's doing stuff all the time. It's called providence. God's running His world, and He's moving things around. He's making things happen. He's preventing things from happening. And that's called His providence. And sometimes, you know, you don't like God's will of providence. It can be very frustrating. It can cross our will very much. And then the more typical thing we think of when we talk about the will of God is His disclosures, whether it's teachings or precepts. God has a will for His creation. And He made human beings, in a particular way, to lead creation in submitting to the will of God. He made humankind to rule over creation as king, and to offer creation back to God in worship as priests, and in a very verbal and very active, choosing way, not just by animal instinct, but from our hearts. God made us to rule the earth under His will, and to offer creation back to Him in worship in accordance with His will, we can actually study the designs of creation, and study the works of God, and listen to His words to us, and obey Him. And we don't, do we? Every evil that has ever happened in this world arises from one common root. against the will of God in heaven. The world is full of evils. Some of them are dramatic and horrific. You think of genocides and wars and murders and other unsavory cruelties of humans as humans. Right on down to the seemingly innocuous but very frustrating tantrum of that two-year-old who's just tormenting his mom in the supermarket. The world is full of evils, and all of them stem from one common root. earthly, creaturely rebellion against the will of God in heaven. It can take any number of different forms. You'll feel this. I do. First of all, the obvious one is just where I exalt my will above God's. I have so many times every day where I realize, you know what's happening in my head if I could get it out on the table and look at it for what it is? My will be done in this world as it is in my head. And it makes me so mad that God isn't cooperative, and sometimes my wife and kids aren't cooperative, and people I minister to aren't cooperative, and I want my will to be done, and so do you. And there are times when you're willing to exalt your will, even when it's contrary to the will of God. That's one way this happens. The other way, maybe a little less obvious, is we can also exalt the will of other people above God's. We human beings have an amazing tendency to let ourselves be tyrannized by creaturely agendas. There are some of you who live so much enslaved to the expectations of other people, you're willing to bow to those and try to make, you know, keep conflict from happening and just, you know, keep things smoothed over and somehow, you know, just keep things as nice as possible, even when that involves disobedience to God. Even when that involves compromising, seriously following after the will of God for your life. And these are two ways we can, we can invert heaven and earth. And to pray this petition, no, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven, is already to begin to repent for ourselves, and as the Lord's royal priest, we talked about the fact that Jesus is preaching a kingdom manifesto here, and he's telling his disciples, his new humanity, his kingdom people, who are going to be the true royal priests now in his kingdom, He's telling them to pray, not just for themselves, but on behalf of creation. To lift up these petitions to God on behalf of the world. And we've repensed by praying this. Your will be done, not just for ourselves, but on behalf of others. We, Lord God, have inverted heaven and earth. We've wanted you to submit to us in so many ways. We've wanted our will to be done, even to the point of ignoring your will. Sometimes human rebellion just takes the form of not being attentive to the will of God. There are some of you who just don't even know what God's will is, because you're not studying. You're not thinking about it. You're getting out of bed every morning, and what's on your mind is what's going to run your day. There's not even attentiveness to the will of God. You know what? That's life. Other times, God's will is very clear. We know what his will is. You know what? I just don't want to do it. This is so often in modern times, the single biggest thing that keeps youth out of the Christian churches, they don't want to obey the sexual ethic of Christianity. It costs. And it's not a price they're willing to pay. It's not that God's will, morally and sexually, is all that unclear. It's just that it's downright unpopular, it is painful, it requires war, and we don't want to do it. It's not like God, you know, it's complicated what God says about how husbands are to treat their wives. We just don't want to. It's not complicated how wives should treat their husbands. We just don't want to. It's not complicated to obey your parents. We don't want to. It's not complicated to make sure fathers are not frustrating your children. We just don't want to. It's not complicated to be submissive one to another in love. We don't want to. It's not complicated to shut your mouth when poison is pouring out of it. We just don't want to. Thy will be done. We have opposed, Lord, what you have designed. We have opposed what you've done. You know what it's like to shake your fist at God and say, Why are you doing this to me? Well, I've got a simple answer. It's not highly comforting, but it's simple because he's God. That's why, and it's very frustrating that we don't. We resist his disclosure. We resist sometimes things that he has explicitly disclosed. And I will tell you, brethren, that praying this prayer from the heart, because you realize, God, the fundamental problem in the world is we've inverted heaven and earth. That prayer and that heart is basic to being a Christian. There is no authentic Christianity without a radical displacement of the self from the center. You are play-acting at being redeemed humanity. You are play-acting at being a child of God. You are play-acting at being a royal priest in Jesus' kingdom if your self has not been displaced from the center. And there's probably nothing that cuts against 21st 21st century North American brain more than that. Self is king in 21st century North America. My identity, my fulfillment, my desire, my potential. You know what? God comes along and Jesus says, you cannot even follow me if you do not die to self. It is the one who loses his life who finds it. You must take up your cross and follow me. That is a radical displacement where I once reigned as king, Jesus is now the center of everything. That's Christianity. There is no Christianity without that. Now what's hard about this, if you think about it though, is that God made us to be willing priests. Unlike animals who act out of instinct, God made us as human beings to plan. To have a will, to have choices, to make decisions. We're supposed to do that. To act on those decisions. That's good. And the problem, I want to be very clear, is not that we have a will. If you get out of bed every day and you're just like, eh, I'm just going to be a blob, and I'm just going to be formed by whatever comes, that's not being human. It's certainly not being Christian. You should have a plan, and make decisions, and have choices that you're making. The problem is not that you have a will, which is why the whole parental idea of breaking a child's will is immoral. I don't want a child with a broken will. I want a child with a submissive will. It's not the same thing. A broken will in a person, it means he or she has been dehumanized. But our problem is that we want our will more than God's. We do not submit our will to Him. We do not die to self-rule. And Jesus says, I'll have none of it. The man who loses his life and loses himself will find it in following me. I should tell you to be ready, because God answers this prayer. Thy will be done on earth, in my life first, as it is in heaven. He'll answer that prayer. And you know what, brethren? It may look an awful lot like Jesus comes in the temple. We like to think of God coming along in this very soft, gentle way, you know, making everything kind of nice and soft and good. Sometimes Jesus comes along and he just starts throwing tables. God can be violent in bringing his will to pass. He's relentless in doing you good. And he'll bust to a thousand pieces all the stuff you think is good for you that he says is not good for you. And he'll just shatter it, and send money flying, and kick the oxen out of his temple. He can be ruthless in doing us good. And his will always sounds great until it actually crosses ours, doesn't it? Oh, it's the will of God, the will of God, and then all of a sudden you realize, oh dear. And then we can be so adept, can't we, at just convincing ourselves that we're right after all, and plowing on ahead will be darn well pleased. Be ready. God will answer this prayer. God, you will be done. Help me to be ready. He may cross our will, not just when we pray for ourselves, but when we pray for other people. It's pretty easy to go to God and say, you know what, God, I've got a heavy situation on my mind. There's this troublesome human being over here, and I'm praying, God, your will be done. Deal with this person. We have very big ideas about what God should do in other people. It's kind of like when people come in for pastoral counseling often. I've noticed this is, in nine years, this has become a syndrome I see. People come to me for counseling, and what they actually want in counseling is me to fix somebody else. I finally told them to go pack their bags and come back when you're ready to talk about you. I will not help you fix somebody else. And neither will God. And do not sit there on your knees saying, God, fix so-and-so and here's how you need to do it. You know what? What if he takes the Saul of Tarsus, a murderous Saul of Tarsus, and turns him into the greatest apocalypse of Christian history? What if you're Jonah saying, God, will you just, will you bring your wrath on the Ninevites? And all of a sudden, God converts a city of 600,000 people. That's quite what I had in mind. I saw that going kind of differently. I saw it like a brimstone fall. Be ready for the surprises. of the love of God, surprises of His grace, sometimes so violent against stuff that we are holding on to so hard, and other times so gentle with something we wish God would just take out. His will be done. But also, that's all pretty heavy. This prayer is an act of repentance. It's also a source of mighty reassurance, though. It's reassuring, first, in that God's will will be done. I mean, this prayer is always answered. Always. God's will, because he's God, is ultimately irresistible. None can stay his hand and say to him, what on earth are you doing? You can't call God into account, you can't stop him. The fact that he is king, and we just prayed your kingdom come, which it will, his kingdom rule ensures that starting now, and in fullness to come, when he finally consummates all things, God's purposes for this earth will be accomplished, even as they are in his heavenly realm. But brethren, I want to say of this, which is important, that's only good news, that's only reassuring if we know that God's will is not just guaranteed, and it is. It's also good. Can you say, God, your will be done, gracing yourself for what can sometimes be a violent working of God to bring it about? Can you pray that not just as a duty, but as a desire? Do you want it to be done? I've got to tell you, I sometimes don't. There are times when turning this chair scares me. The gospel gives me stuff that I know is His will, but it's horrible. And this is where I think the story of Job is so very helpful. You won't crack your heads about the story of Job. I actually think it's not terribly, terribly complicated. There's lots of mysteries in the story, but you know the story. God allowed Satan to go after a righteous man. And it's brutal. It involves all his stuff being stolen, it involves all seven of his kids being killed, it involves a direct assault on his health to the point where he's so broken down he's sitting on an ash heap just scraping the boils with a pot stirred, the man is broken, he is shattered, and he didn't do anything to deserve it. And then he has to endure, like, months and months of his friends yakking to him about, well, it's got to be sin, Joe, because nobody ever suffers like this unless they've sinned. He has to listen to that for all this time, and there's all this theological confusion on top of his pain and his loss and his suffering, even his wife saying, Job, cry out loud and curse God and die. And Job gets angry. Job gets hot. Job is, there are moments when he's frustrated and he wants someone to, you know, get him into the courtroom of God and argue his case for him. And finally, at the very end of the book of Job, God shows. I guarantee you kids, in your worst moments, when you miss your kid to work and your mom and dad are coming to you to ask you about something, you've never seen an angel talk to you. This is summoning. And God gives two speeches, and the first one, the first one's devastating. Who is this, God says, that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? That's not a question you want to ask. Dress for action like a man. I will question you, and you make it known to me, Job. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements, Job? Surely you know. Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, and said, Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud ways be saved? Have you commanded the morning, Job, since your days began? Have you caused the dawn to know its place? Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep, Job? Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness, that you may take it to its territory, and that you may discern the path to its home, Job? Have you entered the storehouses of the snow? Have you seen the storehouses of the hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble? Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain, Job, and a way for the thunderbolts? Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew? Can you bind the chains of Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that a flood of waters may cover you? Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind? Can you hunt the prey for the lion or satisfy the appetite of the young lion? Do you know when the mountain goats give birth, Job? Do you observe the calving of the does? Who's let the wild donkey go free and loose the bonds of the swift donkey? Is the wild ox willing to serve you, Job? Did you deprive the ostrich of wisdom? Did you give the horse his might and close his neck with a mane that he might thunder to the battle, Job?" And the Lord said to Job, "'Shall a fault finder contend with the Almighty?' He who argues with God, let him answer it. That's a smackdown. Job has a good sense, in that thundering torrent of God's sovereignty coming at him, to realize, I need a piece. Behold, I am a small account. He says, what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. spoken once, and I will not answer twice, but I will proceed no further." If the book of Job ended there, it would be a very, very hard book. Because a merely sovereign God, who is Lord, and who is King, and who says, stand up to me if you can, is terrifying. But God, as he finished his second speech, he says again, dressed for action like a man, I will question you when you make it known to me. Listen to what he says. Job, adorn yourself with majesty and dignity. Clothe yourself with glory and splendor. Pour out the overflowing of your anger and look on everyone who is proud and abase him. Look on everyone who is proud and bring him low and tread down the wicked where they stand. Hide them all in the dust together. find their faces in the world below and listen to them, then will I also acknowledge to you that your own right hand can save you. You're not only not sovereign, Lord, because you're not sovereign, you can save yourself. You see Behemoth, Joe, the mightiest of the land creatures, an almost mythical creature, smashing through the underbrush. He is lord of all land creatures, more powerful than any. You see him and he says to Joe, can one take him by his eyes or pierce his nose with a snare, Joe? Can you stop Behemoth? Or let's speak of Leviathan. Can you draw out Leviathan, the mighty That mighty, playful, raging monster that sits atop the sea is a surging emblem in the Old Testament of the power of the Gentiles and the power of nations at war with God. Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook, Job? Can you press down his tongue with a cord, this one who is king, God says, over all the sons of pride? Can you take up the battle against evil Job and the mighty sea serpent, behind which stands the specter of that demonic power that brought Job down in the first place? Can you take him on and put a hook in his jaws and bring him low? I can! And I will. Because I am not merely the sovereign. As the sovereign, I am a says, with great confidence, he says, I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. I absolutely love the words entitled by Catechism 26. What do you believe when you say, I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth? Listen to these words. Sovereignty, yes, but God is When I say those words, I confess that the Eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath nothing made heaven and earth, with all that is in them, who likewise upholds and governs the same by his eternal counsel and providence, is for the sake of Christ his Son, my God and my Father. on whom I rely so entirely that I have no doubt that he will provide me with all things necessary for soul and body, and further, that he will make whatever evils he sends upon me in this valley of tears turn out to my advantage. For he is able to do it, being Almighty God, and willing to do it, being a faithful father." And you have come to pray this prayer that ought to be prayed when you can say, Thy will be done, and you know in your innermost being it is the best. That the will of God is health-giving for those who trust in His mercy, even when it comes by way of the cross. And that, of course, is exactly where so often, in every day of life, don't we have to walk on faith? To know that these things which just seem like they are unraveling in your hand, of not just an almighty God, but a faithful father, seeing beyond and beyond and beyond his immediate providential will, whatever that may bring, to his ultimate promised will, the restoration of all things. Faith, confidence that God will hear this prayer and he will answer this prayer and that it will be good, that faith is the fuel and the heart of one who seeks Notice how there is confidence in the fatherly care of God, who is the fuel of seeking His will. Ask, said Jesus, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks succeeds, and the one who seeks finds. And to the one who knocks, it will be opened." If you're up against something today, and you say, God, I can't take it anymore, I can't fight this anymore, I can't resist this anymore, I can't endure this anymore, you seek God. And without faith, you know that it is impossible to succeed. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists, and that Lord, those who seek you. Lord our God and keep our faith, that you will be done, and that it will be good, because you are both Almighty God. So be it. We'll do this way.