Sermon Brief
Date Written: April 22, 2014
Date Preached: April 23, 2014
Where Preached: OPBC (AM)
Sermon Details:
Series Title: A Study on the Lord’s Prayer
Sermon Title: On Earth as it is in Heaven…(Sermon 7)
Sermon Text: Matthew 6:9-13 [HCSB]
Essence of the Text: Jesus wanted His disciples to know how to pray…
Essence of the Sermon: Jesus wants believers today to know how to pray…
Objective of the Sermon: Prayer is vital for the believer, but prayer is not so much in the words as it is in the attitude behind those words. This model prayer lays forth a template that guides the believer in the direction of their prayer and the attitude of their heart.
Introduction:
A few wks ago I spoke with you about the Will of God and what it was and we learned that God’s will must permeate and penetrate ALL of who we are as beleivers… we learned how tremendously important it is for His will to be done in our lives!
But the question most of us will ask is HOW? How can the will of God be played out in my life? We ask HOW, about this statement within this model prayer, “…on earth as it is in heaven…” – this statement refers to the will of God being accomplished and the model prayer seeks for God’s will to be as accomplished here in this world as it is in Heaven itself!
Can you imagine angels that disobey God? YES, I can… and they were cast out! Those angels who remain in heaven obey God and follow His will without question, for this is what they were created to do…
However, humanity was created with something the Angels did not have, an opportunity for free will. Humanity rebelled as well, and because of that rebellion God cast us out of the perfect into a world that now contained sin and death.
However, God did not cast us out without the hope of redemption. In Christ Jesus we have the opportunity for redemption and restoration. But the question still remains, how can the will of God really be accomplished on earth as it is in heaven?
How can God’s wishes, desires and intentions be realized on an earth where sin dominates the landscape and where evil reigns? How can God’s will be accomplished when Satan holds a tyrannical rule over much of humanity and where humanity itself is mired in self love and the depravity of the heart?
Can the divine desires of the Father be realized in this world? Well I believe that for EVERY believer the desires of the Father CAN be accomplished but it has to begin with each individual believer! So the question now becomes, can the will of the Father be accomplished in MY life here in this world?
I believe Jesus understood human nature and that humanity is selfish… and I do not believe this was some pie in the sky dream of Jesus for His followers. But when He says, “…on earth as it is in heaven…” he believed it could be accomplished by those who seek to be obedient and to please God…
Now we need to understand that just because the world is filled with evil and Satan clutches our world with a tyrannical hold that the will of God will NEVER be realized! IT WILL BE REALIZED! In spite of Satan and the evil hearts of humanity, God’s will will be realized.
What Jesus was getting at was for the believer to submit and surrender (each one of us) to the will of the Father. We are NOT puppets guided by some cosmic puppet master, but God created us with a will to choose and here Jesus is laying out a template for us to choose to be as obedient to God’s will here in this world as the angels of heaven are in their world.
So again the question comes back to, “Am I willing to allow the accomplishment of God’s will within my own life?” So often we find ourselves in the cross hairs of 2 separate wills… The will of the Father and our own will and desire!
It is our calling as believers to surrender our own will and to submit to the will of the Father… this is what we call Christian maturity and growth… In fact 90% of spiritual maturity and what we deem as ‘holiness’ can be achieved through simply surrendering your own will and submitting to the will of the Father!
As we read of those who have come before us we find many were able to do just that… they were able to set aside their own personal desire and will and they were able to submit the will of the Father…and the most successful of those not only surrendered to the will of the Father but they began to cherish and willingly dwelt within the will of the Father…
The most used and most vivid illustration we have for surrendering to the will of the Father is the potter and his potter’s wheel and the lifeless, cold, lump of clay.
WE are that lifeless lump of clay before Christ saves us… He then takes us, molds us, shapes us and designs us for service within His kingdom. He takes a useless lump of clay and transforms us into a beautiful instrument for His kingdom. BUT the potter can only do this with a moldable, mallable willing lump of clay. If we are not moldable or mallable in the hands of the Father… in the center of His will… then we are of no use to Him.
I once read a story of a man on the mission field who visited a local potter. Over the door of his shop the potter had the verse, “…arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause you to hear my words…” Jer 18:2
This missionary asked the potter to share with him how he created such beautiful pottery. The potter was all to eager to show this missionary how things were done.
He led the missionary to a dark room in the far back of his shop and when he opened the door to this small dark back room the stench was almost unbearable. He turned to the missionary and told him, “This is where it ALL begins!”
In the middle of the small closet like room was a hole in the floor. The potter knelt down and reached down into the dark hole and began to manipulate the muddy concoction with his skillful hands.
The missionary said that he immediately was taken in his heart and mind to Psalm 40:1-2 (ESV) where the Psalmist says, “I waited patiently for the Lord; He inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog…”
The potter informed the missionary that he had mixed the mud with some grasses and allowed it to firment and rot causing the caustic smell but that it would create a mud that was much more mallable and useable for his purposes.
The potter then pulled up a double handful of the caustic smelling clay and took it into another room and did something he did not expect. The potter took an inordinate amount of time setting this lump of clay on his spinning wheel, taking great care to center it on the stone.
The process seemed unnaturally long for the missionary but the potter informed him that this was a must as the clay must be in the right spot on the wheel before it begins to turn, otherwise it will warp and be mishapened in the process.
The missionary was once again drawn to Psalm 40:2b where the psalmist wrote: “…and He set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure…”
The missionary thought to himself that like the potter God takes special pains to place us just where we need to be so that He can form us and that we would not be mishapened or warped in the process… that we are ‘centered’ on the foundation that is Christ Jesus.
The potter could not place the clay on the potter’s wheel while it was still in the pit, but it had to be brought up from the pit before it could be set upon the wheel for shaping. Likewise, God has had to pull each and every one of us up out of the pit… out of our old caustic, rotting lives of sin to be placed on the foundational wheel upon which He can spin and shape us into what He desires.
The potter then sat down on his wobbly stool behind the potter’s wheel and a transformation took place. This man who was haggard and lined with the worries of the world across his face… suddenly was alive with a brightness and vigor that lit up the room.
It was as if the potter could SEE what this smelly, mishapened, lump of clay would become! The potter already knew what he was going to make with this lump of clay…
People that is what we are in God’s hands, we are that lump of clay that He lifts up out of the miry clay, that He places so meticulously into the position He knows will benefit our growth the best, and then He begins to shape and mold us… not to become just anything… but to become what He already knows He wants us to become.
This reminded the missionary of God’s loving hands and how intimate God desires to be with each of His children. The loving hands of the potter DO seek to mold and shape, but it is done for a purpose and out of love for the end product, knowing that this lump of unshaped and stinky clay can become something beautiful.
Then the missionary noticed that on either side of the wheel was a basin of water… and he noticed that the potter NEVER touched the clay without first dipping his hands into that water.
The missionary understood this to represent the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life and the life of beleivers. Thru the presence and medium of the Holy Spirit indwelling within our hearts, God can shape and mold us in a manner that will please Him.
Through the moistening effect of the Holy Spirit, God can and does shape our lives and make us into what He deems is best. In other words, we are shaped to the WILL of God!
Another truth was made evident to the missionary as the Potter was shaping the lump of clay… it was beginning to take the definite shape of a goblet when suddenly the wheel stopped and the potter used his finger to scrape away some form of impurity from the forming goblet.
After a few more rotations he had to stop again, resulting in yet another scratch to the goblet. All of a sudden the impurities found in the clay were threatening the final product… all at once the potter stopped his process and crushed the clay back down to a lump of clay.
This illustrated to the missionary that there are times in our lives when the impurities of life prevent us from becoming all of what God wants us to become and so God has to remove them… but there is also a time when there are TOO many impurities for Him to work with, so He crushes down the goblet back into a shapeless mass of clay.
Often God must tear down what He has built… tear us down to ensure that the impurities are removed and that anything He builds with the materials of our lives is pure. Any impurity will cause the integrity of the work to be compromised and so God’s desire is to remove those impurities so that our lives can and will withstand any pressure from the outside.
This illustration spoke to me this week as I prepared for this lesson… I was led to my knees and a pray of Lord use me as the master potter… shape the clay of my life! Father your will be done, on earth (as the clay) as it is in Heaven.
Then missionary then said that the potter took a very fine thread from the wall beside him and stretched it tight from a nail to the wall. The purpose of this thread was to separate the completed goblet from its clay foundation… this is a great illustration of what it means to be used by God…what it means to DO the will of God!
It is as if the thread removing this goblet from its stand akin to removing ourselves from the seat of power within our lives and placing God in control! But we live in a world where self restraint and discipline are things looked down upon, in fact if you can do it… this world encourages you to do so… it does not matter what “IT” is!
I have heard that there are websites out there dedicated to promoting and encouraging extra marital affairs… saying things like “You deserve to experience the rush of an affair… step out of your rut and make a memory!”
After separating the clay from its base the potter places it on a table to rest and cure for a bit, then after that time of curing the goblet is placed into the fiery kiln to put on the final touches…
Again the missionary saw the hand of God in this visit as he now understood that those times of waiting were necessary and that the fiery furnace of life is used by God NOT to tear us down but to cement and make us what He desires us to be…
How do you respond to the touch of the Master’s hand? Are you willing to see His will done here in this world just as it is done in Heaven?
To obey and cooperate with God means that we must subject ourselves to His desire… to His plan for our lives! It means to give into His will and because of our perverse pride submission to His will is usually very hard for us to accept… it goes against our desires and we resist!
The simple truth of the matter is found in Scripture’s cry of “Obey and live… disobey and die” To love God is to obey Him… love and obedience within Scripture are intimately intertwined and cannot be separated.
There are many steps we can take toward this sort of submission to God’s will…
1st – we must have the desire to be obedient and with the help of the Father we CAN cooperate with His will
2nd – once the desire is made evident, we can ask God to intervene in our hearts and minds and permeate our own will to submit to His
3rd – as we set ourselves toward obedience to God, we can know that God is going to reveal His desire FOR us
4th – as we learn what God desires, we can ask God for the strength, courage and boldness to carry out what He is calling us to do
Just as Paul says in Phil 2:13 (ESV), “…for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for HIS good pleasure…”
As we begin to deliberately submit and surrender OUR will to His will we find His instruction clearer in our lives and His direction more evident. We also find the energy and courage to do what He has called us to do…
Thus the prayer that Jesus sets forth here is a template for OUR heart… what we should be praying for within our own lives! When we pray, “…on earth as it is in heaven…” we are NOT praying that the world will somehow miraculously transform into this world of those submitting to God and his will… although that would be wonderful!
But our prayer of “…on earth as it is in heaven…” is a prayer for our own will, for our own outlook, for our own submission to His will! For when we submit within our hearts, we can be used by God and FOR God in His purposes, bringing MORE people to know Him and allowing more people to be submissive to His will… seeing MORE of His will being done on earth!
Let’s pray!
