Your Will on Earth and Heaven

Wills and the Will

When someone passes away, the transition of mind and soul is a trip taken up by God. We, as Christians, believe that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. How exactly that works is a bit of a mystery, even though many theologians have studied it over the years. But what is not a mystery is usually, when someone passes away, a bunch of “stuff” is left behind. And that stuff has to be disposed of in some way, shape, or form.

And in order to dispose of that property we have a special legal instrument. We have a will. And using this legal document we leave our property to whoever—or whatever we choose. Over the years there have been some doozies though when it comes to will requests. Oprah Winfrey, for instance, reportedly has a stipulation in her will leaving $30 million in trust for the care of her dogs when she dies. Those are going to be some pampered pooches! The late comedian Jack Benny had a stipulation in his will that if he proceeded his wife in death (which he did) a single red rose was to be delivered to his widow every day, rain or shine. And Frederic Bauer, the inventor of the Pringles can had a really wacky request. He had a request that when he died, he be buried in one of his inventions! And his family did just that placing their late father’s ashes in one the cans before it was interred.

So, why is this document that deals with the disposal of property and final requests called a “will” anyway? Well, the actual full name of the instrument is called “A Last Will and Testament.” The word Testament allows the deceased to make any final declarations, a final agreement, a final covenant if you will. But the first word, “will” means that the person is declaring their final intentions of how their property, money, and other things should be distributed.

And it is to this matter of “intent” that we will focus some of our time this morning as we discuss the petition of the Lord’s Prayer that asks that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Well discuss just what exactly is God’s will and then we’ll elaborate a bit more on how and why we pray for God’s will to be done. This will bring us to a discussion of why God’s will isn’t already being done today on earth like it is in heaven and the nature of what it means to be human.

God’s Will, What Is It?

In order to fully understand what it is we are praying when we ask for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, we need to define God’s will a bit more. And this is going to take some work because we’re covering thousands of years of time and nearly a million words of Scripture when we do so. And we need to look at the Testaments separately at first because they are written in different languages before we put it all together.

God’s Will in the Old Testament

The language of the Old Testament, what we call Biblical Hebrew, is a very rich language that has an amazing capacity for description and poetry. But one interesting thing I discovered as I was doing my research for the message is that there is no single word for “will” to be found in Hebrew. In fact, what Bible translators often translate as “will” or “counsel” is a collection of several words. And another thing that didn’t surprise me as much is that many of these words were highly emotionally charged words.

The first word for “will”, ḥēp̱eṣ, carries the meaning of to delight in or take pleasure in. Again, these are very emotional words. Taking this word by itself, God’s will is sometimes expressed as that which God takes pleasure in, that in which God delights. God delights when God’s human image-bearers love one another, obey God’s commandments, seek to fulfill their created intent to be wise stewards—ruling royalty—over the created realm.

Still other words describe God’s will in the OT. Those words also carry some emotional overtones. One word can mean that God favors one option over another. Another one carries the nuance of “intent” in that the will of God is described as God’s intent for a particular course of action to come about.

From all of this we see that in the Old Testament God has clearly preferred ways for the world order and God’s human creatures to behave and relate to one another. God clearly wants things to come about that give God delight, that fulfill God’s preferences, and live up to God’s creational intent.

God’s Will in the New Testament

In the New Testament, originally written in the Koine dialect of Greek, things move from being overtly emotional and turn slightly more rational. Now this does mean that God has changed, far from it. But what has changed in the language in which God’s revelation has been passed down to us. Greek is simply a different language that encodes concepts slightly differently. And it is from Greek that we get the language of philosophy and science, things we perceive as rational enterprises. So it’s no wonder that things move from heart to head as we come to the New Testament.

In the New Testament then, the will of God is specifically focused on God’s intent for the creation and specifically human beings. And especially, God’s will is focused on Jesus Christ. It was God’s will for the events of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension to come about. This was all in accordance with the will of the Triune God.

In fact, in very short order, merely saying “the will” became shorthand for saying “the will of God.” When Paul wanted to travel, he would merely say “It is the will that we come or go or stay…, etc.”

God’s Will Defined

So now we’ve seen God’s will in both testaments. It remains for us to synthesize the data and put it together into a cohesive whole that honors God’s revelation as a whole. Thus, we can say that God’s will is God’s creational intent for the created order which when accomplished gives God pleasure and delight. It is the fulfillment of God’s preferences, God’s way revealed in Scripture for humans, for Jesus, and for the created order.

Our Scriptures for Today

With that definition in hand, we can confidently approach our Scriptures for the morning. There are two from the Old Testament and two from the life of Jesus, and I’m going to add one in conclusion that comes to us from Paul’s letters.

Psalm 33

Psalm 33 (NASB 2020)

Let all the earth fear the Lord;

Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.

For He spoke, and it was done;

He commanded, and it stood firm.

The Lord nullifies the plan of nations;

He frustrates the plans of peoples.

The plan of the Lord stands forever,

The plans of His heart from generation to generation.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,

The people He has chosen for His own inheritance.

The Lord looks from heaven;

He sees all the sons of mankind;

From His dwelling place He looks out

On all the inhabitants of the earth,

He who fashions the hearts of them all,

So, our passage begins with fear of the Lord, that thing which Proverbs tells us is the beginning of wisdom. And we know that to fear the Lord is not necessarily to be in terror of God, it’s not trembling in our boots before God. No, it’s much more like giving to God that which is due. It is a reverence, a holy awe we feel when we are in the presence of the deity.

And next we see that God created the world in the way intended. God spoke and things happened. Each thing in creation occurred expressly because God commanded it. God commanded it because it was God’s intent for creation. God told the waters above to separate from the waters below and it was so, etc.

But more to our point and in connection with the Lord’s Prayer is the connection between God’s plans on the one hand and earthly plans on the other. You see, God isn’t the only person who intends, who wills things to be done. Part of being created in the image of God is to be able to be co-creators, co-willers if you like with God.

We are to follow in God’s footsteps and create the things in which we delight that are in keeping with God’s preferences. The problem of course is that sin distorts what it is that we delight in and what our hearts are left with is a perverted caricature of the will of God. Our fallen will is like a funhouse mirror version of God’s will. But through Christ, we can once again be reshaped and refashioned so that we again reflect God’s will into the world.

Daniel 4

Daniel 4:34–36 NASB 2020

“But at the end of that period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever; For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, And His kingdom endures from generation to generation. “All the inhabitants of the earth are of no account, But He does according to His will among the army of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can fend off His hand Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’ At that time my reason returned to me. And my majesty and splendor were restored to me for the honor of my kingdom, and my state counselors and my nobles began seeking me out; so I was reestablished in my sovereignty, and surpassing greatness was added to me.

In order to fully understand this text, we need to understand the context. King Nebuchadnezzar was given dreams. And in those dreams it was shown to him, through interpretation by Daniel, that he was in serious trouble. He had been ruling Babylon and conquered territories like Judah according to his own will. And his will was perverted so that people would bow down and worship him and his gods. He was corrupted by power, sin, and vice to the point that he could not image God but served idols, yes like the Babylonian gods, but also things like power, license, and money.

So God humbles the king by giving him an illness that makes him behave like a beast of the field. In short, the king goes bonkers. And finally, when the time of the king’s illness is at an end, Nebuchadnezzar gives this startling confession in which he finally admits that it is not his will that is done but God’s. It is God who sets up kings and tears them down. None can really say to God that they have done their own thing, it is all in the will of God. Who indeed can fend off God’s hand?

Matthew 26

Matthew 26:36–41 NASB 2020

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and told His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” And He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee with Him, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and He said to Peter, “So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour? Keep watching and praying, so that you do not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

And now we must turn to the New Testament, and specifically to the life of Jesus. It is in Jesus that we see God’s will being lived out in a special way. Since Jesus is God, it stands to reason that if we want a good model of what God’s will is for human beings, it would be wise of us to look to the life and ministry of Jesus.

And this is seen perhaps most poignantly in the struggle Jesus has in the garden of Gethsemane. It is here that we see Jesus at his most human, and at his most like God. In the garden, the God-Man suffers his greatest agony. His human will struggles against the divine will that both inhabit him.

On the one hand, Jesus, like any of us, struggles against the impending death that is less than a day away for him. He struggles with the pain and agony he will bear as he bears the curse on the tree. But on the other, as God, Jesus knows that this is the plan that was laid out in eternity past. It was always decreed that the Son would go to Calvary...

Romans 12

And now we turn to our own will. How is it that you and I accomplish God’s will?

And it is here that I’m going to add in a little seasoning from Paul to our already well-defined sketch of what God’s will is.

Romans 12:1–2 NASB 2020

Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

God’s will my friends is to offer up our very lives as a living sacrifice unto God. We are to live so deeply into God’s will that we can truly say everything we do is our spiritual act of worship. That means that you and I are no longer carried along by the sinful patterns of the world. But we have been renewed and restored to the image of Christ who himself is the very image of God. We act like Christ in all situations.

In this way we prove—by living out—what God’s will is. We do God’s will because God’s will is perfect, acceptable, and good.

And there we must turn back to Matthew for our final Scripture.

Matthew 21

Matthew 21:28–32 NASB 2020

“But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go work today in the vineyard.’ But he replied, ‘I do not want to.’ Yet afterward he regretted it and went. And the man came to his second son and said the same thing; and he replied, ‘I will, sir’; and yet he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even have second thoughts afterward so as to believe him.

In this parable, Jesus recounts that a man had two sons. He came to the first and said, please go work in the vineyard today. But the first son didn’t really want to. He said simply, “I do not want to.” Now the second son was approached and asked the same thing. The second son enthusiastically agreed to go work in the vineyard by saying, “I will.” But he never did. Meanwhile, the one who initially refused ended up going and working anyway, despite his earlier refusal.

Then Jesus asks his respondents which son actually did the will of God. And knowing the whole story, his respondents replied, “the first one.” Of course it was the first one. It was the first one who even though his words said no, his actions said yes.

And in the same way, the “religious” folks of Jesus’ day talked a good game. But they were hypocrites. They said and believed all the right things. They taught the right things, even. But they did not live up to them.

Meanwhile, Jesus is out reaching the lost: the tax collector, the publican, the sinner. And they are all going into the Kingdom before the religious leaders? Why? Because they are not merely hearers of God’s word, but doers as well. They’ve internalized the message and they live it out.

The Will on Heaven and Earth

Siblings, God’s will is already being done in heaven. In God’s space, God’s will is the law of land. And as we pray that God’s will be done also on earth, we should take note of this.

At the end of days, heaven and earth will be joined as one. Indeed, in God’s vision of Revelation, heaven descends to earth and the two are married together.

So, in the meantime, you and I and all Christians must be at work to bring about the accomplishment of God’s will in this realm as it already is being done in heaven.

Why isn’t God’s will being done now?

First it is because of free will and sin.

Secondly it is because the world is in the grips of evil.

Third, the combination of these two makes it hostile territory that is now being put back into its rightful place.

Now, it is for us to will and to work in cooperation with God’s will and work. The Scriptures and the Spirit’s guidance are what tells us what the perfect will of God is for the world and for our lives.

May we live into this greatest of callings until we can say that God’s will is being done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.