Your Will vs. God’s Will

1. 0:00Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 49.
2. 0:13What does the third petition mean?
3. 0:15Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven means: and all people to renounce our own wills and without any backtalk to obey your will, for it alone is good. Help everyone carry out his offers and calling as
4. 0:31willingly and faithfully as the angels in heaven. When we come to the third petition, your will be done.
5. 0:40We need to understand that God's name is hallowed more and more in the measure that his kingdom comes.
6. 0:53And his kingdom comes more and more in the measure that his will is done.
7. 1:00If you have a king ruling over a kingdom and he commands certain good laws and no one follows them, then he has no glory and really he has no kingdom if he's not obeyed.
8. 1:15All you need to do is look at the history of the world.
9. 1:20going all the way back to Genesis chapter 3. And you see what happens when we insist on our will being done. That's what the fall was all about.
10. 1:33The fall was not your will, but my will be done. That's what Adam and Eve were saying and every pain, every suffering, every death, every affliction, every
11. 1:48catastrophe, everything that's ever gone wrong in human history and everything that is going wrong right now is because of man saying not your will be done, my will
12. 1:59be done. We see it in our own lives. I see it in my own heart that my old nature so often is pushing me to live in a way which doesn't align with your will and all the misery that comes from that.
13. 2:13And there's only one way to fix that. Lord, please, your will be done.
14. 2:19It's a cry from the heart because we want to come to a world where God's will is perfectly followed.
15. 2:35That's heaven.
16. 2:36And we want to be saved from a world.
17. 2:39in which God's will is constantly defied and sinned against.
18. 2:46That's hell.
19. 2:48It's not just, "Oh, I should try to listen to the Lord a little bit more."
20. 2:54No, it's a stark difference here between heaven and hell.
21. 2:59And as we study the scriptures and as we study the Reformed Confessions, we understand that God reveals His will to us in His Holy Word.
22. 3:10That is the basis for our life and our faith, everything that He has revealed in His Word.
23. 3:17The Bible makes a distinction between the secret of God and the revealed bull of God. And if you go to Deuteronomy chapter 29 verse 29,
24. 3:25Moses speaks about that. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, the revealed things to us and our children that we might do them, that we might live by them.
25. 3:34So when we're asking God that his will be done, we're asking for both things.
26. 3:39those things. We're asking in the first place, "Lord, your plan for this world and for the universe and for the human race and for my life, may it be done." Because
27. 3:50it's the only good plan. And so this prayer is a prayer of submission. And then it's also a prayer for faithfulness. God has called you in your life to certain offices, certain duties, and
28. 4:09his revealed will is that we ought to be faithful in them. And so when we pray this petition, we're saying, "Lord, help me to do the job you've given me to do." The catechism says, "Do it like the angels
29. 4:19in heaven. So the angels in heaven, when God tells them to do something, they don't linger like a reluctant teenager. Dad says, go shovel the driveway, and two hours later, he's got to remind
30. 4:31him again. When God says something to the angels, they're at it. They're on it. They jump up and they move. They delight.
31. 4:39light to obey. And this prayer is, "Lord, can you please make me like that? When you tell me to do something, let me do it promptly and sincerely, cheerfully, that I just, I'm
32. 4:52in a hurry to listen to you." When we look at this petition, we're reminded that our Lord Jesus Christ, the last Adam, the perfect man, the sinless man, that he prayed
33. 5:09this petition. When he was confronted with God's eternal plan that he would suffer the of hell in order to redeem us from our sin.
34. 5:24That he saw that cup that was before him and he prayed, "Lord, if it be possible, remove this."
35. 5:31But then he prayed these words of this petition, "But not my will, your will be done."
36. 5:37And so when the Lord Jesus puts this on our lips, he knows that sometimes it's very hard to pray this.
37. 5:45That sometimes this prayer is prayed in a moment of great anguish and we think, "Lord, I don't know how I can go forward in the way that you have ordained.
38. 5:55It seems too much for me."
39. 5:57But your Savior knows that.
40. 5:59He's been there.
41. 6:01And so he lays this prayer upon your lips, knowing exactly what it costs.
42. 6:06But he's paid that cost.
43. 6:08He suffered that pain.
44. 6:11And you can trust him, you can follow him as you pray the prayer that he prayed to the Father.
45. 6:17The answer to that prayer is that life comes out of death, and that joy comes out of suffering, and that the morning follows the night.
46. 6:39Thank you.

Made automatically from the audio, so a word here or there may be wrong. Tap any line to play from there.