Luke 11:1-13
Turn in your copy of God’s word
to Matthew chapter six. We are still in the midst of
our sermon series on the Lord’s prayer from Luke’s gospel chapter
11. But the phrase, your will be
done on earth as it is in heaven is not in Luke’s gospel, but
it is in Matthew’s. And so today we will continue
in our series on the Lord’s prayer, but we’ll look to Luke. I’m sorry,
to Matthew chapter six, for the phrase that we’ll consider today,
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give your attention
to God’s word, Luke chapter six, beginning at verse five. And
Jesus says, and when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites,
for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the
street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say
to you that they have received their reward. But when you pray,
go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father
who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward
you. And when you pray, do not heap
up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they
will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for
your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray them
like this, our father in heaven, hallowed be your name, Your kingdom
come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this
day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have
forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their
trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if
you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your
father forgive your trespasses. Let us pray together. Lord, we
pray this day for eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts that are
soft and receptive to your word and to your commands. I pray
also, Lord, that my voice would continue in strength throughout
this message. I pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen. When the church I served down
in the Charlotte area, A number of years ago, a good
number of us started to have kids. I think there must have
been a full moon or something. And so about eight couples all
at once had babies, and then the second one came, then the
third one came. And one of the things that we did, which was
quite fun and has been quite rewarding, is we all got together
and listened to as many parenting resources as we could. And one
of the catch phrases, which we all learned and was very handy
throughout the days as parents of little ones, was this, right
away, all the way, some of you can probably finish it, and in
a happy way. Some of us adults could probably
use that phrase in our minds as well. Right away, all the
way, and in a happy way. It was simply Parenting 101.
You watch parents these days and these children have a promising
career in hostage negotiations. The parents ask them a question.
Little Johnny, do you want to eat? Well, I was raised in the
way, uh, Johnny, you will eat or else. And so that’s the way
we learn to raise ours as well. But obedience to God or to parents
ought to be this right away, all the way in a happy way, no
delayed obedience, no thinking about it, no negotiating, uh,
no halfway all the way and no, Well, do I have to? No bad attitude.
No, in a happy way, right away, all the way in a happy way. And
there’s a correlation you understand. If a child can learn to obey
their parents, guess what? They’ll grow up and they’ll learn
to obey almighty God. God knows what he’s up to when
he puts children in the nurture of their parents. But God also
knows what he’s doing when he puts Christians, children of
the living God into the nurture of the church. of Almighty God. Sometimes we wonder why culture
is so rotten. We wonder why culture has gotten
the way it is. It’s a dark and dying culture,
the scripture says, a crooked and depraved generation. And
we might say it’s the result of bad parenting. It’s the result
of permissive parents. Well, there’s a far worse problem
than that. As we think today of the phrase
in the Lord’s prayer that we find in Matthew’s gospel, not
in Luke’s gospel, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We have to recognize what are
the barriers that keep people from doing the will of God? What
are the barriers that stand in the way of thy will be done? on earth as it is in heaven. Well, we must remember that each
and every one of us is born with a sin nature. We speak of our
understanding of the scripture in terms of creation, God making
the world and everything in it, the fall, sin entering into God’s
wonderful, perfect creation, and then redemption, God through
Jesus Christ and his work of redemption on the cross is in
the process of making all things new. And so we have to look at
this pattern, creation, fall and redemption and understand
why it is that we must pray and pray diligently that the will
of God would be done on earth as it is in heaven. We understand
that God made the world and everything in it. The book of Genesis tells
us that he took what was formless and void and he formed it and
fashioned it and filled it with all the good things that we see.
And as he came to the crown of creation, mankind, he made Adam
out of the dust of the ground. He saw that it was not good for
Adam to be alone, and so he put Adam into a deep sleep. He formed
Eve, his wife, the mother of all mankind, out of a rib from
Adam. And as Adam and Eve were there
in the garden working and keeping it, as they were there in the
garden doing the work and the worship that God had put them
there to do, Satan, the serpent, who was more crafty than all
the other beasts of the field, entered the garden one day. He
snuck around Adam, he came to Eve and said, did God really
say? He attacked God’s credibility. He attacked God’s eternal word
and his will. And he asked, did God really
say, you may not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil. Now we know good and well from Genesis chapter 2,
17, God said, eat everything from the garden. Everything is
here for you except the one tree. In the day you eat of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die. And so we know, we understand
this divine probation that we find in the book of Genesis in
the second chapter. Now the serpent attacked the
scripture. He wore Eve down. She looked at the fruit and saw
that it was good. She saw that it was a delight
to her eyes. She took some, she ate some. She also gave some
to Adam who was with her. And we know that it has been
downhill from there. Pain and difficulty has landed
upon us all. In fact, our Shorter Catechism
asked this question, did all mankind fall in Adam’s first
sin? And the answer goes like this,
the covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but
for all his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary
generation sinned in him. and fell with him in his first
transgression. This is why it’s so important
when Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary that
he was not fathered by Joseph. He was fathered supernaturally
by the Holy Spirit. For everyone born after Adam
by ordinary generation is born with an original sin, born with
a sin nature. Adam was the representative of
all mankind. And so what he did, we have done
because he is our federal head. He is our representative. My
brother lives in the District of Columbia and his license plate
says taxation without representation. Well, here we have damnation
with representation, right? Adam and what he did is communicated
to us. It is inherited by us. It is
passed down to us. And so each and every one of
us is born with the sin nature. Each and every one of us is born
in sin. We are corrupt in all our being. And from this original sin, you
parents know this well, there is no cute, innocent baby, but
from this original sin proceed actual sins. It may take you
until the child is about two to figure that out. Uh, maybe
a little earlier depending on their willpower and all the rest,
but culture, the problems we see around us are not solely
the result of permissive parents or, or rock and roll or the television
or whatever. They are symptoms of the greater
problem. And that is sin, each and every
one of us born with sin nature, with original sin, with corruption. Every person on the face of the
earth is born in sin, denies God, denies God’s grace and denies
his glory. Further than that, though, they
deny His holy will by their continued disobedience. And so what God
wants to teach us as we pray this prayer, thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven, we want to pray that all Christians,
all non-Christians, We want to pray that everyone on the face
of the earth will obey God’s holy will right away, all the
way, and in a happy way. We want to be up to snuff, as
it were, with the home office, right? What’s done in heaven,
we want to see done on earth. The holy angels of glory do God’s
will. And we pray that God’s will will
be done here on earth. So the question for us this day,
do we want to please our heavenly father? Do we want to glorify
God by obedience? There’s three ways this is possible. And so when we make our prayer,
when we make our prayer that will be done on earth as it is
in heaven, we’re praying for some bigger things, some larger
things than we think just that just might appear on the surface
of our prayers. I want us to first think about
conversions. We are praying when we say, thy
will be done, that those who are not in the kingdom of God,
those who are not in Christ, those who are not under submission
to God’s holy will, that they might be converted. In the gospel
of Matthew in chapter 24, Jesus speaks of the days of Noah. Now, you know, Noah was called
by God because he was faithful to build an ark. And he built
his ark for about a hundred years in the middle of a crooked and
depraved generation in the midst of a dark and dying world. Can
you imagine building an ark over the period of a hundred years
in the middle of a dry, arid land where there was not a whole
lot of rain? And so as people came to see
this great spectacle, This great arc, Noah would hammer and saw
and was building away with his family. People would say, Noah,
what you doing? I’m building an arc. What you
building an arc for? God’s going to send a flood.
Can you imagine the ridicule he must’ve experienced? It’s
much like that today. What you doing Christian? Why
are you leaving your house on Sunday morning? I’m going to
church. Why are you going to church?
It’s my arc of safety. because I trust in Jesus and
in him alone and a great day of judgment is coming and I have
escaped by resting in Jesus and I hope that you too will escape
and come running to this ark before God shuts the door. The
Lord Jesus says of the days of Noah, they’re much like the days
now before the son of man returns. People are eating, they are drinking,
they’re living their life as if there is no God. but there
are a faithful few of us who know and love and serve the living
God. And so we pray in thy kingdom
come, or I’m sorry, that will be done on earth as it is in
heaven. We’re praying that men and women
and boys and girls who do not know God, who are left in their
sins, who are dead in their sins and trespasses, These natural
men and women and boys and girls who do not understand the things
of the spirit of God, they’re ungodly and unrighteous. They
are living darkened lives that the grace of God would enter
their lives and that they would renounce ungodliness and worldly
passions. And that by God’s grace, they
would be redeemed from their lawlessness and that they would
love to do the will of almighty God. You know, we hear politicians,
especially now as we’re running up to another presidential election,
we hear the moral majority, the last 30 years, we hear evangelical
Christian preachers saying, we just need to elect the right
people and our nation will get turned around. Well, how’s that
worked for us? Not so great. You know what we
need? We need something bigger than
that. That’s treating the symptom. We need faithful gospel churches. preaching the word of the living
and true God, praying with all our hearts that God’s kingdom
would come and that his will would be done on earth as it
is in heaven. We need to be reminded that these
are the days of Noah, where people are eating and drinking and passing
their time, and they do not expect the judgment of the living and
true God, and they are not seeking an ark for salvation or safety. And so we need to pray that God
almighty would use us as we faithfully serve him in the church, as we
faithfully serve him in our spheres of influence in the world, to
preach and to teach and to evangelize, to give the message of the living
God. And we need to pray for the conversion
of souls. Yes, it’s nice to have the right
person in office. Yes, it’s nice to see the tide
stemmed on some social ill. It’s wonderful to see those things.
But bigger than that, we need the gospel of Jesus to enter
in people’s lives so that they renounce ungodliness and worldly
passions. And they are no longer men and
women and boys and girls of lawlessness, but they are redeemed ones who
read and know and love and obey the will of almighty God. And
so when we pray, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,
we’re praying for conversions, conversions from doing the will
of Satan, the will of wicked man, the will of the world. And we’re praying conversions
to the will of almighty God. There’s another thing though,
that we’re praying for. We’re praying for Christians that they
might be sanctified. So we pray for conversions for
the lost, but we pray for the sanctification of Christians. The apostle Paul said this in
Romans chapter seven, he said, I delight in the law of God.
You think he wanted the will of God to be done on earth as
it is in heaven? Absolutely. He said, I delight
in the law of God, but my members, my body is captive to the law
of sin. You know, Romans chapter seven,
you feel Romans chapter seven every day. You know the words
of the apostle Paul where elsewhere in chapter seven, he says, I
know the good thing I ought to do, but that is the very thing
I do not do. I know the good I ought to do,
and that is the very thing I do not do. And I know the evil thing
that I ought not to do. Yet that is what I do. Dear friends, we struggle as
Christians who have been called and regenerated, who’ve been
given new hearts and new spirits, who’ve been brought from darkness
to light. We struggle still with remaining
original sin, with remaining corruption that is in us. Sanctification is a lifelong
process of becoming holy. That’s what sanctification is.
It’s becoming sanctified, becoming holy. It’s being made holy. It’s
a lifelong process. where we are renewed in the whole
of man after the image of God, that image of God that was crushed,
it was bent, it was broken, it was bruised at the fall when
Adam and Eve first sinned. God, in his grace, when we become
Christians is renewing us in the image of God after the image
of the Lord Jesus. And more and more we die under
sin and we live under righteousness. You know the struggle in your
own life. You know what you ought to do. You know what you ought
not to do. Sometimes we win, sometimes we
lose. Sometimes we do the right thing. Often we do the wrong
thing. We have the spirit in us speaking
to us saying, obey God, follow him, be righteous, be sanctified. But we have the struggles with
the inner man. We have the struggles with the
world. We have the struggles with Satan and his temptations.
And so as our confession of faith so well says, we have remaining
corruption in us, remaining original sin, and it leaves within our
hearts a continual and irreconcilable war. To me, those are some of
the hardest words of our confession of faith. to understand that
I, as one of God’s children, still have a remnant of sin in
my life. that leaves inside me a continual
and irreconcilable war, the spirit versus the flesh, Christ versus
Satan, the word versus the world. You know this struggle within
you. If you’re a halfway awake Christian, you daily battle between
the spirit and the flesh, the word and the world and Christ
and Satan. We win some, we lose some, we
have these periods where we do well in our lives, and we have
these other stretches where we just blow it. And dear friends,
that’s the reality of the Christian life. So when we pray, thy will
be done on earth as it is in heaven, what are we praying for?
We’re praying, God, let your Holy Spirit restrain my evil,
corrupt heart. Let your word win out over the
world. Let Christ and his voice of encouragement
went out over Satan and his lies because he’s still coming into
our gardens and saying, did God really say? I mean, aren’t we
still tempted every day with the same lies of Satan? God wants
you to be happy. These are just rules. You can
ignore them. There’s just suggestions. I mean, haven’t we seen this
in the ministry of the evangelical church in America? It wants you
to be happy, healthy, and wealthy. And what does God want? He wants
you to be holy, even if it costs you everything. And so when we
pray, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Dear friends,
it’s a dangerous prayer. It’s a big, mighty prayer. And so we want to be sanctified.
We want to be made holy. Well, there’s a third thing that
we prayed for, that we pray for in this prayer. Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. We know that someday when we
pass away, we’ll be raised up in glory. And as the great hymn
says, we will be saved to sin no more. When we enter glory,
when we enter heaven, we will no longer struggle with sin.
We will no longer struggle with that remaining flesh in us. We
will no longer struggle with the world. We’ll no longer struggle
with Satan. for we will be made perfect as
we enter God’s glorious presence. God’s will will be done in heaven
as we are there in heaven. And that’s something wonderful
to look for. When you despair over your sins,
when you feel defeated by the world and defeated by your own
flesh and your lust and your desires, when you feel defeated
by following Satan and not Christ, you can say, it’s gonna be no
more one day. This battle will be over. This
strife will come to an end. Adam and Eve, remember, were
banished from the garden. You remember after God confronted
them, he came looking for them, he found them hiding, he found
them trying to cover their shame with fig leaves, and he sacrificed
an animal for them. He made a provision that they
might live. He, though, sent them out of the garden. They
put an angel with flaming swords, cherubim there to keep them from
entering the garden again. And I used to think that was
a really rotten, mean thing for God to do. But you know why he
did that? He protected the way to the tree
of life. For what if Adam and Eve, who
represented us, whose original sin we have because of their
sin, what if they had eaten of the tree of life and lived forever
in their sinful state? We would live forever in our
sinful state. And so the cherubim, the guardians of the tree of
life, they protected Adam and Eve from reentering the garden
and eating that tree of life and living forever perpetually
in their sin nature. And there’s a hope we have in
heaven, dear friends. God has opened up the way to
the tree of life again. the garden from which we were
banished through Adam and Eve, that garden will be open to us
again. We read in the book of Revelation,
how at the center of heaven, there is the tree of life, is
the river of life. And we will eat from it one day
and live forever, but without sin. And so when we pray, dear
brothers and sisters, thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven. We’re praying for conversions,
people to come to faith in Jesus, and that for those who come to
faith in Jesus, that they would grow in grace and know and love
and memorize and desire to do the will of God, and that they
can’t wait to get to heaven where all things will be made perfect.
But keep in mind, will you, when we pray thy will be done, that
God expects even more of us than we do of our children. Yes, right
away, all the way in a happy way. But we want to do it the
biblical way. And we want to do it cheerfully
for God and Christ has saved us from our sin. And what greater
act of thanksgiving could we give him than to love his word
and to obey it in order that we might please him? Pray with
me. Lord, how we love your holy law
for in it, it tells us who we are, It tells us about yourself
and it tells us, most importantly, the way of salvation through
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we ask and pray that you
would incline our hearts to love your law, that you would make
room in our lives for us to obey and to serve and to bring glory
to your name. Lord, forgive us when we want to live the world’s
way. Forgive us when we love Satan’s
call over Christ and forgive us when Though the spirit is
willing, the flesh is weak and often leads the way. Help us,
for we need your grace. And we have one who has lived
perfectly, even Jesus Christ, and we trust in him. And it’s
in his name we pray, amen. We want to sing of God’s goodness
in giving us his law by using Psalm 119, 119M in your hymnal. Oh, how I love your holy law.
This is David’s reflection. of loving God’s word. Let’s stand
together and sing.