Can you fill in this blank? A picture is worth _a thousand words_. I’m going to show you a series of pictures; I want you to give me one word to describe each:
Happy
Sad
Mad
Pretty easy and pretty obvious, right? There are certain things that don’t take a great detective to figure out.
But can you tell me why the baby is sad? Can you tell whether this man is sincerely angry, or is he just posing for a photo? Can you tell me how happy this woman is, or what she’s happy about? That’s a lot harder, isn’t it?
Some things we can take at face value. Others require explanation, and ideally from the source. The parents of this baby might have a good idea why he’s sad, but this woman is the only one who can tell us why she’s happy or how happy she is.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but even those thousand words aren’t enough to tell the whole story. There’s only one way to know what’s going on in someone’s mind, and that is to ask them. And that’s what makes today’s topic so challenging.
In the Third Petition, we pray to our Father in heaven, “Thy will be done.” We don’t often talk about someone’s “will” unless we’re referring to that legal document that determines what happens to a person’s stuff after they die. That’s not what we’re talking about here.
God’s will is whatever he in his infinite wisdom wants to do. God’s will is his desire. But how can we possibly know what God wants? We can’t look at his facial expressions, but even if we could, we couldn’t read his mind. As great as prayer is; it’s a one-way street. We can speak to God; we are invited to pour out our hearts to him, but he doesn’t respond in the same way. Prayer is not like a conversation we have with a friend over a cup of coffee. Prayer is a one-way street, from us to him.
And yet, God nevertheless does reveal his will to us. He even speaks to us in ways that we can hear with our own two ears. He speaks to us in his Word, and there he reveals his will. He tells us what he wants.
I want to share just two of the explicit examples we read in the Bible of what God wants.
God our Savior wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.[1]
God wants sinners to be saved.
What else does God want?
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified.[2]
God wants you to be sanctified, which just means that he wants you to live a good and godly life.
Now, these two passages are not a complete, comprehensive list of all the things that God wants, but they are a representative sample. Of all the things God wants, there are 2 that he wants more than anything else, and they both start with the letter S: _salvation_ and _sanctification_. Generally speaking, that’s what God wants – he wants you to be saved, and he wants you to live like you’re saved. That’s what God’s will is.
How does God’s will get done? That’s what we pray for in the Third Petition: Thy will be done. I want to share three examples with you this morning of three different men in the Bible all of whose names start with the letter J, and who all tell us something about how God’s will is done. I’ll tell you about them one word at a time. You chime in when you think know who it is:
Nineveh. Storm. Whale.
It’s Jonah.
Jonah had a problem with the will of God. Unlike the way he deals with us, God spoke directly with Jonah and told him exactly what his will was for Jonah’s life. God wanted Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and to warn the people there of the coming judgment for their sin, with the hope that they would repent and be saved (after all, that’s one of the things we know God wants – salvation).
But Jonah didn’t want what God wanted. The Ninevites were Jonah’s political enemies. They were threatening to attack the Jewish people. Jonah didn’t want to warn them about God’s anger. Jonah wanted God to be mad at them so that they would be destroyed and so that the Jews would be delivered.
So Jonah ran away. He chartered the first boat headed the opposite direction. Tarshish was as far away from Nineveh in the known world as Jonah could have possibly gone.
Jonah defied God’s will, and yet by the end of the story, Jonah still did God’s will. Do you remember how God got Jonah from a boat headed east to Nineveh in the west? He sent a great storm and had Jonah get cast into the sea to be swallowed by a great fish, to be swum back to the shores of Israel and vomited on dry land with the strict command of God:
“Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”[3]
This time, Jonah obeyed and did God’s will.
What do we learn about God’s will from Jonah? God’s will is done whether we want to do it or not. The only difference is what our attitude toward God’s will is.
I think we can all be like Jonah. Jonah didn’t want what God wanted. Jonah tried to resist the will of God. We do the same thing. Can you think of some examples?
It could be as simple as daring to ask God, “Why?” I don’t want to go too deeply into specific examples today, but there’s a danger to asking God the question, “Why?” Sometimes we are truly nothing more than curious, e.g. “I wonder why God made the platypus?” Most of the time, though, I think that the question, “Why?” comes from a place of pride, more like, “What were you thinking God? How could you let this happen?”
Really, in the back of our minds, what we’re thinking is, “I had a better plan, God! Why couldn’t you just do what I wanted?” And it doesn’t really matter what the circumstance is. It could be a death or a tragedy, a loss or pain. There are times when, like Jonah, we don’t want what God wants. We are constantly faced with the temptation to think like Jonah did – that my will, i.e. what I want, is better than God’s will, i.e. what he wants.
Sometimes, in sin, we dare to ask God, “Why?” Sometimes, in sin, we dare to ask ourselves, “Why not?” Why shouldn’t I be happy? Why shouldn’t I enjoy the things God forbids – the substances, the secrets, the shameful things I do when no one’s watching, the things that are no one else’s business? “Why not?”
But that’s the sin of Jonah all over again – thinking that what I want is better than what God wants. I don’t care about God wants; I only care about what I want. Or, if it’s a little less callous than that: I don’t know what God wants; I do know what I want, so I’m not going to bother trying to learn what God wants. I’m just going to make sure my will gets done.
Jonah teaches us two things: God’s will always gets done, and any opposition that I raise to it, is sin. Time for another J:
Dreams. Coat. Egypt. Slave. Prisoner. Famine.
This one is Joseph. Joseph didn’t defy the clear will of God, the way that Jonah did. With Joseph it was more that the will of God was unclear and sometimes in question.
Joseph was given a dream at a young age – his siblings and even his parents would bow down to him. His brothers thought he was gloating and they hated him for him. They thought about killing him, but elected for the less violent route by merely selling him into slavery. From there he was falsely accused and thrown into prison. Joseph had gone from being the favourite son of his father to a forgotten prisoner mouldering away in a dungeon somewhere far from home.
Joseph must have been so confused. What about that dream God had given him? Wasn’t it God’s will that Joseph rise to such a power that even his family would bow down to him? It didn’t look like that was going to happen from where Joseph was sitting.
But then God used a series of unlikely events to put Joseph into a position to help the Pharaoh of Egypt out of a jam, and in thankfulness Pharaoh plucked Joseph out of prison and made him second in command over the greatest superpower of the day.
God’s will was clear. Joseph would rise to power. But the path from A to B wasn’t a straight line. So, what can we learn about God’s will this time from Joseph? God’s will doesn’t always match our expectation. Or, to put it the way that Isaiah does:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”[4]
I’m sure that, given the choice, Joseph wouldn’t have opted for slavery or prison, but God still used those truly challenging moments in Joseph’s life to put him in a position to save thousands. As the second in command in all of Egypt, Joseph ensured that not only Egypt but all of its neighbours would survive a 7 year famine. I’m sure it’s not what Joseph had in mind, or how he thought he’d get from A to B, but it was God’s will, and God’s will got done.
And finally, our last J. I’m willing to bet that I don’t have to say a single word for you to guess who this J is. It’s Jesus!
Just like with Joseph, God’s will in Jesus’ life was often paradoxical and unexpected. The Son of God from all eternity was born of a woman in antiquity. The almighty, all-powerful, omnipotent God was at the mercy of earthly rulers. The sinless Son of God was convicted of crimes he did not commit and sentenced to die a criminal’s death. The eternal, immortal, ever-living God was killed to give you eternal, unending life in his name.
That doesn’t make sense to us. You hear statements like that and you ask the questions: How is that possible? Why would God do that?
The snarky answer is, because he wanted to – because that was his will. The better answer is because he loves you, and because you know the two areas of God’s will that are crystal clear in Scripture: _salvation_ and _sanctification_. God wanted you to be saved. That’s why he sent his sinless Son to die on a cross – for your salvation.
Unlike Jonah, Jesus didn’t begrudge his mission. He willingly and wholeheartedly accepted the will of his Father and he humbled himself – not only by becoming a man, and living as the poor son of a carpenter and later on a vagabond preacher. He humbled himself being obedient even to the point of death on a cross, even when he would have loved for there to be a different way to save you.
And this is one of the most amazing stories in the entire Bible. On the night before Jesus died, literally minutes before he was arrested by the Jews, Jesus prayed this:
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”[5]
In those last moments before his death, Jesus prayed for there to be another way to save humanity. He didn’t look forward to what was about to happen to him, and he asked his Father in heaven for a different option.
But how did Jesus end this prayer? “Yet not my will, but yours be done.” Jesus was willing to accept his Father’s will, even when it wasn’t his own, even when it would mean great pain and ultimately an excruciating death, because at the end of the day even if Jesus didn’t know anything else about his Father’s will, he knew the same two things that you and I do. God desires our _salvation_ and _sanctification_. And Jesus did too. Jesus was willing to give up his will out of love for you. Jesus was willing to be condemned, so that you could be forgiven. Jesus was willing to die so that you could live.
There could be no better comfort than Jesus when we’re confronted with our own Jonah-like opposition to God’s will. Even for our rejection of and rebellion against God’s will in our lives, we have forgiveness in Jesus who kept his Father’s will perfectly.
There could be no better comfort than Jesus. There could be no better example than Jesus. When we pray to our Father in heaven, especially about his will being done, how can we be like Jesus?
We can be humble like him. Submit our will to his. Trust that even when we can’t see how God could get us from A to B, his will will always be done, one way or another. It may not take the path we think it might or should. It might not be what we wanted, but if it’s God’s will, it is always best. If it is God’s will, it will never jeopardize our salvation or compromise our sanctification.
God wants you to know that you are saved. That’s why he sent and sacrificed his Son. That was his will. Now he wants you live like you’re saved. So, pray like Jesus, “Thy will be done.” Amen.
[1] 1 Timothy 2:3,4
[2] 1 Thessalonians 4:3
[3] Jonah 3:2
[4] Luke 22:42
[5] Luke 22:42