VThe Third Petition
“Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.”—Matt.vi.10
The third petition, which is omitted from Luke’s version of the Prayer, springs directly and naturally out of the second petition, and is really explanatory of it. We have been taught to pray, “Thy kingdom come.” God’s kingdomwillcome, when His will is done on earth, as it is done in heaven.
The central idea of kingship is that ofrule,authority,power. Kingship is only real and effective when the King commands and the people obey. In heaven God’s kingship is a reality. The eyes of all the inhabitants of the better land wait upon God. Cherubim and Seraphim, saints and angels, delight to do His will. In heaven, God speaks and it is done. This third petition is a prayer that men may learn to obey God as the angels do, so that Hiskingship may be as real and as effective here on earth as it is now in heaven.
Jurists draw a distinction between kingsde jure—kings by legal right, and kingsde facto—in actual possession and exercise of the royal power. Now God, if I may be allowed to say so, is the world’s Kingde jure. He is the world’s lawful Sovereign and rightful Lord. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein.” But God is not Kingde facto. His kingship is not effective. His people do not obey. There are large sections of the world, whole departments of human activity, where His rule is not recognised. Ireland is part of the Queen’s dominions; but there have been times when the Queen could scarcely be said toreignin Ireland. At the time when the Irish troubles were at their height, it was a common saying that in certain districts of Ireland it was not the Queen who ruled, but the Land League. Cuba was until last year part of the dominions of the King of Spain. The Spanish flag floated over its arsenals and forts. It was with the ministers of the King of Spain that all negotiations with reference to Cuba had to be carried on. Cuban coins and Cuban postage stamps bore the image and superscription of the Spanishsovereign. But for all that, for the past ten years or so the kingship of Alphonso over Cuba was merely nominal. Outside Havanna and Santiago Alphonso could not be said toreign. Not all the armies of Spain could make his kingship real and effective over the rebellious interior. In much the same way God is the King of the world. He is its lawful Sovereign. No one else has a shred of title or claim to an inch of its territory or to the allegiance of one of its inhabitants. “The kingdom is the Lord’s, and He is Governor among the nations.” But while God is King of the worldde jure, He is not Kingde facto. His kingship is nominal—not real and effective; for there are parts of the world over which God cannot be said torule. There are multitudes of men who are in rebellion against Him, and who refuse to acknowledge His authority. God’s writs do not run. His law is not obeyed. His will is not done.
And here we come across that solemn and awful power which is the prerogative of manhood—thepower of resisting the will of God. Nature obeys God’s will. The flower that blooms in hedge-side or meadow; the lark that sings its way up to heaven’s gate in the spring sunshine; the rivers that roll towardsthe sea; the ocean with its regular ebb and flow; the sun and moon and stars observing their seasons and travelling along their appointed orbits—all these are what they are, and do what they do in obedience to God’s will. The wind is God’s messenger; the thunder His voice; the lightning His sword. Nature obeys God. And above, in heaven, the angels and the blest do God’s pleasure. “Thousands at His bidding speed, and post o’er land and ocean without rest.” Is there any one then who resists God’s will? Yes, there is one, just one, and that one isman. In all God’s universe he is the only one who is disobedient. He is the only one who clenches his fist and says “No” to God. He is the only one invested with the terrible power of resisting, thwarting, opposing the will of God. And that awful power he possesses because he possesses a free and independent will of his own. God made man, we are told, in His own likeness. The special feature that marks man off from the brute creation and links him on to the Divine, is his possession ofmoral freedom. God is a moral Being. Man, too, is a moral being. But in order to make man a moral being, God had to limit Himself and make manfree. For there can be no moral quality where there is nofreedom. Nature is un-moral because nature acts under necessity. Man isnotunder necessity. He can either obey or disobey. He is a moral being because he isfree.
Now all the misery of the world is due to the fact that man abused his freedom, that he chose not to obey, but todis-obey. What was the first sin? An act of disobedience; and that act of disobedience brought in its train a multitude of woes. I want you to remember that vice is not here by God’s will; lust is not here by God’s will; strife and malice and envy are not here by God’s will; war and bloodshed and slaughter are not here by God’s will; misery and poverty and shame are not here by God’s will. They are here byman’swill, because man set up his own will in opposition to that of God. The secret of the world’s unhappiness and sorrow and pain you will find in these familiar words of the General Confession, “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.” “Selfishness,” as Bishop Westcott says, “lies at the root of all sin.” Here is the fountain of the world’s woe, that man preferred his own will rather than the will of God. While man was obedient there was happiness and joy, happiness that lasted. As John Milton says—
—till disproportioned SinJarr’d against nature’s chime, and with harsh dinBroke the fair music that all creatures madeTo their great Lord, whose love their motion sway’dIn perfect diapason, whilst they stoodIn first obedience and their state of good.
—till disproportioned SinJarr’d against nature’s chime, and with harsh dinBroke the fair music that all creatures madeTo their great Lord, whose love their motion sway’dIn perfect diapason, whilst they stoodIn first obedience and their state of good.
—till disproportioned SinJarr’d against nature’s chime, and with harsh dinBroke the fair music that all creatures madeTo their great Lord, whose love their motion sway’dIn perfect diapason, whilst they stoodIn first obedience and their state of good.
—till disproportioned Sin
Jarr’d against nature’s chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway’d
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience and their state of good.
But from that day, that day of disobedience, the whole creation has been groaning and travailing together in pain until now. But to discover the fountain of the disease is also to discover the secret of the remedy. If the world owes its present misery to the fact that man has followed his own will, the world will see its perfect day when man submits his own will to the will of God. “Come and let usreturn” is the prophet’s cry, “let us get back to the old allegiance.” “Come and let us return” is the preacher’s call to-day. The way to the millennium is along the path of obedience. When God’s kingship is real and effective, because men everywhere are obedient, the Golden Age will have dawned. The new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness will be a blessed fact when—
We learn with God to will one will,To do and to endure.
We learn with God to will one will,To do and to endure.
We learn with God to will one will,To do and to endure.
We learn with God to will one will,
To do and to endure.
Thy Will be done!This petition teaches us that it must be our supreme desire that Godmay have His way with us. You will notice, as I pointed out a Saturday or two ago, that this petition comes before the petitions for personal blessing. It is infinitely more important that God’s will should be done than that we should have the things upon which we have set our hearts. “Thywill be done!” Do you not feel humbled and reproached by this petition? I will speak for myself, and say that this petition and its place in the prayer put me to utter shame. Why, our very prayers are selfish! A secularist once said with a sneer that “prayer was a machine warranted by theologians to make God do whatsoever His clients want.” Have not our prayers given some ground for the sneer? Have not our wants and interests occupied too large a place in our petition? This is the true order in prayer—God first. This is the petition that must dominate every other, “Thy will be done.”
Let me not be misunderstood. I am far from saying it is wrong to tell God about our personal wishes and desires. No! Tell Him everything. There ought to be no reserve in the conversation between a child and his Father. I am not afraid or ashamed to tell God about my personal affairs. I ask Him to preserve me from trouble and loss. I ask Him to keep mesafe from harm and danger. I ask Him to ward off from me sickness and suffering. I ask Him to watch over those I love. But there is another prayer I must learn to pray, another prayer I must learn to prayfirst—and oh! what a lot of learning it takes—and that prayer is this, “Thy will be done.” For it may be God’s will to send me the very things I shrink from. He may see that it is the discipline of trouble and loss and sickness that I need. I am but as a little child, blind and ignorant as a little child, and when I pray for temporal gifts, I may be only praying to my own hurt. This is the only prayer for me, for you, for all men, “Father, Thy will be done.” We wish for success in life, but because such a success might prove a curse and not a blessing, we must add, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.” We pray for freedom from bereavement and sorrow, but because such discipline may result in truest blessedness, we add, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.” We pray for peace and comfort and quietness, but because struggle and conflict may be necessary, in order to make us strong, we add, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.” We have not learned to pray truly at all, until every petition in our prayers is made subject to this one; until it becomesour chief and supreme desire that God’s will may be done.
Will it be hard?Hard? I know of nothing harder. This is the great feat of life. You can only learn to say “Thy will be done” through struggle and agony and heartbreak. This old Book compares the agony through which men must pass before they learn sincerely to pray this prayer, to the agony inflicted by the plucking out of an eye or the cutting off of a limb. Obedience to God leads to the land of blessedness and peace, but the gate by which we enter—the gate of self-denial—is a narrow gate, and we have toagoniseto enter in. God has a will for each of us, and His will concerning us often clashes with our own. The desires of the flesh and of the mind hanker after earthly comfort and wealth and ease. God’s will concerning us is, that whatever the cost and the pain, we should be clean and honest and true. Scarcely a day passes but our desires and the will of God for us come into violent conflict. To surrender our own wills, to make God’s will ours, means pain. It is a dying. It is a crucifixion. But there are one or two considerations of which I would like to remind you, which ought to make this surrender easier for us. This is the first:—
(1) The will we are asked to make our own isour Father’swill. “Thy will be done!” Whose will?Our Father’s will!After all, it ought not to be very difficult to obey a father’s will, to fulfil a father’s desire, even when that will runs counter to our own, for we know there islovein the case. Remember, you are not asked to obey a despot; you are not asked to obey a tyrant; you are not asked to obey a slave-driver; you are asked to do the will ofyour Father—your Father, whose love is only to be measured by the Cross of Jesus Christ. It was the remembrance that the will He was called upon to obey was His Father’s will, that helped Jesus in the Garden. It was a hard thing for our Lord to say “Thy will be done,” when He knew that involved the Cross and the Grave; for Jesus, let me say it with all reverence, had all a man’s feelings, and He shrank from the bitter agony and shame. He would gladly have escaped the Cross and the Tomb. “If it be possible, let this cup pass.” Then he remembered it was His Father who was bidding Him drink that bitter cup. That thought steadied Him, gave Him courage, made Him strong, He was ready for anything and everything that His Father appointed. “The cup which the Father hath given me to drink shall I not drinkit?” We, too, shall be strong to make God’s will our own, when we remember it is ourFather’swill. For our Father is love—love at its best and highest. Mr. Spurgeon tells a story about a man who had in his garden a weather-cock which had on it this inscription, “God is Love.” A friend seeing it asked if it was meant to imply that God’s love was as fickle as the wind. “No,” was the reply, “I mean that from whatever quarter the wind may happen to blow, God is still love.” Bear that in mind—God is love; the will you are asked to obey is your Father’s will. Then, though that will ordain for us sorrow, sickness, pain, loss, we shall have grace to say, “Thy will be done.”
The second consideration which I would impress upon you is this:—
(2) God’s willever seeks our highest good. What else could any one expect, seeing that it isour Father’swill? How we who are parents plan and scheme and contrive in order to secure a happy and prosperous future for our children! In exactly the same way God plans and purposes for us. He is always thinking upon us for our good. His will, says the Apostle, is our sanctification. It is a good and perfect and acceptable will. The very discipline through which He sometimes calls upon us topass is meant to build us up in patience and purity and faith. The boy in school is apt to regard his lessons as a hardship. He would prefer the field and the sunshine to the school-room and the desk. But in after years he will be thankful he did not get his own way in the days of his youth, for he will recognisethenthat the hours he spent over his Algebraic problems and his Latin declensions enriched his life by contributing to the culture of his mind. We are scholars in God’s schools. The discipline of the school is painful sometimes; but in later years we shall be thankful even for our sorrows and losses and bereavements, when we see how they have enriched our lives by contributing to the culture of our souls. Yes, it will be easier to embrace God’s will when we realise with the Apostle that all things work together for good to them that love God.
Thy will be done!Notice, God’s will is not simply to be endured or suffered—it is to be done. In our every-day speech we have unduly narrowed the scope and meaning of this petition. We talk about this petition as if it were a prayer that God would give us the grace ofresignation. It is in times of bereavement that this phrase leaps to the lips of men. It is upon tombstones that it is inscribed by sorrowingrelatives. Again do not let me be misunderstood. Suffering God’s will is embraced in the scope of this prayer. To many of us the hardest part of all is patient submission to the will of God. The man bereft of wealth, stripped of all his possessions, flung back again into the poverty from which by hard and persistent effort he had emerged, needs grace to say, “Thy will be done.” The man who languishes upon a bed of sickness, who lies there helpless while perhaps wife and children look up to him for bread—he needs grace to say, “Thy will be done.” Those who have parted with some loved one, who have seen father or mother, or husband or wife or child, hidden from them in the dark cold grave, and who come home again to miss the well-loved face and familiar voice—they need grace to say, while their hearts are aching and their eyes are full of tears, “Thy will be done.” Some of you know how hard it is. You find it impossible almost to say, as Job said, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Yes, it is hard to be submissive and resigned, and it is out of a broken heart the prayer often ascends, “Thy will be done.”
But this prayer is much more than a prayer for the grace of resignation and patient submission.The petition is not “Help us tosufferthy will,” but “Help us to do it.” This is not a prayer simply for the invalid and the mourner and the bereaved; it is a prayer also for those who are happy and well and strong. This is not a prayer simply for our times of trouble and our days of deep distress; it is a prayer for all times and every day. It is not every day, nor every month, nor even every year, that we are called upon tosufferGod’s will, but not a day, not an hour passes, butwe arecalled upon to do it. Do not narrow the scope of this prayer. You prayed this morning, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? What did you mean by it? I will tell you what you ought to have meant by it: “Help me, O God, to do what Thou wouldest have me do, to be what Thou wouldest have me.” That is what the prayer means. It means that we accept God’s plans and purposes as our own, and resolve to realise them. You can pray no nobler prayer than this, for in the doing of God’s will lies the secret of the perfect life. We look at the life of Jesus—so beautiful, so pure, so perfect—and we are lost in wonder and rapture. But the secret of that life is here: Jesus from the beginning to the close of life was intent on doing God’s will. He Himself let us into thesecret. “I am come,” He said, “not to do My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me.” “My meat and drink,” He said, on another occasion, “is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to accomplish His work.” When a boy of twelve He had come to the sublime decision that every moment of His life should be spent in doing His Father’s business. Do not commit the mistake of thinking that it was only in Gethsemane and the Judgement Hall and on Calvary that Christ was doing the will of God. He was doing it during those silent years at Nazareth. He was doing it when at school, He was doing it when He was in the carpenter’s shop, mending the tables and chairs and ploughs of the dwellers in Nazareth. He was doing it when He preached the Gospel of the Kingdom in Galilee. He was doing it when sharing in the festivities at Cana, and taking part in Matthew’s farewell dinner. He was doing it when healing the sick and comforting the lonely and lifting up the outcast. In fact, He was never doing anything else. Every day, every moment, Jesus was doing the Father’s will, and the result is the only perfect life the world has ever seen. And so, in our case, the doing of God’s will is not something confined to our times of darkness and sorrow; the doing of God’s will is a dailyand hourly endeavour. God’s will is reallydoneby us only when, to use the Apostle’s words, “whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, we do all to the glory of God.” “Thy will be done on earth,” so runs the petition; the sphere in which God’s will is to be put into effect is this earth of ours—its business life, its public life, its social life, its family life. The employer is doing God’s will when He treats those in his employment justly and generously. The tradesman is doing God’s will when he buys and sells honestly. The shop assistant is doing God’s will by being diligent and courteous, and yet withal scrupulously straightforward and true. The artizan is doing God’s will when he respects his employer’s time, and does every bit of work as well as it can be done. Fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters in the home are doing God’s will when they strive to make home happy by their self-forgetfulness and ready helpfulness. “Doing God’s will” means doing everything as we know God would have us do it, making God supreme over every detail of human life. It means buying and selling, keeping ledgers, serving at the counter, teaching at the desk, toiling in the fields, sitting in the council chamber, casting a vote, taking our pleasure, sharing in social joys, and doing all this for God.This is what we pray for when we say, “Thy will be done.”
Look at the qualifying words that follow: “as in heaven so on earth.” Heaven supplies the pattern for earth. I have just two words to say about the way in which God’s will is done in heaven—(1) It is donecheerfully. Saints and angels find their highest joy in doing God’s will. If earth is to be like heaven in this respect, we must obey God cheerfully. God wants no grudging service. Our obedience must be glad, willing, free. God’s will can not be done by us as it is done in heaven, until we can say sincerely, “I delight to do Thy will, O my God, yea, Thy law is within my heart.” (2) It is done byALL. You will look in vain in the heavenly land for the disobedient and the refractory and the rebellious. Heaven is perfectly happy, because all its people are perfect in their obedience. Before earth can be like heaven, God’s will must be done byALL. It is done to-day only by aFEW. There are multitudes who rebel against Him. When these return to their allegiance, the day of God will break.
Thy will be done!This petition calls our attention to the most crying and urgent need of our day, the need of a simpler and more implicitobedience. It is not more knowledge of God’s will that we want, but grace to put in practice what we know. What is the use of coming here to-day to hear God’s will declared, if to-morrow in our business life, we deliberately flout and reject it? I venture to say this, that if to-morrow and the following days we only did what we know our Lord desires us to do, we should revolutionise the life of this town. And will you suffer me to remind you that it is not to those who make a profession and parade of religion that heaven is promised, but to those who faithfully and loyally obey. “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.”