Hi, this is the Human Proclaim podcast, The Messages of John Fonville. You're listening to season four called Pray This Way: The Divine Pattern of Righteous Prayer. Here's John with message number 8 called The Will of the Father. Martin Luther calls this the perfect prayer. It's the perfect prayer because it contains the divine wisdom of God.
The Lord's Prayer teaches us how to avoid legalism. Praying on righteous prayer. It teaches us how to grow in genuine righteous prayer because the Lord's prayer. roots us in the gospel of grace. And then it guides us by the wisdom of God's law.
And one of the things that I've been seeing as I've been going through this with you is that. And learning to pray the way Jesus teaches us here to pray. we come face to face with just how impoverished Our prayers really are. We think we know how to pray. We think we know how to come to church and worship.
We think we know how to live the Christian life. And then we come to the Lord's Prayer, and all of that gets shattered. And so, as we come to this increased understanding of the way that Jesus teaches us to pray, we're confronted with this great reality of how often we pray out of the poverty of our spirits rather than out of the rich wisdom of God's Word. You see, Jesus is teaching us that without the gospel, our Father, true prayer is impossible. And without the wisdom of God's law serving as our guide, we don't even know how to pray or even the right things to pray for.
And so the Lord's Prayer focuses on seven major themes which focus us on God the Father. Because it's exactly who the Pharisees and scribes in this context Jesus is teaching against did not know. And these seven themes reveal the true character of God the Father, and they show how the Father's adopted sons pray.
So, the first thing that we learned was that righteous prayer focuses on the knowledge of God and His Father. Second, righteous prayer focuses on the honor of the Father. Third, righteous prayer focuses on the kingdom of the Father. And then we come to the third petition, which is the fourth theme. And we're going to see this morning is that righteous prayer focuses on the will of the Father.
The first three petitions of this prayer are so inseparably bound together that no one can exist without the other. And so Jesus then goes to the third petition and he says, then pray like this. When you pray, pray saying, Our Father in heaven, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
So they're all intricate connected together. The third petition raises some significantly important questions that we want to answer this morning.
So here's the first question. What is the will of God? Few subjects have been the cause of such great anxiety for believers. Have I done the will of God? Have I missed the will of God?
What is the will of God? And few subjects have caused so much confusion among believers as this whole subject of the will of God. And fortunately, God's word doesn't leave us guessing, it doesn't leave us confused, and we don't have to be anxious. concerning the will of God. Because the scriptures clearly distinguish for us and teach us what that will is.
Briefly speaking, this morning, I want to show you two aspects of it. First of all, in Scripture, you have to distinguish between God's sacred will. and his revealed will. God's secret will is sometimes referred to as his decretive will. His efficacious will.
That is, God by his secret will bring to pass whatever he pleases by his divine decrees. Where do you get that in Scripture? Listen very carefully. Psalm 115, verse 3. Our God is in the heavens.
He does all that he pleases. Psalm 135, verse 6. Whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and on earth. Isaiah 46, verses 9 through 10. God declares to the prophet Isaiah, listen.
I am God. And there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me. Declaring the end from the beginning. Do you hear that?
Declaring the end, the whole consummated plan of his person from the beginning. From ancient times, things not yet done. Saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose. That's power. When Jesus instructs us to pray, your will be done.
He's not teaching us to pray that God's secret will be done by us. That's not what he's referring to.
So second, Somebody might object and say, well, if God does whatever He pleases, if He'll accomplish all of His will, if whatsoever He's decreed will come to pass, if He determines the end from the beginning and He announces, I will accomplish all of my purpose. Why pray? First, why pray is that you have to keep in mind that it is the Father's will and command that you pray. That's why I pray. Jesus gives us in Matthew chapter 6 this divine imperative.
When you pray, pray like this. That's an imperative. Martin Kimnitz, he's a great Lutheran theologian back in the Reformation. He said, while thinking on the secret foreknowledge of God, We must not come up with or allow some exceptions to those things that are plainly revealed and commanded in the Word. If you cannot reconcile them, leave that to the hidden reasons of God's secret foreknowledge.
No, just don't go there. Concerning those things that are commanded and appointed in the revealed word about prayer, this is what you are to do. Pray and pray continually. Second, what do you say to those people who say, well, if God's going to do whatever He accomplishes and purposes, why pray?
Well, first of all, He commanded us to. Second. Jesus teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount, on which the Lord's Prayer is part of the Sermon on the Mount. He teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount that the Father of his own will. Is ready to help and reward his children.
He tells us, for example, in chapter 6, verse 8: the Father knows what we need before we even ask Him. That divine knowledge of our need is intended to be a great encouragement for us to come to our Father. If he doesn't know what we need, I'm not going to him. This, the Father's knowledge of our needs, commends to us the benefit of prayer. It reminds us that our Father in heaven, of his own will, is ready and able always to help us when we pray.
Seven times in Matthew chapter 6, where you find the Lord's Prayer, seven times Jesus speaks of his Father giving or withholding rewards. He withholds rewards to the scribes and Pharisees who pray unrighteously, and he gives reward to his adopted sons who pray righteously. And so Jesus shows us that the Father, listen, He delights in rewarding by grace His adopted sons through the means of prayer. That's why we pray. And then, thirdly, well, why do we pray if God's going to do everything anyway?
Why pray? Here's the third reason: because God's secret will cannot be known. That's none of our business. We are mere finite creatures, and we cannot know God's secret hidden will. Thomas Watson, he says, concerning God's secret will.
God's secret will is locked up in God's own breast, and neither man nor angel has a key to open it. God nowhere in Scripture commands us to concern ourselves with his secret will. We're not to search into his secret counsels. In relation to God's secret will, we would do well to remember the wise instruction of Deuteronomy 29:29. Listen to this.
The secret things, the secret things belong to the Lord our God. But the things that are revealed. belong to us and to our children forever. that we may do all the words of his law.
So this leads us to the second way to understand what Jesus is saying when he says, pray your will be done. He's talking about praying for the revealed will of the Father to be done. God's revealed will is His Preceptive will. That word preceptive means precepts, which are laws. It is also referred to as his moral or his ethical will.
God's preceptive will are the precepts found in His law which are to be fully obeyed.
So, when we pray the petition, your will be done, Jesus is referring in the context to the moral or ethical standards of the kingdom of God. And Jesus sets forth these moral ethical standards of the kingdom of God in the Sermon on the Mount. He doesn't leave you guessing what that is. The Father's preceptive will, his moral ethical will, his revealed will is written in Scripture. And how and this is how the Father would have the citizens of his kingdom to live.
And these are, this is kingdom living. This is kingdom ethics. And so the essence of the Father's kingdom, Father, your kingdom come, the essence of that coming kingdom is that his revealed moral will is entirely obeyed on earth as it presently is obeyed in heaven. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
So look at this qualifying phrase that Jesus gives to us in the Lord's Prayer. He says, as it is in heaven, why does Jesus say that? Because heaven is the realm or it is the domain where the Father's will is done perfectly. First, in heaven, the Father's name is fully honored. His kingship is entirely submitted to, and his will is done perfectly by the Son of God himself.
Jesus in John chapter 6 verse 38 says, I have come down from heaven, where it's done perfectly. I have come from there. I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. Later we'll see, Jesus literally came to bring heaven on earth. Second, the Father's name is fully honored, his kingship is entirely submitted to, and his will is perfectly done by the angels in heaven.
Listen to Psalm 103, verses 20 and 21. Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word. You hear that? Who do his word? obeying the voice of his word.
Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers who do his will. The angels in heaven perfectly do the will of the Father. And then, thirdly, the Father's name is fully honored. His kingship is entirely submitted to, and his will is perfectly done by believers who are presently in heaven in the intermediate state, awaiting their resurrection, because the scriptures teach us. That death for Christians, death for all those who are in Christ, puts an end to their sinning.
And it is an entrance into eternal life where you await. The resurrection, the hope of the gospel. And so Jesus is saying, when you pray, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is what he's talking about. Let us fulfill our office, our calling, the various vocations and jobs that we have been given.
Parenting. Being a spouse, a loving husband, a loving wife, a loving father, a loving mother, a perfect boss, a perfect employee, whatever it is. Let your will be done perfectly and help me to fulfill that, just as the angels in heaven do. Just as the Son of God does, and just as the believers who are awaiting resurrection do. Carry this out in my life.
Carry this out throughout the whole earth. But also this qualifying phrase, listen, on earth as it is in heaven, suggests that there is a fundamental inconsistency between the Father's will in heaven and the Father's will on earth. What have we already learned about your kingdom come?
Well, what we learned was this: that we presently live in the already but not yet aspect of the kingdom of God. We live in the proclaimed kingdom where we are ruled by the King Christ. As the Father reigns in Christ, we are ruled by His Word and Spirit. And through the kingdom of God, Jesus presented that kingdom in his first coming. He inaugurated it, he presented it.
But it was not consummated in his first coming. That will happen. It'll be perfected. His kingdom will be consummated when he comes again in his second coming.
So, we are presently living in between the times of Jesus' first and second coming.
So, that means this. The Father's will is not presently being perfectly done on earth as it is in heaven. We do not currently experience heaven on earth. Not all people honor the Father's name. Not all people submit to his kingly rule.
Not all people obey his law, his revealed will. The author of Hebrews in chapter 2, verse 8 says it like this: that the Father has put everything in subjection under his feet. That is, under Jesus. All authority, he says in Matthew 28, has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Everything has been put in subjection to the authority of Jesus.
And the father did that. He says, but now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. And you look about this road and you go, it looks like everything is out of his control. And that's why he says, he goes on to say, but at present we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. And it's exactly right.
What do we currently see? We currently see that there is still murder, theft, hatred, envy, strife, jealousy, gossip, slander, betrayal, injustice, broken families, divorce, immorality, lying, persecution of believers. And the list goes on and on and on. But listen, believers themselves are not off the hook. Because believers are not yet glorified.
Believers are not yet fully delivered from their sinful natures. Believers are what theologians say are similar Eustace Ed Picator. We are simultaneously justified and sinful. Sanctification is never perfected in this life. Believers still struggle with their flesh.
That is the old Adam. Listen to Galatians 5:17. Paul says, The desires of the flesh, that is, old Adam, who you are, fallen in Adam. The desires of that flesh are against the Holy Spirit. And the desires of the Holy Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, like two rams locking horns.
They are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. And what do you want to do? The Father's will. And what do you find yourself often failing to do? The Father's will.
Breaking His revealed will, breaking His moral law. In Romans chapter 7, verses 22 through 24. Paul As a justified believer. Who has just written in chapter 6 that he is in union with Christ? Dead with Christ, buried with Christ, raised with Christ, all of these blessings of union with Christ.
He laments still his inability to perfectly do the will of God. And listen to what he says. I delight in the law of God. That's the will of God, the revealed will of God. I delight in that.
in my inner being. But I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death who has not prayed that prayer at least 10 times per day? before you leave the house after breakfast. And so, what we learn Jesus is teaching us in this petition, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, is a request to the Father for the heavenly state of affairs to be reflected on earth in my life.
You see, in the context of this third petition, this inconsistency. Between the will of the Father in heaven and on earth is seen perfectly in the scribes and Pharisees who failed to understand and obey the ethical standards of the Father's kingdom. Let me just give you a couple of examples. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is exposing the scribes and Pharisees' misunderstanding of the law. Which they profess to keep.
They had wholehearted devotion to over 600 man-made laws and traditions. And because of their devotion to those 600 legalistic man-made traditions, they believed they were qualified to enter the kingdom of God. And then Jesus starts preaching the Sermon on the Mount and listen to what this startling statement he makes. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. I just couldn't.
I would just love to have been a fly on the wall to see a scribe or Pharisee when Jesus preached this. They thought they were in. And Jesus, right there in front of everybody, says, they're not in. And if you don't go beyond their wholehearted devotion of 600 man-made legalistic rules, You'll never enter either. Jesus then proceeds in Matthew chapter 5, verses 21 through 48 to give a series of examples from the revealed will of God, the law of God, to illustrate what kind of righteousness the Father requires.
For entrance into the kingdom of God, the revealed will is simply the Father's expressed law. Jesus teaches us that this kingdom righteousness is not external and ceremonial, it is internal and spiritual.
So, for example, here's an example. In contrast to the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus says it's not simply enough to not commit murder. He says in Matthew 5, verse 22: Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. The Hudderburg Catechism is brilliant on how it exposes this. It says, what Jesus, in forbidding murder, what he teaches us is that he and his father detest the root of murder, which is envy, hatred, anger, and desire of revenge, and all these things.
In his sight are hidden murder. Envy? hatred, anger, desire of revenge. The works of the flesh, outbursts of anger. That is hidden murder.
And furthermore, in condemning envy and hatred and anger, God's law requires us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to show patience. Peace. meekness, mercy, and kindness. And so far as we have power to prevent his hurt, And also to do good even to our enemies, which is to be perfect like the Father who is in heaven. As Jesus says in Matthew 5, verse 45, the Father in heaven makes his Son rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends his reign on the just and on the unjust.
It is his reign, and it is his son, and even his enemies get to enjoy it. And so Jesus is teaching us, he's showing us what a perfect righteousness is, is to be perfect like the Father in heaven. How do we know that? Matthew 5, verse 48. You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.
And then having corrected all of the scribes and Pharisees' bad legalistic teaching in chapter 5, he comes to chapter 6 where you find the Lord's Prayer. And now he corrects her unrighteous practice. And he demonstrates that the imperfection, the unrighteousness of the scribes and Pharisees' religious practice is far from doing the will of the Father. The scribes and Pharisees, he said, engage in religious activity. He gives you three examples: giving, praying, and fasting.
We're looking at prayer. And he says that you scribes and Pharisees engage in this religious activity according to your own will, which is corrupted by the fall. And because you do these religious activities according to the own corruption of your will, listen, you do it to be, chapter 6, verses 1 and 2, to be seen by men and to be praised by them. You don't do it for the honor and glory of my Father. You do it to exalt yourself.
You're not doing the will of God. You're carrying out your own will. The scribes and Pharisees' righteousness. was external. Therefore, the religious practice of prayer was hypocritical.
and unrighteous. And so Jesus sets down this general principle in Matthew chapter 6, verse 1: of God's law that governs kingdom living, kingdom ethic, the revealed will of God, the doing of the will of God. He says, beware. Of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward. From your Father who is in heaven.
The Pharisees and scribes were far from doing the will of the Father. both in their teaching and in their practice. And like the Pharisees, how often do we find ourselves far? From doing the will of God, both in our teaching, our doctrine, how we think about God, our theology. and our practice.
He said, We don't want to miss the ethical aspect of this third petition. Just as we cannot pray, hallowed be your name with integrity, if we don't value the glory of God, the honor of the Father's name. And seek to glorify and honor God's name with our life, both in doctrine and in life. We cannot pray, Your kingdom come, your will be done, unless we truly desire to be cleansed of all of our corruption. To have our wills, our corrupt, perverse wills, pushed down and have obedience to the revealed will of the Father.
If we pray this way, we have to live like this.
So, to pray, your will be done, is to hold ourselves in readiness to give up our fallen desires, our corrupt desires that are opposed to the law of God. And to pray that all of that corruption would be buried. And that only by the Holy Spirit and grace the Father would work through us His perfect will for His name's sake. That's what we're praying here.
So, I want to ask you a question: Have you ever thought about what it means to do the will of God, the revealed will of God? Jesus, as you've heard this morning, gives us the greatest commandment, the greatest will of God, which is this, Matthew chapter 22, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. I want you to consider with me what it means to do the will of God, to do the greatest commandment.
Listen carefully. Consider carefully, your will be done. Do you pray, and do you live like this? The first four commandments of the Ten Commandments means to love God. Here you go.
Does your love for God transcend all other desires presently in your life? Do you only long to gaze upon God's beauty and seek fellowship with Him? Do you rejoice in delight in daily meditating on his word? And do you rise early to pray? Do you always, in motive, in thought and in deed, do God's will, regardless of how difficult it may be, without any griping and murmuring and groaning and complaining?
Do you regard God's glory for every motive that you do in your life? Are you never discouraged, never frustrated, never impatient, always confident that God is always working together all for your good and you never question it ever? Do you recognize God's sovereignty in every event of your life, both in success and failure, as coming from his hand? And you say to him, Thank you. What's the first four commandments?
Let's try the next six. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do you cherish your neighbor with the very same love that you? Love with yourself. In your dealings with your neighbor, do you never ever express selfishness, irritability, peevishness, or indifference to them?
Do you always take a genuine interest in their welfare and seek to promote their interests, their honor, their well-being only? Do you never regard them with a feeling of prideful superiority? Do you never talk about their failings? Do you never ever represent them to anybody else in the world in a bad light, but honor their good name and never spread gossip and slander about them? Do you always treat them as you would like to be treated?
To paraphrase 1 Corinthians 13, are you always patient, always kind, never envious, never boastful, never proud, never rude, never self-seeking, never easily angered, never keep records of wrongs done to you, never, ever hold out against anybody. Do you do the will of God? And Jesus says, When you pray. Pray like this, our Father in heaven, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's what he's talking about.
The reality is that we know all too well, and quite painfully at times, we are not always doing the will of our Father. We're guilty of breaking the revealed will of God. And so we have to be mindful. That this third petition, like the first and second petitions, are first and foremost the prayer of Jesus. Matthew shows us at the end of his gospel that Jesus prays, your will be done perfectly on our behalf.
I want you to listen to Matthew chapter 26, verses 39 and 42. Jesus. In the garden of Gethsemane, praise my Father. If it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.
My father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, Your will be Done. When you pray, pray like this. Your will be done. You don't pray like that. I don't pray like that.
Jesus, pray like that for us. What was the will of his father that he drank the cup? What was the cup? The cup was the wrath of God. What is the wrath of God?
It's not bloodthirsty God putting Jesus on the cross and making Jesus some whipping boy. The atonement is birth from love. It is the wrath of God is simply God's justice in action. It is rendering to everyone his just due because of his or her sin, which is always judgment. Jesus is our substitute drank the cup of God's wrath in our place.
God's revealed moral law contains both precepts and penalties. Listen carefully. God's precepts that I read to you a while ago in summary fashion are to be fully done by you. You are to love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself. And penalties are imposed in God's law for the least infraction of all those precepts.
So in Philippians chapter 2 verse 8, Paul says Jesus Being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. On the cross, Jesus obeyed his father and he exhausted, he propitiated fully the wrath of God that stood against us. In other words, he satisfied all the penalties of God's law that stood against you and me for our lawbreaking. He fulfilled that for us. And so Jesus' prayer in the garden, your will be done, is the fulfillment on our behalf of the third petition in the Lord's Prayer.
It is by his life Jesus kept the Father's precepts perfectly. He loved God as a man perfectly. He loved his neighbor perfectly. All of those commandments you heard, Jesus did that perfectly in his motives, in his deeds, and in his thoughts, every split second of his existence. He lived in complete obedience to his father with great delight.
He fulfilled the greatest commandment for us.
So he not only died in our place as our substitute, he lived in our place as our substitute. It is in the God-man Jesus in the incarnation that we see in a man the Father's will being done perfectly. In Matthew chapter 5, verse 17 in the Sermon on the Mount, this is exactly what Jesus says. He says, Do not think that I have come to abolish the law of the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. What accomplished? All of the law of God, all of the revealed will of God. And so, Sinclair Ferguson says, Jesus is teaching that if we want to know, What the law really means, we must look at him. We must look at what he does because he fulfills and accomplishes the law.
Do you want to know what it looks like to fulfill the greatest commandment of loving God and loving your neighbor? Read the Gospels and look at Jesus' life, and there you see it. We have to realize that the covenant of works That were broken in the Garden of Eden in the perished kingdom that we studied. Is it very much in the background because it's never been rescinded? The justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned should make satisfaction for sin, but no man, because he is now a sinner and has broken that covenant, can satisfy the righteous demands of that law.
Therefore, what we as fallen man could not do, God the Father in love sent his son to become incarnate man to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. He lived the kind of life that we should have lived but have never lived, and he did it for us. And so we have to be mindful that this third petition, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, is first and foremost the prayer of Jesus. The Father sent the Son from heaven, so the Son from heaven could bring heaven to earth. I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
John 4, 34, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Jesus in John 5, verse 30, I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge. My judgment is just because I seek not my own will. But the will of him who sent me.
What was the Father's will who sent him? Listen to Jesus in John 6. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me. But raise it up on the last day.
For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. That is the will of the Father that Jesus came to accomplish and give. The Father's will is that you have eternal life and resurrection in the perfected kingdom because he sent his Son to give you this gift. Ah, they do not do that. It's okay, you can clap.
Praise God. We'll just take a moment and clap. You should clap.
So listen, the law which Adam failed to obey. Jesus, the last Adam, came and perfectly obeyed. All of God's law is accomplished in Jesus' life and death. He perfectly obeys the perceptive will of God, the precepts of God's law. And in his death on the cross, he perfectly suffered and paid the law's penalty for our violation of it.
He freely and willingly, out of love for his father, gave perfect obedience to the revealed will of God for us. Listen to John 14. I do as the Father has commanded me. That's a perfect obedient son. Why?
So that the world may know that I love. The father. Hebrews chapter 10, verses 5 through 7. The author of Hebrews looks back at Psalm 40. And he quotes the words of Psalm 40, verses 6 through 8, and he applies them to Jesus.
And listen to what he says about Jesus. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired. The Mosaic covenant, that was not what brought salvation. But a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and in sin offerings, you have taken no pleasure, because they don't take away sin.
What takes away sin? Then I said, Behold, I have come to do your will, O God. That's what takes away sin. A perfect son coming in obedience to his father. I have come to do your will, O God, because you've given me a body.
You made me a man to do what all fallen men have not done. As it is written of me in the scroll of the book, by that will, what, Jesus' will, his obedience to the Father, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. You know what that means? By Jesus' obedience, by his will to the Father, we have been made holy forever in the presence of our Father. And so, just as the scribes and Pharisees failed to understand God's law, they failed to understand his gospel.
They possessed a wrong understanding of God the Father, and consequently, this wrong understanding of his saving purposes that are perfectly given in the gift of his Son. And the gospel of the kingdom announces to us that Jesus undertook freely to carry out the will of the Father in our place. He came to do what Adam, what Israel, and what every one of us have failed to do: that is, give perfect obedience to the revealed will of God. He did so in virtue of a covenant agreement with his Father. I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
My Father has sent me, and I have willingly and freely, out of love to my father, said, I will go. To glorify your name on earth. And because Christ met the condition of the covenant of works, you and I can now receive the benefit of the covenant of grace. That is, we reap the benefit of his labor. What was work for Jesus is a gift to you and me.
We are saved by works. Jesus's, not yours. It is work for him. It is gift for us. That is the good news of the gospel of the kingdom.
How do I know this? Listen carefully. In Matthew chapter 5. Jesus says there is good news. For disobedient sons who have never done the will of the Father.
Listen to what he says. Matthew 5, verses 3 through 4, Jesus announces with these words of comfort: Blessed are the poor in spirit. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Do you know what Jesus is doing here?
I'm going to tell you. For all who are poor in spirit, what is to be poor in spirit? I am conscious of the fact. That I have utterly failed to do the will of God. There are I am conscious of the fact that I am nothing in the presence of God.
Nothing. I have nothing to offer but my sin. That's poor in spirit. Jesus says to that person, be blessed. Woo!
Really? Yeah. You know where that blessed word comes from? Deuteronomy 27 and 28. In Deuteronomy 27 and 28, Moses lists the blessings that would come to Israel if they would keep the Lord's revealed will.
His covenant, the Mosaic covenant. If they would keep it, if they would obey it, they would be blessed. And on the other hand, Moses says for it, the curses that would come upon Israel if Israel proved to be disobedient to the Lord, and that's exactly what happened. And here comes Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount, and he completely reverses the whole Mosaic covenant. And he says to those who have totally and utterly failed to ever keep the Father's revealed will.
All covenant blessings be upon you. He is dispensing blessings on failures. I want you to think, listen, blessing. What is blessing? It's not happy.
It is to enjoy complete well-being as a result of being under the Lord's favor. That's what it means to be blessed. And I want you to think of the erotic blessing in Numbers chapter 6. where the Lord, it says, causes his face to shine on people and he turns his face towards them in kindness, even though they're utter, complete failures. This is the amazing, almost too good to be true, gospel of the kingdom that Jesus is preaching.
Blessed are all who have failed to keep my Father's law. How can he say that? Because I have come to do it for them. And then they give it to them as a gift. And so as we reflect on this third petition, we realize that God's revealed will is never perfectly done in this present age.
And so there's not only an ethical aspect, but there's an eschatological aspect. And it's very simple what that is. This prayer, this petition, is that we and all God's people live with our eyes fixed on the consummation of the coming kingdom of God. To pray, your will be done is to pray that we and the whole world would be delivered from sin and brought into perfect conformity to the will of our Father. And so ultimately, this is a gospel prayer because the Father's will is done.
Through the triumph of grace. and grace will accomplish all his purpose. And so, what do we have when the perfected kingdom comes? Here's some highlights. Here's a trailer.
Right. Yeah. No more sickness, no more death, no more suffering, no more pain, no more sorrow, no more grief, no more shame, no more guilty conscience, no more regret, no more hatred, no more racial divide, no more ethnic cleansing, no more genocide, no more wars, no more famines, no more plagues, no more disease, no more crime, no more injustice. That's to perfect the kingdom. Your will be done.
And so this qualifying phrase suggests to us that heaven and earth had the same destiny under the Father's rule. Isn't that great? That the kingdom of God in the end will embrace everything. And at the return of Jesus, this kingdom will be fully and perfectly manifested, and the Father's will will be perfectly done on earth. As it is in heaven.
And we must not forget one final thing. is that the ultimate fulfillment Of your will be done not only brings salvation to those who trust in Christ alone, but listen, it brings judgment to all who are in rebellion against his kingdom and against his will. All that is opposed to the Father's will and kingdom will be put down and destroyed. And so, Graham Goldsworthy gives us this important reminder. He says, We are all judged.
People ask me all the time: well, if we're justified, why do we have to stand before God and receive judgment? You're going to stand before God at the judgment. Even as a believer, listen carefully. We are all judged, but those clothed in Christ's righteousness are judged guiltless. and acquitted.
That will be the biggest sigh of relief you ever give for all eternity. And so hallowing the Father's name, praying for the consummation of the Father's kingdom, praying your will be done are all versions of the same end time promise. Everything one day will be set right and the Father will reign in his Son and we'll enjoy that blessing with him and with one another forever and ever.
So let us learn to pray, Father, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Thanks for listening to the Hymn We Proclaim podcast with John Fawnville. Him we proclaim as a ministry of John Fondill of Fairmount Church in Jacksonville, Florida. You can check out his church at paramountchurch.com. We look forward to next time.
