I. Mark the force of this petition. (1) Simultaneously with our discernment of the Redeemer's right to rule us, there is the regretful discovery made that we have withheld our hearts, and our fellowmen have withheld their hearts, from this gracious sovereignty. Recognizing this successively, we long that He would establish and extend His kingdom in our heart. (2) We pray also for the establishment and extension of Christ's kingdom amongst men. His kingdom is not a secret sovereignty over individual hearts alone, but an empire over the united commonwealth of the Christian Church. A common allegiance to the Redeemer has created the great brotherhood of the Church of Christ. And that Church, united in faith, love, hope, duty, is the Saviour's kingdom. And as the devout heart feels that for itself the establishment and extension of the Saviour's secret kingdom within is the thing supremely to be desired, so it feels that for the world the establishment and extension of the Saviour's kingdom in it is the thing most earnestly to be sought. Those who do not pray see not the glory of the Church, nor the essential service she has rendered and can render to mankind.
II. Consider the duty of offering this petition more earnestly. Who is there that offers it daily, as he is in the habit of asking for daily bread? Is it not the case that even the devoutest desire almost everything about Jesus Christ more than His sovereignty? We want His comfort, we want His teaching, we want His promises, we want His protection, we want His support. But His rule, His command, how many of us are there that put that first and foremost before daily bread? It is vain for us to ask for mercy, and joy, and assurance, and rapture, and heaven, and not give ourselves up to be moulded, inspired, enlarged, guided by God. And therefore this petition of surrender is the salt of the whole, that which makes all the others answerable. We wish to be useful, and feel that the only value in life is usefulness. We shall be useful only in the degree in which our obedience to the Saviour is a living and continuous thing.
R. Glover, Lectures on the Lord's Prayer,p. 30.
The comprehensive scope and intercessory character of the three petitions. The spirit of a Christian drawing near unto God is a royal spirit. He asks great things for himself and for others.
I. For himself. It is written, "Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss." And one of the errors of our prayer may be, that our aim is not high enough that in coming to a King, whose delight is to be bountiful, we do not bring with us a royal spirit and large desires, but a contracted spirit and limited petitions. (1) High ought to be our thoughts of acceptance and favour in the sight of God. The very light of God's countenance is our aim. And as every repentant and believing sinner is at liberty immediately to pass out of the cold the Arctic regions of the law, with its condemnation into the sunny paradise of this infinite love, those who have believed are still further assured of their perfect blessedness. (2) Peace is thus ours. Only those who know the God of Peace know the peace of God. Only those who know that Christ is our Peace understand fully what He means when He says, "My peace I give unto you." (3) And do we seek joy in God? It is written, "Thou wilt make them joyful in Thy house of prayer." Christ's joy is to be in us. Perfect love of God, perfect peace of God, perfect joy of God, such are royal thoughts and petitions.
II. For others. Prayer in the name of Christ must needs be prayer for the manifestation of God's glory in the good of man. Intercession is the distinguishing mark of the Christian. The penitent, the inquirer, pray for their own personal safety. The accepted believer prays for others as well as himself; he prays for the Church and for the world. It is in intercession that the Christian most fully enters into his glorious liberty. He fulfils the measure of prayer, for Christ and the Church are one.
A. Saphir, Lectures on the Lord's Prayer,p. 235.
I. Consider the exact meaning of this petition. Resist God as we will, we and all our actions will yet be included in the sweep of some Divine plan, and everything we do, even our evil, be made contributive to some gracious results. But if instead of resisting Him we fall in with His desires become workers together with Him then the Fatherly plan,fullest of mercy and of love, is realized. If we be plastic to His touch, He moulds us into vessels of honour; if crude and unyielding, it is still He that is the Potter, and we are still moulded on His wheel, but He can only fashion us into some vessel of less honourable use. In this prayer we recognize that God's will may, through our dulness or waywardness, fail of its accomplishment; and so, for ourselves, our friends, and for mankind at large, we pray, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven."
II. Consider the consolation suggested by the petition. Perplexed with the entanglements and burdened with the responsibilities of life, this word comes to us with the sustaining thought that, while we are unable to plan it aright, God has planned it for us; that in the Divine mind there is an ideal plan which embraces every object at which we should aim the perfecting of our being, our daily protection, the averting of all injury to our essential being, our present and our eternal joy. To the thoughtless this consolation may seem slight; to the thoughtful it will appear supreme.
III. Consider the wisdom of adopting this petition as our. own. All who can realize that God will take the trouble to plan our life for us will at once admit that the wisest course we can adopt is to pray and labour that His plan may be carried out. And the more we think of it, the more we see the wisdom of praying that it may be so. For (1) we have not in ourselves either the knowledge or experience which would permit us even to plan with wisdom* our outward and earthly lot. (2) Little as we can guess what would be best for us here, still less can we guess what course and what experiences of life would most secure our well-being in the life to come. When we wake to the sense of our immortality, and are moved by the gracious solicitude which it awakens, the first and last action of instinctive wisdom is to commit the whole ordering of our life to God, and to say, "Thy will be done."
R. Glover, Lectures on the Lord's Prayer,p. 45.
References: Matthew 6:9; Matthew 6:10. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 515; R. Glover, Ibid.,vol. xvii., p. 280; W. H. Dallinger, Ibid.,vol. xxx., p. 125; C. Kingsley, All Saints' Day and other Sermons,p. 357; Ibid., Sermons for the Times,p. 130.