Call Me: Your Will Be Done

The last will and testament.

Before there were gummed envelopes, there was the art of letter-locking, a means of letters made to self-lock as a form of security. The paper on which letters were written functioned as their own envelope. A couple of months ago, researchers in Britain said they had uncovered the mystery of a letter that was spiral-locked by Mary, Queen of Scots, on the night of her execution in 1587. Mary used an intricate and complex system of letter-locking to seal her last words, her will. In that will she leaves what she has left to her brother-in-law in France. In it she expresses her desire for her body to be buried in France. Having spent much of her life in prison, Mary Queen of Scots spends her last hours locking her will, her instructions to be shipped out of the country. The next morning she was beheaded. Her body was not shipped to France. Mary was a Catholic. Her cousin, Elizabeth, on the throne of England and the one who signed her death warrant, was a Protestant. Mary had been caught in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth. Elizabeth ignored the will and had Mary buried among Protestant royals in Britain. Elizabeth’s will was greater than Mary’s will. You pass from this life, you don’t simply leave empty-handed, you leave with your will.

We spend our lives exercising our will. The will, we’re led to believe, is free. Power belongs to those who are able to exercise their will in any place and at any time. Direct correlation is made between the amount of freedom the will has and the amount of power one has. The will was at the very center of the original dispute between God and the humans he created. God made Adam and Eve and gave them instructions that they could eat any tree in the Garden of Eden except one. God articulated his will to his creatures. And creatures decided they did not want God’s will. They wanted their own will to be supreme. Exercising their will in their kingdom. Things did not turn out so well for Adam and Eve.

Third big ask: Your Will Be Done

That brings us to the third big ask in what we call the Lord’s Prayer: Your will be done. That is a big ask. That just might be the hardest of the asks. It was hard enough for those, like me who are building their own kingdoms. Because the question is always, Whose will? Whose will are we running with today? The problem isn’t that we don’t know whose will is supposed to have the final say. We’re not interested in the answer, often, unless we find some benefit to us.

There’s also the age-old question: what is God’s will for my life? What does God want from me? We answered that question a bit when we covered the 10 commandments, where God is laying down his Will’s Top Ten. The Top Ten of God’s will for my life and everyone who has ever lived. But there’s more to it than simply law… those commands God has for us. His will is to be found in the gospel. We’ll get to that in a second. But you go out on the internet, get on Amazon and type in God’s will and you’ll find hundreds of books written on the subject. They may not overtly talk about it, but anything suggesting “this is God’s best for you” is suggesting God’s will is to be found in that book.

We’re not going to answer all of the God’s will questions today. What we are going to talk about is the basics. What is it that God really wants from you? And it may not be what you think his will is for you. Those people listening to Jesus that day on the side of the mountain thought they had an idea. I think if you had polled the crowd to get their feel of God’s will, most of them would have made some sort of reference to Caesar and Rome. The mountain Jesus was sitting on belong to the Romans. The entire country belonged to the Romans. Ask any Jew and the will of God is for Jews to have their own land with their own king. You track the conversations that Jesus has with the crowds that are following him and you’ll get the sense that God’s will involves political power.

But Jesus’ words are pushing his audience to see beyond Rome. And even to see beyond God’s big list of do’s and don’ts. The prayer “Your will be done” isn’t simply asking God to make sure that his will is obeyed. What does it mean for God to do His will? The problem is when we stop and don’t finish the sentence. Jesus says,

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

On earth as it is in heaven. What does it mean for God’s will to be done in heaven? And what does that have to do with earth? The short answer is that God’s will is done in heaven by doing whatever he wants. That’s a hard thing for us to hear. That almost sounds severe and arbitrary.

These words in the Lord’s prayer don’t happen in a vacuum. Jesus is pulling from an Old Testament story. It’s the story of Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel.

Nebuchadnezzar’s hard lesson

Nebuchadnezzar is the supreme ruler of the world late in the Old Testament. Nebuchadnezzar destroys Jerusalem and carts off the nobility and the educated. The book of Daniel in our Old Testament is a record of Jewish interaction with the most powerful man on earth at the time. In Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream. The world wide ruler has a really weird dream. His spiritual go to guys can't interpret. This is a running theme in Daniel. And you’d think that Nebuchadnezzar would know by now… his guys aren't going to interpret… there's only one who can… yeah… and by this time… this chapter tells us that Daniel is the boss of the guys who don't know how to interpret the dream.

From the very beginning of his interactions with Daniel and his friends, Nebuchadnezzar has been told time and again that:

The Most High is Ruler

The Most High is Ruler over human kingdoms

The Most High gives human kingdoms to anyone he wants

And this dream that Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t understand is saying the exact same thing. This has been going on for years. Nebuchadnezzar… your kingdom is a gift. It’s not yours. There is a Most High Ruler. He rules over human kingdoms. And he gives those kingdoms to anyone he wants. Daniel tells the king… you haven't learned… you're still thinking this is all you…

Whose will is to be done? The Most High’s will? Or Nebuchadnezzar’s? Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar is going to lose his sanity for seven years because he has not acknowledged that the Most High God is ruler over human kingdoms and can give those kingdoms to anyone he wants. And he won't get his sanity back until he acknowledges that. This is exactly what happens.

At the end of the seven years, Nebuchadnezzar gets his sanity back and this is what he says… listen to the words here:

Daniel 4:34-35 “But at the end of those days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked up to heaven, and my sanity returned to me. Then I praised the Most High and honored and glorified him who lives forever: For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing, and he does what he wants with the army of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth. There is no one who can block his hand or say to him, “What have you done?””

Here's the world's biggest guy… and he’s talking about kingdom and will. His dominion is everlasting. Your kingdom come. He does want he wants, in heaven and on earth. Your will be done, in heaven and on earth. Nebuchadnezzar’s grand statement now shows up in the third big ask of the Lord’s Prayer. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God does whatever he wants in heaven, and will do whatever he wants in heaven at the last day. The prayer now is that God’s heavenly will be done on earth.

What is that will? It would be easy to miss if it weren’t so obvious in the Nebuchadnezzar story. Nebuchadnezzar says “I praised the Most High”. I “honored” and “glorified him who lives forever.” God’s will was for Nebuchadnezzar to have faith, faith that the Most High rules and loves. God’s will in heaven was the rescue of Nebuchadnezzar. God’s will at the end of all time is for our rescue, our salvation. He wants our heart. It’s all he’s ever wanted. His will in heaven is our salvation, our forgiveness.

You want to know what is God’s will in heaven? The Old Testament prophet Isaiah states it in the starkest of terms:

Isaiah 53:10 “Yet the Lord was pleased to crush him severely. When you make him a guilt offering, he will see his seed, he will prolong his days, and by his hand, the Lord’s pleasure will be accomplished.”

It was God’s will in heaven to crush the Son on earth. And to raise the Son. Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Your will be done. For the salvation of those who would believe. Jesus was always talking about doing the will of the Father. It’s why he came. This third big ask is the prayer at the intersection of heaven and earth on the darkest night in the history of the world.

Matthew 26:39-42 “Going a little farther, he fell facedown and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Again, a second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.””

Your will be done. Your will be done so that I may save my people from their sins. That’s God’s will in heaven and on earth. God’s will is that the Son would die and rise and save and forgive. Jesus accomplished God’s will on our behalf because we could not do it. We are bent on our own will. Doing our own thing. Jesus was bent on doing the Father’s will which was and is to save us.

There’s a lot we could say about God’s will. The subject is vast and broad and as big as the world. Your will be done is our cry for God to do His will in saving us from sin and the devil and anything that would keep us from Jesus. If God’s will is not done, we are doomed. We have to have him carry out his will against the enemies of our souls, against our sin. Jesus once said,

John 6:37-40 “Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. This is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me but should raise them up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.””

God’s will is for you and I to believe in the Son that he sent FOR US. What’s God’s will for you at any given moment? To have faith and trust in Jesus. To rest in Jesus. “Your Will be Done” is a cry for help because too often we are again trying to accomplish our will, our agenda, building our kingdom. There’s no faith in Jesus in those moments. There’s no trust. There’s only self-reliance. Self-salvation. “Your will be done” is asking God to do his will on our hearts again, creating faith and trust in us to believe his Son. We are then free to do his will among our neighbors… loved by God we begin loving our neighbors. That’s God’s will on earth, as it is in heaven.

If God's will does not win, we're goners. There is no name to be honored as holy. There is no kingdom. And so we pray, confident in the Jesus who not only prayed "Your will be done", but went to the cross and did it. For you. For me. For us.

Let’s again pray this prayer using the words from Matthew 6:

Matthew 6:9-13 “Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” (CSB)

Let’s pray.

It was the will of the Lord to crush the suffering servant. For you and for me. The Lord’s will. Your will be done. That’s amazing. Right here, right now, we have God’s will for us, in the broken body and shed blood of Jesus. You don’t have to go hunting on some trek to figure out what God’s will for your life is. God’s will for your life is for you to believe that this body and this blood is for you. Because it was God’s will to punish the Son instead of us. The Most High who can do anything he wants. You know what he wants? He wants to forgive you. He wants to love you. He wants you. That’s his unbelievable will right here, right now.