Sermon Tone Analysis

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.